Gadget-tastic

Ol is wanting a Gameboy (advance something or other). Probably my fault as I said he could get one for a fiver if he saved up, and I think he is too young for a DS. Course I made up the fiver bit - sort of like when we tried to buy a five bedroom house in Hastings for under a hundred grand 'cos I thought I'd seen it in the paper - I may have but it was not in the 'nicer bits'.

So anyway the Gameboy is reasonably priced for a secondhand gadget, and for a gadget - after looking at many of them, it isn't solely a boys toy. Many are pink, although the market has dictated these are cheaper, and come with lots of cool more girlie games. It has made me reminisce about the days when they came out, when apparently all the supermodels were addicted to them and spent hours between shoots playing.

Then I remembered when the personal stereo came about; rather like the iphone there was only one brand to have; the Sony. I loved mine and spent hours doing my morning paper round dancing to 'So Macho' by Sinitta at six in the morning. Of course the glamorous image of them was not of strange boy looking thirteen year olds skipping up and down the village streets but of cool Americans on Greyhounds chewing gum and listening to a bit of rock music.

Strange though isn't it how gadgets can become so cool, so must have and the toy of a generation? I don't know anyone who did not have a Spectrum ZX or BBC computer whilst growing up in the eighties, and probably my kids won't know anyone without a net book, or an iphone (us!). Father Christmas sadly can't afford the contract for one, or really justify it, but I'm still working on how it might just be essential. Course I'm sadly jumping on the band wagon about two years too late - and according to some friends; just when a new unbranded version is about to come out that is better and cooler.