Child Of The 1980’s

It’s a shame, but it seems to be the case that the traditional childrens birthday party is slowly being replaced by other ways of celebrating the passing of another year of a child’s life. These days there is a growing trend to have parties hosted at fast food restaurants, the bowling alley or the leisure centre, so let’s take a moment to think about the birthday parties we all enjoyed as kids.

The standard template for a birthday party in the 1980’s, as it was for many years previously, was to invite a number of school friends to your house after school on the day of your birthday, or on a weekend day preceding or following your birthday. Everyone would come to your house with a little present for you, which should be opened when received. I never understood parents of kids who held the party before their offsprings actual birthday, and then told them they had to wait until their birthday before they could open the presents from their friends. Half the fun of the present giving was that everybody could see what you got and go “Cor! Wish I’d got that!”

Once all the presents had been ripped open and all the bits of wrapping paper had been tidied away, it was time to play a few party games. There were several different sorts of games that could be played, depending on the age and number of guests at the party, of which I intend to go into more detail tomorrow, but for now let me just say that no kids party would be complete without a game of Pass the Parcel - preferably with forfeits that had to be carried out whenever a layer of paper was removed.

Eventually it would be time for the birthday tea, the best of which consisted of a first course of buffet finger food such as little sandwiches, sausage rolls, crisps, cheesey footballs and the like, all washed down with a gallon or two of fizzy pop. Woe betide the Mother who served vol au vents though - she’d be picking them out of the carpet for weeks afterwards.

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We’re pleased to announce that Child of the 1980’s is one year old today! Our first proper post was about Bagpuss, one of my favourite kids TV shows, and since then we’ve added over 280 more entries for your amusement. I initially started the site as a way of learning a bit more about Internet technologies, but I hope you have all enjoyed reading up and reminiscing about some of the things you (or your parents!) used to play with, listen to or watch when growing up.

To celebrate this week the posts are all going to be birthday related in some way, so make sure you keep up to date with them by either subscribing to our RSS feed or signing up for our free e-mail updates using the links in this post or those at the top or side of this page. We’d also love it if you could all let us know what category of topics on the site is your favourite using this weeks Saturday Survey, which you can find below. Just click your favourite topic and press Vote!

Oh, and if there’s anything you’d like to see us cover in the future then please leave us a comment on this post (or any post for that matter) and we’ll see what we can do.

Before the Now That’s What I Call Music albums grabbed the pop music compilation market by the throat and refused to let go, compilation albums tended to be released by companies such as Ronco or K-Tel and were basically one off affairs bringing together a number of popular songs. One of the strongest examples of this was the rather good Raiders of the Pop Charts, which was produced by Ronco, also well known for their household gadgets.

In 1983 Indiana Jones fever had yet to subside, so the marketing men decided to piggy back on the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark by putting a guy in a leather jacket and holding a whip on the front cover. They even unashamedly stole the logo from Indy as well!

Despite all this though the compilation was actually very good, with a large number of well known and well loved songs. It featured hits by bands such as Culture Club, The Pretenders, Madness and Heaven 17. It even found room for a few of the more novelty songs of the time, including Tony Basil’s Mickey. Probably the most bizarre feature of this compilation though was that it was split into two parts which were sold separately.

The compilation did very well, and I reckon the makers of the Now albums at least used it partially as a model for their own efforts. Raiders of the Pop Charts hit the top of the UK album charts in January 1983, and also holds the current record for the largest jump up the UK album charts, when it climbed 37 places from number 40 to number 3 at the very beginning of 1983.

One of those fears that most children go through is a fear of the dark, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed by Hasbro division Playskool when they launched their Glo Worm doll. Glo Worm was a soft toy made from soft bright green fabric with a cheerful vinyl face and a cute little green night cap that also glowed at night. By pressing the body of the doll the face would light up, and therefore was able to comfort young children in a darkened bedroom by providing a soft glow for them to see by.

The toy appeared in 1982 and was snapped up by eager parents in the hope that it would help their young ones get to sleep at night, though in reality they probably either lay in bed constantly switching it on and off, or if very young were possibly scared witless when they rolled over onto the toy when close to sleep, thus making its head glow and startling them awake!

Glo Worm proved popular enough to launch a range of books, bedside lamps and the like and in 1986 also spawned the Glo Friends, a range of small static plastic figures in various insect shapes that also glowed in the dark. These were popular with slightly older children who liked to collect the entire set.

