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Our reporter Niall McGuinness goes back in time to remember all the toys we grew up with!
Do any toys from the 70s and 80s stick in the memory? We’re looking back at toys from around the mid 1970s to the early 1990s. Within this period, the toy-market came alive and gave us some inventive, some memorable and some whacky hits and misses. Do you have fond memories of a special attachment to any in particular?
Some toys had almost universal appeal, others were advertised to a specific age group. I’ve drawn a line between teen and pre-teen products and I’ve added a few toys I think were based on inspired ideas and a few more that backfired.
More than just toys have changed since the 1970s; for reasons to do with social and economic change, children gradually lost control of their playtime and arguably their style of play, while parenting methods and associated technologies evolved. The spread and acceptance of safety-first values and the digital technology to apply them, helped change the play landscape.
Compared with the early 70s, play has migrated indoors. In retrospect, we may feel empathy for the limited options available to the pre-digital age-group of lads, too young for the pub yet too old to share the front-room with the ‘grown-ups’. Kicking their heels outside the local chippy, the pack instinct sometimes got the better of them, but they were mostly good lads at a loose-end. Nowadays these adolescents have a range of digital options from X-boxes to social media to keep them out of harm’s way.
Three toys stand out in my memory as successful compromises between fun and self-learning. Meccano inspired budding engineers but I don’t think it was cheap. Lego’s building blocks are still around. Spirograph appealed to the flair of the artist; its circular templates created colourful mandala-style patterns. Those who couldn’t afford these relatively expensive toys had Blue Peter to encourage them to get creative with cardboard boxes, string and old curtains.
Mostly the toys we identify as special will depend on our age and perhaps our parents’ pocket. Educational toys are all well and good, but many 12-year olds of the time will have surely dreamed of receiving a grand-prix style Scalextric set, or a train set or maybe a Chopper bike.
Rather than list the multiple variations of cuddly toys for younger children, I’ve highlighted a few of the best-known ones. The enduring brands were appealing to the eye and to the touch. Others had a new gimmick – Teddy Ruxpin was a talking toy. Almost all were linked to animated TV series.
Pre-teens…
Play-doh – This modelling compound is the perfect kinaesthetic plaything partly because it’s reusable. Proof of its appeal lies in its sales of two billion cans between 1955 and 2005. It is still popular because it aids child development; it fosters creativity and imagination and helps with fine motor skills in the fingers and hands.
1983: Tumbling tower – The traditional wooden tumbling tower game in which players stack and pull blocks from a tower; if the tower topples over you lose! Its appeal was its simplicity; parents got to play while observing the development of self-control, patience and manual dexterity in their children. The wooden blocks unlike your reserves of patience, were unbreakable.
Glo Worm 1982 – The stuffed plush toy contained a battery-powered system. Squeezing the toy lit up the vinyl head, surprising you with its soft glow. Unless otherwise stated, it should be taken for granted that a series of storybooks and videos were released. So it was with Glow-Worm – but I can’t say if the video is still available.
Cabbage Patch Kids 1982 – Cabbage Patch Kids were the new kids on the block in the 1980’s. They were in huge demand for most of the decade. The cloth dolls with a cute plastic head and a comforting feel were new and different. The Kids set sales records for three years running and became the most successful new doll introduction in the history of the toy industry. For the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, they were named the official mascot of the US Team. They also made the front cover of Newsweek, a nationwide magazine – Wow!
My Little Pony may have been an object of ridicule amongst 12-year-old boys weening themselves off a diet of pretend guns and other military style paraphernalia. But the 150 million satisfied owners of My Little Pony, not to mention purchasers of her male cousin – He-Man – weren’t interested.
Some said that My Little Pony was promoting consumerism while Star Wars, Toy Story, and Lego were more positively received. Some found it overly-girly, others found it soothing and peaceful. In almost all successful franchises: Star Wars, Toy Story, Lego and My Little Pony in particular, video and animation are inextricably tied to toys and merchandise. The majority of successful franchises have been revived more than once.
Care Bears – Indeed Care Bears has been relaunched every 5 or 6 years, most recently in 2019. Its launch in 1982 reminds us that toys were big business; Care Bears had a $6million advertising budget and a $122.5 million pre-launch investment. The usual film and TV productions emerged throughout the decade, and new TV entries are still coming out to this day.
