Top 10 Girl Toys of the 80s
Author: Caitlin
As I’ve been reviewing the toys of today, I can’t help but feel some nostalgia for the toys of my youth. As a child of the 80s, I grew up playing with everything from Transformers to Barbies (as long as cutting their hair off and leaving body parts strewn about constitutes playing), and can’t help but feel that the 80s were a wonderful era for toys in general. As such, I decided to put together a Top 10 List of Girl Toys of the 80s. Enjoy!
- Kid Sister: I have to admit I never had one of these, but who can forget the My Buddy/Kid Sister commercials? Like everything else that has ever aired on television, you can check it out at YouTube.
- Cabbage Patch Dolls: What little girl among us didn’t dream of having a room filled with oddly obese dolls which boasted their own lines of clothing, feeding sets, and carriers? Only a few months ago I finally threw away my Cabbage Patch Baby feeding set (but I still have the cling sticker scene sets, the car seat carrier, and of course a trunk full of clothes and official Cabbage Patch diapers - hey, you never know when this stuff might be worth something).
- My Little Ponies: Four words: My Little Pony Palace. Dude, it even had a swimming pool. How cool is that? Couple myriad accessories with ponies of every size, shape and hue and you’ve got yourself a winning product. Some of them even had special scents!
- Baby Alive: Come on, a doll that pees and poops itself? How can you go wrong? “I love the way you make me feel/You’re so real!” That’s right little girls, babies are so cute, don’t you just want to go have some right now? Oh, wait, you mean they also cry incessantly, puke all over you, and you can’t just take out the batteries to make them stop? Damn, there’s one dream destroyed.
- Pound Puppies/Purries: Basically just stuffed animals, but dang it! they had their own cartoon show! That’s worth at least an extra $10 in price! Plus, all the necessary accoutrement (sold separately, of course).
- Care Bears: Freaky little bears with strange shapes on their stomachs. Like most other toys of the 80s, these spawned or were spawned by a cartoon show. Personally, I had one that you could either tuck up into a ball (it became really heavy and great for breaking small knickknacks around the house) or untuck and make into a regular bear desperately in need of a tummy tuck.
- Sylvanian Families: Hopefully I’m not the only one who remembers these. They were little furry clothed animal figures just the right size for using in a doll house setting. I always found myself wanting to just sit and stroke their soft furry heads…. My favorites were the babies and the little kids with the little overalls. But I always wondered why they didn’t have any genitalia under there - they were like a family of hermaphroditic anthropomorphic rabbits or something.
- Easy Bake Oven: I also didn’t have one of these. Welcome to what it’s like to be poor, boys and girls! Not that I really cared - my mom never turned down a chance to make real brownies and cupcakes in the “grownup” oven. Still, I can easily credit the rise of the Martha Stewarts and Rachel Rays of the world to the Easy Bake Ovens sitting in almost every little girl’s room through the 80s.
- Rainbow Brite: Yet another television-based product, Rainbow Brite was a bit like a cartoon version of Punky Brewster. With crazy big red hair and a psychedelic rainbow costume, she was a great antidote to the dreary reality of 80s living - mommy and daddy both have to work because the economy sucks but hey, you can sit and watch me on tv all afternoon and be happy happy happy! I have a distinct memory of telling my grandmother I was going to be a “fit kid” like Rainbow Brite or some nonsense like that as a tot. A few years later as I was sitting playing my Sega Genesis with my Little Debbie snack cake next to me, that statement came back to bite me. That woman always did have a memory like a steel trap.
- Sweet Secrets: Kind of the girl’s version of Transformers, these were various knickknacks that could be transformed into other things - a bracelet into a doll, a purse into a miniature nursery, that sort of thing. While I much preferred Transformers for their ability to shoot things, these were ok when I was at least making the effort to conform.
(Image courtesy of In the 80s)
(Image courtesy of In the 80s)
(Image courtesy of In the 80s)