Playskool have since revamped the original Glo Worm doll and the version you can buy today is a little shorter and fatter than the original, and is dressed in what appears to be a blue hoodie with antennae! It’s also suitable for babies and now plays six lullaby tunes as well!

The NeverEnding Story is a 1984 fantasy movie, based on the book of the same name written by Michael Ende. The film spawned two sequels, The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter in 1990, and The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia in 1994. Due to the time gaps between the films different actors obviously had to play the parts of the child characters, although each of the films centres around main character Bastian.

Bastian is a young daydreamer who’s mother died when he was very young. He is picked on at school, and it is whilst running away from the bullies that he comes across an old book shop. The owner of the book shop is reading a large, old looking book entitled The NeverEnding Story. Bastian asks if he may read the book, but the owner tells him it is not safe. This just makes Bastian even more curious, and when the owner leaves to answer a phone call he borrows the book, intending to bring it back when he has read it.

Bastian sits down to read the book, which is about the land of Fantasia and its inhabitants. Unfortunately for Fantasia, it is under attack by a strange force called The Nothing which is gradually erasing parts of Fantasia from existence. The horrified occupants journey to the Ivory Tower to speak with the childlike Empress about the situation, but the childlike Empress is also under attack by The Nothing and has fallen into illness. She has however summoned a great warrior named Atreyu, who turns out to be a child too. He is given an amulet called Auryn to help him on his quest to save Fantasia.

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Before I get into the real topic of this post, observe the accompanying picture of a “Blue Raspberry and Lemon Swirl 2 Ball Screwball”. Who was it that came up with the idea of making raspberry flavoured products blue? Raspberries are not blue. They are not red either. They are a dark pinkish colour. If we don’t watch out there will be a generation of kids growing up who really believe that raspberries are blue. Mind you, I wonder how much real raspberry flavour actual goes into a “blue raspberry” flavoured product?

Minor moan out of the way, back to the subject in hand. Screwball Ice Creams are those that come in a plastic cone shaped container, and underneath all the ice cream you have a ball of bubblegum (sometimes two). Pre-packaged screwballs often tend to contain a flavoured ice cream such as raspberry ripple (or the aformentioned blue raspberry and lemon swirl), but you could also get them from the ice cream van where they would be composed of that lovely soft pumped vanilla ice cream (Mr. Whippy as many call it - what’s its real name I wonder?) and your choice of topping sauce squirted over the top. I’m sure you still can get them from the ice cream van today, except the tinkly sound of Greensleeves or Pop Goes The Weasel sadly doesn’t seem to play very often around our way any more.

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Captain Caveman (or Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels to give it its full title) was another in the long list of Hanna Barbera’s “group of teenagers and their comedy sidekick solve mysteries” style of cartoon, and whilst nothing will ever top good old Scooby Doo in my book, Captain Caveman was certainly not the worst of the bunch, and his great gutteral cry of “Captain Caaaaaavvemaaaaan!” brings back happy memories of pretending to fly around the school playground pretending to be him.

Captain Caveman, or Cavey Wavey as his female teenage companions would call him whenever they wanted him to do something, was a neanderthal super hero, covered in what one presumes was incredibly long brown hair, and equipped with a massive wooden club and wearing a little leopard skin cape (or the prehistoric equivalent of a leopard anyway). He had super strength and the ability to fly, although these powers had a tendancy to pack in at the most inopportune moments, such as when flying across a massive ravine or holding a really big boulder in the air.

His club was not just a great weapon but was also laden with Flintstone style prehistoric gadgets, such as a torch which was a little bird clutching a candle, or a “guard dog” dinosaur. Incidentally, speaking of the Flintstones, it was on one of the many Flintstone comedy show cartoons that Captain Caveman first appeared, then he later appeared with the Teen Angels of Scooby’s All Star Laff-A-Lympics before finally getting his own show. Personally I don’t remember ever seeing him on the Flintstones, and I only have very vague memories of Laff-A-Lympics, but I certainly remember him from his own cartoon.

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Earlier this week I presented my Mum’s recipe for homemade Play Dough. In the post I talked about both Play Dough, which tended to be a little softer to mould but didn’t stick together as well, and Plasticene, which required some effort to get moulding but was easier to blend together. Who remembers playing with the plasticene at school that had had several colours all merged together so you ended up with a psychedelic marbled effect?

This weeks survey is to find out which of these two modelling materials people preferred playing with. Were you happy to just squidge Play Dough through your fingers or through one of those machines that turned it into wormy spaghetti, or did you prefer the more intricate modelling abilities of Plasticene?