Gleaming the Rubik’s Cube
By Lori Ferraro Imagine my surprise and absolute delight when I saw that THIS was on my eight-year-olds Christmas list: Yes. Oh yes…my old friend/nemesis, the Rubik’s Cube. Everybody had one back in the 80s! You did too, right?!? I begged my parents for one for my birthday – they ended up getting me a knockoff pyramid shaped puzzle that I pretended to enjoy for a while. The pyramid was cool and all but it wasn’t the real deal. I...
Holly Hobbie
By Julie Anderson Eighties girls will totally recognize this bonnet-clad little girl and the way-back-when lifestyle she conjured up: http://youtu.be/XnNlbl0EYhU It’s Holly Hobbie, the artistic creation of author/artist Holly Hobbie. (I know, right? I was fascinated to learn that she named her character after herself.) Denise Holly Ulinskas marred Douglas Hobbie in 1964. In the late 60s, she created the Holly Hobbie character and sold...
Monchhichis
My husband, like me, is a child of the 80s. I asked him if he remembered Monchhichis, thinking that surely he’d have no idea what I was talking about. But NO! He immediately burst into that commercial jingle. You totally know the first couple of lines at least: Monchhichi, Monchhichi, Oh so soft and cuddly! With a thumb in her mouth she’s really neat. Fun to wiggle his little feet. Yah yah yah yah yah Happy happy monchhichi! I love...
80s My Little Pony and Today’s Bronies
By Julie Anderson Eighties girls will totally remember My Little Ponies, those hugely popular plastic horse figurines. The first herd of candy-colored toy horses was created in 1981. My Pretty Ponies were significantly bigger than My Little Ponies and were nowhere near as popular. In 1983, Hasbro’s My Little Ponies hit the jackpot with the elementary-age girl crowd. They were perfectly sized for little hands and little purses. We...
Little Professor
How a Generation Learned Their Multiplication Tables Those of us who came of age in the 80s were little kids in the 70s; and one of the coolest toys of the late 70s was the Little Professor handheld reverse calculator. It was the first electronic educational toy developed by Texas Instruments (which later went on to develop the immensely popular Speak & Spell series). Little Professor was first introduced in 1976, and kids were so...
