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Simon was an incredibly simple yet incredibly popular electronic game that was launched by Milton Bradley in 1978 but was a mainstay of the early 1980’s. It was based on the childrens game Simon Says, where a player is nominated leader and tells everyone else to perform different actions, but only when they say “Simon says“.
The electronic version of Simon went a little further than this simple playground game however, as it added an additional demand on the players memory. The game consisted of four big illuminated buttons in red, green, yellow and blue. Simon would flash the buttons in a randomised sequence, with each coloured button playing a different tone as they flashed. The player then had to repeat this sequence by pressing the buttons in the same order.
If the player got it right, the same sequence would be played back again but with an extra random colour tacked on the end. So the game continued until the player got the sequence wrong, which ended the game.
Stutter Rap was the only hit for comedy rap group Morris Minor and the Majors, a British parody of the Beastie Boys. Where the Beastie Boys were famous for wearing the Volkswagen logo, unsurprising the singers of Stutter Rap favoured the rather more old fashioned (but quintisentially British) Morris Minor.
Apparently, there’s lots of fun for everyone in the Big Yellow Teapot, or at least so the television advert for this toy would have us believe. I would probably say that not everyone would find it that much fun, but certainly most toddlers would have a ball.
Supergran started as a series of childrens books written by Forrest Wilson. Unsurprisingly they were about Granny Smith, a grandmother who had super powers from the town of Chiselton. Her arch-enemy was the villainous Scunner Campbell, who ironically gave her the powers in the first place when she got hit by a beam from one of his strange contraptions.
I noticed John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club on Sky Movies the other day so thought I would watch it again to refresh my memory. I had forgotten just how good this film is, but one new thing I noticed this time round is that this film must be one of The Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s favourite films. Not only is one of the characters named Bender (as in the robot from Futurama) but he also utters the phrase “Eat my shorts“, a phrase popular with a young yellow skinned fellow named Bart…
The 1980’s was certainly a bumper time for the introduction of new slang words into the English language. Of course every decade before and since has added its own new words, but having grown up in the eighties hearing some of these terms uttered today takes me back to my childhood, but also makes me realise how ridiculous we must have all sounded at the time! Here is a list of some of my favourite terms.
