Raise Your Hand If......

So raise your hand if you were a wild child of the 80's! Meeeee meee meeee, I was too LOL!  

And I'll be turning 39 errr 40 in May so I was reminiscing a bit while sick in bed. Why? I have no clue other than the 80's made me happy and thought I'd type up a post because....ummmm the 80's ROCKED y'all!

So raise your hand or say YAY if these are familiar to you ok? 

 I would have scanned in some of my own pics from back in the day, however I was bedridden....good for me and for you, trust me ;)

Did you ever celebrate with a doll/Barbie cake?  A good family friend of our's made me one every year till I was 7...I just loved them.  The ones today are so much more elaborate...wow! But whatever...they were all good!

The Barbies...oh I had lots of Barbies including my sister's older Barbies...she had a Kristy McNichol one (she's 11 years older so that was her thing back then lol).  My mom made me so many Barbie clothes that I literally had garbage bags full of them.  My favorite Barbie was "Cowgirl Barbie"...she had so much blue eye makeup LMBO and she winked one eye...I thought she was FANTABULOUS!  And Malibu Barbie...with tan lines no less...and those fun sunglasses that barely fit in that bag hmmpppffftt.  Nowadays we'd tell her to put some sunblock on stat!!!

How about Cabbage Patch Dolls?  This one looks just like my Daisy...she went everywhere with me.  Including on a ferry to Nova Scotia where I bought a sweater for her for $6 whole dollars LOL. Ask ANY of my family members about her and they will tell ya...I was obsessed.  My mom made bags full of clothes for her...some even matched mine :)  My Daisy now sits on top of my hutch in my craft room...she is still well loved!

I have no idea what these were called but I had a TON of them...I remember the harmonica charm really played too hahaha!

The first iPad folks LOL!  This "Little Professor" was a much loved toy for me and high tech back then for kids!

And we cannot forget the Rubiks Cube...a great mind game for now and then! Don't tell my brother that I played with his and sometimes screwed it up for him...hahaha...I was a great lil' sister :)

Another low tech toy I had and loved.  I had a basketball one too!

I found one at a thrift store for $2 when the kids were little and they loved it just as much as I did.

Strawberry Shortcake...how I loved these little dolls.  And they smelled so good!

My daughter wasn't much of a doll girl...which bummed me out because I loved all dolls when I was little. She had a Cabbage Patch and American Girl Dolls but she collected more than played...she was into games and computer stuff more. Maybe I'll have a granddaughter one day that enjoys dolls as much as I used to.

Yes I might have a few of these "My Little Ponies" too...just a few...you know because there were a whole lot of these.  And you were super lucky if you had a pegasus one...they were extra special ;)

And what about Saturday morning cartoons?  I waited all week to watch a few hours of cartoons on Saturday mornings.  Smurfs, Rainbow Brite, He-Man, Care-Bears, The Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, Inspector Gadget, Fat Albert, Strawberry Shortcake and Jem.  But my favorite was: Shirt Tales...I had all the lil' stuffed animals from McDonalds too...they were too cute!

My older brother had an Atari...which back then was da'bomb-diggety right?  And I played it as much as I could when he wasn't home (shhhh...he was 9 yrs older so he was always busy lol). I loved Space Invaders, Pong, Frogger, Pac-Man and Pole Position. Except we played it on a tiny 20" black and white TV. We didn't get a colored TV or cable till I was in middle school..I lived in the country y'all where there wasn't even pizza delivery..puhleeze!  Then I became obsessed with MTV, back when they ACTUALLY still played music videos. (trivia: first MTV video I ever saw was Aha's "Take On Me" which they play in the 7th inning stretch at every Nationals baseball game and I stand and sing and dance every darn time).  

And then I moved onto my very own Nintendo...which was 100x better.  I was a whiz-master girl at all those games like Mario Brothers, Zelda, Uncle Fester, Tennis and Donkey Kong.  I don't want to think about how many hours that machine got played LOL. The games today are too realistic...my son plays XBox One on our 80" tv in the basement and that's way too much...feels like the people on screen are life sized..whoaaaa!  And he talks on a headset to others playing...who woulda thunk it back in the day huh?

