They were two legendary toy car companies that were a part of growing up for millions of kids. But behind the scenes, it was a cutthroat battle for our brand allegiance.

Matchbox and Hot Wheels had been fighting it out since the late 1960s, and even though both brands went through tumultuous times in the 70s and into the 80s, the toys stayed strong and even grew in popularity.

The die-cast toy car industry of the 1980s was so big that several other companies entered the picture. From Sears to generic knock-offs, everyone wanted a piece of the action. Including one company that decided they were going to make things much smaller...

• The Everything 80s Movie Review Podcast: Patreon.com/80s

Unsolved Mysteries was one of the scariest TV shows in the 80s, especially if you were a younger viewer... But it was also one of the most-watched shows of the decade.

Its roots go back to the early 80s, and the show went through several iterations and hosts, including Perry Mason himself. But eventually came the host with one of the most distinctive voices in television history: Robert Stack.

You'll hear why its intense theme music was deliberately created to scare you, how viewers became part of the story, and how it helped launch the true crime boom from America's Most Wanted to today's podcasts.

And despite debuting nearly 40 years ago, Unsolved Mysteries is still with us to this day...

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It felt like a true golden age. An era that gave us multiple sports dynasties and individual athletes that seemed larger than life.

The 1980s weren't just a historic era for the Big Four North American sports, but it led to some generational rivalries. Rivalries that included a changing of the guard in the NHL and NFL, and an on-court rivalry between the bad boys of the NBA and the future of the league.

In the 1980s, we also saw two women battle it out for tennis supremacy, one of the greatest boxing matches of all time, and an original 6 battle from the 1940s, still going on in the 80s.

And then, there was what may be the true defining rivalry of the 1980s: Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and a decade-long battle between the Lakers and the Celtics.

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It's been called the "Spotify of the 80s," and if you grew up back then, you know The Columbia House Record and Tape Club was not only your access to a vast world of music, but it also seemed too good to be true...

Twelve albums for a penny? Who could resist? It turns out, not a lot, but little did we know that by sending that penny in, we were committing to a years-long fulfillment obligation.

Today we look back on the seven-decade history of Columbia House, a program that started as a simple record club in the 1950s, but grew into a massive powerhouse in the 1980s.

Columbia House was a huge part of growing up in the 80s, and, amazingly, still existed right up to the time of this recording in 2026...

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Peter Cullen was not just the iconic voice of Optimus Prime on the Transformers, but was also a part of more 1980s cartoon shows than you may realize.

Today we look back at the remarkable career of the man who became one of the defining voices for an entire generation. His work spanned an incredible six decades, including hundreds of animated characters.

He also created sound effects for two of the biggest blockbuster movies of the 1980s. And besides being the voice of Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen was also the voice of another one of the most famous cartoon characters in history.

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie review: Patreon.com/80s

The early 1980s were a golden age for video games. From iconic arcade games like Space Invaders and Pac-Man to the growth of home consoles like the Atari 2600, it felt like a magical time for kids and video game lovers.

But all of that almost came to an abrupt end...

In the early 80s, video games — specifically arcade games—had caught on so quickly and spread so far that many wondered whether it was healthy for kids to play them for hours on end. It wasn't just physical concerns, but psychological ones, too.

From the UK to North America, arcade games were soon under attack, and many cities were taking measures to restrict kids from playing them.

It was an issue that went all the way to the Supreme Court, and a generation had no idea how close we came to losing them...

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A lot of us grew up in the 1980s with Flinstone vitamins. Or you may have had one of the many other kids' chewable vitamins endorsed by cartoon characters and other famous figures.

This was a time when kids' health products, vitamin supplements, and some medicines had become indistinguishable from candy -- and that had created a lot of issues...

Children overconsuming these great-tasting products had been an issue for decades, but in the 1980s, it grew out of control as candy-flavored health products exploded onto the market. Products like children's candy-flavored vitamins were being heavily promoted--with no restrictions--and kids were consuming them more than ever...

This was also having a spillover effect into the world of breakfast cereals, as the line between health and candy had really started to blur...

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade movie review: Patreon.com/80s

Welcome to a free preview of the Everything 80s Movie Review Podcast that you can find at Patreon.com. This is a previous episode devoted to one of the defining movies of the entire 1980s: The Karate Kid.

In this episode, we do a full plot recap, then look at what went into making this era-defining movie. That includes taking the direction of the original Rocky, but honing the themes to younger viewers.

We then look at the release and phenomenal success of the Karate Kid, a film that came out during one of the most competitive summers of the 1980s. And we finish by looking at the lasting legacy of the movie that many describe as their all-time favorite.

• The Everything 80s Movie Review Podcast: Patreon.com/80s