I just purchased the pop culture book Just Can’t Get Enough - Toys, Games, And Other Stuff From The ’80s That Rocked by Matthew Robinson and Jensen Karp. This is an excellent look at many of the things from the 80s that I grew up with. Masters of The Universe, Alf, Madballs, G.I. Joe and so on.

Every item in the book is summarized by what the thing is, when it came out, who made it, who was it for, and if the item is still around today. Anybody that was a kid during the 1980’s owes it to themselves to pick this book up.

I found myself laughing at some of the stuff that is really cheesy by today’s standards but just rocked in the 1980’s. The Pogo Ball for example. There is a section about this. I had one of these and I just though it was so cool that I was finally able to master the “J.” This was a trick on the ball where you bounced in the air on it, curved your legs back with the ball still between your feet. The shape your body made looked like the letter “J” hence the name. The Pogo Ball is just one of the many things covered in this book.

I had a Pogo Ball and was about eight or nine when I got it and it took a hell of a lot of practice to be able to pull off some of the tricks, especially The "J." The book is not all that large, it is just over 200 pages but it has cool analysis on the stuff they discuss and a ton of pictures.

Syd Lexia wrote:

I believe the official spelling was PogoBal. I still have mine:

They mentioned the spelling in the book. They say something along the lines of "Great now kids will think ball is spelled bal."

They also have a section dedicated to the Ewok Village from the Return of The Jedi toy line and how it could be used with almost any series of action figures and they wouldn't be out of place.