Great Scott!
I was very excited to see the name of the April challenge badge was Back To The Future! I’m pretty retro and these films were firm favourites in our house when we were growing up.
The first thing I did was to binge all three films over one weekend. I love them! (Side note: I heartily recommend the BTTF musical in London). I prefer when the films are set in the past, the future parts have always been irksome for me. The technology- still using fax machines and not a mobile phone in sight! It is a shame we don’t have Hoverboards though, they would be fun.
I had a go at some retro arcade games, albeit on my phone. I am old enough to have played a couple of these in the 80s on arcade machines. Pac-Man is a classic, it was (and still is) great fun. We even had Pac-Man soft toys!
I also had a go at playing Galaga, I wasn’t very good at it 🤣
The recreation of a retro dessert was something I was looking forward to doing, it also fits one clause for Baker (classic pudding) and Confectioner (Foreign dessert- my research tells me it is from either the USA in the 1920s or from Brazil as that’s where pineapples originated). It feels like a 1970s dessert to me, so it also fits the clause for cooking a dish from a 1970s dinner party. We had it after a sweet and sour chicken stir fry, which I think became popular with the masses in the seventies also.
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| It was delicious! |
I dug out my original 1980s Spirograph, I was hospitalised as a youngster in the 80s and someone bought me a Spirograph Cyclex…I was hooked! I still love Spirograh to this day and was thrilled to be able to have another play.
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| Still with the original pens! They were dead. |
As a retro bonus, when I opened the Spirograph box I found this gloriously 80s Benetton clipboard!
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| So 80s! |
I shared my joy of the Spirograph with the Leicestershire rebellion, where we also talked about our youth and childhoods in Leicester. While at our Rebellion meet up we also danced the Time Warp, there is video evidence but I don’t seem to have it (what a shame!).
Several of the Rebels had Tamagotchis at the meet up, one offered to lend me hers but the constant noise would have bothered me so I kept several alive on the Tamagotchi Forever app, here they cannot die but if you are successful with them they mature to adulthood and move into an apartment.
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| Evolving! |
I made a profile of myself as a child:
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| I didn’t become a hairdresser |
And a collage of my favourite childhood things:
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| That cassette deck was one of my all-time favourite birthday presents. I still love NKOTB too! |
I loved Fraggle Rock when I was young, on Apple TV you can watch all of the old series and there is also a modern reboot. I watched a few episodes of the original version and the first episode of the reboot. They both have the same message of caring and the songs are sweet on both versions. Obviously the new version has slicker special effects but in the original the puppets and automatons add to the charm. In the UK, the Fraggles lived under a lighthouse and the “outer space” sections were a lighthouse keeper called The Captain (played by Fulton Mackay from Porridge) and Sprocket. I was sad to discover that Apple TV only has the US version with Doc and Sprocket, and that only 12 UK episodes have survived.
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| The original Fraggles |
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| The reboot, Back to the Rock |
Mokey has a new look in the new series, I think to make her more like an older sister type character. She was mother like in the original.
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| The Captain and Sprocket |
Finally, I used AI (Chat GPT) and asked it to help me do one other clause. I asked it to help me design a Time Machine and here is the result (several screenshots to follow!):
AI created images or all three version of the Chrono-Drifter:
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| Steampunk carriage |
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| Futuristic pod |
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| Grand library |
At the time I was working on this badge there was a craze for getting AI to make action figures of yourself. So I also got ChatGPT to make one of me and one of my little dog.
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| Elsie is as sweet as this in real life too! |
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| I wish life was this aesthetically pleasing |
And with that I think I’ve done all I can. I can’t tell you the amount of joy and nostalgia I got out of this badge, seeing everyone’s work on the Facebook page has been brilliant. So many great memories of childhood!
This badge has truly been powered by a flux capacitor-it’s what makes time travel possible!
Thanks for the memories!
Take care
E x
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