phases and crazes from your youth..

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..inspired by the pocket money thread. can you remember the must have crazes from your youth that demanded you pocket/paper round money.

I remember everyone going mad for..

pellet guns
ninja stars
black widow catapults
fizzy drink branded yoyos

so in a nutshell anything that could cause serious harm.
 
chicken scratches
rapsies AKA bloody knuckles (loser takes hits across the knuckles with a full deck of cards)
discs (caps of beer barrels swapped and traded and played like pigeon toss)
Pubs (continually punching someone in the arm until he names 5 local pubs)
Kingo (throwing the ball at other teams legs to get them out)
Dancing dollies (standing against a wall while avoiding a ball being thrown at you)

Many more stupid pain inducing games boys play in a tough all boys school.
 
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I was a pogs and tazo's collector as a child, I remember collecting the whole Star Wars set in a Star Wars ring binder and I was so proud of it lol.

Pokemon was also out when I was in my very early teens, used to play that all the time on my red Gameboy Pocket.

Oh, and in my mid teens I was a player of Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing better than spending a night at a friends house, all gathered round a round table in the dark with some candles, using nothing but some dice, some books and your imagination to have hours and hours of fun. Man I miss those days!
 
Damn makes me cringe just thinking about the cards on the knuckles, we used to do that too
 
wraps AKA bloody knuckles (loser takes hits across the knuckles with a full deck of cards)

Ouch - remember that one well - known locally as "Scabby Queen" (Queen from the pack of cards, Scabby... well - you can guess...)
 
Pretty sure we just called it rapsies.. Hideous game!
 
Pretty sure we just called it rapsies.. Hideous game!

I remember a psycho kid from a nearby school being arrested for using a pack interlaced with razor blades.

Clearly the beginning of a pattern since he's current residing in one of her Majesties hostelries, and will be for quite some time. :eek:
 
I remember a psycho kid from a nearby school being arrested for using a pack interlaced with razor blades.

Clearly the beginning of a pattern since he's current residing in one of her Majesties hostelries, and will be for quite some time. :eek:

Omg what a nutter!!
 
yes that's what we called it..

can anyone remember Petrol Pumps? its where you were flat on you back and had a knee and its weight put on your bicep and then your arm would be pumped(a bit like pulling a one arm bandit) numerous times... the result was a very sore arm.

Haha yeah I remember that too!!
 
One silly thing we used to do and get unsuspecting kids doing...

Biting your little finger nails on your back teeth then linking fingers together and putting pressure on tips!

My daughter got her little brother doing that recently, that was a blast from the past!
 
I remember clackers - they either shattered, showering the vicinity with plastic shrapnel or could be used as a cosh-on-a-rope or flying garrotte... Great fun!!!
 
A phase I went through was to have long hair on top, with the sides and back shaven....It was very wrong :eek: And also, at a different stage I had a very big parting, very long all along my face where I constantly had to flick it back...Not to mention comb it down as my hair is rather curly....Oh the fun of the eighties....

Oh gosh, and then there were these Tattoo pipes...a very straight pipe in which you could put normal Drum tobacco....And perhaps some herbs to spice it up....Oh and Kretek cigarettes tobacco mixed with cloves.....
 
School games I remember..
  • British Bulldog
  • Something similar to dodgeball but we didn't call or that, and a lethal variation of it where you has to dodge the thrown ball as you made tour way around the gym using the apparatus without touching the floor..
 
School games I remember..
  • British Bulldog
I remember that one too - banned now, I believe as OFTEC(?) feel it's too dangerous.

We had another called CockyOlly - there were two teams of around 15-a-side with 15 defenders and 15 attackers. Hence 15-a-side :rolleyes: The tree was the CockyOlly tree and was a distinctive tree beside the woods. The attackers won if one of them touched the tree and the defenders won if they touched all the attackers before they reached the tree. Sounds simple but like all simple games, easier said than done. The attackers would draw the defenders the wrong way so one or two could sneak through. The defenders usually won but not every time by any means. The teachers loved it and we children loved it too. Best played in cold, wet, freezing conditions with a hot shower afterwards followed by a hot chocolate drink and biscuits! :)
 
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Cabbage patch dolls, Rubicks cubes. Those were the crazes I remember.

