Growing Up in the 80s and 90s

I’m really struggling to start this post as I have so much in my head about it,

so much love

and also a strange feeling of loss.

I’m now 42, born in 1984, which means I grew up through the late 80s, the 90s, and into the early 2000s.

And man… what a time to be alive.

Looking back, life just felt simpler. It felt real. Childhood felt like an adventure where every small thing mattered. The toys we had, the games we played, the TV shows we watched, they all felt special in a way that’s hard to explain now.

Kids actually played outside for hours, no phones.
Video stores were packed every weekend.
Music collections meant shelves full of vinyl, cassettes, or CDs.
Games came on cartridges, floppy disks, or scratched discs.
And the internet, if you even had it — screamed through a dial-up modem.
Mum & Dad hanging out the window shouting "YOUR TEA'S READY!"
Ice cream vans were our local shops most of the time.

There was no internet in our pockets, no constant scrolling, no endless noise. If you wanted to play a game, you actually played it. If you wanted to see your friends, you went outside and found them.

We used to take old glass bottles to our ice cream van. The glass bottles were worth, I think, 30p each, and we'd have bags full of them. So we'd walk away with ice cream, juice (soda), and sweets, all by handing back our empty glass bottles!

It felt like life, you know?

Life felt slower.

You didn't have everything instantly.
You had to wait for your favourite TV show.
You bought the weekly TV guide.
You had to rewind the VHS tape.
You had to record songs from the radio onto cassette.
You had to wait for the ice cream van.
You didn't have home deliveries.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking, but things today feel very different.

A lot of products today feel cheaply made, movies often feel like they’ve lost their soul, and toys just don’t seem to have the same magic they once did.

Back then, things felt built to last. Not just physically, but emotionally too. A toy, a game, even a silly little watch could stick with you for decades.

Maybe that’s why I find myself hunting down old things from my childhood now.

Not because they’re valuable.

But because they remind me of a time when everything felt a little more real.

Below are some of the things I’ve collected over the years.

Super Mario 3 Watch

Man, this watch.

This little thing has plagued my mind for most of my adult life. Nothing throws me back to childhood faster than thinking about it.

I remember getting this watch for Christmas and from that moment on I would not part ways with it. It was glued to my wrist. I played it over and over again, trying to beat the little Mario game on it.

I have such vivid memories of being in primary school during break time, walking around the field while playing Mario, trying to save the princess. The tiny beeps and noises coming from that watch still live in my head. I can almost hear them now.

Even in class I’d constantly feel my wrist, just to make sure it was still there.

That watch meant everything to me.

Looking back now, I really wish I had kept the original one. But how was I supposed to know that decades later I’d still feel this way about a tiny plastic watch?

Last year, in 2025, I finally decided to try and track one down. I had no idea what the watch was actually called other than “Super Mario Watch.” Turns out, that’s basically what it’s known as.

After a bit of digging I found a few of them online on eBay and Vinted. The moment I saw the listing photos, it was like getting slapped straight back into my childhood. It's strange how such a small object can trigger such a powerful wave of memories.

The one on Vinted looked pretty battered, so I went with an eBay listing instead. It set me back about £110 at the time.

I remember thinking, “Ah, fuck it. Let’s get this bad boy.”

When it arrived, I couldn’t stop holding it. Instantly it became one of my prized possessions again.

Then a strange thing happened.

I started thinking… what if this one breaks?

So I bought another one.
And then another one.

At one point I had four of them.

I’m still not entirely sure what was going through my head, but eventually I sold the two that weren’t in the best condition and kept the best pair.

One of them now sits proudly in my display case.

The other one?
Battery removed.
Safely locked away in my safe.

Just in case.

Because some things from childhood are worth holding onto.

Mighty Max Skull

As an adult, I never even realised this toy existed anymore. It was one of those things I had growing up that just disappeared from my memory over time.

I only rediscovered it when I started collecting some retro toys, including the Mario Watch I just rattled on about.

While browsing eBay one night, I suddenly spotted it — the Mighty Max Skull.

Just like the watch, it was like a lightning bolt hitting me.

