A blog about all of the old gizmo gadgets you used to have when you were a kid. We all remember the Super Nintendo, but what about the lesser known toys? Remember that thing you had that had two cords, one went into the TV and one went into your ear? And then you would listen to that sweet radio music? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
This is a blog about all of those old Gizmo Gadgets from back in the day. If you can remember it, we’re gonna blog about it.
Zounds! Did you have one of these? I used to have one of these and it was just the cats pajamas. The only thing I remember is that it was an 89 cent gadget that used actual mercury to make a bead roll back and forth in a plastic tube.
Did you have one of these? Mine was pink and blue with a silver top. It had a little sticker on the side that said “Made In Hong Kong”. I remember because it would always fall off when I would carry it around with me everywhere I went.
I think the thing about this toy that really appealed to me, besides the fact that it was actually made out of mercury (which is kind of cool), was how “smooth” it felt in your hand. It felt like glass. So much so, that I thought if you dropped it on the ground it would shatter into a million pieces.
I don’t know what ever happened to my “mercury” gizmo. Maybe my mom threw it away because she thought it was filled with deadly mercury? Maybe my dog ate it? Or maybe someone stole it from me at school…
I have always been fascinated with gadgets and gizmos. Remember the first digital watch? How about electric can openers or electric carving knives? I was a big fan of the black and white portable television. And then there was that coke-bottle shaped portable phone.
I couldn’t wait for technology to get better and smaller. The first digital watch I had was huge and it didn’t work half of the time, but it was my first step into the future. I used to think I would be driving around in my jet car by now and we would all be living on the moon!
The smoke detector is one of my favorite gadgets because it really does save lives. There are other gadgets I’m not so crazy about like the cordless phone. That thing is so confusing to figure out and if you lose it you are up a creek! A lot of our gadgets do more harm than good, but we seem to be addicted to them anyway.
The things that go on in this blog are the things that you had as a kid or still have in your home even though you are a grown up.
Can you remember the first time you got a household gadget that made your life easier and you wondered how you ever lived without it? For me, it was the cordless phone. It wasn’t the first one on the market, but I didn’t have one until my sister gave me hers, and then I felt so liberated. I could move around the house and yard with the phone, or take it with me when I went for a walk.
You talk about technology moving ahead at light speed! My parents’ house and my own home were equipped with rotary dial phones throughout my childhood years. When push-button phones came out in the 1970s, it was quite an adjustment for people who are used to dialing a number with a finger, but we all adapted to this new technology pretty quickly.
The original C64 was first released in August, 1982 and is commenly referred to as the breadbox or breadbin version. This was the first computer that I owned. I remember buying it at a store called Pic ‘N’ Save. It cost me $200 which seemed like an awful lot of money at the time. It was a great machine for its time and it had some incredible games.
The C64C was released in 1986 and is commonly referred to as the pizza box version. The unit itself has no external power supply and uses an internal power supply and has a totally different look and feel than the original unit.
This is a Commodore Amiga 500 computer which is also known as the A500. The release date was 1987 and was originally sold with 1 megabyte of ram (Amiga 500+ models were 2 megabytes). It has a 68000 Motorola processor running at 7Mhz.
The Amiga 2000 pictured above (which is also known as the A2000) was released in 1987 as well. The base model came with 1 megabyte of ram but this can be expanded up to 8 megabytes via the expansion slots on the motherboard.
The ATARI 2600 JR sometimes called 2600 Jr or 2600 Junior, debuted in 1986 and