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TEEN ROMANCE SERIES:

Decades before there were supernatural teen romance stories, there were realistic ones, many of which I read as a teen.

Some of the more popular series were Sweet Dreams, Sweet Valley High, First Love From Silhouette, and Wildfire. I know I read at least one book from each series, especially Sweet Dreams and Silhouette. Our junior high school library had Sweet Dreams books, but they were always checked out! I literally only got to borrow two of them ever! I was thus buying a lot of these books. Some I got from book orders and book fairs, but most came from bookstores at the mall, and one or two from a bookstore we once had in town.

 

Several years ago, I discovered this blog which lists teen romance series of the 1980s. It brought back memories, and I also discovered series from that time that I had never heard of. I don't know how I missed them! Now this is something to pick up at thrift stores should I ever find them. I currently have some used books from the series pictured above.

TOP 40 COUNTDOWNS:

Most people are familiar with American Top 40, with Casey Kasem. No radio station in my area seemed to carry that show, however, as far as I knew. However, one Sunday in 1983, I stumbled onto one called Countdown America on a station in San Jose, CA. This one followed the Radio & Records chart, rather than Billboard. I got hooked and began listening every Sunday thereafter. Originally, it was only Top 30 and three hours long, but expanded to four hours at the beginning of 1984. Unfortunately, the first show from '84, once uploaded on Mix Cloud, is now unavailable, or I would have linked to it. I'm upset! When I first discovered it, I was excited! That was a lot of memories! Here, however, you can see the list from that week.  I remember that countdown show from two weeks later, when "Say, Say, Say" ended its run at the top.

Countdown America was later renamed Countdown USA, which lasted until 1990. Both versions of the countdown had year-end countdowns called "The Top _ of '_" (fill in the blanks with the last two digits of the year). You could send away for the list. A group on Facebook posted the one from 1984, which I sent away for and still have somewhere:

TV GUIDE:

I so looked forward to getting TV Guide each week, back when it had regional editions. In my area we got the San Francisco Metro Edition, until 2000, when the Santa Clara County Edition was launched. Ever since the regional editions stopped, I have not bothered with the magazine. Like Rolling Stone, I had a subscription. I still have some TV Guides in a plastic storage tub in the garage, along with Rolling Stone.  Covers like these is how I remember TV Guide:

TEDDY BEARS:

These were popular among teen girls. I had stickers of bears and had a few of these things:

I had more than one bear sweater, one of which I still have. I'm amazed it still fits. It has shown few signs of wear.

TV DINNERS:

I always loved it when I got to eat TV dinners. Swanson and Banquet were the most popular ones. These were the old ones that came in metal trays. They were so quick and easy to eat on nights when people were too tired to cook. 

Nowadays, I tend to have the TV on when eating, so basically every dinner is a TV dinner to me 🙂

TRIVIAL PURSUIT:

I lusted after this game for Christmas in 1987, and I got it. It was a rare treat when we had others over who liked to play. I can still recall some of the questions. I don't know where the set I got back then is now, but I recently won a trivia contest at the local library and the prize was--a Trivial Pursuit game, the Classic Edition! It's still in the plastic shrink wrap. 

TEXTBOOKS:

Every year we got different ones for each class and we could see who used the book during previous school years. And we were required to cover the books, often using brown paper grocery bags. 

Yes, that Blake Shelton. Click here to see more.

TWINKIES:

Nearly everyone then ate some Twinkies and their sister snack foods, Ding Dongs, Cupcakes, Crocodiles, and such. Many will recall seeing these wrapped in foil, and seeing the logo below (the one I grew up with):

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TIME to go now. UNTIL tomorrow.