Growing Up in the 1980s: Things My Kids Should Know About My Childhood (Part 2)

In Part One of this series, I discussed my favorite '80s movies, Ronald Reagan (from a kid's perspective), Michael Jackson, and more.

There are so many things I want to tell my kids about my childhood...many years ago, in the totally awesome '80s. Now it's time to tell my children about all the TV shows I watched, all the junk food I ate, and all the books I read when I was their age, in the 1980s.

Television in the 1980s
When I was even younger than you guys, I watched Sesame Street . Elmo wasn't a big star back then. Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, Grover, and the rarely-seen Snuffleupagus were my favorite characters. I loved Jim Henson's Muppets, especially Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear, and saw all The Muppets movies that came out in the '80s. My brother and I also liked the Muppet Babies cartoon. (Anyone feeling nostalgic can see clips of old Muppet Babies episodes here.)

When I was your age, we didn't have computer-generated cartoons like The Backyardigans or Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In the 1980s, cartoons were still hand-drawn-sometimes the quality was poor, but we didn't care. My brother's favorite '80s cartoons were G.I. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man. I liked He-Man too, and She-Ra (He-Man's twin sister), Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, and Jem. We both watched The Smurfs, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. We also watched older cartoons: Scooby-Doo Where Are You!,The Flintstones,The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Pink Panther, Tom & Jerry, and Looney Tunes. Classic Disney cartoons were shown on The Disney Channel back in the '80s. Goofy and Donald Duck were my favorites. Good luck finding any decent cartoons on The Disney Channel today!

(Mini-rant: Why, oh WHY, can't I find classic Looney Tunes or Disney cartoons on TV today? Come on, Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Come on, Disney Channel. Bring back the good cartoons. No child should have to grow up without Roadrunner and Coyote, and Chip 'n' Dale. Sure, my kids could find old cartoons online, but what else might they find while they're searching for old cartoons? My 9-year-old son came across a picture of a bunch of topless women on the computer at school while searching for "money in Moscow" last week. No joke.)

When I was your age, my whole family looked forward to watching these TV shows: The A-Team (Murdock cracked me up), Magnum, P.I. (my mom had a huge crush on Tom Selleck), The Greatest American Hero, Knight Rider, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Family Ties, and A.L.F. My mom watched Dallas in the early '80s. She and my dad liked Remington Steele , which must have come on after I was in bed because I never watched it.

I watched these '80s shows sometimes: Murder, She Wrote; Silver Spoons; The Golden Girls; The Dukes of Hazzard; Fame; Highway to Heaven; Head of the Class; Growing Pains (my friends and I thought Kirk Cameron was sooooo cute); Diff'rent Strokes; The Facts of Life; Night Court; Full House; and Who's the Boss? (I devoted an entire article to Who's the Boss? here.) My husband, who also grew up in the '80s, remembers his parents watching Hill Street Blues and Moonlighting. He liked Miami Vice and The Wonder Years, in addition to a lot of the shows I already mentioned. We both watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and the classic Star Trek series, too.

These popular '90s shows started in the late '80s: Doogie Howser M.D., Roseanne, and The Simpsons (my family watched The Tracy Ullman Show, which is where The Simpsons first appeared). New episodes of The Simpsons are still being made, all these years later!

Kids, when I was your age, having cable TV was a big deal. I'm not sure exactly when my family got basic cable (1983?), but it was a happy time. No more fiddling with those rabbit ears on top of the television! If I wanted to watch Fraggle Rock on HBO, I had to go over to my neighbor's house, but our basic cable package included The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and MTV. On Nickelodeon, I watched an incredibly stupid show called You Can't Do That on Television (someone was always getting green slime dumped on their head), an educational show about science called Mr. Wizard, and a game show for kids called Double Dare. In the evening in the late '80s, I liked watching "Nick at Nite," which exposed me to lots of black-and-white shows I never would have seen otherwise: The Patty Duke Show and The Donna Reed Show were two of my favorites. I watched I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Leave It to Beaver, and The Price is Right, hosted by Bob Barker, during the day if I happened to be home sick.

This might be hard to believe, but MTV showed music videos in the 1980s. Lots of music videos! Some of my favorite videos from that decade were Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (duh), A-Ha's "Take On Me," Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer," George Michael's "Faith," Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" with Run-DMC, and D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince's "Parents Just Don't Understand." (Kids, you know The Fresh Prince by a different name: he's Will Smith!)

