Hail to the Hive!
While I was recently back in Leicester I took a visit to the New Walk Museum as for me it's a place I used to visit a lot in my youth. Before you start thinking I was an avid history or natural science buff it was more because my Mum worked there ( no she wasn't a Mummy 🤣 ) and I used to pop in to say hello or pick up house keys etc.
As it happened they had an exhibition that really did take e back to my youth. it was an
I Grew up in the 80's Exhibition.
It's hard for people to imagine these days but this was when electronic games were in their infancy and computers were the stuff of Science Fiction fantasy. Seeing the items on display really brought back some memories.
The Simon electronic game was a game I'd never owned but played on endlessly at friends houses.
I did have the snake thing and managed to swap some stuff for the Casio keyboard but never really became a keyboard player.
As an avid 2000ad comic reader I did buy the Judge Dredd board game
And any kid from the 70's and 80's would remember these swimming badges and the pride you'd have being rewarded one. I did laugh out loud in the museum when I saw the 5m badge.
Laser disc players, betamax and VHS tape layers. Look at the size of that player and the weight of them was tremendous. I remember clearly carrying an early VHS player to a friends house to watch a movie at theirs. My god my arms ached by the time we got there. Compare that to an Ipad today and it boggles the mind.
After Star Wars so successfully marketed it's merchandise every sci fi movie tried to follow in it's footsteps and I remember buying a Tron action figure. You could hold them them next to a light bulb to make them glow in the dark. oooh wow haha
And the the Atari 2600. I never did get one as we couldn't afford one but I would walk several streets to a friends house to play on theirs. Amazing how many friends the kids with Ataris had. They were very popular.
In the 80's Lucozade was marketed as something you would drink if you were ill. It wasn't a sports performance drink that it is today. If you were off school poorly sick then the chances are your mum would buy a bottle of Lucozade to help you get better. Top Deck shandy was the closest you would get to drinking beer and in the summer it was so refreshing. And Cigarette sweets haha can you imagine them selling those today?
And then there was the cool trainers and sports bags ( those dunlop ones on the left were not cool by the way)
This little exhibit brought back so many memories but made me realise how much of a massive leap technology has taken and now I have Ipads, drones , lap top computer with video editing software on it way ahead of anything Hollywood would have used in the 1980's. let's not even start with what our phones can do now either. In fact most of the tech I woned today exceeds what I thought would be available to me when I used to dream of stuff as a kid. And as I am still a big kid I like to make the most of it. Well why not? After all I remember when it was just the stuff of fantasy and now I get to play with it and I still love my toys 😁.
