Dublin’s Top 10 Toys of the 1980s
Patrick Ryan takes a trawl through the archives to checkout what Irish children wanted from Santy in the 1980s.
Invented by sculptor and Professor of Architecture Ernő Rubik, one of the most popular toys of the early part of the decade was the “Magic Cube” a puzzle initially only available in stores in the designer’s native Hungary. Upgraded to meet western safety standards the renamed Rubik Cube won the 1980 German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle Toy of the Year, and quickly became a huge hit internationally.
Every Irish youngster had one – Moore Street traders even sold tiny working versions on keyrings, but by 1983 the craze was starting to wane.
Four decades later it is estimated that around 500 million Rubix Cubes had been sold, earning the product the title of the world’s bestselling puzzle game and bestselling toy, though in an interview with Time magazine back in 2009 it’s inventor revealed it wasn’t a toy at all.
“People like its beauty, simplicity and form. It’s really not a puzzle or a toy,” Dr Rubix explained. “It’s a piece of art.”
Lego has been an essential part of every Irish childhood for 60 years and by the 1980s the Danish company brought space to the crowded marketplace.
Legoland Space was the new kid on the block, cleverly using stacked plates rather than bricks to create thinner wings on craft, with colours like blue, grey, and white, alongside translucent yellow pieces and bright vehicle windscreens in buggies, walking robots, and lunar bases. “Minifigs” – little astronauts with helmets, which by the late part of the decade boasted transparent blue visors, and moving limbs – added to the fun.
Lego introduced eight new boxes in 1984, including the Intergalactic Command Base and the Robot Command Centre but eventually the big sets switched to the likes of the Monorail Transport System with a battery-powered train and 20 feet of track, selling for a hefty £100 (£500/€550 today) meaning hardpressed dads were the ones really bricking it by December.
40 years after it’s launch My Little Pony remains one of US toy giant Hasboro’s most successful ever products and is so popular today that the term “Brony” – “Bro” and “pony” – has been coined to describe obsessed modern collectors – many of them adult, and male.
Originally Cotton Candy, Butterscotch, Blossom, Blue Belle, Minty, and Snuzzle were made of soft vinyl and had long silky manes, stars, shamrocks, or flowers on their rumps winning the hearts of little girls around the world. By the mid 1980s the chunky toys came in a vast range of colours and sizes, in everything from seahorses to unicorns.
Some had jewelled eyes, which according to the My Little Pony comics were the result of them being enslaved to mine the precious stones by an evil wizard whom they later kill… Lookit, ‘twas the ‘80s. Kids in Kilmainham killing evil wizards with unicorns? Deadly.
Demand increased following the animated TV series and My Little Pony: The Movie, featuring the voices of Danny DeVito, his wife Rhea Perlman of Cheers fame, and Madeline Kahn. Hasbro first discontinued the line in 1992 by which time it had generated $1 billion, but thanks to reboots and the Bronys the money keeps rolling in.
In the 70s the Chopper was the bicycle everyone wanted. A few years later the Nottingham company did it again with the Raleigh Grifter. Knobbly tyres, a padded seat that absorbed every drop of Dublin rain, Sturmey-Archer gears which you changed by twisting the grips like on a motorbike – what more could you ask for?
Grifters cost about £140 (€500 today) and looked a bit like it’s new rival the BMX, but unlike those nimble stunt bikes weighed as much as a Sherman tank. Youngfellahs and youngwans bombing around Inchicore didn’t have to give an inch to anything in their way on Christmas Day.
They just ran it over.
It was also impossible to pull a wheelie on, unlike today’s bicycles; something Raleigh deserve a medal for.
Cha-ching! If any game could sum up the 1980s, with the emphasis on money and trying to prove that greed is good, it’s Monopoly.
The popular product has been around since 1903, and was originally called the “Landlord’s Game” by it’s feminist inventor Lizzy Magie to show the evils of capitalism. She created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all players won when wealth was created and a monopolist set which aimed to crush opponents.
Ironically Lizzy’s story was overlooked for decades and credit given to Charles Darrow who based his 1933 Monopoly game, which sold for about $2 (c.$50 today) on her earlier design.
In the ‘80s many homes had a box of Monopoly tucked away in the press complete with the 10 tiny player “tokens”: Battleship, Race Car, Cannon, Top Hat, Scotty Dog, Horse and Rider, Shoe, Thimble and Wheelbarrow.
At least 275 million Monopoly sets have been sold worldwide (and probably far more as the latest stats date back a decade) the same time in which ABC News stated that one billion people had played the game. Even those numbers probably pale in comparison to the dosh from McDonald’s nosh: the franchiser forked out $40+ million in advertising alone to push it’s official fastfood-linked Monopoly game in 2025 .
For many Irish kids of that era Transformers defined childhood. Like a lot of toys the concept for these warring, shapeshifting aliens started in Japan with a company called Tankara.
They quickly developed it as a joint venture with Hasbro who already had a partnership with Marvel Comics and in 1983 their cteative team provided an engaging backstory in their popular books, chronicling the adventures of Optimus Prime, leader of the heroic Autobots and Megatron, their arch enemy who led the evil Decepticons (who were a bit like the Progressive Democrats but could morph into all kinds of yokes from cars to guns).