My younger brother watched a lot of MTV; he was really into hair bands in the late '80s/early '90s. He used to wear a black Motley Crüe T-shirt that said "Kick Start My Heart" on the back. For my part, I had a crush on the lead singer of White Lion (go here, and maybe you'll understand why). That would have been around the same time that I bought Tiffany's self-titled album on CD and fell madly in love with Jordan Knight of New Kids on the Block (that was before we called them "NKOTB").

Here's another humiliating confession: My brother and I watched WWF-now known as "WWE"-wrestling in the '80s...and loved it! We stayed up late to watch wrestling on the weekends after my parents were in bed. My favorite wrestlers were Hulk Hogan; Andre the Giant; future governor of Minnesota, Jesse "The Body" Ventura; Jake the Snake; "Macho Man" Randy Savage; and The Ultimate Warrior. My mean parents wouldn't let us order any of the big "Wrestlemania" events on pay-per-view. They said wrestling was "fake" and "stupid," and they were right.

When I was your age, we didn't have DVRs. It was hard to remember to program the VCR to record something on TV (besides, most people couldn't even program their VCRs to display the correct time; many VCRs flashed "12:00" endlessly), and we couldn't go on the Internet (what's the Internet?!) to watch TV shows on Hulu.com or similar sites the next day. If we happened to miss a show when it was on live TV, we didn't get to see it until the rerun came on weeks or months later. Without DVRs, we couldn't pause live TV. Oh, those were dark days. If we had to pee really bad, we held it until commercials came on. Commercial time was also when we got our snacks and drinks.

Candy, Soda, Pizza
What were my favorite snacks and drinks in the '80s? Nacho Cheese Doritos, Cool Ranch Doritos (that flavor wasn't introduced until 1986 (source)), Little Debbie snack cakes, cookies, Minute Maid fruit punch, and Coke. Not New Coke, though-that tasted too much like Pepsi. (Kids, you can read all about New Coke here.) I liked Pop Rocks, Blow Pops, Now & Laters, Laffy Taffy, Jolly Ranchers, strawberry Twizzlers, Reese's peanut butter cups, and M&M's (peanut butter M&M's didn't exist yet, unfortunately). Nerds and Runts candy were both introduced in the '80s (source). I used to ride my bike to the gas station to buy Whatchamacallit candy bars. Like most kids, I was a health-food fanatic. Sometimes my mom would buy a gallon of fresh A&W root beer at the drive-in A&W restaurant; that was always a treat. We popped our popcorn on the stove in the first part of the 1980s, but by the end of the decade, we'd switched to microwave popcorn because it was so much easier.

When I was your age, pizza delivery was becoming more popular nationwide. Domino's Pizza promised to deliver our pizzas in 30 minutes or less. But we had to call the store to place our order; we couldn't text our order or order online. Pizza Hut started delivering pizzas in 1986 (source), but we usually preferred to dine-in because my brother and I always had "Book It!" coupons for free personal pan pizzas to redeem. The Book It! program debuted in 1984 (source). Our teachers gave us Pizza Hut Book It! coupons for reading books outside of school.

My Favorite Books in the 1980s
Some of my favorite books in the early '80s were classic Dr. Seuss books, the "Ramona Quimby" series by Beverly Cleary, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and anything written by Judy Blume. Guinness Books of World Records were popular book-order choices in my classroom in the mid-'80s. I spent hours looking at the unbelievable pictures in those books-the man with the longest fingernails, the tallest woman, the biggest baby, the fattest identical twins, the oldest woman to give birth, etc. "Choose Your Own Adventure" books were also popular. I went through a Sweet Valley Twins and Babysitters Club phase. By the late '80s, in my "tween" years (I don't think we used the term "tween" back then), I was addicted to Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine horror books geared toward teenagers. I also collected comic books for a few years. Then I made the jump to Stephen King and never looked back.

In Part Three, I reminisce about '80s toys and collectibles.

Related Articles by Maria Roth:
"Growing Up in the 1980s: Things My Kids Should Know About My Childhood (Part 1)" - here
"Best Television Show of the '80s: Who's the Boss?" - here
"Totally Awesome '80s Poem" - here

Sources:
Wikipedia.com
http://www.pizzahut.com/ourstory.html
http://www.inthe80s.com/80sprime.shtml
My own sweet memories
My husband's memories (thanks, Dan!)