Merry Christmas!

Here's a Christmas card I received in 1988 - with our old feline pal Garfield offering some excellent seasonal advice. We wish you all the best for Christmas (remember, more is more!) and for 2021 (Hmmm... bizarre times indeed!). 

'80s Actual will be back after a bit of seasonal excess. xxxxx

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...

Christmas Presents 1980s Style - 2: Garfield Car Window Stick-On

Dear old Garfield. So funny - and downright... er... catty. After creator Jim Davis' Paws Inc company was founded in 1981, Garfield merchandise flew into the shops and began arriving here in England circa 1983.

The character had made his debut as an American newspaper comic strip in 1978 - back then he was far more traditionally cat-like in appearance, but his image evolved until the early 1980s when he came to look pretty much as he does today.

In the 1980s, there were Garfield posters, mugs, figurines, greetings cards, soaps, clocks, telephones - you name it. By the middle of the decade, he was everywhere.

And he stared out from many a passenger seat window in passing motors.

These still crop up on internet auction sites, and, if seeking to evoke the feel of the Style Decade are surely a must.

Garfield seems to capture the attitude of many cats I've known - selfish and yet hugely lovable. Perhaps he also sums up the selfish side of ourselves we don't like to confess to.

Whatever the reason, he's tremendously funny.

Read our main Garfield post here.

Garfield, Garfield Everywhere...

Favourite fat cat Garfield, creation of American cartoonist Jim Davis, first appeared as a comic strip, syndicated in 41 US newspapers, on 19/6/1978. The illustration above, showing Garfield and Jon Arbuckle, is a panel from that first outing. Didn't they look different?! Especially Garfield. Gradually, the characters evolved. By the early 1980s, Garfield was recognisable as the Garfield we know today, but it still took some years before he stood up on two legs. Studying pictures of Garfield over the years is fascinating.

Garfield is greedy, cynical and lazy. He has a passion for lasagna, a love/hate relationship with Odie, the dog, and is pretty loyal to his not-terribly-bright owner, Jon Arbuckle, all things considered.

This advertisement appeared in a Cambridge, England, newspaper in December 1983. The local branch of Clinton Cards was introducing the city to a flood of Garfield merchandising. 

I have had several queries about the "1978" copyright label on some Garfield merchandise. This refers to the year the character was first copyrighted. If you have an early Garfield toy, mug etc, it will have been manufactured in the 1980s. As can be seen in the illustration at the top of this post, Garfield looked rather different in 1978! 

Garfield creator Jim Davis’ company, Paws, Inc, was founded in 1981 to take care of the creative side of the Garfield licensing business.
-

This girly, wearing a "Frankie Say Relax" T-shirt with very fancy lettering indeed, nipped out to her local Bejam's one morning. On her way home, she spotted this major celebrity presiding over the re-opening of her local Post Office, which had been closed for a refit. 

Swoon, swoon!

Well, it seemed to be love at first sight, but in reality the celebrity had simply spotted the frozen lasagna in her shopping bag. We tried to warn her that it was only cupboard love - but would she listen?!

This card was received by me on my 21st birthday in 1986 and originally had a plastic "key to the door" stuck to the top right hand corner. I was quite a fan of Garfield back then and still enjoy reading the comic strip today. In the 1980s, Garfield posters adorned my bedroom wall, my tea was drunk from a Garfield mug and a Garfield cuddly toy lived under my bed. 

And sometimes in my bed, if I had nobody else to cuddle.

Did you take Garfield for a ride in your motor?!

A Christmas card from 1988.

The wit inside the card!

This Garfield phone was available in the Index catalogue from September 1989 onwards.

1983: The World's First Mobile Phone; Compact Discs; Garfield; Hip Hop; Flashdance; Blockbusters; Blue Monday; No. 73; Wallies; Sloane Rangers

Top of the nation's list of concerns this year was unemployment. In 1980, it had been inflation. Inflation, which had been such a tremendous worry during the 1970s, was down but the unemployment figures were going up. And up. And up...