The characters’ TV series regularly topped the TAM ratings after it’s debut in 1985. A year later The Transformers: The Movie appeared, spawning several sequels and to date generating $5.29 billion at the box office, proving the early prediction by Canadian film critic Richard Martin that: “Transformers don’t really die, they just become new products” completely true.
Parents love educational toys. Children hate them. Keep both camps happy and you will make a fortune. Texas Instruments did just that with Speak & Spell.
“The gadget had a speech synthesizer, a keyboard, an LCD screen and an expansion port for cartridges to play games like Hangman. Unlike its predecessors, this toy didn’t use prerecorded speech to help kids learn,” says Allie Townsend of Time magazine.
The bright red-and-yellow toy featured five play modes – Spell, Mystery Word, Say It, Secret Code and Letter – and boasted multiple levels to keep children entertained for hours.
In ’83 ET proved a turning point in paid-for “product placement” in movies and when Steven Spielberg’s alien used a Speak & Spell to phone home heart lights shone brightly everywhere and sales skyrocketed.
The gadget continues to sell in huge numbers today, with Amazon UK offering versions for just under €40, and the site lists almost 10,000 reviews from happy buyers.
Sports equipment is always in demand at Christmas and with many supporters wearing shirts on the terraces as they watched their clubs, replica football kits topped a lot of wish lists by the early ’80s. Soccer magazine Roy of the Rovers even got in early on the act, with their Gola gear available by mail order.
Official shirts from Liverpool, Man United, Arsenal, and (thanks to John Giles) Leeds United were hugely popular though hard to get your hands on here as they usually had to be imported directly.
Shoot! magazine carried ads from retailers with the jerseys made by companies like addidas, Umbro and Admiral but most kids were happy with O’Neills’ classic pinstripe Ireland shirt which proved so popular that the Walkinstown-based manufacturer have reintroduced it for grown-up kids whose ages now match their waistlines.
By 1987 the FAI had switched to addidas and the success of the Boys In Green at Euro 88 and Italia 90 ensured that fans’ Opel-sponsored home and away jerseys remained an essential part of wardrobes for years afterwards.
Cabbage Patch Kids dolls took America by storm at the dawn of the decade and by 1983 the must-have Christmas toy had arrived in the UK, and Ireland with a RRP of £25.
The products had a number of unique selling points: each had a different face, their own birth certificate, adoption papers… you even got a card on their first birthday.
It proved a marketing masterstroke. As always with the most popular toy shops were hard pressed to keep up with demand, driving Santy to the drink and mammy and daddy to the brink, with parents swallowing several grains of Valium while fretting that darling Deirdre’s dolly mightn’t make it by December 25th.
This success soon sparked a huge range of spinoff products, with the Cabbage Patch Kids’ logo appearing on items from nappies to breakfast cereal, stationary, bedding and prettymuch anything likely to make money. It did just that: generating over $2 billion (about $6.5 b/€5.5 b today) in retail sales in 1984 alone.
The toys continue to generate lotto-like sums in profits and remain popular among children and adult collectors, making Cabbage Patch Kids one of the longest running doll ranges in history.
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Masters of the Universe was Mattel’s sneaky attempt to muscle in on the swords-and-scorcey epic Conan The Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In the movies the bad guy suffers for his subterfuge. Meanwhile in the real world Mattel made a mint.
Launched in 1982 the range of 5.5-inch action figures led by the muscular He-Man and his nemesis Skeletor was an immediate success but soon sparked row with the rights holders of the movie who’d been in licensing negotiations with the toymakers, and later tried to sue them for copyright infringements but the courts found in Mattel’s favour and…
Whatever, mister. None of this mattered to kids in Santry visiting Santy.
He-Man spoke to every boys’ twin goals in life – to be admired as a hero and beat the bejaypers off someone in order to achieve that. The innovative figures’ appeal was obvious. Mekaneck’s head could periscope up and down while Man-E-Faces could change expression quicker than a Fianna Fáil minister grilled about the latest unemployment figures on Today Tonight.
By 1984 facing – no pun intended – increasing competitors in the boys’ action figure market Mattel greatly expanded the range and offered all kinds of new movements, rideable creatures (no sniggering please) a castle dungeon, and accessories like swords and axes.
I said no sniggering!
With an animated movie to help boost sales He-Man, She-Ra, Teela et cetera made more and more moolah for Mattel. Licensed toys are often linked to TV shows and films and today these make up one-in-three items on the shelves, meaning the live action Masters of the Universe film in 2026 looks certain to be another big moneymaker.
In October Mattel and Amazon MGM Studios jointly hosted “A Legend Reborn: Reimagining Masters of the Universe” at the Brand Licensing Europe conference in London and executives later agreed deals which will decide the content of letters to the North Pole in 12 months’ time. Cancel the cuppas for the elves and clear the shelves, Daidí na Nollag: He-Man-ia will soon be here.
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