The McVitie's Hobnob Biscuit - 1985 - 2020 - 35th Anniversary

From the McVitie's website - the launch of the mighty Hobnob biscuit in 1985 was quickly followed by others, like the chocolate variety, launched in 1987. Rolled oats and crunch and - YUM!

Just a quick shout-out to one of the very best biscuits of all time - and one, of course, launched in the 1980s - the McVitie's Hobnob. No biscuit since the Jaffa Cake (all right that's a cake, I know!) have ever made such a big splash with me. I loved 'em from the first - dunking 'em wildly in my tea and getting through a whole packet per mug, and I still love 'em to this day.

I particularly liked them for night shifts when I was working at the local psychiatric hospital - they were very fortifying and cheering on my tea break.

The Hobnob was launched in 1985, and the '85 original TV advert contained the slogan 'One Nibble and You're Nobbled'. Beautiful.

Oatey and crunchie and mind-numblingly beautiful when dunked in a cuppa, I can still scoff my way through loads. A true quality product. 

Very like the 1980s themselves, of course (ahem).

Of course, I'm against advertising here, but you must give some products their due.

And if McVitie's would care to slip me some Hobnobs as a thank you, I won't say no.

Just remember, 'More Is More' - as we used to say back in the day!

Read some McVitie's history, including the launch of the Hobnob, here:

https://mcvities.co.uk/about

Some 1980s Vibes: When Corona Was Fizzy Drinks, Frankie Wanted To Arm The Unemployed And West End Girls Prowled...

'West End Girl' - a 1987 poster by Athena. The spiky-haired foxtress has obviously been surprised on the fire escape. Wonder what she's been up to? Eurythmics's Annie Lennox, in the guise of her horrid middle class housewife in the 1987 'Beethoven (I love to listen to)' video, would no doubt, have been fascinated!

So, the 1980s.

BOOM! BANG! KER-BLAM! Love Thatcher/Reagan? Hate Thatcher/Reagan? Wanna be a yuppie? Wanna join Red Wedge and tear down the whole capitalist system? Wanna eat Nouvelle Cuisine? Wanna eat bubble and squeak portions from Bejam? Love the brand new House Music sensation? Prefer the brand new indie sensation that was The Smiths? Love to power dress? Love to wear deelyboppers and jelly shoes?

The 1980s seemed full to bursting with contrasting thingies. And now it all looks like a different planet. How things have changed! Take Covid-19. Back in the 1980s if you mentioned 'Corona' in England and Wales, a range of fizzy drinks immediately sprang to the forefront of most minds - not lockdowns and social distancing.

This Corona bottle dates from 1982, as indicated by the date on the promotional blurb on the back of the label. The label features the little bubbly thingie from the early 1980s 'Every bubble's passed its fizzical' TV ad, which was then current.

Environmentally friendly? 'Course we were - 10p deposit charged on the bottle. My favourite Corona drinks were orangeade and cherryade. Every Christmas we used to order a crate of assorted Corona drinks from the milkman.

Daily Mirror, 27 February, 1985:

Frankie goes to Downing Street
Leading pop stars have signed a "celebrity petition" to be handed in at 10 Downing Street tomorrow. It opposes Government plans to axe supplementary benefit for school leavers if they do not take part in the Youth Training Scheme. Holly Johnson and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Paul Weller, Madness, Smiley Culture, the Flying Pickets and Alison Moyet are among the entertainers whose names will be handed in. The Downing Street visit is part of a national rally and lobby of Parliament organised by the Youth Trade Union Rights Campaign.

The Youth Opportunities scheme had been introduced by the Callaghan Labour Government in 1978, in response to rapidly rising youth unemployment. A YOP provided work experience only, although in 1982 a training element was added. In 1983, it was replaced by the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), which, as the scheme's name suggests, was centred around training for skills.

So, what was the beef with school leavers having to go on a YTS scheme to qualify for Government money? Did they not want training? Well, looking back, the reasons I heard bandied about were that the Government was simply using the scheme to make the unemployment figures look smaller, and that minimum age school leavers had a right to expect a proper job.

This interested me as, as far back as the mid-1970s, the fact that graduates with degrees were finding it impossible to find work was being widely reported.

