IF YOU grew up in the 80s, you might have been the proud owner of an Omnibot.
This cutting-edge toy, created by Tomy, was the must-have robot of the decade, and these little boys from Cumbernauld - Ross, three, and Ryan O’Rourke, 17 months, - seemed delighted to see one in action in Habitat, in 1984.
With the likes of R2-D2 and C3-PO on screen in Star Wars, robots were all the rage – although AI was still a long way off.
Both the Omnibot and the more advanced Omnibot 2000 had a cassette tape player built into the chest area of the robot, which slid out like a drawer to reveal the cassette and could record and play back sequences of commands, as well as regular audio recordings.
Was your first computer a Commodore 64, an Amstrad or a ZX Spectrum? Or maybe you had an Apricot PC, pictured here in 1985 at the Anderston Cross branch of Microworld. David Tillson and Christina Young helped our photographer understand what it was all about.
The British company was eventually bought over by Mitsubishi in the 90s.
Other popular tech inventions that caused a splash in the 80s include the Sony Walkman, the world’s first portable cassette player.
Show a young person one of these and utter the word ‘mixtape’ and you will have completely baffled them. The Sony Discman – a portable CD player - arrived in 1984.
READ MORE: The Glasgow shops that are gone but not forgotten
What were your favourite toys and tech devices in decades gone by? Share your stories and photos with Times Past. Email ann.fotheringham@glasgowtimes.co.uk
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