We'd been horrified when unemployment passed the million mark, for the first time since the 1930s, in the early 1970s, but we hadn't seen anything yet... we now had three million unemployed. Yes, three million. And the 1979 Tory election slogan had been Labour Isn't Working! But never mind. Thatcher and co told us this nasty medicine was necessary. Once we had a stable, competitive economy everything would be rosy. Trust them, that was all they asked. Hmm...

The Hip Hop scene was evolving fast, born of the American rap scene. In 1983, the scene swept across England. Youngsters could be seen in city centres across the land, breakdancing and body popping. The boombox (aka the ghetto blaster) had arrived and was an essential piece of kit.

The boombox had developed from the radio cassette recorder, and the term boombox was probably first coined at the beginning of the 80s. This was when the things began to grow rapidly in size. I recall them being called "ghetto blasters" here, and don't think I ever heard the name "boombox" back then.

In England in 1983, it was trendy to cover your boombox/ghetto blaster in stickers and no blank wall was safe from a spot of Hip Hop graffiti.

Our neighbours' eleven-year-old son painted "Hip Hop" on the side wall of his family home. I was impressed - it was a fine piece of work, like something out of a breakdance film, but his reward from his parents was a scrubbing brush, a bucket of soapy water and the loss of two weeks' pocket money. As I said to the lad, "Some people just don't appreciate art!"

I will always remember this as the year of Blue Monday by New Order. I hated it at first. Just a disorganised mass of synthy bits and guitar chords, thought I. Within a week, I not only had the record but was playing it around twelve times a day. Magic.

Sky TV didn't arrive until 1989, so I couldn't see MTV. Could anybody in England at this point? But the effects of the music video revolution were being felt - never more so than with Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Another trend that was reaching our level was continental quilts. You could buy them from mail order catalogues and pay for them in small regular amounts. But did you want them? This was debated long and hard. A conversation between two woman, which I heard in a local shop in early 1983, went something like this...

Carol: "I wouldn't want my feet sticking out. You can't tuck 'em in. It'd probably fall off in the night and you know my bedroom window doesn't fit properly - I'd freeze. And they can't be that warm either. Fancy just having one cover!"

Wendy: "The trouble with you, Carol, you don't think things through. I've ordered one from Audrey's catalogue. You can get different thicknesses, summer, winter, all that, and you can always put a candlewick over the top and tuck it in to hold it in place."

Carol was most impressed.
Flashdance, the film sensation of 1983, was a bit like Fame, but with better dancing. The film started a trend amongst the girlies for wearing off the shoulder tops.

Welsh songstress Bonnie Tyler scored a tremendous hit with Total Eclipse of the Heart.

What was the Total Eclipse video about? There was Bonnie, a singer I'd been fond of for a few years, rushing around a country house with big hair and boys in loin cloths.
What was all that about?

My mate Pete had the answer: "A headmaster's daughter who's gone off her rocker."

"Oh, right. How do you know that?"

"I read it in the paper."

"Fair enough..."
The hand-held mobile was still in the future for us here in England, but BT gave us its first cordless phone.

The first commercially available hand-held cellular phone ever was unveiled in 1983. Motorola had invested fifteen years of research and $100 million in the advancement of cellular technology, and the story stretched back much further than that. The first hand-held mobile was called the DynaTAC 8000X and was unveiled on March 6th. It was, of course, a brick. At a price of $3,995 it wasn't for everybody. More here.

It may have been late 1982 or during 1983 but Compact discs were first marketed here around this time. As with many new things, the price was prohibitive and it would be some years before they were widespread. Read all about them here.

Computers began talking the same BASIC language and the internet was on the way.

"B" was for brilliant Bob Holness as Blockbusters began. The original American version had begun in October 1980, but our version was best - who else could host it like Bob?!

Children's TV show Number 73, which had begun in the TVS area in 1982, was networked.

A certain Mr JR Hartley went searching for a copy of his book, Fly Fishing, and found it with a little help from Yellow Pages. More here.

Breakfast TV arrived: on the BBC we had Selina Scott, Frank Bough (in some lovely jumpers) and Francis the weatherman. The style was sofa-based and relaxed.

