
I saw your post Allison about the must haves of school days in the US, and felt compelled to offer a small insight into 80s and 90s school days on this side of the pond.
Whilst we may have watched and wished our lives were more Degrassi Junior High, many of our school lives weren’t even Grange Hill. Nor did many of us have an all-consuming and totally cool youth club like Byker Grove where we could rub shoulders with future pop sensations and Saturday night stalwarts like PJ and Duncan AKA. And don’t even get me started on the lack of a Jordan Catelano roaming the halls of our local comprehensive high school.
And, oh to have had a vending machine where you could buy pencils! That just sounds ace. Most of us had to put up with buying a new HB from WHSmith or John Menzies and spend our 10p tuck money on a vending machine Chomp.
We may not have heard of Trapper Keepers or Lisa Frank per se, but covering textbooks and jotters with anything from wallpaper to posters from Big! gave rise to clipping collages on ring binders and using a compass to graffiti your pencil tin. All in the name of demonstrating our individuality… Except we all did it!
And of course, these were the days well before selfies and Facebook… But you could still take a disposable camera into school for some photos of good times, even though you had to wait at least three days to get your film back and find out what the hell you’d taken though!
But growing up in the UK in the 80s and 90s certainly wasn’t humdrum….here are a few things (in vaguely chronological order) that made those British decades some of the best so far.
Being a Milk Monitor to distribute the free milk at school
My Little Pony Lunchboxes
Celebrating birthdays with a Mr Wimpy party
Learning to read & write with ‘Look & Read’
‘Now that’s what I call Music’ compilation tapes & latterly CDs
Smash Hits – for music news
Anything from The Body Shop – particularly the Dewberry Scent
Pop Swatch
Forever Friends pencil tin
Product Placement Pencil Cases (eg Walkers Crisps)
High Street carrier bag (had to be River Island) as your school PE kit bag*
Head bags – school bag
Funfax – (for the wannabe yuppies amongst us)
Shell suits
Naf naf
Global hypercolour
Sure, some of your stuff made it over the pond… We kind of got ALF, we loved Dinosaurs, the Cosby show was staple, and we had Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake. But we also had Bagpuss, Morph and Button Moon. We learned about ‘real life’ through Children’s Ward, Gruey Twoey, Jossy’s Giants and Johnny Briggs. And of course Blue Peter was still a staple for the wholesome amongst us (some of us even had not one but TWO coveted badges).
And then Brit Pop happened and suddenly it was cool to be British again!
*Following a bit of online research on this one via Facebook, I verified that this was indeed a national phenomenon validated from the south coast to the North East counties and many places in between. Weird. And very good marketing on River Island’s behalf!
I grew up on the other side of the Channel in Holland in the 70s, but this post has made me go back to my school days. It was so much fun.
Lol, I’m laughing while reading, I remember too well covering my school books with wallpaper or posters ha ha, and the milk and smash hits, I could go on and on, what a great post xx ps my shellsuit was almost identical too!!