I picked up a box of Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles when doing the shopping the other day, partly because I hadn’t had any in ages, but mainly because they were on a special offer. A day or so later said box of Waffles was taken from the freezer to be cooked for dinner, and whilst waiting I was idly reading the packaging.
There was a little bit on there talking about some bloke called Colin who was the official Bird’s Eye potato guru (what a job title) who has apparently been making sure Bird’s Eye only pick the best potatoes so that Potato Waffles are as good now as they were when launched in 1981.
Suddenly my Eighties sense was tingling, and it made me realise I hadn’t written about a food related subject for a little while, hence the subject for today’s post.
Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles are basically mashed up potato moulded into a rectangular lattice shape. They’re the kind of food that could only be manufactured in a factory somewhere, as you’d never bother to even try and make anything similar from scratch, it just wouldn’t be worth the effort.
They’re tasty enough (especially if you cook them with a bit of cheese on top, that’s my tip) but to this day the thing that always pops straight into my head whenever I catch a glimpse of a Potato Waffle is the TV advert, in particular it’s jingle which gets lodged in your brain and refuses to budge.
Following my post on Stick On Garfields earlier this week it seemed a fairly obvious decision to make this weeks survey about them. It’s pretty simple, did you (or more correctly perhaps, your parents) have a Garfield in the car?
Did your family have a stick on Garfield in the car?
In the first half of the eighties it seemed George Lucas could do no wrong. With the original Star Wars trilogy completed he was on top of the world. In 1984 he brought us Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and his crown started to perhaps look a little tarnished, but we forgave him because we all loved Indy.
Get to 1986 though, and the first signs of him going perhaps a bit la-la came along, with the release of Howard the Duck (also known as Howard A New Breed Of Hero). Film critics were boggling as to how George Lucas would even dare to put his name to this film, which bombed at the box office and is often cited as being one of the worst films made.
But what do film critics know? They thought Hudson Hawk was bad (I liked it, Bruce!) and anyway, George has done far worse in the meantime by introducing us to the oh-so-annoying Jar Jar Binks.
Personally I quite liked Howard the Duck, although admittedly I was a young teenager at the time I saw it, and I think this is the age group that will appreciate the film most, as despite featuring a duck as the main character it is perhaps not all that child friendly, and because it features a duck as the main character most adults would think it childish.
Today’s post is about another one of those strange fads that seem to come out of nowhere and are popular for a short time before everybody suddenly finds the idea ironic and ridiculous.
Adding a little something extra to your car to personalise it a bit has always been popular. In the seventies it was those “TREVOR and TRACY” visors for the front windscreen, or perhaps a pair of fluffy dice, whilst these days it tends to be neon strips or those weird spinning hub cap things. Not sure which of those looked worse to be honest…
In the eighties though one of the crazes for decorating your car was to have a Garfield soft toy with those suction cup thingies on each of the arms and legs stuck in your rear window. I think this craze must have originated in the US, where Jim Davis’ Garfield cartoon strip is far more popular, since I don’t remember knowing who Garfield was when these toys first appeared in the UK.
It didn’t matter though that people didn’t know who Garfield was. It was fairly obvious he was a cat and for most people that was probably enough.
So when did this craze die out? I don’t know exactly, but it was probably about the time people realised that the suction cups were rubbish and that Garfield normally spent most of his time rolling around on the back seat and floor of the car, picking up lint and dirt on the suction cups which then made them even worse as a method of attaching a soft toy to a piece of glass.
For a long time as a child I was quite puzzled by exactly what Top Trumps was. Apart from the slightly giggle worthy name (trump being a childish word for the passing of wind) I wasn’t sure why I had what appeared to be a pack of playing cards that just had a lot of different pictures and a load of numbers on.
I remember having a pack depicting various sports cars, and I used to enjoy flicking through the set looking at the pictures and reading the statistics and picking out my favourites. Then, one day a friend of mine said did I want to play Top Trumps. “Play?“, I thought, “I didn’t know it was a game!”
