I really do enjoy this series, a lot of the advertisements featured so far have taken me right back to my youth (which was a long, long time ago now), but I’ll admit the promotional pages contained in this fifth part didn’t result in any purchases or gifts for me in the 80s. That’s not to say they don’t bring back certain memories, though.
In the 80s there was one teeny, tiny little thing that made a huge impact on our daily lives, despite the fact we rarely saw it. From toys to VCRs, from washing machines to the explosion of home computers that entered our homes. It could even be found resting on our wrists. That little, unassuming thing that hid inside more and more of the devices we used was, of course, the microchip.
It’s something that links all of our adverts, too. Beginning with Casio’s watches containing those elaborate stopwatches! Don’t laugh, I remember being very jealous of a friend who had a digital watch that recorded lap times, even though I’d no need for such a feature. Remembering my own basic watches of the time and seeing Michael Knight talk to K.I.T.T. through his, every time I use my smart watch today I feel like I’m living in some sci-fi future.
It’s not only the passage of time and the leaps in technology compared to the 80s that’s making me feel old. I think the fact the next item sounds so absolutely horrific is because I’m now a boring old fart. As a kid I may have gotten about ten minutes of fun out of a keyboard that used sampled sound effects from around the house to produce “music”, but as an adult I can think of nothing worse than this thing.
As it’s nearly Christmas, I’m reminded of a scene in my favourite Christmas movie, Fred Claus. At one point Santa’s brother, who is desperately trying to avoid anything to do with the season, is subjected to a taxi ride with a radio station playing nothing but Jingle Bells with the notes replaced by cat meows and dog barks. It’s horrific! That’s essentially what this keyboard is.
Much better for the kids would’ve been a real keyboard on which they could learn to play actual music and up stepped Yamaha who ran these next two ads over a handful of OiNKs. The Starmakers would’ve appealed because the reason behind it is right there in the name; let’s buy our child this so they can learn to play proper music, become famous and support us later in life. Well, maybe not. But you get my point. I do like the ads though, especially the guitar-shaped one, it’s so very 80s.
I remember a friend of mine in high school was incredibly talented musically. He could literally listen to a tune once or twice and play it back on a piano. He also had two huge Yamaha keyboards in his bedroom and I sat in awe one day as he spent no more then three hours one Saturday afternoon turning the Airwolf theme tune (which wasn’t sampled, he played it from scratch) into a dance track. He should’ve released it!
In the later weekly editions of OiNK an advert appeared for a new computer game and its release confused me at the time. I was aware of The Three Stooges and I think we all saw the odd live-action or animated clip growing up, but I always felt their humour was too old-fashioned for me. So I didn’t understand why they were suddenly appearing in a computer game for us young ‘uns.
I must’ve been an outlier though because apparently the game was very popular, doing well enough to be adapted to consoles such as the GameBoy Advance in the next decade. Throughout the 80s VHS collections of their TV shows were also released and an arcade game was revealed in 1984, followed up with this for home computers. In the game the Stooges had to partake in odd jobs to raise money to save their local orphanage.
Given how outdated I personally felt their humour to be as a young boy I was even more surprised to see some gloriously illustrated strips appear in two issues of OiNK. Co-editor Patrick Gallagher has confirmed these were exclusive to OiNK and were made to tie in with the release of the game. It’s not the comic’s fault I never got on with the Stooges’ humour, a lot of people loved them and I’m sure many enjoyed the strips so I’m glad these little oddities exist, especially as they give us a reason to enjoy some more art from the incredible Malcolm Douglas (aka J.T. Dogg).
The final advert for an electronic piece of entertainment wasn’t an advert in the traditional sense but rather a promo OiNK pieced together to tell us about the free comic sitting inside the pages of Crash magazine on our newsagents’ shelves, as well as the comic’s own computer game of course. You can check out the free comic, the special feature inside that issue of Crash and the game itself in a special section of the blog devoted to the game.
The rise of the microchip and computerised technology in the 80s was a wonder to be a part of, especially at such a young and impressionable age. I’ve stared in wonder at my friend’s very young kids and how quickly they’ve grasped iPads and iPhones and I think I now know how my own parents felt four decades ago!
Right, so we’ve only one more part of this series to go, in which I’ll be rounding up the leftover miscellaneous ads from the pages of OiNK. Look out for that in 2026.
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