TV-am, ITV's breakfast time service, was also sofa based but a little more formal as Angela Rippon, Anna Ford, David Frost, Robert Kee and Michael Parkinson set out with their "mission to explain". The mission never really got off the ground, and it wasn't long before "The Famous Five" had been replaced by Anne "don't call me Annie!" Diamond, former sports presenter Nick Owen, weather girl Wincey Willis and Roland Rat - "Yeeaaarrrgggh!".

Australian soap Sons and Daughters came to English afternoon telly. Lucky viewers in some ITV regions got their first look at the feuding Hamilton and Palmer families in 1983, and quickly took "Pat the Rat", played by Rowena Wallace, to their hearts. The actors were greatly admired for their ability to freeze and turn sepia at the end of each episode. Production on the show in Australia took place from 1981 to 1987.

Garfield, the American fat cat, was becoming popular over here, with a range of merchandise available at Clinton Cards.

Care Bears were the year's cute and cuddlies, but the end of the year held something quite different: newspapers from 1983 record that just before Christmas some Cabbage Patch Dolls had made their way from America to England. In great demand, they came with their own adoption certificates and, by the look of them, a nasty attack of mumps.

"Choose Life" slogan T-shirts and luminous fingerless gloves were all the rage. Thanks, Wham! But who came up with the idea for wearing odd coloured luminous socks? Don't know, don't want to know!

Some brave everyday blokes were beginning to wear pink and putting blond highlights in their hair.

Thatcher won a second term in office (Boo! Hiss!).

"Wally" was a popular mild insult and How To Be A Wally was published.

1986 - Big Bang, Walk Like An Egyptian, "Today" Newspaper, Scanner Tills, Neighbours, Baked Spuds, Chernobyl, Courgettes And Peppers...

"You've got the brawn, I've got the brain, let's make lots of money..."

Chernobyl blew and there was a sharp rise in radiation levels across Europe. I was caught out in a downpour just after it happened and, having heard that rain was a good carrier of radiation, I wondered if my snorkel parka would be glowing when I turned out the light and got into bed. Fortunately, it wasn't.

The Big Bang, computerised dealing on the London Stock Exchange, suffered teething problems. The new system was unable to cope, so traders were forced to trade in the traditional way until it was up-and-running again.

In March, Eddie Shah launched Today, the UK's very first colour daily national newspaper.

Another Royal Wedding - Andy and Fergie, this time. Not as big a deal as Charles & Di, but a good enough reason to hang the flags out and swig down a bottle of sherry for royalists.

"Hold a chicken in the air, stick a deckchair up your nose..."

Spitting Image took revenge on the merciless Black Lace for Aga Doo.

Oh dear... Ange from EastEnders made compulsive viewing as she struggled with the booze and Dirty Den, but, behind the mic, she simply proved that whilst Anyone Can Fall In Love, not everyone can sing.

Nick Kamen was charming eye candy for the girlies as he whipped off his jeans and put them through a power wash, but pure flim-flam as a singer - just like Ange.

But the ultimate stinker was designer-stubbled Nick Berry, Albert Square's Wicksy... Roll on Kylie and Jason!

Fortunately, the Pet Shop Boys saved the pop day with dance treat Opportunities - Let's Make Lots Of Money, and the Hip Hop/rock fusion of Run DMC and Aerosmith's Walk This Way was a pivotal moment in Hip Hop history. And that wasn't all! Love Can't Turn Around by Farley "Jackmaster" Funk was the very first House track to chart in England! And it made it all the way up to No 10!

I tried designer stubble, but it simply made me look seedy - the sort of character you definitely wouldn't buy a used car from.

Back to the music, and did you follow the Bangles and Walk Like An Egyptian?

It was a time when we talked Power, capital 'p' intended: of course there was power dressing, but there were also power walks/naps/breakfasts/showers/washes...