But in the 1980s, any initiative on the part of the Thatcher Governments was seen by many of us as a plot to do us down. Her first government's concentration on inflation rather than unemployment early in the decade had cast her out forever as far as I was concerned.

And, although I had a job and was completely unaffected, I still ranted my disapproval.

Maggie Thatcher would probably have dearly loved to give Frankie a spanky in the mid-1980s.

The Pigging 1980s...

Well, we know it's often referred to as 'The Greed Decade' by the Great and The Priggishly Hypocritical nowadays, but there's no doubt that the 1980s did have a bit of a fixation with pigs. Take a look at the festive porker above. He's on the lid of an embossed tin of lovely fudge I had for a Christmas prezzie in 1988. Kinnerton confectionary made a whole range of 'Who's A Little Piggy then?!' things in 1987 and 1988 (and probably beyond) and below you can see a couple of 1987 egg cups.

Needless to say I guzzled the fudge in a single serving - actually while watching Madge and Harold bickering in Neighbours. I was so intensely involved that before I knew it the tin was empty.

And lovely that fudge was too!

The tin has survived much longer and I now store safety pins, odd buttons and ear plugs in it.

But, on the subject of the '80s and pigs, you don't have to look much further to find more. In that prime porker of a decade, there was something of a drive by UK banks to get kiddies and teenies saving with them, and Nat West came up with the wizard wheeze of a whole family of piggies as collectable ceramic money boxes. Remember Woody? Remember Annabelle? Remember Sir Nathaniel? Of course you do! And all stand mute testament to the 1980s affection for a bit of a swine.

Here's Woody! 'Oink, oink, darlin'!'

And here's old Sir Nathaniel, larding it up on a badge.

It was at Christmas 1988 that, as well as the aforementioned fudge, I ended up with these as prezzies  too. From the same 'friend' who had purveyed the fudge. These very '80s porklets are enjoying themselves thoroughly - with a personal stereo (preferred listening probably 'Pig In Japan'), gym weights ('fit for business, fit for life') and a luxury holiday (complete with binoculars to guzzle in the sights).

'Why all the pig-related gifts?' I asked my 'friend'. 'Not some snide allusion to my weight, is it?' (I'd been hogging the Stella Artois a bit and I had a very slight poddy, which I was trying to offset by cunning use of shoulder pads).

'Of course not, sweetheart!' said my 'friend', all innocent and wide eyed.

That was OK, then. I believed her because she was never snide. Well, only when she was awake. And, to return the thought, the following year I sent her...

... these. Cute, aren't they?

It's 1985... how about some piggin' aerobics?

And we also had the mid-1980s 'Pig Tales' piggies by George Good - pictured above are 'Hogwash' and 'No Pain, No Gain' from 1986. Adorable!

And also from 1986 clap your little trotters for this Marks and Spencer cruet set!

Enough of anthropomorphic pigs! What about pig pigs? Well, if you liked the plain old natural farmyard variety, the 1980s catered for you too. Take a snout at the 1988 lovely below. 

So real!

Oh my gawd - my room looked like a pig sty!

And then there was an ordinary pig doing extraordinary things. Yes, the NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL MUSIC pig! Proudly starring on my bedroom wall in the mid-1980s, the pig also appeared on several NOW album covers, but probably the height of its career came in late 1984 when it starred in the nude centrefold below. Well, I ask you!

Pig fans across the land grunted in delight back in the Style Decade, but one young pal of mine recently called it 'disturbing'. The 21st Century, eh? What a bore!

Pig fans didn't exactly have a lean time of it in the 1990s either - remember the Piggin' ornaments?

But, when it comes to the oinky ones, the 1980s truly had the competition beat!

Some 1980s Highs... Shoulder Pads In The Broom Cupboard...

Yuppies, new technology, shell suits, power dressing, riots, hamster scoffing... it was all happening in the 1980s...

Great response to our recent post regarding your "1980s bests". Got a few "worsts" as well, but up here at '80s Actual Towers, in our turquoise and pink Great Hall, we're well chuffed, mateyboots!

So, we start with Cliff on those monstrous Power Dressing shoulder pads, complete with Velcro so you didn't "over-pad" - as if that was possible back then...

