Weird shit from an 80s childhood

[CandidFruit]

Reading through the retro sweets thread reminded me of some other random stuff from growing up in the early 80s.

Who else remembers the garbage pail kids? (I mean, Cabbage patch kids was bad enough!)
Now that is some seriously weird shit!

Mind you, I bet anything if you have the full set, you’ll probably be able to pay off your mortgage 😂

They really were, far more catchy.

He was yes, and the words like Drogna were all anagrams of the word dragon.

DB and I really loved that programme.

No, I'm not Jewish, it's just a useful word!
I think your parents' story is probably quite a common one, both the 'mismatch' of class backgrounds and the family losing everything in the war. I know a few people with similar family stories. It's quite fascinating.

The uni thing is something that's changed a few times over the years. I tend to think uni now is less accessible in some ways; I went in the early 90s and got a partial grant, as my parents could on paper afford to subsidise me to a point (reality was a different story as they had debts etc). I also got loans, and worked. It wasn't easy, but if I'd had to pay fees and had got no grant at all it would have been out of the question for me to go.

My dad, who went to uni in the 60s, grew up in a crowded tenement flat with an outside loo, but was bright and got into grammar school. He got into Oxford and all his fees, tuition and even room and board were paid. Again, if his family had had to pay for it, there's no way he'd have been able to do it.

(Sorry everyone for a bit of a derail!)

Yes, loved it (see earlier post about still being in possession of too many Fighting Fantasy books). And Maid Marian and her Merry Men, although I think that's definitely '90s.

No, me too - and for some reason that unlocked the vault to such dialogues as:

"Accrington Stanley? Who are they?"
and "Course we do! It's not all work, work work..."

I seem to remember the Mary Whitehouse Experience - ok, the vault is now spilling stuff out - doing a spoof of the 2nd one that had a voiceover offstage for young pimply bloke and female colleague in scene that added "Do you think he 'as 'er?" before the phrase "Course we do..."

I had forgotten about these. Brings back memories. I can remember one called pinny's house. When I was ill off school there would be a programme about writing and drawing letters over and over, I really hated that.

Off topic but other things I remember were candy sticks we pretended to smoke and these funny plastic grabby things that went around hair buns.
Oh and chunky neon pink bead necklaces and neon coloured plastic summer sandals ☺️

I'm so impressed 👏 😂

We're on holiday at the moment and I saw this and immediately thought "mumsnet" 😌...

Is your holiday in the Congo?

My mum worked from home and she would let us go out play with all the kids in our cul de sac for hours on end without even checking on us and if we went to the park behind our house we had to run in and tell her so she knew where to come look for us for dinner.

There were about 8 of us of various ages playing together and parents woukd come grt their kids to fo shopping and we all go but can't they stay and play whilst you go shopping 🤣 and they woukd go come back and we'd knock on the door and ask if they are coming back out to play hahaha such good memories

I was under 10yrs old

And today it feels so weird to say I used to go play outside for almost 6hrs unsupervised at that age, feels weird to me now 😆

I've skim-read this thread and I remember some of the things written on it, but one thing I've seen here and don't remember is Pierot. I had to Google it because I was starting to wonder why so many 80s kids had posters of a Belgian detective on their walls!

I was a spoilt brat when I was a kid. Had all the toys. Does anyone else remember these? I loved the sweet shop but Mr Frosty was the biggest disappointment ever! I had dozens of Cabbage Patch Kids. I still had them until a few years ago. I had a ruthless clean out and put them all in a skip!

We bought some Um Bongo on holiday this week funnily enough and obviously had to YouTube the song for our kids.

And then the Kia Ora ad of course!

Does anyone remember putting Grolsch bottle tops on their shoes/Doc Martins? Apparently the band BROS invented it but I don't remember that. For a while it was the fashion to wear cargo/chino long shorts, thick socks and DM boots/shoes with the Grolsch beer bottle tops attached.
Dear me.

Our coach drove past 5 Star on the A40 on a school trip.
They were in a rolls royce so we all banged on the window and waved. They waved back.
Peak of excitement.

I remember that well @HootyMcBooby but I wasn't a Bros fan so didn't do it personally. Way before that I remember everyone wearing Pod shoes (or something like that) and they had a little 'Pod Man' tag attached that everyone left on.

I didn’t do it myself but I remember Bros starting the trend. (And I remember Smash Hits dubbing them Matt, Luke and…Ken 😄).

What were those red plastic things called that you looked through, after inserting a cardboard wheel that held a series of small photos? You clicked through them and they showed you a story - bit like a posh flick book? Anyway, I had one of those and a few of the story wheel things.

Anyone remember stig of the dump?

I’ve so enjoyed reading this thread. Someone down thread mentioned the Johnny Briggs programme and I’ve honestly not thought of that since I was little - such a blast from the past!

I loved my little professor toy - like a calculator that asked you times tables and additions - you could even play tunes on it by sliding in cards and pressing the right buttons - hours of fun 😂

I loved lemon Cremola foam!

They're called a slide viewer or stereoscope, the red plastic one was called a Viewmaster.

Who remembers these ET biscuits? They were cola flavour and lots of E numbers too I'll bet!

Yes I had a Winnie the Pooh one. It was so thick - like wearing a duvet jumper!

Viewmaster! That was it, thank you.

If anyone is near Chippenham there is a Sindy exhibition on at the moment