Black lycra continued to be a hit with women. With small, bolt-like metal studs dotted around the dresses and armour-like earrings, the message was "don't mess with me!" But for fun nights out figure-hugging lycra was also available in various putrid shades - you could even buy lycra micro minis. More like an elastic band than a skirt, these were essential for the girl who wanted to ensure that NOTHING was left to the imagination.

What was it with baked spuds? Perhaps the F-Plan Diet had a lot to answer for, as spud fever gripped the nation. There was a very fancy potato cafe near me, decorated with old fashioned advertisements from the early 20th Century, where you could go and eat spuds filled with wonderful things.

Now, who's for a nice jacket with prawn mayo, sliced hard boiled egg and grated cheese? Baked beans on top? OK...

In the 1970s and early 1980s I was happy to simply give a baked spud a quick dollop of marge and a bit of grated cheese before wolfing it down. Not anymore. Now I scooped out the potato and mashed it up with butter and chopped chives, before replacing it in the jacket, placing grated cheese on top and then browning it under the grill. Or the potato might be mixed with tuna, chopped peppers and mayonnaise (I didn't meet peppers or mayo until the 1980s - before that I was only acquainted with salad cream and spring onions!).

Me, a humble working class lad, was suddenly scoffing posh nosh. I was eating food I'd never laid eyes on back in 1982.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, supermarkets had reflected our thrifty (and ignorant of posh nosh) ways. Remember the wide range of "Basics" and "Economy" products on sale at supermarkets in the early 1980s? These were dead cheap versions of everyday neccessities to help us through the ravages of the recession. They started a trend, and you can still buy similar "cheap-as-can-be" supermarket items today.

Back then, Sainsbury's and Tesco's were different planets compared to the supermarkets of today. There simply wasn't the range of foods on sale. The '70s and early '80s were hard times.

But many humble, everyday supermarkets were undergoing a revolution during the mid-'80s boom period, introducing shocked shoppers to such oddities as avocados, peppers, olive oil and courgettes for the first time ever. The working classes would never be the same again.

Sainsbury's started to seem quite classy in the mid-'80s, and I'm sure I was rubbing shoulders with vicars and school teachers whenever I nipped in - and more than a few yuppie types. It all seemed very strange.

As posh nosh trickled down to the working classes, we also loved prawn cocktail - which was being slagged off by Fanny Cradock as long ago as 1967! But Nouvelle Cuisine was really "it". I could probably have eaten about nine Nouvelle sized portions in one sitting, and wouldn't give it house room.

My own favourite was all those fancy salad dressings suddenly so widely and cheaply available. When I was a kid, and indeed into the early '80s, salad to me meant cold meat or a wedge of pork pie, cheese, some limp lettuce, a few spuds and a dollop of salad cream. Not any more!

The supermarket revolution wasn't just confined to expanding ranges of food. A female friend of mine was working at Sainsbury's in the mid-'80s, and witnessed the arrival of bar code scanner tills. The beeping sound was dreadful, she told me.

Completely unused to it, the dreadful repetitive sound echoed in her head when she got home, and many of her colleagues experienced similar difficulties. On her honeymoon in 1986, my friend halted things at a very romantically charged moment to ask: "Was that a beep?" Fortunately, her new husband also worked at Sainsbury's and was entirely sympathetic!

Filofaxes and Garfield toys/posters/mugs were everywhere, Trivial Pursuit continued to be wildly popular. But what 'B' won 1986's Game of the Year title? Yes, a game based on Blockbusters. Bliss - now we could all enter into the spirit of the thing and have a 'P' at home.

An Aussie daytime soap with a stripper? Gosh! It seemed that Neighbours, which began here in October, was going to be a bit naughty - shades of a Bouquet of Barbed Wire, perhaps? But Daphne Lawrence, played by Elaine Smith, was the only stripper in the world who didn't take her clothes off, and we had to make do with commenting on her trendy hairdo and Helen Daniels' jumpers. They weren't quite in the Frank Bough league, but inspirational nevertheless.

Soon, we were also commenting on Mrs Mangel's simper and Madge Ramsay's enormous gob.

Early Neighbours was great. Read all about it here.