A Mug For The '80s...

Here up at '80s Actual Towers, we're right mugs for all things 1980s, so in this post we've decided to up our mug status by looking at mugs. 1980s mugs, that is. We bought this new graffiti design in 1989, and the design continued to be wildly popular into the early 1990s. 'BUY BLITISH!' 'SAVE TREES EAT A BEAVER!' 'IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED CHEAT.' 'MICKEY MOUSE IS A RAT!' FABULOUS!

What about mugs reflecting crazes of the 1980s? Well, you couldn't find a better representation than the two 1981 mugs pictured below featuring the mighty Rubik's Cube. The Cube was one of the greatest success stories of the decade, sweeping into our lives in 1980 (or, more likely, 1981 - there was a shortage) and then taking those aforementioned lives over. Could we solve it? Our fascination was endless.

Sadly, I couldn't solve it and had to concede that it really was a 'mug's game'!

One of our very fave 1980s mug designs is this lovely pedestal 'Let's Break' design - with the cosily boiling kettle. There was also the same pic with a 'Have A Break' and 'Break Time' slogan. All three designs are still favourites for a comforting brew on a busy day up at '80s Actual Towers.

These mugs are also great for packet soups. Being slightly smaller than most, if you stir it up well you get a nice thick tasty slurp rather than the usual insipid powdery hot water.

Just remember to stir well and make sure the powder is fully dissolved - the rounded base makes it easy. YUM!

The wedding of Princes Charles and Lady Diana Spencer on 29 July, 1981, provoked a welter of souvenir merchandising. This mug seems particularly evocative. The newsprint quality of the photographs would never pass muster today.

Here's our old mate Henry's Cat with a very '80s message: 'Nothing succeeds like excess!' Absolutely!

Talking about famous cartoon cats, what about Garfield? From 1981 (in America) and 1983 (England) we were swamped with Garfield stuff.

And here's a word about Garfield mugs and general merchandising. If you have Garfield merchandise it will date from the 1980s at the earliest. If it says '1978' on it that's simply because it was the year when the character first appeared in American newspaper comic strips - was first copyrighted - and he looked liked this:

His appearance evolved during the 1980s and evidence of that evolvement is obvious from the merchandising. Jim Davis founded his own Garfield merchandising company, Paws Inc. in 1981, and that's when the flood of Garfield stuff began. He made his way to English shops a year or two later.

1978 being the first copyright date for Garfield, it was often used on subsequent merchandising. The same rule applies to the Pac-Man mug later in this blog post. It's dated '1980' because that was the year the character debuted, but the mug is actually from a couple of years later.

So, next time you nip onto eBay and see a Garfield mug - apparently from 1978, don't be fooled. It won't be. 

The mug featured here actually has two copright dates - 1978 and 1981!

Right, pressing on, we say 'qua qua, fa diddily qua qua' and meet our next mug... 

Yes it's Adam (with the 'D' authentically the wrong way round) and his Ants on this little beauty from 1981. Actually, we loved Adam. We think he made David Bowie - even in David's fab 1980 Ashes To Ashes video - look like Hilda Ogden. Adam had great street cred, and also great behind-the-bike-sheds-with-a-ciggie-and-a-transistor-radio cred. It's easy to go all tongue in cheek about it now, but I genuinely felt Adam was something of a marvel back in the early 1980s and I still treasure the memories. The music, the videos, the image... fantastic! 

And here's another larger-than-life 1980s celebrity - Mr T - BA Baracus himself - from the A Team. Some English TV critics were dubious about the show when it debuted here, but the kids loved it and it quickly assumed legendary status. 

This mug is simply very 1980s and very nice. Well I like it. It dates from 1986.

A must-have from Argos and a few other sources from around 1983 were these soup bowl mugs. Comfortingly country retro, these were wildly popular and, if your chosen '80s lifestyle was retro country chic, ideal for display in your kitchen. This is Scotch Broth, but many other designs were available, and they also came as plates, bowls and possibly woolly hats. I jest. I think. 

