Fads and Fashions

Crazy Fads of The 80's

toploader video players

It's hard to remember now how amazing the first VCRs seemed to us, and how much they changed our lives. In the era of £20 DVD players and 100-channel cable & satellite TV, it seems amazing that people would pay the equivalent of a month's wages to own one, and even more amazing how huge, complicated and fragile they were.

For the first time, we could also record and keep the films or series that we liked the most, building up a personal collection of classic TV and cinema.

The humble VCR was responsible for a complete revolution in the way we watched TV.

But, the earliest machines became victims of their own success. By the mid 1980's, VCRs (though still expensive) were taken for granted, and the original generation - the old top-loaders and Betamax machines - were relegated to the attic, forgotten and ignored.

Ghetto Blasters

The Ghetto Blaster was large, portable, radio cassette player, measuring about 1.5m wide and 1.0m high.

It is played especially outdoors, in public places at loud volume; and carried on one shoulder with loudspeakers facing the head.

It is assumed that bypassers share the same musical taste.

Sony Walkman

Whilst half the population felt the need to share the whole experience of thier music with Ghettoblasters, the other half preferred just to share the beat with the advent of the Sony Cassette Walkman.

In the 80's the Walkman was king. We all had one (or a cheap knock off, usually made by Akai or Alba) and many of us would spend every Sunday night attempting to record the top 40, pausing and un-pausing the tape recorder (that we had unplugged from our Spectrum computer set-up) whenever Bruno Brookes started his inane between-song gabble. The hard work was worth it though if you wanted to be the first in your class to know all the words to the latest Tears for Fears single.

Remember kids, without the Sony Walkman, your Ipod wouldn't have ever been invented.

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Top 10 Fashion Crimes of the Eighties

Shell Suits

During the 80s a bizarre fashion hit the world in the form of nasty nylon waterproof trousers and matching jacket.

Only available in the most hideous colour schemes, this was a fashion statement that definately shouldn't make a comeback.

If it wasn't bad enough that they made you look like a reject from Brookside, they were also a fire hazard!

Stone Wash/Acid Wash Denim

Stone wash jeans were very popular in the 80's thanks to Nick Camens Levi's advert. You know the one, where he strips off to his tighty whiteys in the launderette.