Child Of The 1980's

Cadbury’s Wispa first appeared in 1981, but only as a limited trial run product in the north east of England.  It proved popular enough during the trial that it was launched nation wide in 1983, and rapidly became one of the most popular chocolate bars of the decade.

The bar consisted of Cadbury’s famous Dairy Milk chocolate, but it had gas passed through it during manufacture that caused it to go all bubbly on the inside.

It was initially advertised on TV by various well known comedy double acts, including Jan Francis and Paul Nicholas from Just Good Friends and Ruth Madoc and Simon Cadell from Hi-De-Hi (see ad embedded below this post).  I’m also pretty sure Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones did an ad in the style of one of their talking heads sketches.

Over the years new variations of the Wispa were also brought to market, such as Wispa Gold, that had a layer of caramel in the top of it, and Wispaccino which had coffee flavoured chocolate.  There was also Wispa Bite  which had a caramel and biscuit filling and Wispa Mint, which unsurprisingly had a gooey mint filling.

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I wrote this week about Kinder Surprise eggs, and how I personally am not all that keen on the taste of the chocolate that makes up the egg, so this weeks survey has the aim of finding out if people bought Kinder eggs because they like the chocolate, or whether its just for the toy…

In 1982 the classic Action Man doll was beginning to waver in popularity, with much of the blame for its demise being squarely levelled at the then insanely popular Star Wars Figures.  Manufacturers Palitoy figured if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and promptly introduced the Action Force range of mini figures (still branded under the Action Man name, as the image shows).

This first set of figures were fairly accurate depictions of different types of real life soldiers from different ages and countries, including a British Royal Marine, an SAS Frogman, a US Paratrooper and a German Stormtrooper.  There were also some more generic entries into the line up such as a helicopter pilot or a deep sea diver, complete with old fashioned diving bell helmet!

The figures were also accompanied by a number of different vehicles and playsets such as a Jeep or a command centre.  These figures weren’t quite so historically accurate, as the “multi-mission-vehicle” clearly demonstrates, being a wheeled vehicle with flotation devices to enable it to become amphibious and a set of foldable wings to give it flight.  OK, I’ll go with the flotation devices but the wings seem a bit unlikely…

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Good old Postman Pat.  He must be the envy of all other postmen as he drives around the sleepy little village of Greendale in his shiny red van, delivering the post to a handful of happy occupants.  Contrast that to a regular postmans life, delivering hundreds of letters and parcels in the rain on a bicycle, and taking most of the parcels back to the depot because there was nobody in to sign for it.

Yes, Pat Clifton (bet you didn’t know his surname!) really is a happy man, as the theme tune to the series states, and let’s face it he deserves it.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen him get angry or impatient, so good for him.

The first series of Postman Pat aired on BBC1 in 1981, and was a stop motion animated series about a friendly postman and his black and white cat, Jess, who rides around in Pat’s bright red van doing what cats do best.  That is, not a great deal.  Jess generally just stuck her head out of the window and miaowed a bit.

Some facts about Pat’s post office van.  It’s registration was PAT 1, so he must have paid through his (quite long) nose for that particular number plate.  The van initially had a yellow crown on the side, but before long the UK Post Office gave permission for the proper Royal Mail logo to be used.  It may only be a small thing, but it did make Pat’s job as a postman seem somewhat more credible (in so far as a puppet series can be).  This led to Postman Pat being used by the Post Office as a sort of mascot for a time.

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Whilst visiting my parents at the weekend my Mum suddenly appeared clutching a plastic bag that she had found whilst clearing up the house.  From it she produced my old hot water bottle from when I was very little.  I had forgotten all about it but instantly remembered the smell of rubber when clutching it close to me to keep warm when going to bed in the winter in the days before our house had central heating.

This water bottle was made out of blue rubber, and was in the shape of a bunny rabbit with big long ears.  It was still sat inside its cover, which was made of a furry blue fabric with a picture of a teddy bear sewn on the side.  The cover was important as it both helped retain the heat for longer, but also stopped the hot water bottle from feeling too hot.

Unfortunately though, time had not been kind to my poor old water bottle, and the rubber had completely perished, separating the head of the rabbit from it’s body, poor thing.  There seemed little point in taking a picture of it in this state, hence the more generic picture accompanying this post, which I think is a good thing as the tartan covers in the picture are far more evocative of what an old hot water bottle generally looked like.

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Kinder Surprise Eggs consist of a dual layered chocolate egg, with milk chocolate on the outside, and the inside of the shell made from white chocolate.  Inside the chocolate shell lies a little plastic container, which when opened contains a build-it-yourself toy.

The eggs are manufactured by Italian company Ferrero (creators of the Ferrero Rocher – thank you ambassador, you’re really spoiling us) and they first appeared in 1972.  Whilst the chocolate egg part has remained pretty much unchanged since then (personally I don’t find it that tasty) the toys have steadily improved in quality.

I remember as a child the toy was usually a disappointment, being something like a ring or a pencil topper, but some time in the 1980s (I think about the time the TV advert that I talk about later in this post aired) the toys suddenly became more interesting.  Self assembly toys started to appear, where you clicked little pieces of plastic together to build much larger toys such as cars or people.  Now they can be quite sophisticated toys with moving parts.

Sometimes the eggs will contain a special range of limited edition toys that are intended to be collected, which has increased the appeal of this confectionary to adult toy collectors.  Some examples were a range of Smurf figurines, a collection of variously posed crocodiles called Crazy Crocos, and the frankly odd pairing of sharks with the stories of the Arabian Knights to produce the Sharkie Babas.

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Sport Billy (He’s a hero from another planet, as the theme music stated) was a cartoon series that aired in the early 1980′s in the UK and US.  It was originally made in 1979 by Filmation for the German market, as Sport Billy was originally a comic book character who was popular there.

The series was about a young boy named Sport Billy who came from a planet called Olympus, a place that was modelled around the myths of the ancient Greek Gods.  Sport Billy was sent to Earth to try and stop the evil green skinned Queen Vanda, a hater of fair play, and her henchman Snipe from removing all sports from history.

Sport Billy is aided in his task by his friend Lily and his talking dog Willy (why is it all these cartoon characters end up having talking dogs?).  Since Queen Vanda is trying to destroy sports the only way for her to do so is travel back in time to when the sport in question was first invented.  Sport Billy therefore has a big yellow spaceship/time machine combination, that looked something like a giant alarm clock with a big winding key sticking out the back, which he used to track Vanda and stop her in her tracks.

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There are of course a great many classic arcade games, but probably the two biggest which are still played today are Space Invaders and Pacman.  Both these games have simple enough gameplay, but they still hold players attention in their purest forms even today, which probably can’t be said for something like Pong.

Anyway, this weeks survey is to find out which of these two classics is most fondly remembered by our readers.  Will it be the monochrome alien invaders, or the greedy yellow circle?