Another favourite - the Cadbury's chocolate block mug from 1983. Lovely with hot chocolate. And a couple of choc bickies... And maybe even a couple of bars of chocolate. I'd particularly like... 

... a Wispa bar! Bite it and believe it as the ads said. Scrummy!

Wanna be a yuppie? Yus, matey boots? Well, this 1984 mug is for you. This was before the hugely booming bit of the 1980s had really got underway, so the yuppie 'wants' seem a bit naff and feeble now. We still had three years to wait for Gordon Gekko.

Orville! Remember that chart-buster of late 1982 - Orville's Song? 'Orful, who is your very best friend?' 'You are.' 'I'm gonna help you mend your broken NECK!' That's what we sang. Hard-hearted gits, weren't we? But this is a very lovely mug, is it not?

And here he is, then! The one, the only, PAC-MAN! Remember the copyright date rule we discussed regarding Garfield? Well, this Kiln Craft mug contains the copyright date '1980' for the character, but the mug dates from around 1982.

The kettle never stops boiling at our place so we'll be revisiting the 1980s teatime soon...

Home Decor In The 1980s And Who painted Puss?

Back in the 1980s a change began to sweep over working class homes. Before that decade, we poor types had been happy to mix-and-match our furnishings and décor. There would be that old couch passed down by Aunt Lil - probably dating back to the 1950s (the springs were going but it still served), Great Nana's flying swallows from the 1940s, that nice bit of carpet Mr Sims had chucked out (quite new as well!), some out-of-date but still serviceable bright yellow 1960s curtains, Great Aunt Gemma's religious text - dating back to a 1920s seed catalogue, some garish modern wallpaper - dreamt up in a nightmare by some late 1960s hippie, and so on. It clashed. But we didn't see our rooms as a whole.

We loved Great Nana's swallows and they may not have gone with the modern smoked glass-topped coffee table (a Christmas present from Auntie Lizzie, who'd only had it three years) but then neither went with cousin Sue's cushion covers. In fact, nothing went with cousin Sue's cushion covers. Still, we didn't care. Our rooms often contained a 1950s or 1960s print on the wall too - sad eyed kiddies and clowns and so on by the likes of Barry Leighton Jones or Audrey Dallas Simpson. These were usually board prints with cheap plastic frames.

Stylistically, the rooms were often very discordant - but we didn't think like that.

Things were displayed or used because they were of sentimental value or because we thought they were 'real nice' or  because we couldn't afford new and somebody we knew was chucking something out that wasn't totally knackered. If only just.

But then came the 1980s.

The mid-1980s presented the working classes with a credit boom and LIFESTYLE choices. What sort of clothes best portrayed who YOU were? Were YOU trendy? Futuristic? Power dressing? Casual? Classic? What did your home say about YOU? Should your home be futuristic? Rustic? Trendy? Townie? Minimalist? Industrial?

And so out went out the strange assortment of furnishings we'd assembled over the previous decades and in came our very own distinctive 'look'. Yes, this was about YOU and who YOU were and about making a statement to the world about YOU.

The transition was slow and wasn't always in the best possible taste, particularly at first, but by the end of the 1980s my very working class family's homes were definitely becoming less of a hotchpotch and more black ash and vertical blinds (or country cottage or whatever) than they had been before.

1985, Argos catalogue... Graffiti your furniture... make it really YOU!

A study area? Darling, how could we do without one?

Index catalogue, only now it's 1989. OOOH!

I was an '80s trendy person and when, in 1987, I moved into a shared flat, I was eager to furnish the communal areas with my flatmate. I went to a nice posh shop and bought a nice posh (and very 1980s) clock for the kitchen and was stunned when my flatmate went out to a jumble sale at the local United Reformed Church and bought back the kitten picture pictured at the top of this post. She'd paid 10p.

My beautiful 1987 wall clock! Isn't it great? And still keeps perfect time!

