An interesting thing about watching the episodes being run on Pluto is to see culture evolve in fast forward; to me in 1982, many of the styles, prizes and aspects of the show's set were still stuck in the 70s, but by some point in 1984/5 much of what we think of as iconically 80s was in full force. A lot of the things mentioned as being "only in the 80s" were also pretty 70s things that just hadn't gone away yet.
One thing from the show I think is probably "only in the 80s" is our friend the fourth model, who was called about 12 different names but was mostly just called The Robot. Too futuristic for the 70s, but by the 90s, too clunky and awkward.
The video game consoles were also a distinctly 80s prize. Although they continued to appear sometimes in the ensuing decades, they were a really common prize for much of the 80s when arcade fever was at its strongest. The home video console had taken a bite out of the appeal of huge video game machines by the 90s.
I'm surprised that the show abandoned consoles basically until the Drew Era, which is a shame since some of the lesser known ones like the Turbografx-16, NEO-GEO, Atari Jaguar, or even the Sega Master System/Saturn if the show had offered products from Sega in the past.
Take from example 8-Track players and CB Radios, both peaking in the '70s in terms of popularity, but were still offered at least as late as 1985. That said, those arcade machines did continue into the '90s and beyond, and even the '70s had some pinball machines as well, back when the scoring dials were analog.
Answering machines, most famously the Record A Call also were in peak vogue in the '80s, and PYL also offered those as a round 1 prize. Cordless landlines also first came out in the '80s and were a frequent as an SP in the '90s and early '00s. Voice mail and later VoIP replaced them in the '90s and '00s.
Finally, lots of exercise equipment first gained their electronic features, including speed, distance, and pulse displays in the '80s. It's a far cry from the multimedia screens that first appeared around the turn of this century and can watch TV or even browse the web on them. You still had lots of the old, analog-only bikes though for most of the Pluto episodes so far.
