All Geeks

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Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future.

The glorious 25 May is once again upon us, towels are being folded correctly and thousands of voices are suddenly crying out in pain as they discover another little tweak to a certain film that was first released 35 years ago today. If that isn’t enough for you to celebrate, today is also once again Geek Pride Day. Last year IT recruitment agency Modis commissioned a survey of 1,000 Americans on their opinions around the term geek, and they’ve run it again this year to see how things have changed...

The ’80′s and early ’90′s were a magical decade for gadgets for kids. Computing power and display technology were evolving and cost effective enough to penetrate the toy market in a big way. Purely mechanical toys evolved into electromechanical toys and gave birth to the digital toy revolution. For example, LED games of the ’70′s were replaced by Tiger LCD games which were replaced by the Nintendo Gameboy and so on.

Companies also began to innovate on educational toys for kids, whether it was teaching them about electronics, programming, or offering educational games. Additionally, electronics became cheap enough to expand what toys were capable of doing, from playing music to increased interactivity. As a child of the ’80′s, I had many of these toys and played with them much longer than a kid’s attention span would dictate.

A year ago, one of my first posts for GeekDad was a popular article reminiscing about five of these more educational toys. I’ve taken those and added five more that I have the fondest memories of – whether they were my own or my neighbors toys which were coveted the most. And hoping to instill that same child-like wonder in my kids, I’ve also included what the modern equivalents are in the market today....