Icons of the 80s

The Iron Curtain still divided the East and the West. Increased tensions between the US and Russia led them to become more militaristic. The nuclear missiles they aimed at each other would land in the middle of Europe if they were ever to be fired. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets for peace and disarmament in Germany.

The hype began in 1981: Before they had Nintendo and cell phones, kids of the 1980s passed time with a colorful cube, pivoting its rows to get only one color on each of its faces. It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy to this day. A world record was set in 2018 by an Australian who solved it in 4.22 seconds, but a robot can achieve that same feat in 0.38 seconds.

The 17-year-old red head triggered an unseen tennis boom in Germany by becoming the first German as well as the youngest player to win the traditional tennis tournament. After his victory on July 7, 1985, Boris Becker became a world-famous man — and has remained in the tabloids ever since.

Short at the front and sides, and long in the back. While women were into perms, many men wore this hairstyle in the 1980s. Among the world's most famous mullet heads at the time were tennis star Andre Agassi (photo) or singers George Michael and U2's Bono. In the US during that decade, the mullet also became popular within lesbian culture, serving as a public sign of a woman's homosexuality.

The Opel Manta was the right car to go along with the mullet in the 1980s. With a fox tail hanging on the rearview mirror, you were all set up to be a classy redneck. The most famous model from Opel, the car has been built more than a million times to date. It starred alongside actor Til Schweiger in the German movie "Manta Manta" (photo).

The world was fascinated when suddenly, a small battery-driven device allowed people to carry their music with them. With your headset over your ears, pop in a cassette tape — another icon of the '80s — and if you turned the volume up high enough, everyone nearby could hear what you were listening to. Doctors were up in arms, predicting lasting hearing problems for an entire generation of youth.

The computer descended from the lofty heights of huge data processing centers to private homes in the 1980s. "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home," said a skeptical Ken Olsen, the founder of Digital Equipment Corp DEC, in 1977. Well, we know how that went.

Olsen was wrong. In the 1980s, the Commodore 64 home computer was wildly popular, and it was affordable. Young people loved to play the computer game Pac Man. Players navigated a yellow ball through a maze, where it devoured blinking dots, always rushing to escape the four ghosts hunting the Pacman ball.

In 1982, Steven Spielberg's blockbuster science fiction film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had people all over the world glued to the big screen, many in tears at the plight of the extraterrestrial creature left behind on earth and then befriends young Elliot. The line "E.T. phone home" is a top movie quote to this day.

That same year saw the release of Michael Jackson's album Thriller, produced by the greatest producer of that decade, Quincy Jones. The whole world danced to "Beat it", "Billie Jean" and the title track, "Thriller." The video with its zombie dance routine was a huge hit that young audiences of the time will never forget either. Thriller holds the record of being the most-sold album ever.

The 1980s also had Madonna on the music scene — and to this day, no other female musician has managed to top the US pop icon's success. Lace skirts, revealing bra tops and pouting red lips, Madonna Louise Ciccone had moralists up in arms. She wowed the young audience when she performed "Like a Virgin" at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards dressed like a sexy bride, rolling around on stage.

The infamous Berlin Wall came down late on November 9, 1989 — all of a sudden, the border between West Berlin and communist East Berlin was broached. The entire East Bloc opened up, and the Iron Curtain crumbled. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who led the way to open borders, was celebrated like a pop star. The world was moving toward a new order and an exciting decade came to a close.