Now, my flatmate seemed quite posh to me. Her parents had started buying their council house in the late 1960s (you could where I lived) when she was a tiny tot and she affected an air of languid middle classness. So, what the hell was she doing? Here was me, fresh off a council sink estate, living in the throes of the latter years of the Style Decade and very 'with it', and here she was, from a home owning family, doing a 'dead common' pick-n-mix job on our flat like it was 1983 or something.

My flatmate - I'll call her Sharon - hadn't bought the print because it was 1960s and she had enthusiasm for that era. Those sort of prints still adorned many a fogey relative's living room wall back in the 1980s and hadn't any appeal as retro pieces to trendy young people.

No, Sharon had bought it because she thought the kitten was 'sweet'.

The picture was one of those Audrey Dallas Simpson style things, delicately stained with nicotine, and the kitten portrayed looked as miserable as sin. And there was no way I wanted it rubbing shoulders with my dead posh modern clock in the kitchen/living room of the flat.

I thought quickly. I didn't want to offend Sharon by calling out her lousy taste, so I said: 'What a great picture! It will go great with the green wallpaper in the hall!' And so there it was hung.

And it stared. Miserably. Each day, its eyes clocking me out of the flat as I left for work and back in as I came home. Finally, when we left the flat, Sharon gave me the picture. I didn't want to offend, so cooed delightedly over it, and hung it in my new hall so that Sharon would see it when she visited.

The picture still has its original 1987 10p jumble sale price ticket on the back.

And so it continued to clock me out as I left my new house each day - and back in again. As at the flat, I found those solemn eyes meeting mine each time I left or entered.

In recent years, the picture has become increasingly shabby and faded. I took it down. And then began to feel a profound sense of unease each day as I left the house or entered.

Could it possibly be the lack of those solemn eyes, clocking me in and out?

After thirty years, had I become addicted to them?

The sense of something lacking continued and in the end I scanned and brightened the picture and put a copy up in the hall.

The eyes were back.

And so was my sense of wellbeing.

Kitty had entered the second of its nine lives.

The original board print with plastic frame originated from the 1960s, and lately I've wondered who painted it? It looks very Dallas Simpson to me, but does anybody know?

I call it the '51c Cat', because that was the number of our old flat.

Funnily enough, in my middle age, I've started mixing-n-matching again.

The 51c Cat happily resides in the same hallway as my 1980s wall clock...

And both go so well with my pink woodchip oh-so-1980s hall wallpaper...

Not to mention my Adam Ant mirror...

Back to 1987, and Sharon had really liked my ultra modern 1980s kitchen clock. So she went out and bought a chopping board with a 'country kitchen' design to display on the worktop - a past times greengrocer's shop complete with old money price tags and old style woman and boy. There was nothing wrong with the design. I quite liked it. But it clashed liked nobody's business with the clock. Despite Sharon's parents buying their council house and her refusal to drop her aitches, the woman was dead common. She had no sense of style and interior design coordination at all.

I despaired. 

And gave it all up as a hopeless job. Especially when another flatmate arrived and immediately made her contribution to the décor. She  blue-tacked a yucky brown and cream horse's head tea towel to the pantry door.

Sharon's chopping board. Of course, this was the 1980s, so it was being flogged as a 'very collectable chopping board' (sigh).

New Romantics

 August 1980 - the release of Ashes To Ashes, with its groundbreaking video, was a great moment for David Bowie - and propelled the Blitz Kids and others towards the pop scene to form the New Romantics, the first big 1980s music and fashion scene.

20th Century Words by John Ayto traces the term "New Romantic" to 1980. So, what was a New Romantic? Late 1980 saw the emergence of two acts - Adam And The Ants and Spandau Ballet - into the upper echelons of the pop charts. They gave us Ant Music and To Cut A Long Story Short, respectively, and although both songs were very different, the Ants and the Ballet blokes were both heavy on the face make-up and the dashing outfits of years long, long past.

And, suddenly, we were all talking of New Romantics.

