80s-90s gifts

Travel brochures always promise the moon. Tatooine promises you two suns. The desert planet may not exactly be a preferred vacation destination - s...

In Super Mario, the best surprises hide behind those yellow question mark blocks – coins, power-ups, or extra lives. You never know what's inside u...

"I am the one who knocks" - one of the most iconic sentences in TV history. But what if the most famous plumber in the video game world had decided...

With the Pokémon Pokéball sandwich maker, your snack ends up where it belongs: neatly caught between two slices of toast. Shiny black on the outsid...

Anyone who drinks sake like a warrior from the world of Dragon Ball should do so in style. The Dragon Ball Z Blue Shenlong Sake Set made of ceramic...

In 1954 a man in a rubber suit stomped through a model city made of balsa wood, and cinema was never the same afterwards. Godzilla was never just a...

You run through level after level, jump over chasms, dodge turtles - and then, just before you give up, it glows: the green mushroom. A 1-UP. An ex...

If your breakfast deserves a special treat that doesn't sound like "standard toast", this gadget is practically a little kitchen companion from Kan...

Chrome, Formica and a counter where the refill arrives before anyone asks: the American diner of the eighties ran on a fixed inventory. Somewhere i...

In the Mushroom Kingdom the important things hang in mid air anyway: the Question Block that spits out a coin after a solid headbutt from below, an...

There is that one moment in Super Mario where nothing can touch you: the Super Star chimes, the music speeds up, and for a few seconds you simply r...

Let's be honest: The Empire's white soldiers are famous for many things. For their spotless armor. For their unwavering loyalty. For their… well, a...

In the 1960s, they hung in travel agencies: bold posters that made distant destinations tangible with a single image. NASA has embraced this tradit...

Red or Blue? Since the first Pokémon games on the Game Boy, the choice of starter Pokémon has divided friendships and schoolyards. Bulbasaur fans, ...

Steven Rhodes is the illustrator behind these delightfully dark retro images that look like harmless 1970s schoolbooks – until you take a closer lo...

Who hasn't dreamed of turning to Shenlong with a wish? While the dragon himself may be difficult to summon, you can at least treat yourself to a li...

"ThunderCats, Ho!" – if you grew up with this battle cry, you know: the Sword of Omens is no ordinary sword. It carries the Eye of Thundera, a red ...

88 miles per hour: no other number in film history sounds quite so much like a departure. Below it, the silver runabout is just a car with a stiff ...

In the nineties the lunch box was a status symbol. Anyone who had one with their favourite character on the lid automatically sat at the right tabl...

In Minecraft you know: when the sun goes down, it gets dangerous. Torches quick! In real life, this little guy now takes care of that for you. The ...

On October 21, 2015, Marty McFly lands right in the middle of the future in Back to the Future Part II, marvelling at floating hoverboards, self-la...

In the world of Sonic the Hedgehog, one thing counts above all: speed. The blue hedgehog races through loops and green hills at supersonic pace, co...

Back then, when Star Wars was still recorded on VHS, "new" was a feeling that smelled of plastic cassettes and heated tube TVs. And then came the p...

The Pokémon Pokéball Toaster is the kind of kitchen gadget that makes even morning grouches look like they've just stepped out of the Pokécenter. I...

Some sounds sit deeper than any melody. The short bright chime when Mario jumps up into a question block from below and a coin pops out on top is o...

Some licence plates you still know by heart after forty years. OUTATIME sits on the back of the DeLorean, a Californian squeeze of “out of time”. A...

No villain has lost as often and lost his temper as rarely as Skeletor. The lord of the underworld has been marching against He-Man in front of Cas...

By the power of Grayskull! Prince Adam raises the sword, the lightning comes down, and the bored courtier turns into He-Man. The series Revelation ...

In the summer of 1975 the beaches stayed empty, because one film had convinced half the world that something with a great many teeth was waiting in...

At some point the last pizza box is empty, the television is only hissing away to itself, and things go quiet under the streets of New York. That i...

There is one moment in the Mario games when the music suddenly rattles off at double speed with no warning at all. For a few seconds the whole scre...

Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo: art lovers hear those four names and think of the painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, everybo...

A hundred coins and the counter flips over into an extra life. Hardly any game has made collecting loose change as satisfying as Super Mario, and a...

The Question Block is the politest form of uncertainty there is. It hovers, glows gold and announces that something is inside without telling you w...

A summer job at an ice cream parlour sounds like sunshine and chocolate sprinkles until you see the uniform: a blue and white striped sailor dress,...

In the eighties a black band shirt worked a lot like an ID card. Walk across the schoolyard in one and you never had to explain what was sitting in...