1st rule about growing up in the 80's (and I do rember the 70's) don't talk about growing up the in 80's.
Joking aside. The 80's were made of awesome and rad. The 80's were like, totally tubular. Cool to the max.
Lets start with how the 90s tried to jack every other decade. Kids in the 90s did not coin not. That came from the 80's and a metal band called Anthrax. Just needed to get that off my chest, because I was saying not a lot back in 1986. Just because Wayne and Garth ressurected it for another decade, doesn't mean its yours, kay?
Back to the 80s though. The golden age of the Bass Guitar, where every Duran Duran song had a killer bass line. It was the golden age of thrash metal! Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax all started their face melting anti-establishment music bombs. Madonna started being naughty and stirring up controversy in the 80's. We had the Police for a little while too. Rush introduced moving picutres, and all was in place for a kick ass musical decade. Paula Abdul wasn't fat, and actually nice to look at. Faith no More attacked MTV (which acutally showed nothing but music!) with Epic and trust me the Real Thing Album was kick ass. CD is nicer than Cassette though. I remember the Death of Vinyl, and a pile of records in my house.
Cartoons experienced a golden age of win, especially anime. Dragon Ball Z, Fist of the North Star, Macross and Robotech, and who could forget the Transformers and GI Joe? The Transformers movie alone was so epic children everywhere needed phsyciatric help to get over the death of Optimus Prime. My wife is reminding me that there was the Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, the Smurfs, the Snorks, mother truckin' He-Man, She-Ra, Jayce and the wheeled warriors and all other kind of crap that I WOULD wake up early saturday morning to watch. It also brought us Scrappy Doo, but who's counting.
Clothes were aweful in the 80s from the outside looking in. But hair, oh man, hair was a work of art every morning with your big ass can of Aquanet, and your favorite gravity defying do. Bands like Poison, Bon Jovi, and Motley Crue would make sure you knew the lyrics to your favorite ballad to impress the girls who would go crazy for their music. If your hair looks like theirs, you are in like Flynn.
AIDS was only whispered about in dark corners, Regan was pushing Star Wars on congress, wall street was kicking kids out of their homes while they clung to their Care Bears and Cabbage Patch kids, and Robert Downey Jr. was cool the first time. Panama, Cuba, and the Soviet Socialist Republic were the axis of evil. DeLoreans weren't just time machines, and then they were. Fax machines were non-existant to the every day guy. The internets were measured in Baud rates, and they were restricted to BBS services over your telephone line. You had five home computer architectures (or more) to choose from; Commodore/Amiga, Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), IBM compatable, Apple and Texas Instruments. All of your programs were stored on 5 1/2" single density floppys! Hard Drives were for rich people.
As an aside, I graduated High School in 1994, and left College in 98, so the 90's were pretty big for me too. Best thing about the 90s was getting married though