80s Toys!

Ah, toys, toys, toys! It seemed everything in the 1980s existed for one purpose: to sell toys. Cartoons? Chock full of ads: Coming to a local Kmart near you just in time for the Christmas rush!  Fast food? Buy the kids’ meal and get a free toy!  Breakfast cereal? What’s breakfast cereal?!  Oh, that crunchy crap we dumped out on the table to get– the toy!  Marketers knew that the all-powerful toy marketing scheme had to start somewhere and they made good use of that other omnipresent selling machine to get their wares out to the masses: television.

Girls’ toys of the 80s carried on with the 70s trend of women going back into the workplace after going home from the factories after WWII and the 60s feminist movements that taught our mothers women could do anything. 80s girls had Easy Bake Ovens just like their mothers and fed and clothed their Cabbage Patch babies and Baby Alives too but Barbie came out that decade with a whole new deal- We Girls Can do Anything (right, Barbie?).

While 80s girls were certainly enthralled with their My Little Ponies like their older sisters had been with Breyer horses, they were learning all about a world outside of marriage and the home they and their dolls could have. International travel wasn’t just something you achieved through joining the army, it was real and you could get a Cabbage Patch Kid from anywhere in the world- even the toys got around.

For future women CEOs there were a whole host of Lisa Frank stationary and desk accessories- better pick out your signature erasure scent now ladies, when you’re crunching numbers on Wall Street you’re gonna need to stand out from the crowd.  Personally I *loved* my toys and still do. I don’t have a ton of them left (my husband makes sure our house doesn’t turn into a shrine- boo) but I still think it was the best time in the world for playthings and today’s Lalaloopsie and Bratz are just …well, bogus.

And let’s give those toy makers and designers credit: not only did they churn out a generation with more toys than ever before in history but some of the most memorable toys of the 20th century came from the 1980s. If you were an 80s kid and you have great toy memories, browse through the toy pages to reconnect with the magic!