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I Grew Up 80s

I Grew Up 80s

Revisit the vibrancy and innovation that defined a decade! 

Tickets cost £5 for adults, £3 for children or £14 for a family of up to five (maximum 2 adults)

Book 'I Grew Up 80s' Admission (opens new window)

 

A role playing game in which one player acts as a ‘dungeon master’ who describes the environment and dangers, whilst the others assume the role of a party of adventurers. Many sided dice are used to decide the outcomes.
Although the movie is mostly set in 1955, it remains one of the quintessential 80s movies with great characters and a hugely entertaining plot.
One of the most successful launches in toy industry history 3 million Cabbage Patch Kids were ‘adopted’ in 1983.
Confectionery casualties of the 80s included Texan bars, Peanut Treets and 5,4,3,2,1. Marathon and Opal Fruits were rebranded as Snickers and Starburst in the 90s.
A ‘Slush Puppie ’ maker in your own home was every 80s kids dream.
During the height of the Rubik’s Cube craze from 1980 83 an estimated 200 million cubes were sold.
Smurf figurines attained peak popularity in the 1980s thanks to the cartoon series which launched in 1981.
Sony’s Walkman was the original ‘personal stereo’ of the 80s and so definitive that the multitude of rival products were often nicknamed Walkman’s too.
The Beano, with its anarchic cast of characters who got up to all manner of pranks, had great success, with its Fan Club achieving one-million members in 1988.
Transformers ‘robots in disguise’ pitched the heroic Autobots against the evil Decepticons (Megatron). 80s era toys are now known as ‘Gen One’ and the franchise continues to this day.

 

A fun and nostalgic showcase of memorabilia from the 'greatest decade in the history of history' is coming to The Novium Museum!

Opening on Saturday, 7 December 'I Grew Up 80s' is set to provide a colourful trip down memory lane, capturing what the decade was like from a child's perspective when music was on cassettes, shellsuits and leg warmers were must-haves and everyone received a Rubik's Cube for Christmas.

The period saw huge developments in science, technology, fashion, entertainment and the way we interact with each other. The exhibition will explore life before the internet and investigates the shared cultural experience of childhood in the 1980s.

Visitors will find more than 200 items of memorabilia showcasing the youthful exuberance of the decade, from toys such as Care Bears, My Little Pony and Transformers, to album covers of timeless musicians like Queen, George Michael, Phil Collins and Kate Bush.

'I Grew Up 80s' will be a nostalgic trip down memory lane for many of our visitors, but will also provide an enlightening insight for younger visitors to see the differences between then and now.

As well as exploring what childhood looked like for their parents, children can explore interactive elements of the exhibition including 80s dress up, trivia questions, games and  1980s themed toys,  including many old childhood 'must-haves'!

The exhibition will also feature a vintage Donkey Kong arcade game, which visitors can try their hand at for 50p per play.

The exhibition will launch with a free 'Celebration of the 1980s' event on Saturday 7 December and we'll also be running a special events programme including an 80s Bingo Night with Dawn Gracie on Friday 13 December. Find out more by visiting: www.thenovium.org/whatson

'I Grew Up 80s' opens at The Novium Museum on Saturday 7 December 2024 and runs until Saturday 8 June 2025. Tickets cost £5 for adults, £3 for children or £14 for a family of up to five (maximum 2 adults). 

In ’83 Richard Branson’s Virgin and EMI joined forces to release thirty original chart hits together. ‘Now’ went triple platinum and is still going strong today.
One of the first toy lines to foster a ‘collect them all’ mentality with a steady release of subtly different figurines (with names like Sunbeam, Posey and Applejack), resulting in 150 million ponies sold during the 1980s.
Weighing 15KG and costing over £2,000 in today’s money, Sony’s C5 Betamax recorder was a serious piece of tech and even came with a wired remote control.
Following their acclaimed performance at Live Aid, Queen returned to the studio to create A Kind Of Magic . The album spent 63 weeks in the UK chart and sold 6 million worldwide (it also served as a soundtrack to Highlander
In the early 80s the Atari console provided the best way to bring the amusement arcade into your own home, although the cartridges were not cheap (£25+ for new titles, around £100 adjusted for inflation today).

 

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