I hated shoulder pads and used to take them out of any jackets I bought that had them in. The 1950s teddy boy look that became so popular again in the 1970s was more my thing. I thought Joan Collins looked ridiculous and I never chose a girlfriend with a 1980s “power dressing” fetish. You have to admit that the shoulder pads became too big and looked hideous in the 80’s. And the idea of blokes wearing them to hide their beer guts was pathetic. The best thing was the Credit Boom. Enough said.

We quite liked 'em, Cliff - we favoured Miami Vice chic, with a few twists, but each to their own... and as for the Credit Boom... well, after spending the '70s and early '80s living so frugally it hurt, it was like Wonderland...

Gorgeous 1980s colour scheme, but are those shoulders lovely or loathsome?

And here's Karen on Miss Ethel Davis and her lodgers, and Edd the Duck...

I used to like “Number 73” on Saturdays and I thought Ethel, Dawn, Harry and Kim really lived in that house! And I loved Children’s BBC with the puppets and the presenters. It was very lively and I really believed Edd the Duck went to Cubs on Tuesdays. I preferred Edd to Gordon The Gopher actually.

Edd was quite simply a mallard god. And he DID go to Cubs on Tuesdays.

Edd with Andy Crane and Wilson the butler. Children's BBC, which began in 1985, was a must-watch for all kids aged five to fifty.

Phillip Schofield brought shoulder pads out of the board room and into the Broom Cupboard.

Sandi Toksvig? Rubbish! That's Ethel!

And here's the Naughty One:

I remember things like Pot Noodles becoming a big thing. There was a cheesy flavour that smelled revolting but tasted like heaven with a satchet of tomato sauce. And Howard Jones. What Is Love? Does Anybody Love Anybody Anyway? And bulldog clips in my hair – bright yellow ones. And break dancing outside Boots on a Saturday morning with a big red ghetto blaster. I body-popped and my boyfriend thrashed about and he and his mates tried to stand on their heads. People sometimes threw money into our pot but mostly seemed kind of bemused and this woman told my boyfriend, “stop it, you’ll hurt yourself!”

Lurved a Pot Noodle and I remember the flavour you mention. Bliss if you could stand the stink. Howard Jones was excellent, but I never got into breakdancing. Mainly because I couldn't do it.

Gis a Noodle.

And Maria remembers that a saucy title didn't always add up to a saucy film...

When I turned 18 in 1989 I went to see a movie called SEX, LIES AND VIDEO TAPE with my best friend. We both thought it would be very rude with lots of bums and panting and groaning, but it wasn’t really. We thought of asking for our money back, but didn’t dare!

Steven Soderbergh... great, great film. I went to see it too, hoping for a bit of vacuous titillation, but it was so much better than that. Although I was grossly disappointed and swore a lot at the time.

Sonia thought Boy George was so cuddly - and then along came Ecstasy...

I had a Boy George Doll in the mid-80s and I loved him very much. I was surprised to read later that he was one of the people behind ‘Everything Starts With An E’ in 1989. Totally different image!

The 1984 Boy George doll! The Boy went from Karma Chameleon to Planet Ecstasy all in one decade!

And finally for this round-up, Claire says:

My low of the 80’s pop culture was Cabbage Patch Dolls because I found them really creepy and thought they were trying to take over the world. My high was Live Aid. Truly inspiring. I was glued to the TV.

Yes, Live Aid was a WOW! and the Cabbage Patch Kids were hugely popular, but not to everybody's taste. I was afraid I might catch mumps off one.

Sunday People, December 1983: Eek!!! Invasion of the Cabbage Patch People...

Please keep the comments coming. We're having a WICKED time here. Till the next time, xxxx

Easter EastEnders Greetings From 1986...

Compulsive viewing though it was - with some tremendous characters and writing, the BBC's EastEnders was also a bag of miserable, middle class, leftie propaganda in its early years. Not the sort of thing you'd imagine contributing to the spirit of peace and renewal at Easter.

But Auntie wanted to make a few more bob, so 1986 gave us the EastEnders Milk Chocolate Easter Egg - with chocolate beans. Cor! It also 'ad views of the Queen Victoria, Sue and Ali's cafe, the railway bridge and some of the grotty Albert Square 'ouses on the box. 

Lovely, eh? Unless Lou Beale misses 'er bleedin' bingo.

Then there'll be runctions. Not to mention if Sue and Mary get started.

And wot about Den and Ange?