Polly Pocket – The back-page of the Bunty- a 70s comic for girls – had a cut-out wardrobe to dress cut-out dolls. Dressing the doll using the carefully cut-out clothes held wide appeal. Several toys built their success on this nurturing instinct. Polly Pocket was an 80’s miniature doll which came in compact makeup and compact-sized dollhouses. She was available in endless varieties. You could spend hours dressing Polly Pockets in different outfits. How could it fail?
Teddy Ruxpin – Teddy Ruxpin was apparently the bestselling toy of 1985 and 1986. The talking toy was a cutting-edge novelty at the time.
Pound Puppies – Floppy ears and cute droopy eyes were its distinguishing features, Pound Puppies were popular stuffed toys of the ’80s and early ’90s, accompanied by the usual animated films and TV series.
Mr. Potato Head – Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head are assured of a place on the playtime pantheon. In 1952, it was the first toy advertised on television and also the first to be aimed directly at children. But he existed on the shelves of toy stores long before the Toy Story film. Their infinite variety and interchangeable features made them well-respected and more than just popular.
The 1970s & 80s feel like a simpler time. Until computers weighed in, some of the best toys were based on simple ideas. Portable technology was in its infancy. I’m not familiar enough with today’s ‘toys’ to compare them with the more innocent 70s. At least the most inventive from the 70s can claim longevity; Rubik’s Cube is still on sale, but unlike the modern version of Teddy Ruxpin, it won’t cost you $200.
Action figures
Barbie – The jury is still out on whether Barbie promotes unrealistic beauty standards or serves as a positive role model. But these were the considerations of parents rather than the young girls who welcomed the chance to play with a ‘grown-up’ doll unlike the baby dolls popular when Barbie debuted in 1959. Her numerous iterations reflect social change of the time; from Astronaut (1964) to the somewhat belated first black and Hispanic versions of Barbie (1980) to CEO (1985) and to President Barbie, no less! (1992). Barbie’s 1985 advertising campaign proclaimed “Anything is possible as long as I try”.
We can all agree that the way to go to develop a positive body image is to help children to see that their value is in who they are, not what they look like.
Of course, the world of popular kids’ toys has moved on; in 2021, the LOL Surprise Doll and Na Na Surprise Doll were removed from the shelves following negative consumer feedback based on the clothes these dolls featured. By these standards, Barbie seems like good old innocent fun, which for the vast majority in the 70’s and 80’s, is what it was.
The G.I. Joe doll – was the first action figure marketed as the boys’ version of Barbie. The “real American hero” was arguably a small pathway away from binary attitudes to playing with dolls.
Star Wars - When released in 1977, Star Wars was a marketing sensation Star Wars toys were as successful as the film. These are valued in every sense now because Star Wars figures have become collectible.
Masters of the Universe – dominated the landscape – as you’d expect – with its sci-fi fantasy world. It goes without saying that minicomics accompanied the Masters of the Universe toys in the box, which expanded into books, which expanded into full-length comics etc.
Toys for 14 plus age-group
Atari’s 1972 video game console. Much prized at the time. It came, it went.
Game Boy – Nintendo’s 1989’s innovative and desirable Game Boy changed the landscape of video games and paved the way for the multiple iterations which followed. Family car journeys and the like became less disruptive providing there was enough Game Boys to go round. According to Nintendo, Game Boy sold over 118 million units. I suspect that today’s gamers wouldn’t be impressed by the actual quality of the dot-matrix screen and the games it offered, but hey, that’s progress.
Nintendo entertainment system – It may well be one of life’s unintended consequences, but whether intended or not, Nintendo all but ended life outdoors for a sizable segment of the youth. Brave new world or not, it changed home entertainment and helped distract mainly male adolescents from the chippy on the corner.
Walkman – Upon first release, desirable innovative items such as Game Boy and the Walkman held a cachet that might resonate with todays’ iPhone devotees. Like the iPhone, they didn’t come cheap; I know because I paid a ridiculous sum to strap my shiny red Sony Walkman onto my belt and listen to music on the go, for the first time, wherever it pleased. That it later evolved into the Discman which substituted compact discs for cassette tapes – which is just outside our period – now seems faintly ridiculous.