As for games 'behind the curtain ' or 'statues' where you sneaked up behind the person that was IT without them seeing you move was a common one.
 
I remember the clackers & their banning.

The senior school I went to had builders in, and suddenly everyone had 'split bullets' - the cartridges used to work heavy duty nailguns - that would give a tremendous explosion when hit properly with a brick. They lasted just a few days before the teachers got wind and confiscated them with dire threats of punishment for anyone caught with them. Not unreasonable considering how dangerous they must have been.

Clothing wise we saw some odd fashions. High waisted trousers with a waste band up to 4" wide. Girls summer dresses with a full length zip at the front and a large metal ring attached to the zipper (practically shouting PULL ME!). The art of knotting a tie so that no more than about 6 inches hung down. Later on there was a fashion for wearing poloneck jumpers under shirts, often with a wide studded leather watch strap OVER the left cuff - bad news if you couldn't cope with the warmth.

One summer everyone seemed to have magnifying glasses, and was trying to burn each others clothes, hair, skin, whatever was accessible. You learned never to leave a hand still for a moment in direct sunlight or else.

We went through a phase of pea-shooters, with everyone buying split peas from the local gardening suppliers. That morphed into spit balls a year later, with empty Bic pens being used as the firing tube. Then later again the postmen started using heavy duty rubber bands, and a couple would be linked and used to fire V-shaped folded pieces of paper at high speed that could cause a nasty bruise or burst a balloon.

We had a large influx of people from Jamaica and Tobago who initially integrated very well. Later the kids we'd played happily with started to discover their own cultural identity, and a kind of patois spread, with the 'cool' white kids also declaiming "jah, guy" and calling people they didn't like a "Raas claat". :rolleyes:

Then there was the 'Chinese martial arts' phase, where everyone had to learn some kung-fu moves or re-enact scenes from The Water Margin (a sort of Chinese version of medieval X Men) on TV.

There was a craze for pythonesque humour. Every skit created for English lessons was python-style. Inanimate objects would be given complex names, like a brief case called Horatio Nyus the 3rd. Various school children would wander the town exclaiming to passers by, words selected for their double entendre potential whilst being innocent in themselves. Life was happily surreal in South Norwood.
 
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I know that in the recent past we had the craze for Roller Blades or In Line Skates, but I'm sure they were preceded, probably in the late 60's by "Skeelers".
Please tell me someone else remembers them!


Edit. Don't know why I didn't think to Google it!
 
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I remember that one too - banned now, I believe as OFTEC(?) feel it's too dangerous.
Never officially banned, but a lot of schools banned it individually. Apparently it's now being encouraged again, probably in a "touch" form.

"Forty, forty, in" was another we played as kids. When I'm at a proper keyboard I'll type in the rules as I remember them.
 
We played British bulldog too and forty forty in..

My boy plays dodgeball after school but it's nothing like our version
 
There was a craze for Sekiden guns when I was a kid. They were plastic things that looked like a Walther and had a hopper in the top that you loaded up with gold coloured balls. The gun was spring loaded and shot the bullets out with real force. They were made of painted clay and hurt like buggery if you got hit with one.
 
Lets not forget the pogo stick and space hopper!

plus knockdown ginger:eek:
 
Hope it's been cured since they discovered antibiotics, Keith!
 
Choppers, the poor boys gelder!
I remember Clackers too.
Caps on a paper roll? We used to get two bolts and a nut, screw the bolts together onto either side of the nut with a cap between, tighten up and throw the whole thing as high as possible to make it explode on landing. Also worked with match heads before safety matches :)
 
Platform shoes and parallel trousers so wide you could take three steps before they started to move :lol:
 
Scrumping.
 
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