80s News Today

The snow lay thick on the streets of New York that February in 1981, the kind of wet, clinging snow that turns the city into something older, something that remembers when the world was simpler and crueler at the same time. The North American International Toy Fair had opened its doors at the Sheraton Centre and the toy people were there in force—men in sharp suits with smiles like switchblades, women with hair teased high enough to scrape the low ceilings, all of them moving through the aisles like pilgrims who had come to worship at the altar of plastic and profit. And Milton Bradley had brought a god. A plastic one, sure, but a god nonetheless. They called it Dark Tower . A hulking, obsidian monolith, studded with cryptic symbols, looming over a round board divided into four kingdoms—Brass, Iron, Silver, Gold—like the four quarters of a dying heart. The tower itself was plastic, sure, but it felt like stone carved by hands that didn't belong to this world. It rotated with a low,...

One must appreciate the sheer audacity of it all. To take something so gloriously, defiantly simple – a cube, mind you, six sides, six colors – and then to render it utterly, bafflingly, frustratingly complex. Such was the magnificent, bewildering debut of what was then simply called the "Magic Cube." On January 29, 1980, in the grey and drizzly environs of Earl's Court, London—where the British Toy and Hobby Fair was unfolding with all the restrained excitement of a civil service tea break—a small, brightly colored plastic object made its entrance on the international stage. This was no ordinary entrance. This was the Rubik's Cube stepping into the world spotlight, like a Hungarian mathematics lecturer who has accidentally invented a device capable of driving the entire species mildly insane while charging only $1.99 for the privilege. Its inventor, one Ernő Rubik, had been quietly tormenting himself with it since 1974. He arrived at the Ideal Toy Corporation's s...

Folks, let me tell you, Captain Power – tremendous show, absolutely tremendous. And the toys? Believe me, nobody had toys like that. This wasn't some weak, failing little cartoon; this was serious stuff, the best. It was like the Trump Shuttle of action toys – innovative, exciting, and way ahead of its time. We're talking post-apocalyptic battles, robots taking over the world, and heroes fighting back bigly. If you were a kid in the '80s, you remember this, or if you don't, you're missing out on pure gold. Picture this: It's the year 2147, after these "Metal Wars," where machines went rogue and wiped out most of humanity. But we don't want to have wars, we have to have peace. I could have ended the Metal Wars in one day; in fact, they never would have started if I had been president.  Lord Dread, this evil cyborg villain – he's digitizing people into pixels, total nightmare, very bad. He's digitizing the dogs, he's digitizing the cats,...