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1980s Fads


Sixgun Sheridan

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Okay, some of us Old Geezers aren't as old as the rest of you. What fads did you follow during the 1980s?

 

I was one of the few to have a genuine Rubik's Cube. They were so popular that everyone was always out, and tons of cheap knock-offs hit the market (including a cute little one to put on your keychain).

 

I also had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A computer. About as powerful as a pocket calculator is today.

 

Unlike most of the teenagers in school though I just never caught on to that Michael Jackson thing. I did learn how to Moonwalk though. :D

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Yup, the first computer I was taught on was a Trash-80 (radio shack TRS-80).  My first computer had an 8088 processor, and had a whopping 256k of ram.  I bought enough dip chips to boost it to 640k.

 

Never did understand the idjits that lowered their pickup trucks all the way to the ground..never did hop on that fad.  There was a tall speed bump in the parking lot of the store I worked at when I was a senior in high school.  Seemed like every other day a lowered nissan would get stuck on it.  We would all jump into the bed to give them enough traction to drag themselves off the speedbump.

 

 

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My first computer was an IBM PC Jr.  Added a second, external floppy drive, bumped that puppy up to 640k with chips, and spent countless nighttime hours playing Flight Simulator.  I was the envy of ALL my buddies~!  :lol:

 

Oh... and it ran Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect quite well, too.  Teamed it up with a tractor-drive Epson dot matrix printer so I could work at home.  Later added a 300 baud modem... Tall Cotton~!  :)

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All things "preppy."

 

Ray Ban Wayfarers, courtesy of Risky Business.

 

Ray Ban Aviators, courtesy of Top Gun.

 

Eddie Murphy being actually funny.

 

'London Calling' posters

 

MTV

 

Parachute Pants

 

Oversized WHAM! tee shirts

 

Oversized Frankie Goes to Hollywood tee shirts

 

Levis 501 Jeans

 

 

I could go on, and on. Guess who went to high school and most of college in the 80s?

 

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I was a school IT specialist then and when we upped the Ram on the IBM computers in the lab, I had to make a call to see what price it was it was selling at on that day...if my memory is correct it was around a hundred dollars to double our computers Ram from 2 to 4 and that is megabytes  not gigabytes.

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Franklin Ace 1000   :D

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18 minutes ago, Cypress Sun said:

 

Don't know if it was a fad or not but who can forget music videos. Here's a "classic".

 

It wasn't all that bad.  The mid 80's saw a Blues revival with ZZ Top's second career, George Thurgood, and the introduction of guitarists like the Vaughan brothers (Stevie solo and Jimmy with The Fabulous Thunderbirds) and Robert Cray.

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The early 1980s were a fun time for music, with all the synthesizers, big hairdos and colorful pop bands. It wasn't until the late 80s when rap music began to take over that it all started to sound like garbage.

 

I also miss the days when MTV only played music videos and concerts, instead of nothing but shows about rebellious teens and leftist political crap like they did throughout the 90s. Are they even still on the air?

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Yup, I had a Fisher dual cassette deck that ate quite a few of them. :angry:

 

I also remember one night a local radio station broadcast part of a Springsteen concert. The reception in my room was pretty poor unless I held onto the FM antenna to eliminate all the crackle and hiss, so I had my tape deck recording it while I held onto that antenna for 45 solid minutes. :blink:

.

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One fad that did start that I liked, V8 engines started coming back into vogue after years of 6 and 4 cylinder motors. They started to go by liters though. A 5.0 in a Ford Mustang was actually a 302 motor but they sounded REAL good compared to the ones from 1974 and until then. Motors still had carburetors, distributor caps, rotor caps and points.....glad that changed.

 

Beta and VCR formats came out. Now you didn't have to miss your favorite tv show or sports game/race. Set your VCR, make sure that the cable box (the one with all 36 channels) was on the right channel and tape away. Still had the problem of tapes getting eaten but it wasn't as bad a music cassettes.

 

Satellite phones came out, same size as a WWII walkie talkie. Only the well off could afford them. Of, course they eventually turned into what we have today and continue to aggravate the hell out of everyone who has them or is driving in traffic with those who can't stay off of them.

 

Saturday Night Live was still worth watching as were many tv shows on at the time. Now, not so much.

 

Gas stations mostly all turned into self service. You could even go in and get a 4 year old egg salad sandwich in a blister pack type package.

 

War between the cocaine gangs started being wage in the street with innocent people getting wounded and killed by gangs with illegal submachine guns. Eventually banks would have to report any cash deposits of $10,000 or more.

