Written by Guest Contributor, Pat.
Like many of you I loved playing games as a kid in the 80’s and 90’s. Hide and seek was always my favorite. I always considered myself a pretty good “hider and seeker.” It was just awesome or “radical” when six or more friends from the neighborhood showed up to play. We often decided who the first seeker was going to be the old fashion way….1 potato 2 potato 3 potato 4 or Bubble Gum Bubble Gum in a dish. Rarely did anyone like the Rock Paper Scissors Stones method. It was too confusing and someone always changed their hand in mid air.
Those were the days when every kid played outside in the fresh air and got dirty. Yes, video games were emerging and we were glued to them BUT we enjoyed outside activities as well like building forts in the woods! Some of us were modern day architects in our youth when it came to assembling sticks and tumble weed into elaborate forts.
I’m so glad I grew up in the time frame I did. I have that luxury of knowing what the world was like before internet, video games, cell phones and social media. Those four advancements in technology have single handedly wasted billions of hours of free time of people around the world. The games I played as an upstate NY kid throughout the 80’s and 90’s developed creativity, imagination and social skills that are often absent from the way kids grow up today in society. It can’t imagine being 6 or 7 years old at the present time stuck behind a keyboard playing Call of Duty with “hax” annihilating seasoned players in their mid 30’s in 3 seconds lol.
The introduction to the Super Soaker! How could we forget this modern marvel? It was every kids dream come true to own one of these. It was ground breaking unlike any other squirt gun up to that point. The most powerful squirt gun to hit the market and you felt like a KING if you were one of the first kids on the block running around squirting your friends. I was always the fat kid so the Super Soaker 50 gave me the advantage I needed that my legs could not provide. Especially during hide and seek.
Stompers!!! The big kid version of the MatchBox Car! These were the ultimate adventure in every kids sandbox or construction site lol. Anyplace the sand was. I used to make the best dirt tracks for these little things. These were the prerequisites to R/C Cars!
I came across a couple of ads from WAAAAAY back in the day. I can’t express how enjoyable it is looking at these advertisements in 2014. As we approach the Christmas holiday these bring back so many memories of shopping with my parents holding out hope that at least one of these game systems and R/C cars would wind up under our Christmas tree. By the way on a side note I grew up with real Christmas trees and I continue to buy real Christmas trees in my adult life as well. I like the process of finding a tree and buying one already cut or cutting my own.