Instantly I was thrown straight back into childhood. Memories came flooding in, and it honestly knocked the shit right out of me. It was such a strange feeling — warm, nostalgic, but also really intense.

I couldn't believe I had completely forgotten about it for so many years.

Eventually I found a fully complete set listed for £52.99. There was no hesitation. No overthinking.

I ordered that thing immediately.

I had to have it.

Now it sits proudly on my display shelf alongside my Mario Watch and a few other collectibles from my childhood.

I'll add some photos of my display cases down at the bottom somewhere to show all the stuff I've collected.

Movies

VHS tapes. Cassette tapes. Man… these things.

I crave them. I really fucking crave them.

I miss them dearly.

When I was a young lad, Friday or Saturday nights were special. It depended on when my parents fancied having a wee swally (a few drinks). On those nights, me and the old man would walk down to the local shops. They were about a ten-minute walk from the house.

I remember trying to keep up with him. My dad walked fast, so I’d have to jog a little every now and then to catch up.

But I didn’t care.

I was buzzing.

As we got closer to the shops, you could smell the local Chinese takeaway. That smell alone meant one thing — it was movie night.

This was the night I waited for every single week.

My dad would place the Chinese order, then we’d head up to the video shop. As soon as we got there he’d basically dump me inside, knowing full well I’d be in there for ages.

He’d wander off next door to grab his drink and snacks for the night.

Meanwhile, I was in paradise.

Shelf after shelf of movies. I’d walk slowly along the rows, scanning the covers.

Steven Seagal.
Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Arnie Schwarzenegger.

It was always the same actors. The same explosions. The same plots.

And I absolutely loved it.

I’d take my time, studying the covers like they were priceless art. Eventually I’d settle on three or four films and take them up to the counter.

By the time my dad came back, I’d have my little stack ready.

He’d pay for them, we’d grab the Chinese, and we’d head back home.

Once that tape went into the VHS player, that was it.

I was locked in.

I’d watch those movies over and over again. I knew every line, every scene, every moment. Pausing. Rewinding. Playing it again.

Sometimes I’d rewind a film and watch it again straight after finishing it.

Pure magic.

I’d sit at the table eating my Chinese while the movie played in the background. My mum and dad would be sitting there yapping away (chatting), but I barely noticed.

I was completely absorbed.

When the movies were done, the night wasn’t over.

My mum would fire up the record player, and the records would spin for the rest of the night. I loved helping pick what went on next.

My parents shaped my taste in music without even realising it.

That’s probably why, even now, I still prefer the old school stuff.

Sometimes I think that’s why I’ve started collecting these things again.

Not because they’re rare.
Not because they’re worth money.

But because they remind me of a time when life felt simple.

Movie nights with my dad.
Chinese takeaway in a white paper bag.
VHS tapes rewinding in the background.
Records spinning in the living room.

Little moments that didn’t seem important at the time.

But somehow ended up meaning everything.

Video Stores and Online Streaming

Online streaming is total pish.

It absolutely is.

Nothing — and I mean nothing — will ever compete with the thrill, the joy, and the excitement of going to a video store and browsing the shelves, walking up and down the aisles, studying the covers, trying to decide which film would be the one for the night.

Then bringing it home.

That feeling of sliding the VHS into the player and settling in to watch it.

That was magic.

You can’t replicate that with a menu screen and a remote control.

The smell of popcorn in the store, the excitement of a new movie, the rewinding of the tape when it finished — it all felt like an event.

Streaming today just feels disposable.

Rising subscription fees.
Ads creeping into everything.
Endless scrolling trying to find something worth watching.
Half the time the bitrate is terrible and everything looks compressed.

And the biggest problem of all?

You don't actually own anything.

Films disappear from platforms overnight. Shows get removed. Entire catalogues vanish because of licensing deals.

With physical media, once you own it, it's yours forever.

That’s why I still collect Blu-ray.

But the real setup in my house is Plex.

I run my own media server, which means I control exactly what’s available on our TVs. No disappearing films, no subscriptions creeping up in price, and no algorithm deciding what we should watch next.

Just a library of movies that we actually love.