Turned out that those statistics were actually the core of the game. The cards are divided equally between all the players, and the lead player chooses a statistic on their top most card that they think will “trump” their opponents card. For example, it might be the top speed of a car. Whoever has the best card wins all the other cards from that round, and gets to choose the next statistic. You are out of the game if you lose all your cards, and the game ends when one player has all the cards.
From that day on I had a renewed interest in my Top Trumps cards, and even got myself a couple more sets with my pocket money, including a set of dragsters and another of dinosaurs, which quickly became my favourite as like most kids the world of dinosaurs seemed fascinating.
I wrote about the little toys and free gifts you used to get in breakfast cereals this week, and mentioned that my favourite breakfast cereal as a child was Coco Pops. To be truthful, they probably still are my favourite now, although I do like the odd bowl of Crunchy Nut Clusters with the chocolate flakes, although it is only the odd bowl because they’re too expensive and come in far too small a box.
Breakfast cereals have come and gone since the Eighties. Who remembers Kellog’s Start and the awesome Lucky Charms, a US cereal which was available over here for a while, before it was presumably withdrawn because it must have contained at least 110g of sugar per 100g…
Anyway, this weeks survey is to find out what was your favourite cereal when you were growing up. I’ve filled in most of the usual suspects already, but go ahead and add your own if I’ve missed something you were particularly fond of.
What was your favourite breakfast cereal as a kid?
Last August saw the first 80s Rewind Festival occur in Henley on Thames, and by all accounts it went down a storm. There was a great line up of eighties pop acts over the two main days on the festival, plus a funfair and late night disco tent, and over 30,000 people turned up to enjoy some great live music.
The festival proved so popular that it is set to return this again this year, with dare I say it an even better line up of music acts that before. The currently confirmed list of artists is as follows:-
I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the work of Rolf Harris, even though he tends to be made a mockery of much of the time. OK, he may insist on making ridiculous noises with his mouth or wobbling a piece of cardboard around and calling it music, but the man is an incredibly talented artist (as you’ll know if you saw his programme where he painted a portrait of the Queen) and he was even, apparently, a champion swimmer.
In the eighties Rolf’s artistic skills saw him hosting a show called Rolf Harris’ Cartoon Time, which featured a number of classic cartoons (Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, that kind of thing) with Rolf showing you how to draw the different characters with a big thick marker pen in between the cartoons. This show was the seed which ultimately grew into Rolf’s Cartoon Club, the subject of todays post.
Rolf’s Cartoon Club was show on Childrens ITV, first airing in 1989 and continuing until 1993, and whilst a lot of fun to watch was also, dare I say it, quite educational too. The show began with more of Rolf’s mad sound effects and the weird heavy breathing thing he does, layered together into a theme song. It’s impossible to write down quite how Rolf pronounces the words “Rolf’s Cartoon Club”, so instead you’ll have to watch the clip below to hear what I mean.
RSS
I picked up a box of Bird’s Eye Potato Waffles when doing the shopping the other day, partly because I hadn’t had any in ages, but mainly because they were on a special offer. A day or so later said box of Waffles was taken from the freezer to be cooked for dinner, and whilst waiting I was idly reading the packaging.![[del.icio.us]](http://www.childofthe1980s.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
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In the first half of the eighties it seemed George Lucas could do no wrong. With the original Star Wars trilogy completed he was on top of the world. In 1984 he brought us Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and his crown started to perhaps look a little tarnished, but we forgave him because we all loved Indy.
Today’s post is about another one of those strange fads that seem to come out of nowhere and are popular for a short time before everybody suddenly finds the idea ironic and ridiculous.
For a long time as a child I was quite puzzled by exactly what Top Trumps was. Apart from the slightly giggle worthy name (trump being a childish word for the passing of wind) I wasn’t sure why I had what appeared to be a pack of playing cards that just had a lot of different pictures and a load of numbers on.
I’ve always been a bit of a fan of the work of Rolf Harris, even though he tends to be made a mockery of much of the time. OK, he may insist on making ridiculous noises with his mouth or wobbling a piece of cardboard around and calling it music, but the man is an incredibly talented artist (as you’ll know if you saw his programme where he painted a portrait of the Queen) and he was even, apparently, a champion swimmer.
