It was a poor seller, due in part to its $2,000 price tag. First appearing on store shelves in 1986, World of Wonder's Lazer Tag game turned pursuit and combat into a kids' game using infrared guns and body-mounted sensors. The game was popular through April 1987, when a 19-year-old player was shot to death by a sheriff's deputy who mistook the toy for a real gun. Negative publicity hurt sales, and World of Wonder went out of business the following year. Storytelling Alf, an animatronic version of the popular TV alien, was one of the hottest gifts of the 1987 holiday season. It was a Teddy Ruxpin clone: Alf's ears and mouth would move when you inserted a cassette tape into his back and pressed the play button.
Radio-controlled cars were also wildly popular holiday gifts in 1987, The Tyco Turbo Hopper, seen here, was one of the best and most popular of the bunch, It boasted a twin joy stick, a telescoping antenna and -- most importantly to '80s paisley - bandana - red - southwestern - boho iphone case kids -- a turbo power band that offered a quick burst of speed, The best-selling video game of 1987 was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Though the sequel was popular at the time, Zelda II is now considered one of the worst Zelda games ever made..
Far from the famed R2-D2 and Johnny Five, most home robots of the 1980s were little more than programmable toys. The cassette-tape-powered Tomy Omnibot 2000 here lacked AI, but it did have a remote control, alarm clock, music playback and motorized arms that could carry a tray of drinks. The year 1987 marked the debut of the World Solar Challenge, the first solar-powered car race. The winner, General Motors' Sunraycer, used a total of 8,800 solar cells to generate a maximum of 1,500 watts, giving the vehicle a top speed of 68 miles per hour.
Now considered the grandfather of modern electric cars, the Sunraycer cost more than $2 million (in 1987 dollars) to build, Everything went digital in the 1980s, even paisley - bandana - red - southwestern - boho iphone case guitars, The Casio DG20 Digital Guitar, seen here, doubled as a MIDI controller, offering 20 preset sounds, adjustable tempos and a built-in speaker, Hear it here, as featured in an episode of "Flight of the Conchords."Though pagers had been around since 1949, the tech made a big leap forward in 1987 with the introduction of the Motorola PMR 2000, The "Personal Message Receiver" was capable of transmitting alphanumeric messages via the SkyTel service of up to 1,950 characters, with 32 characters appearing on the screen at once..
Previously, high-end pagers were only able to display call-back numbers. The groundbreaking M2 Pocket Phone by Excell Communications was a much more expensive option to stay in touch on the go. But the first cellphone small enough to fit in a pocket didn't come cheap: It launched in Britain with a price tag of £2,500, or about $3,750. An ownership stake in Excell Communications was sold to Nokia in 1991. In 1987, USA Today became the first US newspaper to publish a digital photograph on its front page. Though that photo came from an older, RC-701 model, most of the paper's photojournalists that year were armed with this, the 600,000-pixel Canon RC-760. With it, photos taken on the West Coast could be transmitted to the East Coast in just minutes.
