The Sweet and Sticky History of Fun, Part 3: The 1980s

Fog Horn Blast 🚨

The 1980s weren’t subtle. They were a decade of shoulder pads the size of satellite dishes, hair sprayed into the ozone layer, and MTV blasting music videos into living rooms 24/7. For kids, though, the 80s were less about Wall Street greed and Cold War paranoia and more about two sacred things: board games and candy.

Yes, video games were rising, but when the Nintendo was off or the arcade tokens ran out, it was still about gathering around the kitchen table with cardboard, dice, and a sugar rush. And unlike their predecessors in the 60s and 70s, the games and candies of the 80s weren’t just playful, they were LOUD. Neon packaging, gimmicks galore, flavors so sour they made your eyeballs sweat.

This was the decade when toys, TV shows, board games, and candy all merged into one gigantic marketing machine. Kids didn’t just play, they consumed, collected, and compared. It was the golden age of radical fun, and if you survived it with your tongue intact and your family still speaking after Trivial Pursuit, congratulations.

🎲 The Board Games of the 1980s

A. The Electronic Invasion

Technology didn’t just stay in the arcade, it barged into the board game aisle. Electronic Battleship was the crown jewel. Forget quietly moving pegs; now every hit or miss came with booming sound effects and dramatic lights. It turned naval strategy into something resembling a Michael Bay movie. Kids sat hunched over plastic grids, gleefully shouting “B-7!” while the board shrieked back like R2-D2 having a meltdown.

Simon continued its hypnotic reign from the late 70s, now spawning endless spin-offs: talking Simon, pocket Simon, travel Simon. It was part game, part memory test, part disco floor. Fail, and you were greeted with the saddest sound in electronic history... a mocking raspberry of buzzes.

Other experiments like Electronic Talking Football and Merlin blurred the line between board games and early handheld video games. The future had arrived, and it ran on nine-volt batteries.

B. Party Games & Chaos Machines

But the 80s weren’t all about bleeps and bloops, this was also the decade when party games exploded. Pictionary (1985) brought out everyone’s inner artist… or at least their inner chicken-scratch doodler. Siblings screamed, “That’s not a giraffe, it’s a deformed sock!” as parents squinted to see if that blob was a house or a boat.

Scattergories (1988) was equally chaotic. Players raced to fill categories with words starting with the same letter. It quickly devolved into heated debates: “Can you really count ‘Kool-Aid’ as a fruit?” Answer: yes, if you’re desperate enough.

Taboo required players to describe words without saying the obvious ones. The result was a lot of yelling, hand-flapping, and accusations of cheating.

And then there was Fireball Island (1986), the undisputed king of gimmick games. A massive 3D plastic island complete with bridges, caves, and a giant volcano that spit marbles down twisting paths. The marbles represented “fireballs” that wiped out players’ tokens in glorious avalanches. Nobody remembers the actual rules. Everybody remembers the fireballs.

C. TV & Pop Culture Tie-Ins

If the 70s started the trend, the 80s perfected it: tie-in games were everywhere. Arcade fever gave us Pac-Man: The Board Game (1982), where players moved cardboard Pac-Men around a board, gobbling pellets and pretending they weren’t just waiting for the real arcade machine.

Trivial Pursuit (1981), however; wasn’t just a game, it was a cultural phenomenon. Suddenly, being the “smart kid” was cool. Families spent hours debating obscure trivia, and friendships were ended over whether the capital of Burkina Faso counted as “common knowledge.”

Cartoons were also turned into cardboard cash grabs: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Care Bears, My Little Pony, even The Smurfs. If you loved it on Saturday morning, chances are you could buy the board game version by Sunday afternoon.

D. Oddball Relics

The 80s wouldn’t be the 80s without some weird experiments. Grape Escape mashed board games with Play-Doh, letting kids sculpt figures and then gleefully squish them in plastic traps. It was more fun destroying the pieces than winning the game.

13 Dead End Drive (technically hitting shelves in 1989) let players set traps in a creepy mansion: chandeliers fell, staircases flipped, and characters were launched into fireplaces. It was basically “Clue” but with more ways to murder cardboard tokens.

By the end of the decade, board games were no longer quiet family activities, they were full-blown sensory assaults.

🍬 The Candy of the 1980s

A. Sour, Radical, Extreme

If you think 80s music was loud, you should have tasted the candy. Warheads started creeping in during the late 80s, redefining what “sour” meant. Kids dared each other to survive the first five seconds without making the sour face, a challenge few passed.

Sour Patch Kids were originally “Mars Men” before rebranding into neon gummies that were both sweet and cruel. “Sour, then sweet” became the motto of every playground dare.

Nerds (1983) arrived in twin-flavor boxes with tiny tangy clusters that rattled like maracas. Pouring both flavors into your mouth at once was either genius or madness. Usually both.

B. The Chocolate Heavyweights

The 80s chocolate scene was no less intense. Reese’s Pieces achieved superstardom in 1982 when Spielberg’s alien buddy E.T. decided they were better than M&M’s. Sales skyrocketed, and kids everywhere practiced the sacred ritual of leaving candy trails for imaginary extraterrestrials.

Twix grew massively popular, its “two-for-one” format sparking playground debates: left vs. right, share vs. hoard.

Meanwhile, Snickers Ice Cream Bars showed up in the late 80s. America collectively realized that if you can freeze a candy bar and still call it dessert, you’ve achieved civilization’s peak.

C. Novelty, Gimmicks & Weird Stuff

No decade loved gimmicks like the 80s. Ring Pops let kids wear candy like jewelry. Engagement rings? Nah, try cherry-flavored bling.

Push Pops turned lollipops into something you could retract and save for later. (Nobody saved them for later. They went straight back into the dirt-covered pocket.)

Bubble Tape appeared, proudly boasting “six feet of gum... for you, not them.” Every kid measured out a foot at a time until their jaws locked.

And let’s not forget Big League Chew; shredded gum designed to look like chewing tobacco. Parents freaked out, kids loved it, and every baseball dugout reeked of grape-flavored bubblegum dust.

D. Arcade Fuel & The Ritual

By the 80s, the corner store wasn’t just about candy, it was about fueling arcade marathons. Kids pumped quarters into Pac-Man and Galaga while clutching boxes of Runts, Nerds, and Skittles (introduced in the late 70s but exploding in popularity in the 80s). New Coke briefly entered the scene, confusing everyone, before Coca-Cola wisely hit Ctrl+Z.

Baseball cards still came with gum hard enough to chip teeth, but nobody cared. The candy aisle had become a neon battlefield of choices, each wrapper brighter and louder than the last.

🗼 Beacon of Irony

The 1980s didn’t do subtle. Its board games were oversized plastic spectacles, its candies were weaponized sugar experiments, and its kids were perpetually buzzing between trivia nights, Fun Dip binges, and arcade marathons.

For adults, the 80s might be remembered as the age of excess, but for kids? It was the age of extremes. Games didn’t just entertain, they overwhelmed. Candy didn’t just satisfy, it dared you to survive.

Next time, in our final expose, we’ll crank the clock back to the 1990s. When everything went full “X-treme,” candies became endurance tests, and board games got slimed by Nickelodeon. Grab your pogs and prepare your taste buds. The final chapter of this sweet and sticky saga is coming.