Child Of The 1980’s

Do you remember visiting your local toy shop and looking at one of those rotating display stands that was brimming with tricks and jokes? From whoopee cushions to nails through fingers the stand was loaded with little toys at pocket money prices. You don’t seem to see these as often as you did, but they are still around if you look hard enough.

One of the toy jokes I distinctly remember was the Snappy Chewing Gum. This consisted of a piece of cardboard decorated to look like an ordinary stick of chewing gum when it was inserted into a standard packet of gum. The difference was that it had a sprung loaded piece of wire with a loop on one end stuck to it, something along the lines of the dangerous part of a mouse trap.

Approaching your victim you would nonchalantly ask if they wanted a stick of chewing gum. When they attempted to take the gum out of the packet the trap would be triggered, with the metal wire snapping forward onto their finger with a surprisingly loud whacking sound. If you got it just right then it could actually be quite painful.

This joke could only be spoiled in two ways. First, your victim refused the gum in the first place, but that wasn’t so bad because you could just seek out another person to surprise. The real spoiler was when the person took the stick of gun by using two fingers either side of the stick of gum, rather than one on top and one underneath.

This and a range of other chewing gum related pranks are still available today from SillyJokes.

Some toys are totally useless, yet still remain amazing fun to fiddle with. The Gurning Flexiface is just one of those toys that I remember having as a kid, and has probably been around for a fair few years before I had one.

Consisting of nothing more than a reasonably ugly looking rubber face, the toy had a number of holes on the back into which you could insert your fingers. By moving your fingers in different directions the face could be amusingly distorted into all kinds of strange and disturbing poses, the kind of thing that if you were to pull them yourself, your Mum would probably tell you to “watch out, because if the wind changed direction you’d stay like that“. Funny the untruths that come out of parents mouths to stop their children showing them up, isn’t it?

Whoever came up with the idea for the Flexiface must surely have got it from watching TV footage of championship Gurners. You don’t seem to see it much any more, but Gurning competitions presumably are still running. Gurning is basically a competition where ugly looking men (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a female Gurner) try to contort their face into the weirdest configuration they possibly can. Some of these guys must have extra facial muscles looking at the kind of weird things they can do. I’ve never understood quite why they have to stick their head through a toilet seat or a horse harness to do this though…

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Lego Fabuland first came out in 1979, and stuck around for most of the 1980’s, finally disappearing in around 1987. The Lego company had enjoyed great success with their Lego Town kits aimed at children aged around 6 and over, and also catered to the baby and toddler market with their larger Duplo bricks (or Big Lego as I used to call them as a child). Children aged from about 3 to 6 may find Duplo too simple, whilst the Lego Town kits may still be too complicated for them to assemble by themselves. Fabuland was the result of trying to bridge this age range gap.

Fabuland was based around the same familiar Lego brick format used for Lego Town and all the other variants of Lego, so it felt more “grown up” than Duplo. In order to make building of the kits simpler the bricks were generally limited to the larger lego pieces, such as the 4×2 stud piece that is around a centimetre high.

These bricks were joined by a variety of larger special purpose pieces that made building a model a simple affair. Examples of such bricks were large wheeled sections for building vehicles, windows with shutters, pieces of fence and so on. This made following the building instructions much simpler, so kids could start to build the models themselves and not get frustrated in the process.

The biggest draw of Fabuland however was the range of characters that came with the kits. These characters were similar in appearance to the standard poseable Lego man we all know and love, but were slightly larger in size, brightly coloured and with heads that were beautifully detailed depictions of animals such as pigs, monkeys, sheep and mice. They could still be attached to the Lego pieces, but were far easier for little hands to play with.

The characters also had a range of accessory items unique to Fabuland, ranging from ready built scooters and wheelbarrows to brooms and shovels, similar to those provided in the Lego Town kits but larger to fit the characters increased size and also generally more detailed. Indeed, some kits consisted of little more than a single character and an accessory or two.

The James Bond films are well known for their gadget equipped cars, and The Spy Who Loved Me had a particularly well remembered vehicle in the form of the Lotus Esprit which was also capable of travelling underwater!

When the vehicle went under the water a set of stabilising fins came out of the the bodywork, and some propellors popped out the back to drive it along. It was also armed with torpedoes, depth charges and surface to air missiles. Given that the computer generated special effects of today didn’t exist in 1977, when the film was released, it’s quite amazing to think that the film makers went to the effort of actually making an underwater car! Admittedly it didn’t actually work, but it was a cool piece of special effects works none the less.

It may predate the 1980’s by a few years, but this amazing car was also one of my favourite toys. Corgi made an absolutely brilliant model Lotus Esprit that drove around perfectly as a toy sports car, but with the flick of a switch out popped identical fins to the movie version of the car, and you could then pretend to drive around under the sea! Better still, the back window of the car had four sprung loaded missile launchers, and the car came with four little plastic missiles to put in them. Flicking another switch shot them out the back, only to then get lost under the sofa or be eaten by the family dog.

