LLgoatJ

1990's

I was going to write about the 1980's but then I realised that actually I was very young in the 1980's and my memories would  be hazy and I would end up having to nick all of it from other people. Also everyone goes on about the 1980s so I thought I would choose 1990's when I was young enough to appreciate the real best things like TV and toys but old enough to remember it. Any inaccuracies or mistakes are purely because of my swiss cheesed memory and as you will see instead of doing some kind of time line or grouping things into groups I have just put them down as they fell out of my head. I have tried not to repeat all about what they were about too much. I am sure you know already and if you don't then you can google it. If you go right to the bottom below the photos and adverts there will be a comment box (hopefully) where you can share your memories of the decade. Or E-mail me them and if I get enough I will put them all on a page of their own. 

Gameboy- Well my dad was too tight to buy me a Gameboy. He was also too tight to buy me those little hand held Nintendo games that only had one game. He did buy me cheap knock offs though. I remember sitting in a caravan in Maplethorpe playing handheld game for hours thinking if only someone could invent one of these where you could change the game as this is getting a bit boring now. Anyway after pleading and pleading for a Gameboy guess what I got? That's right a Quickshot Supervison. Now if this was Amercian TV I would have thrown it back in his face but we had little so what we did have was appreciated. I played loads games on it. At that time there wasn't too many places you could buy computer games. Those shops definitely did not sell games for the Supervision so it was mail order. That was also when you filled in a form. Sent your cheque off with your form off. Prayed it was in stock. Waited 3 days for the cheque and order form to arrive. Then another 7 days to clear. Then another 3 days for them to send it. Then another 3 days for it to arrive in the post. Those two weeks were long but all worth it when the game arrived. None of this order by 5pm for next day delivery internet rubbish. When you ordered you made sure it was what you wanted as you had a long wait. The Quickshot was exactly like the Gameboy. In fact it was better than the Gameboy. It had a screen that was bendy so when you were peering at the low quality screen you could bend it back and forth to see if that made it easier to see (it didn't). The screen was the size of the Gameboy. Although only about 20% of it was actually display. It wouldn't fit in your pocket and only fit in your bag if you had a holdall. Sure the volume dial went from off to very loud and annoying without anything in between and got you told off as everyone was watching TV but for 5 minutes you could play one of the many games made in Asia and either badly or not at all translated into English. Of course after 5 minutes the 20 AA batteries it required to run it ran out but it was great fun. I still have mine in mint condition with about 15 games. As soon as I have amassed another batteries to play it, I will be. 

Tamagotchi- Again another toy that instead of having an original I had a cheaper version that I am pretty sure didn't even have a name. It was also a watch with those horrible rubber straps which you use to get that after about 10mins caused your wrist to sweat. Then 20 minutes later it when red and itchy and after about 30mins the skin had started to melt. The thing is it didn't even tell the time! Someone had obviously a load of electronic watches to shift and decided to change it to be a tamagotchi knock-off. Anyway like most people for the first few days I cared for it and nurtured it and then...... I got bored with it and it died. In my defence I would like to say that I have a 5 year old dog which is fit and healthy. Although she follows me round the house when its dinner time. 

StarCom- I think this was very early 1990s. My Dad being clever and poor always brought my Christmas presents in the January Sales. Not being one to have to hold on to something all year he use to buy my presents the January after the Christmas. It was great though. As we would get up well early at 6am when it was still dark and everyone was asleep. Then we would get the bus to East Cowes and go on the Red Funnel Car ferry to Southampton. Breakfast in Allders in the City Centre. Or was it C&A? Then we would walk down to Toys R Us. I would have an hour and a budget to choose one big toy and one small toy. My dad would obviously encourage me in the sale items so I could maximise my budget. One year I brought StarCom base. It was way ahead of its time and the base floor was metal and the spaceman had magnets on their feet. So they clomped around the base. Then it had guns and satellite dishes that turned and other bits that you wound up to make them go. It also bizarrely had a metal bar the spaceman could hang from. The best of it you didn't need any batteries! I played with that for months! 