Actually, I think it odd to have an Albert Square-themed Easter egg. But then it takes all kinds to make a world, dunnit, darlin'?

Wishing you a peaceful and happy Easter anyway! x

The Great 1980s Courgette Explosion...

So, the 1980s kicked in, and we grotty working class types still ate bread and dripping and considered curry to be the finest foreign food ever invented. Peppers? No plural - pepper was something you shook over your dinner. Mayonnaise? What the 'ecks that? I'd 'ave salad cream, ta! Courgettes? Never 'eard of 'em, mateyboots!

Alf Roberts of Coronation Street stocked some courgettes in 1981, but failed to sell them because his customers had no idea what they were and were not impressed with them when they were explained. In fact, it was very unlikely that staid old Alf would have tried stocking them in 1981, but then Corrie was a fantasy of very well-heeled scriptwriter types.

But in the mid-1980s, as the credit boom boomed and yuppies arrived and consumers finally had a bit of dosh to consume with, courgettes swept in as the thing to be seen dishing up. Even I fell for them, and my local Sainsbury's seemed to be bursting full of them. In May 1984, Weekend Magazine printed the Greenfingers feature above to tell us what courgettes were and how to grow the little blighters.

Of course, in the 1980s we were bombarded with strange new foodstuffs - as "posh nosh" arrived in force and even impacted on the Great Unwashed (people like me).

Read our feature here.

More About The Weetabix ("OK?!")

Time warpin' back to 1982... Remember Dunk, Crunch, Bixie, Brian and Brains?

"OK?!" squawks Brian, whilst Dunk glowers...

Brains and Bixie are horrified by a "titchy" breakfast...

One of the fondest remembered TV ad campaigns of the 1980s has to be the Weetabix bovver... er... bix, railing against "tichy" breakfasts and telling us in no uncertain terms that you make it "neet wheat, mate!" Well, if you know what's good for you, you do...

These memorable characters, created by Trevor Beattie (now also known for fcuck, amongst other things), stomped into our lives via the "goggle box" (telly!) in March 1982, and the ads then swept through the rest of the 1980s, finally ceasing in November 1989.

I became aware of them when my little sister became a fan. When she was ill in 1984, I wrote to the "Weetabix gang" at Weetabix HQ for her, and the company sent her a huge package of Weetabix gang posters, felt tips, pictures to colour and other goodies - all free, gratis and for nothing.

It was a much appreciated act of kindness on the part of the company - my sister was quite seriously unwell at the time, and anything that brought a smile to her face was very welcome indeed.

And soon little sis was happily enrolled in the Weetabix Club!

"Computers are OK once you show them who's BOSS!" I never thought that computers would be a part of my life back in the 1980s - although the home computer era was beginning, I preferred Stella Artois and plenty of Nite Spots.

The ad on the right reflects the roller disco fad of the 1980s...

Crocodile Dunkdee... love it! And Choose Your Own Adventure books - popular with many 1980s children. Notice the kids fleeing from the dragon in the illustration are riding BMX bikes!

A word about the WeetOlympix stickers on the right... these have a copyright year of 1984, but this does not refer to the actual year of the stickers themselves - or perhaps they were issued twice! I have reason to remember that they were issued in the run-up to the 1988 Seoul Olympics simply because me and a group of friends, sharing a flat from 1987-1988, collected the stickers and stuck them to the inside of the food cupboard door. We had terrible trouble completing the collection - Bixie was simply not to be found for ages!

Two of the WeetOlympix stickers - Brains Throwing A Mile and Dunk Clearing The Stadium Wall.

More fun and games...

"Are you Robin Hood?" "No, I'm Robbin' your Breakfast!" Brilliant! And energy for BMX riding comes from a WBX start!

Many thanks to Peter Gray's Cartoons And Comics blog for providing the comic ads!

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 2010. UPDATED MARCH 2013.

Living Life '80s Style... Part 3

Twirling back down the years to the 1980s, the "Style Decade", is such a pleasure. Want to know what to eat? How to furnish your micro bijou home or penthouse flat? Take a seat and enjoy the show - courtesy of mid-1980s Habitat and others!

Do eat nouvelle cuisine. Such a lovely, yuppie fad! Spitting Image described it as "an expensive way of not having very much to eat". Wasn't it WONDERFUL?! Also, employ lots of '80s speak in your conversation. "Tubular!",  "Wicked!", "Gnarly!" Call your friends "mateyboots" and always remember to say "purlease".