For me, that’s as close as modern technology gets to recreating the magic of those old video store nights.

Music and Vinyl

Like I mentioned earlier, Fridays and Saturdays were kind of the big nights for movies and music in our house.

My mum and dad absolutely loved their record collection, and you know what? They still have every single one of them.

Back then they’d play those records right into the early hours of the morning. By that point they’d had a few beers and were feeling pretty merry… maybe a little drunk as well.

Meanwhile, I’d have the records spread all over the floor, digging through them trying to find the ones I loved.

I still remember the old record player. Looking back now, that thing was absolutely massive, but it was brilliant. I really wish we had held onto it.

Back then, with records — and even with movies — time moved slower.

There was none of this instant gratification. You had to actually put in the effort. You’d go through the collection, find the album you wanted, pull it out of the sleeve, figure out which side you wanted, place it on the turntable, and carefully drop the needle.

Then when the album finished… you did it all again.

It was a process. A ritual. A whole experience.

You’d sit there studying the album artwork while the music played. The whole thing felt immersive.

Nowadays everything feels instant. Robotic. Disposable. People skip through songs constantly. Albums feel almost forgotten.

But back then you’d sit and listen to the entire album from start to finish.

Records… well, I have such a love for them.

One day my parents mentioned they still had all their records up in the loft. I was genuinely surprised.

Around the same time their anniversary was coming up, so my wife went out and bought them a vinyl player from HMV as a gift. To be honest, I thought it might just end up as a little novelty that they’d never really use.

I was completely wrong.

They absolutely play the life out of that thing.

Their Friday and Saturday tradition is still going strong. They still have a wee swally and play their records just like they always did.

Sometimes I’ll get WhatsApp messages from them with little videos of the records spinning on the turntable.

And I fucking love it.

Seeing that tradition still going all these years later made me go out and buy a vinyl player myself. Since then I’ve started building my own collection.

In my eyes, vinyl is the absolute king.

Cassettes

My earliest cassette memories are probably Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice and the Top Gun soundtrack.

I don’t know why those two stand out so clearly. I doubt they were the very first things I ever listened to, but they’re the ones that stuck in my memory.

I loved cassette players, especially the portable ones. Sitting there with headphones on, completely lost in the music.

I also had one of the bigger cassette players with a built-in radio.

I used to sit there for hours waiting for songs to come on the radio so I could record them onto tape. You had to time it perfectly — hitting record at just the right moment, otherwise you'd miss some of the song!

And man, the feeling of making your own mix tapes was fucking incredible.

That whole era was priceless.

Just like vinyl, cassettes had a process to them. You’d grab the tape from its case, check to see if it was rewound, and if it wasn’t, you’d rewind it before playing.

It was slower.

But that process was part of what made it so special.

CDs

Eventually I moved onto CDs, which felt like a big leap forward at the time.

They were completely different, but still really exciting.

I remember trying to organise my CD collection, buying racks and little storage towers to keep them all in order.

Looking back now, CDs were great… but I don’t know.

They never quite hit the same way that vinyl and cassettes did.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve started collecting CDs again recently as well.

I’ll explain why later.

Consoles and Games

Nowadays I'm not much of a gamer, but back in the day I absolutely loved it.

I grew up playing on the Game Boy, Atari, NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and later the original PlayStation and Xbox 360.

Games and consoles back then were the absolute bollocks. They were simple, they were fun, and they were addictive. They were everything that modern-day consoles and games often feel like they’ve forgotten.

The Game Boy for me was a game changer. It was portable and it was brilliant. I could play it anywhere and everywhere — and I bloody did. That thing went everywhere with me.

Even today I still have it sitting proudly in my display case, complete with the original carry case, and it still works.

Some of the games I loved were Super Mario, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, Sonic the Hedgehog, and a whole host of others. The list honestly goes on and on.

Those games were simple, but that was the magic of them. You could pick them up and play instantly, and somehow hours would disappear without you even noticing.

Then came the family computer.

I remember getting my first PC — a Compaq Presario. My uncle William worked for Compaq at the time and mentioned he might be able to get us a good deal. I cried and begged my parents for one.