 

 

Suffice to say, there was plenty of good things and fads that came out of the '80's but there were some things that would have been better off left there.

 

 

 

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30 minutes ago, Cypress Sun said:

One fad that did start that I liked, V8 engines started coming back into vogue after years of 6 and 4 cylinder motors. They started to go by liters though. A 5.0 in a Ford Mustang was actually a 302 motor but they sounded REAL good compared to the ones from 1974 and until then. Motors still had carburetors, distributor caps, rotor caps and points.....glad that changed.

 

The last vehicle I owned with a carburetor was a 1985 Chevy S-10 pickup. That carb was sealed so you couldn't change the idle fuel mixture and had a bunch of electric solenoids controlling it. On the positive side it had an electric throttle body heater so at least it wouldn't ice over and cause a stall like all my older cars did.

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Boom Boxes

Big Hair (men AND women)

The Breakfast Club

MTV

Satelite TV

Sony Walkmans

 

We also saw the end of the national 55 mph speed limit and the drinking age increase from 18 to 21, if memory serves.

 

Affordable college tuition!

 

 

 

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On 2/17/2020 at 2:49 PM, DocWard said:

All things "preppy."

 

Ray Ban Wayfarers, courtesy of Risky Business.

 

Ray Ban Aviators, courtesy of Top Gun.

 

Eddie Murphy being actually funny.

 

'London Calling' posters

 

MTV

 

Parachute Pants

 

Oversized WHAM! tee shirts

 

Oversized Frankie Goes to Hollywood tee shirts

 

Levis 501 Jeans

 

 

I could go on, and on. Guess who went to high school and most of college in the 80s?

 

501 shrink-to-fits go back to the late '40s in my world.

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Valley Girls!

 

:D

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IROC Z

 

Wearing untied or unlaced high tops.

 

Leggings. 

 

Square headlight Jeep Wrangler

 

Red Dawn.         WOLVERINES!!!!

 

Freddy Krueger

Jason Voorhees

Michael Meyers

 

 

 

 

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38 minutes ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

Convertible mini trucks with high wattage sound systems and sub woofers :angry:

 

 

I don't associate those with the '80s, for some reason. When I think think of vehicles, I think of the renewed pony car wars between the Fox Body Mustangs and the Camaros / Firebirds, with the turbo Shelby Chargers making them both at least take notice for a couple of years. With trucks, I tend to think of the 4x4 mini trucks, of the sort seen in Back to the Future. I'll admit I would still like a near mint Shelby Charger Turbo!

 

b23.jpg.592bb1dc07f235b5295c984b3f7d4cc6.jpg

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25 minutes ago, DocWard said:

 

I don't associate those with the '80s, for some reason. When I think think of vehicles, I think of the renewed pony car wars between the Fox Body Mustangs and the Camaros / Firebirds, with the turbo Shelby Chargers making them both at least take notice for a couple of years. With trucks, I tend to think of the 4x4 mini trucks, of the sort seen in Back to the Future. I'll admit I would still like a near mint Shelby Charger Turbo!

 

b23.jpg.592bb1dc07f235b5295c984b3f7d4cc6.jpg


Those mini trucks were a California fad. Guys would take a Toyota or a Datsun / Nissan and chop the top, slam it (lower the suspension), paint them up like a Gypsy on psychedelic mushrooms and then install huge speakers in the bed with hundreds of watts of power to impress everyone around them. :blink:

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17 minutes ago, Crazy Gun Barney, SASS #2428 said:

absolute dumbest waste of a pickup truck imaginable... thought so at the time and still think so.

 

 

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Agree 100%

 

 

Had a classmate get his similar truck hung on a speedbump in front of Walmart.

 

 

 

No we did not pull him off of it with our REAL trucks.

 

 

 

 

Fortunately the tow truck driver felt sorry for him and didn't charge him anything.

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5 hours ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:


Those mini trucks were a California fad. Guys would take a Toyota or a Datsun / Nissan and chop the top, slam it (lower the suspension), paint them up like a Gypsy on psychedelic mushrooms and then install huge speakers in the bed with hundreds of watts of power to impress everyone around them. :blink:

 

Ah, we got a bit of that, but I tend to associate it more with the nineties and later. Midwest must have been behind the curve on that one! That, and most of the guys were are still lifting their trucks around here.

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24 minutes ago, DocWard said:

 

Ah, we got a bit of that, but I tend to associate it more with the nineties and later. Midwest must have been behind the curve on that one! That, and most of the guys were are still lifting their trucks around here.

 

You mean, like... :blink:

 

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