Not too long ago, one of my friends sent me an e-mail with pictures of stuff that we used to have during the era of people around my age group (That means if you were born around the 1980s).
The e-mail brought back memories of the things I used to do as a kid.
Lets start with the stuff I used to watch.
THE TV
I started off with this cartoon called He-Man Thundercats. I used to think that little red dragon creature in the picture was cute… *sigh*, what a distorted perception I had of the word “cute” back then.
Then I slowly grew up to learn to watch… DORAEMON!!!
Who doesn’t love Doraemon right? Even up till now I treasure my Doraemon memories. At one point when I was studying in London my phone had a Doraemon ringtone to it.
And finally, when I was getting older, the testosterone began to kick in and like all boys my age, we went to more “MANLY” and cool stuff to watch…
TRANSFORMERS!!!
I remember how they would always play all these cartoons somewhere between 5.00PM – 6.00PM each day. As far as Little Timmy was concerned, 5.00PM-6.00PM is private TV time.. nobody was allowed to touch the remote.
THE MUNCHIES
That’s also around the time when they would play TV commercials for things like TORA.
I still remember some of the Tora commercials. They never seemed to focus on the chocolate itself but always focused on the toy they had in each box. The commercials would have a bunch of kids all playing with those little plastic toys whether they’re little flying helicopters or little plastic bugs that squirt water.
And let me tell you this, those ads worked!
Whenever I went to my tuition class I would always sneak out to buy a pack of Tora that cost RM1.00 each just for the toy but here’s the joke: the toy in the TV Commercial looks soo much cooler than the actual toy!
Like if the actual toy could squirt water, it could squirt up to 5CM away but the toy in the TV Commercial looked like it could squirt water to 10 miles from where you were standing.
The thing about Tora also is that they keep updating it with new toys and new commercials almost each month so I never stop buying them. I mean once I feel that I’ve gotten all the Tora toys available, *POOF* another commercial with a new toy would appear in front of me and I would go out and buy it again.
But while I only bought Tora for the toys, I made sure my mum bought me plenty of these.
I used to love this…. and I still don’t understand why though. It’s just sugar on a biscuit. I used to like biting off the sugar and eating it on its own before going on to its biscuit.
Almost as much as I liked these little animal crackers.
But here’s what I loved the most of all the munchies we had back then.
BUBBLE GUM!!!
I mean I don’t know but somehow back in my school, when you were eating bubble gum, you were “COOL”. Probably because if you’re not allowed to bring bubble gum to school and if you got caught you get a huge scolding from teachers but I guess even as early as back then, girls loved guys who broke rules and acted all dangerous and so.
I also used to love this bubble gum for the temporary ‘tattoo’ that you could put on to your arm or anywhere. Just add a bit of water and stick it on till it dries.
THE TOYS
Then comes the things we play with.
I guess all boys grew up with these little toy soldiers.
I don’t know what it is about them but I loved lining up an entire freaking army of them all around my room. Funny thing though is after I’ve lined them up, I kinda lose my way on what to do with them. I mean they don’t exactly shoot each other or move around on their own.
So what I would end up doing is getting one of my big toy trucks and ramming them all down, making sound effects of the trampled soldiers
“AIEEEEE!!!!! AIEEEeeeee!!!!”
Of course, boys love to play with girls too and girls don’t fancy toy soldiers (No they think their Barbie Dolls are all so much better eventhough they don’t come armed with bazookas and M-16s).
So for games with girls, we used to play a card game called
“HAPPY FAMILY”.
I remember how after exams we would always play a lot of “Happy Family” in school. Probably one of the few games we were allowed to bring to school to play after we were done with our exams.
And when we weren’t allowed to bring anything to school before exams, the girls used to play games like this with the boys.
Now I never really friggin understood what the hell this paper thing was supposed to do but I think it was supposed to somehow tell my fortune or something… but I don’t know and I didn’t care… a girl was playing a game with me and that was the only thing that mattered.
Heck I lived a very confused childhood. On one hand I loved the attention the girls in my class gave me, but on the other hand I was the leader of the G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS) club that I started in primary school after reading way too much of Calvin & Hobbes.
Of course by the time I turned 13, hormones kicked in and I realized that I did like girls after all.. very very much indeed.
But well among the other cool toys I used to play with friends was this.
This little revolver gun that shoots a very small dose of gunpowder.
All my friends used to arm themselves with this and we would go hiding under cars and all shooting at each other and always shouting
“I GOT YOU I GOT YOU I GOT YOU!!!”
and some of us shouting back
“NO… I GOT YOU FIRST!!!”
or
“NOO!!! YOU MISSED ME!!! I MOVED AWAY”.
I was never too sure how anyone knew whether we hit or missed but I remember thinking to myself at one point:
“Sonofabitch always say that you move away… wait till I get a real gun and we’ll see you dodge my real bullet”.
Today all the friends I used to play this with are all grown ups working at big companies with girlfriends. Ishh … how did we even make it this far.
Now here’s the last thing that really brought back loads of memories.
The PENCILBOX.
Somehow back in primary school it was cool to have pencilboxes like these full of buttons to press. They had everything from pencil sharpeners, to a million different compartments and probably a coffee maker in there somewhere.
That was like the status symbol in school. The better your pencilbox the richer you were.. eventhough one of those probably one cost like RM5 – RM10 each.
Funny thing is how that pencilbox so quickly ran out of fashion. From being cool in primary school, to quickly becoming “childish” by the time we hit secondary school. By the time you were Form 5, your pencilbox had better me nothing more than a zip pencilcase or you were a lame ass.
But ahh.. finally.. there were the erasers.
All the girls took pride in little cute-sy erasers like this.
Which most of them never used to rub anything, funny enough. I mean all it was there for was to make their pencilboxes look pretty.
The guys like myself however… WE LOVED… THE FLAG ERASERS!!!
and I would collect loads and loads of them with all the different countries.
Ahh… I wonder if the kids of today grow up to the same or similar childhood as we all did during our time. I know they probably don’t watch He-Man or eat Tora anymore but maybe … just maybe… they still collect Flag Erasers from different countries.
Do any of you guys remember all this?
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space