Back then my folks didn’t have a lot of money, but somehow they managed to make it happen.

That PC became my best friend.

I spent hours and hours on it every single day. Everything was on floppy disks and CD-ROMs.

Games like The 7th Guest, Doom, and SimCity.

And do you remember Encarta Encyclopedia?

That thing felt like the entire world inside a computer.

I even remember running MAME from floppy disks. I do miss floppy disks. Don’t get me wrong, the speed of them was brutal, but there was something special about them.

The game that really blew my mind though was Grand Theft Auto.

The original one came out in 1997, and it was unlike anything I had ever played. You could steal cars, cause chaos, run from the police — it was madness, and I fucking loved it!

Good times. Really good times.

As consoles became more powerful, we moved onto systems like the PlayStation and Xbox.

The Xbox 360 especially was brilliant.

I spent hours playing games like Halo, and later Call of Duty. I remember the nights playing Call of Duty Zombies with pals, staying up until ridiculous hours trying to survive just one more round.

And I’ll never forget my wife standing in line at Tesco trying to grab me the latest Call of Duty or FIFA release on launch day.

Those were good days.

What Will Modern Kids Pass Down?

Sometimes I actually feel sorry for modern kids. Even my own.

I'm constantly trying to get my girls interested in owning things, not just consuming endless digital content on screens that constantly ask for more money or push whatever the latest trend is.

Don’t get me wrong — I run a Plex server and I’ve got access to pretty much anything I want to watch. But I still collect Blu-rays, vinyl records, and CDs.

Why?

Because they’re real.

They’re something you can hold in your hands. Something that exists outside of a subscription or a login screen.

I've started building a collection not just for myself, but so that one day I can actually pass something down to my kids.

When I think about my parents' records, I realise something.

Those vinyl records have lived through decades. They've been played by different hands, heard countless conversations, sat in living rooms filled with laughter, arguments, stories, and memories.

They've been part of real life.

And one day they’ll probably end up in my hands.

Then maybe one day they’ll end up in my kids' hands.

But what will modern kids pass down?

A Roblox skin?

A digital game license that disappears when a company shuts down a server?

A streaming playlist that vanishes when a subscription ends?

What exactly are they going to hand to the next generation?

I’ve got over 500GB of photos of my kids growing up. Real photos, moments captured over years.

Sometimes I wonder if that’s even normal anymore. Most timelines today just seem like endless selfies covered in filters and temporary posts that disappear after 24 hours.

Modern life feels disposable.

Everything is rented. Everything is temporary. Everything exists inside someone else's platform.

And I honestly think it's only going to get worse.

People laugh at the phrase “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

But look around.

Subscription movies.
Subscription music.
Subscription games.
Subscription software.

It’s not hard to imagine a future where even your computer is rented from some giant tech company.

No building your own PC.
No owning your own hard drives.
No running your own servers.

Just a virtual machine somewhere in a data centre that can be turned off the moment you break the rules.

Maybe I’m wrong.

But I’d rather live in a world where I actually own my things.

So yeah — I buy physical media.

Vinyl.
Blu-ray.
CDs.

Because when you own something, nobody can take it away from you.

And maybe one day my kids will understand why that mattered.

I could keep going for hours but I’m stopping here.

TV Shows, Stickers, Trading Cards, Comic Books, Action Figures, Board Games, Video Games, etc. I have so much of this shit running through my head, but this post is mega long and has taken most of my morning doing it. I could ramble on for hours about all of this stuff.

The simple truth is, I love my life with my wife and kids but I FUCKING hate the timeline we're in with a passion! I wish I could just live in the 80s and 90s forever with my wife, kids and family.

If you're a young person, for the sake of your health, lose the social media, stop scrolling, get outside, play with your friends, read books, play video games, play board games, play sports, etc. Buy physical media, not digital. Own your stuff, not someone else's platform.

Stop funding the tech giants who want to control everything you do, they want to censor everything you do, take your data and sell it to the highest bidder. You need to wake up and smell the coffee, the world is changing and it's not for the better. If you have parents or grand parents, speak to them about the past, do some research.

Today's life, is not life.

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