Did a post thread on 1990s childhood, thought why not do an 80s one lol.
I grew up in the 1980s. I was a kid in the 1980s eighties decade era.
The 1980s Eighties was Big Hair, Don't Care.
It was boomboxes, cassette tapes, mtv when it was good. It was about the music, music videos were the best. Now you can just go to Youtube to look up a music video.
For starters, get off of your computer. There wasn’t the world wide web that there is today. The internet back then wasn’t much and hardly anybody had access to it.
We survived without cell phones and internet, managing to make it to appointments and getting a hold of people (when they were home). If you wanted information, you got it somehow from the library, school books, asking questions around, or reading newspapers and books. But the information stuck. Today we suffer from information overload and the so-called “Google syndrome”, where you read a lot and you forget immediately.
I miss my newspaper that would be delivered to my house I grew up in of the 1980s. I miss Sunday Comics.
I miss Hagar the Horrible, Peanuts, Foxtrot, Luann, Calvin & Hobbes (Bill Watterson is a genius), Family Circus, Zits, Garfield, Beetle Bailey, Baby Blues, and more!
In the 80s, There were these things called encyclopedias (encyclopedia britannica, compton's) you had to open up and read if you wanted information about something. There was no Google and Wikipedia. No Internet.
Also, put your phone away, phones were attached to walls or the size of a brick. At best, you had a cordless phone in your home.
Also, if you’re out and about, better bring some dimes or quarters, because you can only use a payphone. You can’t text with one of those.
Most of the channels that you watch didn’t exist. MTV was the only channel that mattered in the 80s. What it evolved into is beyond recognizable. How it’s still on the air repeating the same 2 programs is an incredible mystery.
Use either records or cassette tapes to listen to music. The CD didn’t become popular until the mid-80s and CD players were pricey.
Watchig movies on VCR and VHS Tapes and don’t forget to rewind. You get a fine if you don’t. Also, buy some blank VHS tapes so you can record your favorite programs. You can watch them on your 27″ TV or you can spring for the console. Those large screen TVs take up a lot of room, and are quite pricey.
President Reagan was on our family television set.
The 1980s was Freddy Krueger and Jason. They were the horror villians of the eighties. They were the ones that scared you shitless.
Michael Jackson was still black, and Thriller was the top single! That music video scared me shitless as a kid in the 1980s!
LEGOs was THE toy of the eighties. I would spend hours playing with my legos. Legos were awesome!!!
Do you like Oreo cookies? Regular and Double Stuff will be your only options. M&Ms options are just plain and peanut. Regular Coke and Diet Coke for soft drinks. None of that Coke Zero stuff.
And the cartoons, oh the cartoons! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, DuckTales, Inspector Gadget, Chip and Dales Rescue Rangers, Transformers, The Smurfs, and More!!!
Also can't forget all the video games I played on my Atari 2600 and Original NES. Pac-man, Combat, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, and f u E.T the Extraterrestrial worst game ever.
And the tv shows like Dukes of Hazzard, Who's the Boss?...
Oh and the movies of the 1980s. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Chuck Norris, and all the other action movie stars of the 80s!
That's all! Too tired to edit more of this post lol.
What was your 1980s Childhood like? What was your favorite thing about the 1980s?
I had so many tdk, maxelle and sony blank tapes that I should have had stock in the companies. It was really awesome when compact disks came out. I didn't get a CD player for a long time. I loved it if a friend recorded a cd onto a cassette tape for me. They sounded so good when you did that. Used to love to go buy used cassettes. NES was awesome for video games. There were a lot of good metal albums and movies from the '80s.
I like it better now though. All the things I can do with my computers make things a lot better than it was in the 80s. My family could not afford even a commodore 64 when I was a kid in the '80s.
I wasn't too into cartoons as a kid in the 80s. I watched some but wasn't obsessed or overly nostalgic for 80s cartoons, except for the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon which left a huge lasting impression on me.
I really recall about the 80s was the music (which I think is the best music of course) and the movies. I grew up in NYC as a kid and we used to be allowed to go/do whatever for the most part. Going to the movies was dirt cheap and there used to be a theater on every other block. Matinees were $2 and evening shows were about $3.75 a ticket.
I, my sisters, and our friends would just kinda hang around the city. Taking the subway was cheap as hell too. They used to give out little tokens and punch cards for the bus if you need a transfer. It cost like $1 to ride the subway and we would go station to station and ave to ave basically morning till night.
That is what I recall most about being a kid in the 80s- we spent most of our time around the city.
Going to Joey's, Tip Top, Lou's, etc. I actually went ot CBGB, LQ, and Max's when it was age-appropriate in the 80s. I have a different impression of those places than their "legends" would suggest.
Block and house parties were a HUGE deal in the 1980s. It was basically what you planned your day around nearly every day. Weekday and weekend. Sometimes they were in the row, a lot, on the island, or in the yard. I was like 13 years old and once went to a party that was in literally the subway tunnel. Parties happened on roofs and vacant houses/apartments.
Arcade machines were everywhere. Like every bodega and shop had a coin-op of some kind. Everyone had music going like 24/7 too- again, I feel like people just played music nonstop in this time frame.
Everything was filthy. Like grimey filth.
Video stores were everywhere too. Every block basically had a bodega, video store, clothing shop, and swap meet essentially. Sometimes they were all in the same place.
When they sold frankfurter on the street, they had a distinctive smell. You would smell like them for hours afterward. If you ever brought one home or made the mistake of eating it in a car (gods help you and the owner) people would be fucking PISSED OFF. Because that smell lingered for days in the house or car. I think it was because they used to steam the sausages with the same water for days/months on end. The accumulated runoff of hundreds of frankfurters on warm summer New York day.
Which is another thing, the summer was HOT. Hotter than I ever recall in the past few decades. Winter was bone-crushing too. There seemed to be less extreme days of heat/cold but they were hotter/colder for a more sustained time.
I remember days on end in the summer of going to the community pool and movies to stay cool. Sometimes we would go to the beach.
There was like no variety in pizza such as today either. There was just cheese and pepperoni for the most part.
I feel like New York became a theme park at some point and stopped being a real city.
I remember The Raccoons predicted Cryptocurrency. The villain would invent machines that turned vast amounts of electricity ... into pollution and money.
The peak of Canadian animation. Also wondering if anyone in Canada has seen a real life aardvark.
grew up in the 1990s and I just dream of going back there. I don't like the damn modern world. Disgusting people, disgusting life. I want to go back to my childhood.
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