10 great childrens toys from the 80's

The 1980's can be remembered as the colorful consumer driven decade of toys and boardgames, with sophisticated TV commercial, and marketing cartoon campaigns.

There was something unique, and new to the toys of the 80's and even today's toys haven't come all that far from the very basic concepts of the 80's.

It was all helped by the mass production and availability of cheap plastic materials, and mass industrial creation of toys. Before the toys of the 1980's most of the toys where assembled by hand only. Thanks to technology and computers though, the 1980's become some of the most creative times in history.

Some are even Still being released, and have went on to be 1980, 1990, 2000 toys.

Take a trip down memory lane with some great toys from the 80's below.

If you can think of any other good ones, please leave a note in the comments section.

This was a great boardgame of 2 player communication and detective skills.

You have to guess who is on your opponents card, and use the flip lids in front of you to keep track what you have asked.

This is a great family fun game as its usually very quick to play a round.

No Batteries Needed! 

The care bears were one of the first really successful, cartoon movie, and merchandise tie-ins. The reason was that they had a huge amount of cute characters bears, all with names that represented good family values like love and friendship, and so they not only captured the hearts of children, they also captured the love of parents, who knew they were good toys and concepts that they could buy for their children.

Mad Balls were squashy foam balls that had gruesome, and funny faces. There wasn't really anything more to them than that, but they became huge sellers, due to their popularity with young boys. There was even a bit of controversy with one of them named crack head. This was later changed though.

One of the most popular selling toys ever, the rubiks cube, still sells stong today. Its a great game to play on your own, or for kids in long journeys. Impress you friends by buying a rubiks cube, and reading a guide how to complete one in less than 20 seconds and impress your friends.

The slinky was made for going down your stairs, or moving from hand to hand.

Not really much, but people loved it anyway. Simple example of physical engineering. The slinky own weight was what always keeps its fluid movement in motion.

This was an amazing toy for every little budding driver. You would control a car on what looked like an lcd screen, but it was far from that. It did however have a great steering wheel, and a gear stick that meant you could go really fast. I can't remember if there were any obstacles that you had to avoid, and if you ever got killed. I think it was just an infinite highway, until you turned the key off.

Muscle men were one of the most collectible toys that were on the market. They came in collections of boxes, and there were hundreds of different styled muscle men characters. They included block type characters to funny multi handed aliens. There was a huge range of creativity that was put into them, however they didn't go any further than just being small toys that you could swap with your friends. Would have been great to see a muscle men movie.

Long before Guitar hero was the multi colored and hugely playable Simon. You had to follow the sequence of lights that played on it, and match the same pattern of sequence. As you got better, the amount of patterns increased. Huge fun even for drinking games today.

Speak and spell was very much owned by every child. What parent would not want to buy their children a toy that helps them spell better and do better at school. There were a range of spelling games you could play on it, and it came with one of the most recognizable robot voices.