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 😂

And as the elastic got higher you had to tuck your skirt in your knickers to straddle it! Our playground was full of girls with bulgy knickers…

Manimal...Really bad gurning werewolfy transformation...
Knight Rider with Monsieur Open-Necked-Whatever-I'm-Wearing Hasslehof and Kit the talking car.
Airwolf - thought Jan Micheal Vincent (might have made that name up?) was hot. Only a few years ago I had an Airwolf phone cover. Shameless...
And loved that Black Beauty theme tune, was humming it the other day!
We had Flower Fairies colouring books.

French skipping and sevensies against the (back of the house) wall with a tennis ball for hours, usually inducing one of my parents to tell me to shut up. Must have been so annoying, especially when it hit the windows 😬
Tapioca and semolina pudding are 2 things I'll never miss.

@Threewheeler1 I used to endlessly play tennis up against our back wall!

I also loved Manimal (not remotely bothered by the lady riding him when he turned into a horse, hehe), Knight Rider, The A-Team (never a drop of blood and never rumbled; I don't know how on Earth Colonel Decker kept his job), Dukes of Hazzard, Beauty and the Beast, Airwolf and Blue Thunder. But I REALLY loved Streethawk with a passion. The guy and the theme song.

We just had:
England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales,
Inside, outside, inside, out.

No puppy dog tails or anything.

Although there was a version that went:
inside, outside, flyover, back.

On flyover, you picked up one side of the elastics with your toes and crossed it over the over as you jumped.

Both of those make a lot more sense!

I think we probably watched the same programmes 😆
Streethawk the ultimate high-tech crimefighter was brilliant!...vroom vroom!

Some great TV!

• Tales if the Golden Monkey (like a cut price Indiana Jones type thing)
• Knightrider/A Team
• Monkey (“born from an egg on a mountain top”)

Also great ads

• Philadelphia (those secretaries! Lovely!!)
• Carling Black label dam busters

…..and one I used to find mildly terrifying but cannot remember what for - a drink of some kind. It had a stop animation style and went “beware the Judder Man, my dear, when the moon is fat”. Does anyone remember this?

How he managed to cling on during Hyperthrust I'll never know 😉

I just googled that music book and had an immediate memory of us learning "I'd like to teach the world to sing"! The Coca-cola advert when loads of people converged on a hill if I remember correctly?

@CoraPirbright That was for Smirnoff Ice. Terrifying.

I used to like the ads for Philadelphia too - I think the two actresses had very brief cameos in the Helen Mirren film The Queen, as voxpop members of the public laying flowers at Buckingham Palace.

I liked the Peugeot 106 ads with the two women as well, they made quite a few and they were always quite witty. And Maureen Lipman's BT ones. Papa and Nicole were, I think, more 1990s.

French skipping too but by then I was in secondary school and also in 70s.

Double diamonds work wonders, work wonders, work wonders, double diamonds work wonders so out you must go.

We also had rude songs… 🫣🤣

Yes to the Judderman! I think it was the 90/00s (2000 according the video below), it was an alcopop called Metz. We used to say “THE JUDDDDDERMAN” to each other in the scary voice 🤣

That was the Metz alcopops drink around in 2000 (I swear it was around in 90s too as I drunk it in my early 20s) but you’re not the only child to be traumatised by it judging from the comments:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z-VUlXl0wUQ

Does anyone recall a mid late 80s advert for Perrier, it had either a woman or man in a bar all a bit bright lights bubbles and suddenly after they screamed and went I think “whooooaahhh” and drank it the room span or something went upside down, they might have tipped or smashed up the bar (?) and then quiet again. DM who used to be in advertising thought this was a great advert when she saw it but can’t find it.

Hofmeister, for great lager follow the bear. And the Levi’s 501 adverts where we either wanted to be the girls in them or lusted after Nick Kamen (I still do, rip Nick 😢). Babycham with the prancing reindeer (like Bambi?) and bubbles and sparkles.

Oh yes, Metz. Silly me. The ad was more memorable than the drink, I think!

Ohmigod I'd forgotten about the mini bars and about the machine!
Did you also used to get mini bars Easter eggs and/or advent calendars, or am I imagining that?

Anyone remember Meeces? They were pink chewy mice sweets that I think you could get as part of a 10p mix. Sort of strawberry/raspberry flavoured, although obviously it was all E numbers. They were deliciously chewy, like a precursor to Percy Pigs.

We did.

omg yes!

Not just me, then IRL, people largely look blank when I start wanging on about 80s sweets and crisps and junk food in general. I think it's because I have tended to meet and know people as an adult who had the sort of upbringing where sweets and junk were frowned on or maybe an occasional treat, whereas in our house it was sweets, Crispy Pancakes, Ice Magic, Mr Kipling cakes etc all the time!

@MarkWithaC I remember similar ones, shaped like curled-up prawns. And the banana ones. Chewy, delicious and crammed full of tasty chemicals, nomnomnom... And the rows of jars in the newsagents where you could buy a quarter of sweets weighed and measured into a paper bag. I liked pineapple chunks. And I remember looking at the jar of cough-twists and thinking "Why?!" (Tunes or Lockets were much better).

The weird romances over Nescafe adverts and also that one where he pretended to have an espresso machine in the kitchen and made all of the "Kcchhhhhhh" noises, but served her instant.

Also remembered 'Allo 'Allo another classic

The curled up prawns were nice. We used to have so much choice and none of this fake US candy shop shit they sell now!

All the things we bought and loved were stuffed full of E numbers and sugar and we loved them!

Bakeries… anything you remember or you can’t get now? Bread pudding - up until a few years ago you could still get it in Greggs. Iced buns in fingers and round ones with cherries. Freshly baked. Fresh cream cakes. With matching adverts.

Ooh Allo Allo!!! Loved that - we still use some of the lines as family sayings eg Good Moaning! Swiftly and with style! Yooooou stuuuupid woman!!!

I can’t believe the Judderman was 2000. That means I was 21 when I was being frightened by an advert 😳🙄🤦‍♀️

I remember the prawns (shrimps, we called them) being hard and brittle, not chewy. I seem to remember both hard bananas, like the shrimps, and foamy ones

Cough twists I thought were for old people. I liked aniseed balls though. And acid pips.

Ah yes sevens against the wall with a tennis ball. I used to play for hours on a high wall in between our house and next door. I must have had very patient neighbours.

Also dibs with the little coloured clay cubes and marble games in a hole in the pavement.

Kids would probably find these games quite boring nowadays, or they would get bored quickly at least.

Making perfume out of flower petals, catching butterflies in a net, making daisy chains and playing tag or going on bike rides with friends took up much of my summer holidays. If we had an ice cream from the ice cream van it was a bonus!

We rarely had days out or were entertained by parents in the 80s. We would have the odd holiday in a cottage somewhere but I'd still have to entertain myself. My first trip to a theme park was Thorpe park with the school aged 13 - mind blown.

It was a great time to be a child.