Inspired ideas
Connect Four – Given the simplicity and appeal of Connect Four, it’s no surprise to learn that it is in fact a centuries old zero-sum game played by the likes of Captain Cook and his officers on long voyages. Players choose a colour and then take turns dropping coloured tokens into a six-row, seven-column vertically suspended grid. The pieces fall straight down, occupying the lowest available space within the column. The first to form a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line of four of one’s own tokens wins. Its arguably a sophisticated strategy version of a tumbling tower game.
Rubik’s Cube – Though Rubik’s Cube was invented in 1974, it rose to international fame in the ’80s, becoming popular among children and adults. It was easy to lose track of time trying to solve the cube, though once you got the hang of it, you might put the stopwatch on to compare it with competitors in Worldwide cubing competitions. Like the best long-lasting toys, the Cube offers more than entertainment. It helps develop spatial awareness and has something to do with maths, but don’t ask me what exactly; I never mastered it. Did you?
Trivial Pursuit was released in 1981 and remained popular up to the digital age. It popularised so-called trivial or not particularly useful information, a trend continued on TV programs such as Pointless. It successfully put a stop to Monopoly’s monopoly of over-familiar family board-games that were boring.
It became a stalwart of dinner parties and long evenings. The trivial nature of many of the questions ensured that players who didn’t know the answer were not made to look foolish. In later years, question sets were designed for younger players or as promotional tie-ins to Star Wars etc.
Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
Hungry Hungry Hippos – Described as a “frantic marble-grabbing action game”, players banged away on a little plastic lever until your insatiable hippo gobbled up as many marbles as possible. Apart from any emerging chronic wrist ache, unlike Connect Four and Tumbling Tower, to ‘win’ at Hungry Hippo required neither skill nor strategy. But it was hectic.
Pogo Bal and Pogo Stick – Google tells us that Pogo Bal was “invented by Belgian toy designers in 1969”, although ‘dreamt-up’ seems more apt. After all, it’s nothing more than a circular platform resting on a ball; the same Google search claims it became “a massive trend in the toy landscape in the mid-’80s”. That’s not how I remember it. Maybe your memories are different?
Not so long ago, I purchased something very similar but sold not as a toy, but as a low-level fitness and balancing aid for a much older age bracket. At least in its re-purposed and repackaged existence, it seemed like an invitation to snap an ankle bone. If you weighed more than 4 stone, its cousin the Pogo Stick was similarly underwhelming.
Twister – ‘The game that ties you up in knots’. Another toy/game that seemed like a good idea at the time, it shares with Pogo Bal a tendency to strain one’s anterior cruciate ligaments. Marketed as an ice-breaker at parties, it was celebrated for the sometimes-embarrassing contortions its moves required. It could be both funny and fun, but I don’t think it’s making a comeback… Yoga helped – a lot.
Pet Rock – most children would love to have their own pet, a dog or cat or hamster. If cash or living arrangements didn’t allow for a four-legged creature, in 1975, an American advertising executive – no surprise there – came up with a rock-solid solution. Pet Rock was marketed as a collectible toy. Packaged in distinctive cardboard boxes complete with ventilation holes and straw bedding in the style of a pet carrier, at $4, this pet needed neither feeding nor house-training. Over one million were sold before the joke became stale. There is no record of how many Pet Rocks were unceremoniously chucked onto the nearest waste ground.
Health and Safety
However, snapped ligaments are not the only health and safety concerns associated with toys from the era. A health and safety issue much more serious than rock-throwing has come to light. With younger children in mind, a 2015 headline in the Independent newspaper warned that passing on childhood toys to your offspring may seem like a touching gesture, but “you could actually be poisoning them”.
Studies found the highest concentrations of both cadmium and lead in yellow toy parts. Specialist equipment was used to detect heavy metals in more than 100 vinyl and non-vinyl vintage toys, including old Barbie dolls, Fisher Price Little People figurines and My Little Pony dolls.
It seems churlish to end a celebration of 70s and 80s toys on a somewhat sour note. So, here’s two positive changes since the 80s; stringent safety tests on toys and the power of consumers to hold manufacturers of questionable products to account. That’s progress.
Which toys and games were your favourites?
Fancy reminiscing with your own classic toys? Check out these products, available to buy now:
Care Bears | Cheer Bear 35cm Medium Plush.
Barbie You Can Be Anything Doll.
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