1981 brought a flurry of them into our lives - including, of course, Duran Duran and Ultravox. Planet Earth, complete with video, was very typical of the scene - synths, futuristic setting, OTT dandy flounces, lashings of lippy, and bizarre hairdos. The movement crossed over to America and Kim Carnes sent us the divine Bette Davis Eyes. 

TV Times, June 1981. How would you feel if your son looked like Adam Ant? If he'd lived where I lived, he'd probably have got seriously punched. But although nobody I knew was brave enough to adopt the image, Adam And The Ants were immensely popular with us lads.

So, the first big new pop sensation of the fledgling 1980s. How did it all begin?

Well, that's not quite what it seems! Read up on it elsewhere and you'll find that it all seems to have originated from a club called The Blitz Club in London, whose patrons paid homage to David Bowie - apparently dubbing themselves "Blitz Kids". Or was it somewhere called Billy's? Or both? Or...

Anyway, it was a dressy night club scene - or a couple of dressy night club scenes - where men wore make up and/or flamboyant outfits

The UK press created the "New Romantics" tag when Adam and the Ants and Spandau Ballet first hit the pop charts in late 1980.

David Bowie, of course, had been exciting the pop scene since 1969, and was very heavy on image. Was he Ziggy Stardust? A Thin White Duke (goodness, I thought that particular image was bloody boring and so retro!), but whatever he was he attracted dedicated followers in droves and his music brought flashes of sheer brilliance. 

In 1980, David had another one of those flashes - with his Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) album, and a single which would be included on this album, released in August 1980, although not officially classed as a New Romantic song, was what kick-started the scene. That song was, of course, Ashes To Ashes.

The video (or "promo" as we referred to them back then) was striking and hugely expensive, and featured Steve Strange, who wowed the pop charts in 1981 and 1982 with Visage hits like Fade To Grey and Mind Of A Toy.

But not all of those considered New Romantics in the early 1980s were part of The Blitz Club scene - Adam And The Ants for instance. 

And I can certainly state that I'd never heard of the Blitz and what attracted me to the New Romantic style was that I had simply had enough of the gobbiness and run-down seediness that had dominated the previous decade.

Several years before the New Romantics, as I lurched into my teens, I was yearning for something a bit more flash, a bit more stylish. I was depressed with the thick layer of mould up my bedroom wall, my threadbare "make do and mend", often hand-me-down clothes. 

I craved for glamour and excitement. I'm sure I was not alone! There was simply something in the air - many of us wanted a change. 

After the likes of Slade shouting their mouths off - as tacky as you please, the sleaziness of the Disco scene and the hopelessness (and, of course big gobbedness) of Punk, plus the oh-so-unoriginal 1970s revivals of 1950s style, 1960s mods and rockers (no thank you, Paul Weller!), plus the '60s ska scene and rockabilly, I was hungry to dress up, desperately hoping that the 1980s would be different.

And they were.

And probably the first manifestation of that was the emergence of the New Romantics in late 1980.

The wonderful Roxy Music, still going strong in the early 1980s, are considered to be an influence on the New Romantics, and I'm sure the group was, but the New Romantics, despite their precursors, were still startling and fresh at the time.

Boy George, of course, was part of the Blitz Club scene, he worked as a cloakroom attendant there, and he was an early New Romantic for sure -  but by the time he made his chart debut in 1982, the New Romantic thing, which had burned fiercely from late 1980 and throughout 1981, had fizzled as far as we the public were concerned. So, The Boy was, at the time, greeted as a stand alone newcomer, a unique individual, loved or loathed. Similarly, A Flock Of Seagulls, who had chart success in late 1982 with Wishing, whilst looking very New Romantic indeed, were not, at the time (as far as I remember!) labelled as such.

