Top 5 ’80s Toys I Plan to Torture My Son With

By Heather LaBruna on November 27th, 2009

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Oh, the magic of a 1980s Christmas morning, when the gift wrap came off and revealed … a junky robot. You loved it anyway because you didn’t know any better.

For me, that robot was Verbot. He was supposed to follow your voice commands, but you could scream until you were blue in the face and most times he’d just sit there, looking dumbly at you with his cheap little robot eyes. Sadly, Verbot is no longer, but many other toys from my childhood are still being made. These simple toys let kids have fun and use their imaginations, and I think there’s something to be said for that nowadays. That’s why I plan to subject my son to the following:

1. Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Behold! Children on speed! I can still see me and my friends frantically trying to get our hippos to eat all the little white marbles. Hopefully my son has better luck with the game than his Daddy did. My husband ate one of those marbles when he was 6 and so began his parents’ vigil – every subsequent poop was carefully inspected to see if said marble had made its way out. It did, for the record.

2. RadioShack toys.

Nothing said ’80s childhood quite like a ghetto RadioShack gadget. I had the Tandy Computerized Arcade - nothing more than a plastic rectangle with buttons that lit up. It met an untimely end when the family dog peed on it and the switch rusted in the “off” position. Times have changed at RadioShack and the toys look a little sleeker. Still, I’m confident I can still find my son something crappy there that forces him to be imaginative.

3. Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine.

The Sno-Cone machine looked sad even when I was kid, like something out of a retro toy museum. Kids didn’t want “Peanuts”; they wanted “Smurfs.” Still there was something magical about the ice shavings spilling from it, which you put in cheap paper cups and topped with some suspect syrup.

4. Sit N Spin.

This one never quite worked on ’80s shag carpeting, but on the right surface, and after several Capri Suns and a bowl of Kaboom cereal, you could look forward to spinning right off that sucker and into a pile of your own puke.

5. Vibrating football game.

I think mine was handed down from my older brother, and most of the little football players were missing. It also seemed to be made out of sharp metal.  Sans football players, I’d just throw on other toys and objects and watch them vibrate across the fake field. See, now that’s imagination!