Bagpuss- I am pretty sure this was made in the 70s but seemed to be repeated constantly during the 1990's. I hated it. The golden bird Professor Yaffle use to make me uneasy. But then so did Finger mouse. It always use to be on between two good programmes though so you had no choice but to watch. Being older and more educated now it is obvious that this was some front. They brought items, never had customers and never sold anything. Yet the shop carried on. It was obvious that Madeline the Ragdoll was using the mice who played the organ to manufacture hard drugs which she then sold. Emily didn't care and as long as when she came to dump her old rubbish and collect the rent she got paid off. Professor Yaffle was trapped in the shop and while sad to see his shop taken over as a drugs factory was glad it was kept open and he could hoard rubbish. Bagpuss was so high all the time that he was never sure when he was asleep or awake. Madeline also had a fancy dress shop which she used as a front for selling the drugs. There was a man called Mr Benn who had been sacked from his job in the city and use to come in the shop as he hadn't told his wife he had lost his job so needed something to do all day. She use to make him high and he'd have a hallucination of what he'd done all day and then she'd send him home.  

Quantum Leap- Okay I am pretty sure this started in the 1980s but I didn't start watching it till the 1990s so it counts. Okay?  So Quantum Leap is basically about this scientist Sam Beckett who is doing this time travel experiment that goes a bit wrong and he ends up stuck travelling through time "Leaping" into people. I mean into their bodies. He doesn't spend his time jumping people. So anyway everyone sees the person as who they are. He has a friend who appears just to him (and later children and animals) as a hologram and has a link back to the future and he helps him work out what thing has gone wrong in the past and how to fix it. Once he fixes it he leaps out of that person and into the next. So each time he is hoping that he will leap home. In the end it turns out that he won't leap home till he decides he wants to. Its him making him leap around time helping people out. I have always loved time Travel stuff and really liked the idea of going back in time to fix stuff. Although in reality I think you would fix one thing and it would cause all kind of havoc and they tended to try and side step the whole question about what other effects his fixing was doing. I mean like if he stopped someone from dying and then that person got drunk and run his dad over and so he was never born who would go back to stop that person from dying so they would survive to the point to run his dad over? They tried to jazz it up with an "evil leaper" and him leaping into himself and his helper Al and then orginally he could only time travel in his own life time and then he started travelling in his relatives time line. Then he went home and realised he had a wife which he had forgot about. Its well worth a watch and often they repeat on ITV4 in the UK. 

Red Dwarf- Okay another thing that started in the 80s but I didn't start watching till the 90s. This is about a space ship called Red Dwarf where the whole crew have been accidently wiped out and all that is left is Lister who was frozen, a hologram Rimmer and a man who has evolved from a cat over three million years. They also had Kryton who is a sort of robot. Its very funny and depsite its following you don't have to be in to Sci-Fi stuff to like it. My favourite bit ever is when they are facing danger and Rimmer announces "Kryten put us to red alert" and Kryten replies "Are you absolutely sure sir? That will mean changing the light bulb?" Classic.  

Back To Future- Okay only the third one was released in the 1990s but I promise this is the last a)1980s thing on this list and b) Sci-Fi related. So scientist builds time machine in a DeLorean ("If you are going to build a time machine why not do it in some style") and its one long story about accidently changing history and then going back and forth in time to try and fix it. I love the films and Back To Future 2 is my favourite. Its looking unlikely that 2015 is going to turn out quite like is shown but I love the cause and effect of it. Buying a book in the future ends in a very different present. I also love the end of it when 1950s  Dr Brown sends Marty back to 1985 and he is celebrating and Marty comes running down the road towards him. Back To Future 3 is a bit crap with the whole love story thing that ruins the film but the first two films are so good you have to forgive them. I also love the Delorean from Back To Future 2. I have two models of it. One small and one larger one that has working lights and sounds and keeps me hypnotised for ages. Get them all on DVD or wait for ITV2 to show them as they do every few months.