Everything old is new again at Toymate
Check out the modern versions of your favourite 80s and 90s toys.
It’s Christmas Eve 1989 and you can’t wait to get out of bed in the pre-dawn hours to see if Santa Claus left you the Hot Wheels, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, Cabbage Patch Doll or Barbie you asked for.
Fast forward 30 years and Christmas is still just as much about dolls, action figures and board games as ever. With just a touch more technology.
We ventured into the brand new Toymate store at Majura Park Shopping Centre to find modern versions of some of our favourite 1980s and 1990s toys. It was the best.
You played with: Strawberry Shortcake
Today’s kids play with: Candylocks dolls
Strawberry Shortcake and her delicious-smelling friends ruled girls’ bedrooms in the 1980s. Strawberry was the leader, and if you were lucky enough you had the whole gang, including Huckleberry Pie, Plum Puddin’, Lemon Meringue and Orange Blossom.
In 2019, there’s a new gang of sugar sweet girls in town. Candylocks dolls are uber cool toys that come with their own makeup palettes, hair accessories and beauty salons. The leader is Straw Mary (sound familiar?) and her crew includes and Beau Nana and Carmella Apple.
You played: Operation
Today’s kids play: Operation
You know the old saying – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Operation was, and always will be, one of the most classic board games – but while we spent our childhoods trying to pull body parts from a hospital patient – without alerting that horrendous buzzer – today’s kids have a much nicer experience.
At Toymate, we found the ‘Finding Dory’ version of Operation, where you simply have to pull tiny sea creatures out of the ocean. Much less scary (and loud, hopefully).
You played with: A remote-control car
Today’s kids play with: A remote-control drone
While you were forced to design an obstacle course on the ground with sticks and dirt for your remote control car, in a modern world, the sky is literally the limit.
Kids lucky enough to receive a Little Tikes ‘My First Drone’ this Christmas will be able to fly their very basic drone – complete with LED lights and motorised sound – to about 15 feet in the air. It’s the stuff their dads could only have dreamed of.
You played with: a Fisher-Price telephone
Today’s kids play with: a Fisher-Price telephone
Who remembers dragging the Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone around on a string? We do! He rolled his eyes back and forth and you could phone your grandparents and your friends.
For your own children, or nieces, nephews or friends’ children, you might want to upgrade this Christmas to the Fisher Price smartphone. It has its own fake weather app, pretend email and even swipes to open. Cuteness!
You played with: Baby Alive
Today’s kids play with: Kindi Kids
She was the closest thing to a real baby – Baby Alive, first released in 1973, drank her own bottle and ate food and then ‘released it’ at the other end into a nappy.
Baby Alive was kind of restricted to juice and mushy food but the new Kindi Kids are dolls clever enough to eat the cherry from the top of a cupcake, lick scoops of ice cream and take a bite out of a cake pop. Poor Baby Alive would have loved snacks of that calibre.
You played with: He-Man
Today’s kids play with: The Avengers
In the battle of good versus evil, it was once comic book character He-Man and his crew of superhuman friends defending the secrets of Castle Grayskull from the evil Skeletor.
It’s still good versus evil in 2019, but on a universal scale. The Avengers – led by Captain America – are the Earth’s foremost defense against superpowered threats.
Toymate has extended hours in the lead-up to Christmas. Head to the Toymate website for details on store trading hours.