Well, I already go into a three-day snit every time someone brings up “Safety Dance” or “Hey, Mickey!” 
(Or anything by Duran Duran or the Thompson Twins. There’s one or two Culture Clubs which I find tolerable, however.)
Oh, and then there’s those Asia songs. [shakes fist in best Mads style]
Tail and this were the two movies I saw in theaters from 1986.
There’s a lot I want to say here, but holy hell, I’m more tired (yet not sleepy) than I’ve been in a long while, so my brain is absolutely completely totally 110% fried, which means I’ll have to stop back here when I’m feeling less burned out.
I’ll say this for now: I was a child of the 80s, and I freaking loved that. Things seemed unstoppable with a NES firing up the best games under the sun.
Also also, I was taken to see The 'Burbs at an absurdly young age, and OH MUH GAWD, GAMECHANGER.
Somewhere around 3rd grade, all the kids in my school started collecting and trading Post It notes. It was a whole thing, kids spread out doing this at recess instead of playing. I wish I still had my book.
I remember being absolutely fascinated by music videos, even before we had MTV. I would stay up late to watch Friday Night Videos on USA with Lisa Robinson. I can vividly remember some of the videos I saw on there: “Pressure” by Billy Joel, “The Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, “Why Me” by Planet P Project. One time we went down to visit my cousins in Florida, and they had MTV. There I am in Florida, and I think I spent the whole time sitting inside glued to MTV.
Shortly thereafter we finally got it on our cable system.
I collected and traded lots of stuff in the 80s but never Post-Its.
Mostly stickers (strictly a girl thing at the time), marbles, and those really fat, puffy, and often neon-colored shoelaces, which we called Thicks. They looked like this:
We never put them in our shoes, just bought and traded them trying to get as many color combos as possible.
I still have a pair of those.
My girlfriend worked at Arby’s and would come home with a different Mr. Men and Little Miss toy every night, I don’t know why she became obsessed with collecting them. But I remember the packaging and those figures sitting all over the apartment.
Ahh the 80s.
Stickers. OMG there were whole stores dedicated to selling stickers!
And those barrettes you threaded ribbons through. Remember those?
Friendship pins
Jean jackets full of buttons. I think I still have some of my buttons somewhere.
Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. (I had a Revenge of the Jedi poster, but it was lost in a move, dang it)
You made pocket money babysitting for the neighborhood.
The angst over latchkey kids.
Leaving the house at dawn and not coming home until sunset in the summer. Someone’s parents fed you lunch.
Riding in the back of a pick-up truck.
Candy cigarettes. Big League Chew, and cinnamon everything.
Oh my god I REMEMBER ALL OF THOSE THINGS
the barrettes
the pins
seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater
the latchkey kids (c’est moi)
I have fallen through time
Mine got stolen at a bar in college. 
Ah, the 80’s. When Rome was consolidating its control of Britain and the Colosseum was finally completed. Oh, sorry, you totally Servoed me.
Yes, that 80’s. When invisible Satanists lurked in every dark corner, doing vague (but definitely evil!) things for some reason, usually involving Dungeons & Dragons or rock music. Any time something got vandalised, it was definitely them, not some dumb kids. At least according to the screeching nutjobs who somehow got into the spotlight back then.
Anyway, I’m just gonna put on my He-Man pajamas and watch the Smurfs while I eat my Mr T cereal.
The 80s to me was not a good time. I had a terrible experience in a private school for years that I won’t get into, so most of my enjoyment of the era was after school and in the summer. I was also plagued with nuclear war nightmares (although I was also obsessed with post-apocalyptic media). I did watch a lot of good movies and TV shows, but I do not remember it as fondly as some.
That said, I discovered new wave music when I was slightly older and I do love that.
Kids Incorporated.
’80s Couch Surfing: Kids Incorporated – Mutant Reviewers (mutantreviewersmovies.com)
I NOT ONLY HAD ONE, BUT I ALSO HAD A NIGHTMARE ABOUT IT
I had a nightmare that the New Kids on the Block stole the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles button from my jean jacket, and it freaked me out and made me feel really bad, so I had to track them down and get my button back from them.
They tried to play it off really cool and apologize and all, but I gave them THE SCOWL.
This is also a good place as any to indicate that I was an insufferable Ninja Turtles fan in those days.
My dad installed surround sound in our family room and as soon as it was available, we got the whole Star Wars trilogy on VHS. We would then marathon it.
In the 80s, if you were that sort of kid, you either found porn out in the woods or tried to get something out of this…
I wasn’t the full-on film nut that I would start to become in the 90s, but the seeds were getting planted there in the 80s.
The video store still factored heavily into life back then, and it was the best. There was this mom-and-pop video store we used to go to, and it had two floors (TWO FLOORS!), and it was stocked from the bottom to the top with all these movies that looked so nifty.
Of course, it was intimidating to go anywhere near the horror section, because those video covers WENT SO HARD in those days.
And this place had the coolest video arcade machines in the lobby. So many quarters lost to Mappy.
But we would rent all different kinds of things there. I remember coming away with the typical Looney Tunes compilation tape from time to time. I would always act with amazement when one cartoon was followed by the next (“ANOTHER CARTOON?!” I would yell as if I somehow discovered a new element that had yet to be factored into the periodic chart).
The one tape we came away with a lot? The musical version of Little Shop of Horrors. We should have owned that tape for all the times we rented it.
Mappy has the best video game music of all time and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.
This cartoon was definitely peak 80s.
For those who don’t remember, it’s about a band that “connected their video to their radio” and ended up transported to an alternate universe called The Flipside, which is a rock and roll based dimension. The evil villain is a corporate music executive called Master Blaster and clips from real music videos were featured.
