Aint Nothing Like the 80’s

Recently some friends and I walked down memory lane and recounted all the brands, stars, and TV programmes of that wonderful era.

In 1999 I went through an 80’s music revival period, but I had forgotten about many of these fads.

I remember 06:15 every morning watching Ken from the Body Beat team lead us out on an aerobic work-out. No morning would be complete without watching Ken and his girls take us through the paces. In retrospect, do you know how bad it was for me a farm-boy to be doing aerobics? I am lucky none of my class mates ever found out.
I wonder what Ken is doing now?

The 1980’s also brought out some ludicrous chip flavours. The sure stand-out was Creole flavoured chips. With these chips, parents did not need to worry about losing their children in shopping centres, they would make their kids eat them and smell for them when they went missing. It smelt like Bokkoms gone bad.

Then there was Hot Diggity Dog, which was hot dog flavoured chips which were terrible, but none were worse named or flavoured than Russian and Chip chips. I always thought they got made a typo. These chips were so unappealing they had a fat, pink sliced open Russian with oil drenched chips on the cover.

US-Mexican tension developed between Texas Chilli Chips and Mexican Chilli Chips, at least the Mexicans outlasted the Americans in something.
Monster Munch and Ghost Pops tasted nothing like the rubbish which gets dished out today.

The Beers from the 80’s, although too young to drink, I remember the man I most wanted to meet was not PW Botha, Naas Botha or Brian Macmillan, but the voice of the guy in the Lion Lager advert. How did that guy get such a voice. Back then Lion was as synonymous with rugby as was the sand bucket.

I also remember the athletes beer, Ohlsonns, we as kids were made to believe that if you drank it, you would be able to run a marathon. Back then in South Africa, there was no such thing as Heineken, Carlsberg or Budweiser, it was all about Castle, Lion and Ohlsonns.

The TV programmes, who remembers that mumbling imbecile Zet, and his sister Zit, or what ever her name was. These incoherent characters were supposed to draw young people to God, they could have got a heroin-infused drug addict who would have done a far superior job.

There was also Uncle Bill and Pumpkin Patch, a programme, we loved to hate, but secretly used to watch. Growing up in Vryburg, in the North West, and being surrounded by mainly Afrikaans speaking people, I became a big fan of the bmx-riding, crime fighting Swart Kat (Black Cat), this kid made Superman and Spiderman look incompetent. There was also Trompie en die Boksem Bende, where Trompie led the good guys from the wrong side of the track against the bad guys from the worst side of the tracks.

There was also that alien we all loved Alf, although the kids of today would not see him as an alien but rather a dog. There was that adventure programme Skatte Jag where you had to find a treasure and my favourite Afrikaans programme was late on a Friday night, Spies and Plessis. This was a top class comedy show, however, the only late programmes you get on Friday nights are porn and more porn.

As a young kid, I used to get indoctrinated by the Milk Board with possibly one of the cheapest, yet most successful TV shows ever created with Mina Moo who would fight Kiem and Kiem when they would invade the milk factory with there tin-foil space ship.

I think now and am very sure that the creator of that show must have been on some insanely heavy drugs.

There were also legendary personalities like deaf rugby analyst Zandberg Jansen, who was as sharp-tongued and unforgiving as they come. There was Colin “ Keep em Peeled” Fluxman from Police Files, there were the classic Jimmy The Viking Abbot and Mike Schutte wrestling matches. Rof stoei was simple and hard, no fireworks or fancy entrances like one sees in the WWE today. I remember the 600 Pound woman getting into fits of rage when their man lost.

I am remember bands like Gorky Park, with their song Bang. These were the days when Heavy Metal was satanic and we as young people were made to believe that if we listed to Iron Maiden we would kill our best friends and sacrifice them.

Who could forget Scope with the stars?

Instead of Xbox 360’s we had Rubik’s Cubes and Atari block soccer….

Let us not forget that Chuck Norris was no yet Walker Texas Ranger, but a b-grade martial arts superstar then. Oh how the times have changed…