These simple toys were all the rage for a time during the 1980’s. They were the sort of thing normally sold by blokes in the street or at Sunday markets, and sold all the more due to them being at pocket money prices, and incredibly easy to demonstrate. Best of all was that when you did buy one, unlike something like jumping beans, they did actually work, at least until the stickiness finally wore off that is, which was usually after they had fallen on the floor a few times and picked up pieces of hair and dust.

The toy consisted of a little octopus (other forms such as little men and spiders were also available) that was made out of a very stretchy rubber. The rubber was covered in a tacky substance which made them feel very strange against your fingers. The idea was to throw them at something vertical and shiny (Mum’s freshly cleaned windows were ideal) where they would first stick for a time before gravity took effect and the top legs would gradually peel away. Once the weight of the octopus body could no longer be supported the whole thing would flip over, and the legs that had just lost cohesion would stick back to the glass. The new top set of legs would then start to come away, and in this manner the thing flipped its way down the entire surface.

If the rubber got too covered in dirt it would no longer stick properly, and would either bounce straight off when you threw it, or else briefly stick then drop straight off to get even dirtier. Washing it in warm soapy water could bring it back to life for a while, but eventually even this did no good and the toy was reduced to something you could squidge and stretch, and perhaps ping at your little sister like a rubber band.

OK, so there’s obviously nothing that magical about the Magic Drawing Slate, but they are a lot of fun to play with just the same. I fondly remember these toys from my childhood, although they were clearly around for many years before the 1980’s had begun, dating back to at least the 1950’s and possibly even further. They are such simple toys, and fairly inexpensive, so most kids have probably owned one at some point in their life.

The Magic Slate consists of a piece of grey acetate like sheet laid on top of another darker layer of a more rubbery construction. Using the tip of a plastic stylus on the acetate, it was possible to draw pictures, as the stylus would cause the acetate to gently stick to the underlying layer only where the stylus had been used. The sticking together of the two materials meant it was now easier to see the under layer through the acetate, thus giving the impression you had drawn something.

When you had finished drawing your picture it could then be erased simply by separating the acetate from the rubbery layer, thus stopping the two layers sticking together and yielding a blank sheet again. On some magic slates this was simply a case of peeling the acetate up and laying it flat again, whilst others encased the whole lot in a frame and provided a plastic slider that could be slid from one side of the slate to the other to separate the two layers.

Obviously the magic slate was limited to only being able to draw in one colour, but I believe there were some that had a rainbow effect applied to the rubbery layer so your lines changed colour depending on where they were drawn on the slate. I also remember seeing a similar idea where the acetate was replaced by a piece of neon pink plastic, which allowed bright pink coloured lines to be drawn on a slightly lighter pink coloured background.

It’s good to see Swingball is still going strong, and indeed is supposed to be one of the most popular toys of the last 10 years. Whilst the image illustrating this post is of the current day Swingball, it hasn’t really changed a lot over the years, which is not surprising given its simplicity.

The Swingball tennis game (also known as Totem Tennis) was all the rage in the 1980’s and allowed you to play a game of tennis in your back garden without needing to accomodate an entire tennis court, which would be beyond the rather less generous allotment of land that most people would probably have for their garden. In Swingball, the tennis ball is attached to a cord which in turn is attached to a spiral at the top of a pole, and instead of a full size tennis racquet you play with a solid plastic bat.

Players stand facing each other on opposite sides of the pole, and each is assigned a direction of travel for the ball, either clockwise or anti-clockwise around the pole. The players take it in turns to hit the ball, changing the direction of travel in the process. If you miss the ball as it goes by you can always try and hit it next time it comes round. Since the ball is attached using a loop threaded onto a spiral, missing the ball means the loop can move up or down the spiral. If it reaches either end of the spiral then the player who has managed to get the ball to reach their opponents end of the spiral gains a point.

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If you wanted to scare the living daylights out of your younger siblings then there was nothing better than the Devil Banger. I’m amazed that they are still available and haven’t been banned by Health and Safety years ago. These days they appear to be known as Fun Snaps, but they’re basically the same as I remember them.

The Devil Banger was basically a little piece of thin white paper filled with some kind of explosive material - maybe you can see now why I’m surprised they haven’t been banned! When thrown with force at a hard surface or stepped upon the material ignited with a loud snapping sound, blasting the paper surrounding the explosive contents apart in the process. If thrown at the right time you could scare the wits out of any passer by, which was lots of fun. Of course, if you did this within earshot of a parent or teacher you’d likely find your supply of them confiscated.

They came in boxes of around 50 bangers packed in a plastic bag full of shavings to keep them dry, because they became useless when wet. I presume that the active ingredient must be something similar to that used in the snaps for Christmas Crackers, but I have no idea what it is, or how potent it could potentially be!

If you fancy getting hold of a pack or two they are available from Silly Jokes for just 89 pence per pack, but please be responsible when throwing them around the office to scare your boss!