And I will state now...because its true according to ME (ha)...that the 80's had some of the best movies ever!  I love watching a lot of these with my teens when I can.  I mean c'mon Andrew McCarthy was dreamy, everyone wanted to be Molly Ringwald, I wanted to visit Australia & say g'day mate and I was in love with Corey Haim...wasn't everyone?  And I will admit to watching my VHS tape of Top Gun over 100x...obsessed maybe (still like Tom Cruise movies, not the man so much unfort).  And then there was Dirty Dancing...hmmm my friends and I watched that so much we broke the VHS tape LOL. C'mon who didn't want to be Baby to Patrick Swayze's Johnny hmmmm especially in that final scene...oh yeah!!? And Back to the Future made me love Michael J Fox!  My list could go on and on and on....hehehe!

And the TV Sitcoms...they don't make them like that anymore...good, wholesome family fun. My kids have watched reruns of a lot of my faves as they were growing up.  Fresh Prince of Bel Air, Growing Pains, Webster, Family Ties, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Who's the Boss, Full House, The Facts of Life, Silver Spoons, Mork & Mindy, Alf, Punky Brewster, Different Strokes, and The Cosby Show.  I know there were many more but I loved them all...dearly...wish we had more like them these days.  And of course 90210 came out in 90' and that was one of my all-time faves too!  And shhhh don't tell my mom but I watched or listened in on Dallas when I could too...who shot JR bwahahaha!

BUT the music...I STILL love 80's music...well I love most music, but still the 80's...sighhhh!

Madonna, Michael Jackson (still have my Thriller album), Bon Jovi and all the Hair Band boys I wanted to marry, Whitney Houston, Aerosmith, Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, Wham, Boy George, Billy Idol, Run DMC, Beastie Boys, Aha, Debbie Gibson, Tears For Fears and so many more.  But I was OBSESSED and I'm not embarassed to say it...with NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK OMG! I went to their concerts, had everything they made, my walls were plastered with their pics...I knew I was gonna marry Jordan. Whelp that didn't happen but I did go to their Reunion Concert with my mom...because she took me to ALL their concerts as a teen...and I mighta drooled a wee bit. They aged VERY well...just sayin' ;)  And my son loves all the 80's hair bands..I brought him up very well!

Oh and albums....or records...ya know the ones we played on record players.  Nowadays the "hipsters" call them vinyl but we were hip long before these kiddos took over right?  I remember the horrors of a scratched record...the skipping...the counting of lines on the record to change to a different song.  And of course tapes...I had a TON of tapes too when they got popular. And if your tape uncoiled you got out a handy dandy pencil to roll it back up LOL!  The record/tape player above looked a lot like mine with the dual tape players..you know so you could copy a tape to a blank one back in the day hahaha!  Well these kids can have the record players because this gal prefers the ease of iTunes these days ;)

I will say the 80's were not good for the ole' hair!  I don't want to know how much of the ozone all of us killed with hairspray back then.  You know...hold the hair up with a comb, spray and then blow dry it up.  The higher the hair the closer to God they say ;)  It was just bad...I won't share my pics..my daughter will still laugh for HOURS at my old hair hahaha!  

I mean WHAT IN SAM's HELL WERE WE THINKING...I think the hairspray clogged our brains y'all!

80's fashion..um wow...I won't go back to any of these looks lemme tell ya.  Once you've already done a trend and it comes back around...just say NO folks ok? Never do trends twice...well trends that were bad then are STILL bad now KWIM?  We had stone washed everything, layered socks, perfectly peg-legged jeans (took me forever because they had to be perfection), neon, high-tops and shoulder pads, penny loafers, huge earrings, stirrup pants and parachute pants.  And good-gracious Jams...remember those?  Those atrocious shorts..I had a pair of Coca-Cola ones that I adored...enough said LOL!

And we had some rad fads too....NOT!  DUH! 

WHERE'S THE BEEF? ROLF?

And if you read thru this list and do not remember all of these below, well I'm snatching your 80's card back right now....yes'm I will!!!

Garbage Pail Kid cards, gelly shoes, breakdancing, boom boxes, walkmen, MTV, Swatch Watches, Jelly Bracelets, banana clips, Guess Jeans, Esprit bags, Keds without laces, stickers & sticker books, Trapper Keepers, Pop Rocks, Pound Puppies, Weeble Wobbles, ViewMaster, Holly Hobby, Monchichi, rat-tails, Cootie and Dungeons & Dragons.

So did you take a trip back in time like I did?  Boy in some ways I miss the 80's a lot but I do like the conveniences of today.  

I'm happy I grew up in the 80's...it was a good time alright, alright, alright!!