Let's hear it for the boy - Boy George, of course - before fame, pictured in the Daily Mirror in April 1981. Although an original New Romantic mover, shaker and trendsetter, by the time he arrived in the pop charts in 1982, the New Romantic scene was just about dead and buried. So, he was regarded simply as Boy George. And his own very personal sense of style inspired admiration, clones, and some homophobia. Soon-to-find-fame George (as seen in the newspaper picture), then simply referred to as George O'Dowd, 19, was wearing Chinese slippers (£3.99), old school trousers he'd tapered himself, and leg warmers. A 1920s dress (20p, Oxfam) was draped around his waist. The tassle belts, the long scarf, and Oxfam beads around his neck, cost him a few pence, the crimplene blouse came from his mum and the wooden cross from a friend. A black felt hat and assorted earrings completed his outfit.

Adam and the Ants.. well, Adam - AKA Stuart Goddard - has stated that his early '80s pop venture was not part of the New Romantic movement. I never knew at the time. Loved the band and saw it as very much part of the New Romantic thing way back then. Sorry, Adam! I still love you and the Ants - whatever you were!

Two groups which I was labelling "New Romantic" long after 1981 were Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. They were always and forever "New Romantics" to me. I loved the way the Duranies dropped the frillies for those gorgeous brightly-coloured suits - and the 1982 Rio video marked a turning point in my own personal fashion statements. 

 A change of image for Duran Duran, seen here in 1981 and 1982. Loved the colourful suits with pushed up sleeves and large shoulders!

Even now, knocking on towards fifty, I still feel a stirring of youthful (if that's possible at my age!) excitement at the thought of the New Romantics and the blossoming synth pop scene of the early 1980s in general. Combined, these two factors were the first indication that 1980s music and fashion were going to be OK for me. And, as it turned out, brilliant!

Adam And The Ants: "I'm The Dandy Highwayman..."

Adam Ant, AKA Stuart Goddard, emerged from the ashes of Punk and relaunched himself as the Dandy Highwayman of New Romantic pop. His image - hair ribbons, lip gloss, and the famous white line across the face, was stunning. Actually Adam has said he wasn't ever a New Romantic, but, whatever he was, he was fabulous.

Qua qua, fa diddily qua qua, fa diddily qua qua...

An Adam Ant mirror - Adam was King of the Wild Frontier AND 1980, 1981 and 1982. The mirror, which is dated 1980, hangs in my hall to this day and brings back fond memories of youth.

In the mid-1990s, my mate Pete, bored with the "we can do a better Beatles than you can" squabble between Blur and Oasis, asked mournfully: "Andy, whatever happened to all the GOOD music? Whatever happened to Adam and the Ants?"

What indeed!

How would you feel if your son looked like this? asks this TV Times from June 1981. On the housing estate where I lived, no bloke would have DARED to look like that!

An interesting article from the Daily Mirror, June 1981:

A film scene showing pop idol Adam Ant being hanged was chopped from TV's Top of the Pops last night.

The three minute film promoting Adam's latest hit Stand And Deliver was shown on the programme a few weeks ago.

But a BBC spokesman said last night: "It was decided to cut the scene from future shows because we don't want to encourage younger viewers to copy Adam's antics."

Film maker Mike Mansfield said: "It was just a piece of fancy dress fun - and, anyway, Adam does not die."

Sensitivities were obviously very different back then - think about what today's children view! Note the way the article's writer refers to the video as a "film". "Films" or "promo's" for songs actually stretch back many years. The "video" tag took off during the 1980s, greatly influenced by MTV.

Adam And The Ants starring on the cover of "Look-In", October 1981

IT'S DIANA THE POP CHARMER,

Daily Mirror, 10/9/1981:

There's another new girl in the life of lady killer Adam Ant. It's Diana Dors, who was a sex symbol before he even knew about such things.

The odd couple have teamed up for a TV film that will be shown on "Top of the Pops" tonight to plug Adam's new single, "Prince Charming".

Diana appears as a fairy godmother who turns Adam from a pauper into a prince.

Prince Charming is one of Adam's best-known "TV films", and his fabulous co-star was once described as "the English Marilyn Monroe". 

See a slightly later 1980s pop star with some fab make-up ideas here.