Transform your study area, 1980s style! The colours here are so conducive to concentration, I'm surprised they ever went out of fashion!

Computers began entering the home in the 1980s and they were provided for. Remember how trendy black was as a furnishing colour? Even tellys went black eventually.

Pose about in your lounge in pink trousers and fondle your hi-fi. Looking faintly minimalist here.

Invest in lovely lantern light shades and install a pendant over your dining table. Place a warning sign proclaiming "Gesticulation Prohibited" over said dining table before guests arrive as entanglement with pendant may ensue. It is, of course, highly desirable to be known for giving memorable dinner parties. But electrocutions are probably best avoided.

Just look at these! Even plugs went all bright and jazzy in the 1980s! 

"Individuality - being what you want to be - until tomorrow..." and what better way to make a statement than by spray painting your lounge suite with your own '80s style daubings? Glorious, is it not? We love Habitat!

 Ah, the children! The next generation! Our hope for the future! Ensuring their well-being was, of course, one of the top priorities of the 1980s. And what better way to care for them than by providing a nice, restful decor and furnishings for their bedrooms, like this red metal tube bunkbed?

And for your bedtime? How about these gorgeous quilts and pillow cases? The epitome of 1980s chic!

Bonce feeling a bit chilly? Buy a pillow case with inbuilt night cap and you'll be oh-so-cosy! And oh-so-stylish. Lucky you! Night, night!

We haven't finished yet! Tomorrow's another day. Lots more on living life '80s style soon! xxx

Pricing Guns Versus Bar Codes...

 

Lovely 1980s Cadbury's Wispa chocolate bar (read our article on Wispa here), with bar code and sticky price label. 18p! And they were even cheaper if you bought them from a supermarket. I haven't seen any sticky little price labels on anything for ages. The bar code, making a determined onslaught in the 1980s, began turning those friendly (sometimes!) folks with the pricing guns, trotting around the supermarket aisles, into an endangered species.

The 1980s saw huge technological changes erupting into our lives - the arrivals of various early and hugely influential computers, the first commercial computer mouse and mobile phones, satellite TV, Microsoft Windows, the compact disc, the C5 car (OK, not a great hit), the UK's first debit card - which sent plastic money into the ascendancy... plus, VCRs (you could always rent if you couldn't buy) and microwave ovens were also hitting the mainstream... yep, the decade positively crackled with electrically charged change.

And this was reflected in the shops, too. Slowly at first, the bar code began to make its presence felt. Sainsbury's, for instance, installed its first bar code scanning tills in 1982, and gradually these were rolled out throughout its stores. A great friend of mine who worked at a large Sainsbury's store out in the sticks in the mid-1980s, told me the story of the scanner tills arrival at her store:

"The beeping noise drove us all bats at first - and you could hear it in your head when you got home at night. I think it was louder with the early tills. Of course, now we take it as a part of everyday life, but I got married in 1986, shortly after the new tills arrived at the store I worked at, and I remember, on my honeymoon, thinking I heard a beep in the hotel bedroom at a very, well... to avoid being crude I'll call it a very 'romantic' moment. I think I was a bit befuddled with wine, because I interrupted proceedings to ask my new hubby: 'Was that a beep?' Good job he worked at Sainsbury's too, because he understood perfectly!"

 Johnny Ball's Think Box, 1982. Look - no bar code!

Incidentally, I was a great bookworm, and found the arrival of bar codes on book covers in the early 1980s positively hideous. I loved (and still do love) books, and bar codes printed on the back of each new purchase looked ugly and alien to me. And, at that time, I couldn't understand just what purpose they could have! Of course, the bar codes needed to be in place on merchandise before shops could invest in the equipment to use them.

 

Weetabix box from 1987, featuring one of the Weetabix skinheads in trendy hip hop garb doing a spot of breaking. The cereal was fifty-six pence way back then (sell-by date Aug '87) and the box has both price label and bar code (the bar code was on the other end). Until supermarkets were equipped with scanner tills, the pricing gun continued to be an essential tool. This particular purchase was made at a small Sainsbury's store and, whilst the supermarket chain installed its first bar code scanners in 1982, it would seem that by 1987 this particular store was still without them.