Popping your Pop Culture cherry

Just a fun nostalgia-driven blog post for today. Basically after fondly browsing this webpage, I got to thinking about my various pop culture firsts back in the 1980s. What various bits of plastic, magnetic tape, vinyl, celluloid etc. took your pop culture virginity back in the day?

The following is my personal list. If you run a similarly themed blog to mine (or even not) maybe you feel like doing the same thing on your little portion of the web? And for non-bloggers, please trawl your memory banks, give it some thought and share your "firsts" in the comments section below this post.

First movie:

I have mentioned this on my blog before, but the first film I ever saw at the cinema was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It was very early 1985, I was 3 and my mother was heavily pregnant with my sister. Unholy terror that I was, I ran around the cinema until the movie started. From the moment that Kate Capshaw started warbling Anything Goes though, I was rigid in my seat; my eyes locked on the screen. Although admittedly the film was perhaps not ideal viewing for a toddler (monkey brains, insect-drenched tunnels, blood drinking, hearts ripped out) I don't think any lasting damage was done. In fact, I was exhilarated by the experience: I didn't stop talking about the man with prawns (actually horns!) - on his head for weeks.


Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is arguably the worst of the original Indy trilogy but it remains my favourite, due to its combination of breakneck action, unmoderated violence and general darkness. To this day I don't have a problem with flawed films that succeed in entertaining me. For the record, other films that had a major impact on me during my early childhood were The Dark Crystal, The NeverEnding Story, Superman III, The Secret of NIMH and Return to Oz. Funny how fantasy, especially for children, wasn't afraid to be pitch black and disturbing in the 1980s...

First television:

Okay, the memories of my first favourite TV shows are definitely more hazy than my memories of movies. I do know though that when I was very little I was a dedicated fan of stop-motion series Postman Pat and those litter-clearing little blighters The Wombles (what makes you think I have a British heritage?).

Then there was also cartoon David the Gnome - AKA Dawie die Kabouter - along with Around the World with Willy Fog and, of course, The Adventures of the Gummi Bears. ThunderCats, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, She-Ra: Princess of Power and Rainbow Brite also all featured prominently in my pre-school days - while seminal South African kids' show Pumpkin Patch and Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles came a little later.

In terms of "grown-up" TV shows, my first fave was the short-lived show Tales of the Gold Monkey. Indiana Jones-style World War II-era adventuring, sea planes and a dog with a eye patch - what more could you want from a series? Given film studios and television networks' current appetite for anything 80s, I can't understand why nobody is gathering the funds to remake this show. Along with Golden Monkey, my other favourite series of the same period were unquestionably Airwolf, The A-Team and MacGyver (we even named our old spaniel after Richard Dean Anderson's mulleted character in the latter).



First music:

As a child of the 80s, Read-Along books and tapes were a common form of entertainment for me. I only developed an interest in pop music around the age of 6-7, when I received my first ever Walkman (that's a precursor to the iPod, young whippersnappers!). Of course "awesome" vinyl LPs like Belinda Carlisle's Heaven on Earth had to be converted to cassette tape so I could listen to them. However, in terms of the first music tapes that I ever actually owned, there were two: The Simpsons Sing the Blues (yes, I was obsessed with Do the Bartman) and Roxette's Tourism. Wow, how's that for an indicator of age and girliness? Then again, I suppose it's not too bad, all things considered. It all seems a lot safer and innocent than six year olds gyrating to Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus today.


First book:

It's actually impossible to identify my first story books. I do remember though that I had a large collection of child-sized Ladybird Books that centred on everything from fairytales and folk stories to random reality-based "Day in the Life of..." narratives. Of these stories, the ones I remember most distinctly were schoolgirl Jayne Fisher's The Garden Gang, which was basically Mr Men with anthropomorphic fruit and vegetables.


My introduction to Roahl Dahl's children's books and CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles came much later. However, my formative years did also include a lot of exposure to Spot the Dog (with all those fun flaps to open), What-a-Mess and Dorrie the Little Witch.

As for comics, I had a pretty conventional introduction to the medium through my uncle's collection of Beano and Dandy annuals, as well as all the usual Harvey comics - Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Little Dot, Hot Stuff, baby Huey and Sad Sack. As for my first superhero comics, Superman dominated, which may explain my continued fondness for the Big Blue Boyscout today. This said, one of the first, and most memorable, stories I read was surprisingly intense - with Superman rescuing the daughter of lesbian cop Maggie Sawyer from a winged mutant Skyhook, who uses slimy cocoons to transform runaways into similarly winged creatures. So, yeah, don't say Superman never fights anyone but Lex Luthor.

First video game:

My first ever video game was, I'm embarrassed to say, Bowling for the Atari 2600. Fortunately, after that I quickly gradated to the much more interesting - and iconic - Pitfall!, Missile Command, Breakout and Space Invaders.


Changing gaming platforms in the late 1980s, but still using game cartridges, my first ever experience on the Nintendo Entertainment System (or rather, NES system knock-off) was movie tie-in The Goonies. My first Sony PlayStation game meanwhile was platformer Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee ("Follow me!"). As for PC, although I fiddled with Logo and some of those old textual fantasy adventures in the late 1980s, my first proper games - on CD - were experienced about half a decade later, during the great golden age of on-disc multimedia. These included Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and a great CD of shareware titles that included Hocus Pocus, Heretic, Descent and Rise of the Triad.

First action figure:

Over the years I owned a beloved teddy bear, Maya the Bee and Popples plushies, as well as Forest Families, a couple of My Little Ponies, and even some paper dress-up dolls. However, when it comes to Pop Culture and the 80s, it's the action figure that immediately comes to mind as the iconic toy of the era. Although I recently posted up pics of my other action figures they were predated by one toy that has long been lost. And that was my Teela action figure. I always wanted She-Ra but back in the day, the Princess of Power was unavailable in Apartheid-era South Africa. Incidentally Teela was the only He-Man toy I ever owned. As you can see, action figure design has come a very long way in the past 25 years or so.