The Spacehopper - 1960s Pop Culture First & Foremost... - UPDATED

The famous Mettoy space hopper first bounced into the UK in 1968...

Many thanks to Mark for this interesting e-mail:

I don't remember the 70s, but the Beeb made a groovy job of them in "The I Love 70s" progs. I'm surprised by things I read on here and on your Spacehopper blog that the spacehopper wasn't released in the 70s. You have a feature on "The Perishers" on Spacehopper and I have some old books of them with Baby Grumpling having a spacehopper around 1973.

I agree with you, Mark - the BBC DID make a groovy job of the 1970s - the only trouble was, a lot of it wasn't accurate.

The space hopper newspaper ad from 1969 on the "Space hopper" blog, and its labelling as a "Trend", indicates that the hopper was up and bouncing in Britain well before the end of the 1960s. We've since found many newspaper ads from April 1968 onwards, revealing that the space hopper was available and articles about spacehopper races from 1968 onwards - including one in Hyde Park, London, in 1968 as part of a huge charity effort.

1969 - space hopper races had been all the rage since 1968.

The BBC's I Love... series had a little tag in the opening titles informing the world that the hopper was released in 1968. But the I Love website states that the first hoppers arrived here in 1971 - or at least it did the last time I looked!

Check the date - May 1968!

The Toy Retailers Association (formerly the British Association of Toy Retailers) was listing Clackers as the "overwhelming toy mania of 1971" - until the I Love 1970s series, when the association joined the merry chorus, labelling the hopper a new arrival and "Craze of the Year" for 1971. This was done recently. The BATR had no "Craze of the Year" award in 1971. Nor any other year.

And as for Baby Grumpling - true he did get a hopper c. 1972 or 73, but Perishers writer Maurice Dodd wrote in the introduction to Omnibus No 3:

Some little time ago I introduced a space hopper, which is an inflatable toy, into the strip. That toy had been hopping around my house for about five years until, when my children had outgrown it, I gave it to my Godson. It was only when I saw him enjoying it I recognised it as a potential runner in the giggle stakes and gave one to Baby Grumpling.

So, the space hopper had been around Mr Dodd's house for about five years when he introduced one into The Perishers strip in 1972/3. Work it out.

An acquaintance of mine contributed some items to the I Love 1970s series. He was astounded that most of the researchers were too young to remember much, if any of the 70s, and suggested that, anyway, the 60s would be a better decade for the series. He was informed by one young researcher that they were too far back, and nobody remembered them!

So, instead, the researchers transplanted 60s pop culture into the 70s as new fads.

My acquaintance advised about an item lined up for the I Love The 1970s series:

"Er, I think you'll find that's 1980s pop culture. It was released in 1980."

"Too late now, it's scheduled," he was told.

So some 1980s pop culture tumbled into the 1970s black hole too. I think this had something to do with many BBC researchers' political stance. The organisation recruits largely in The Guardian newspaper, and is rather anti-80s - being the decade of Reagan and Thatcher. I'm a lefty myself, but I still have fond memories of the 1980s, an amazingly polarised time, and shifting likeable pop culture from that decade into the 1970s is simply childish and nonsensical.

I hope an image of the real 70s will emerge here on this blog, and space hoppers may well be part of it as they continued to be popular after the 60s, but the craze was really very much in its heyday from 1968 to about 1970 and the type of thing purveyed by the BBC or Toy Retailers Association about it is not accurate. As this blog is based on actual material from the 70s, the BBC stuff has no place here.

Having said that, Mark, you might find other reasons to love the 70s, not based on BBC fantasy! I hope that doesn't sound patronising. It's not meant to be.

I'm absolutely fascinated, as I wade through a mountain of magazines, newspapers and other bits and bobs, to recall my 70s childhood and to see a wider picture of the decade beginning to emerge.

Nostalgia based on accurate info is illuminating and fun!

I hope that you will enjoy the true picture.

The 1970s: What the BBC Says and the Truth...

A recent e-mail came winging my way from Gaynor in Brighton. She said: "I always prefer recalling pop culture as it actually happened. What fads we were in to in which decades. As the BBC and 70s fans spend so much time telling lies about 1970s pop culture, please can you prepare an accurate list of fads of the 60s, 70s and early 80s as I am trying to get a clear picture?"

The BBC, Wikipedia and others certainly have spread a lot of nonsense about the 70s - although I don't think most of it has been intentional fib-telling! People are just desperate to be nostalgic, and as the 60s are a little way behind us now, and the 80s are tarred as totally greedy, a lot of 60s and 80s pop culture has been wrongly celebrated as "70s".

I will do my best to unmuddy the waters and spread some 1960s fun and information on this blog - http://space-hopper.blogspot.com/

I recommend that 1970s fans do not take too much notice of the BBC's "I Love..." TV programmes or websites, which have been responsible for a great deal of misinformation, or the Toy Retailers Association, which has sadly followed the BBC's lead and altered accurate information on its website to inaccurate! When last I looked, Clackers had been replaced as the craze of 1971 by the spacehopper. The Toy Retailers site states that the hopper arrived in 1971, which is in line with nonsense on the BBC's "I Love..." site. The fact is, our orange friend was featured as a trend in British newspaper advertisements as far back as the late 1960s!

The spacehopper, the Chopper bike, the Stylophone and flared trousers did NOT first become part of British pop culture in the 1970s.

Whilst we're at it, certain other items vaunted as 70s pop culture were actually 80s pop culture! See my 80s blog for accurate 80s info - http://80sactual.blogspot.com/

At the end of the day, nostalgia should be fun, but I can't help thinking that the fantasy 1970s recently created is not a healthy thing at all, as so many youngsters seem to be living in an era that actually did not exist.

This blog aims to celebrate and bemoan the 1970s as they actually were - in England primarily (I have access to a large archive of English provincial newspapers of the era), but people in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, and beyond, will hopefully find that many memories are stirred for them, too.

This is not a boring anorak blog (hopefully), it will be fun as well as informative. But I do aim to be tediously nitpicking about facts and dates. I'm fond of the 1970s - the decade saw me grow from four to fourteen, and whilst it was no picnic, it certainly had its moments.

But the fantasy 21st Century version of the 1970s has outstayed its welcome and should be put to rest.

So, Gaynor, and anybody else who would like a glimpse of the real 1970s, please keep reading - and I'll do my very best!