Here, I'm going to reminisce about the first few cassette tapes I ever owned as a little kid, I was single-digit age here, like 5 years old upwards. I'm only including normal cassette tapes, not including the "child educational tapes" I had (which I had two of, and I can't remember the name of one of them)
Due to my age, the tapes I had were "promo tapes" usually being given away either for free or by saving tokens from my parents' purchases (like Weetabix and petrol), so, let's have a reminisce about what music I listened to at a very very very young age
I think this was the first one in the Top Trax series (I could be wrong) but each tape was named after one of the Weetagang (the Weetabix characters) and one of theme was called Duncan (Dunk for short), and hence, shared the same name with me, this tape had the following songs on it:
Thompson Twins - Doctor Doctor
Tears For Fears - Shout
Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
Kirsty McColl - There's A Guy Work's Down The Chipshop Swears He's Elvis
Now, all four of those songs are classics, total bangers, and these are still firm favourites of mine, I love these songs, and recently (in 2026), I've managed to acquire this tape again via the magic of ebay, to relive those memories
This was the first cassette tape of my own that I ever owned, and what a start to my music collection.
From here, I don't really remember the order I acquired them in, but these were all in fairly quick succession, one after the other, so I'll drop them as I think about them
What a combination, some Rock music classics performed in a Classical Music style by the London Symphony Orchestra.
I really liked this tape and played it quite a lot. There's some well known ones on here, and some I that were not so well know, but we've got:
Fanfare Intro / Rhapsody In Black
Reach Out, I'll Be There
Chariots Of Fire
Bohemian Rhapsody
Baker Street
For Your Love
American Trilogy
Layla
and most of these were brilliant - I still have this tape now as well, and sometimes like to put this on.
What can I say? This is pop-tastic, all really good 80s pop songs, and all songs I really enjoy, even now. I also still have this tape, so let's take a look at what we have on it:
Billy Ocean - Get Out Of My Dreams (Get In To My Car)
Eddie Grant - Gimme Hope, Joanna
Beatmasters (feat. The Cookie Crew) - Rock Da House
Erasure - Victim Of Love
Kylie Minogue - I Should Be So Lucky
Jellybean - Jingo
The Fatback Band - I Found Lovin
The Proclaimers - Letter To America
Yet again, all really good songs and most of which are firm favourites of mine. I still love these songs now, they're timeless classics, and this tape is still in my collection and still plays perfectly.
Quite a mixed bag for me really, but, I did enjoy most of this tape, it did get quite a bit of play, but unfortunately, I have no idea where this one went, it seems to have gone missing (but I'm on the lookout for it again) - here's the songs that featured on the tape:
The Kinks - Dedicated Follower Of Fashion
The Small Faces - Itchycoo Park
P J Proby - Somewhere
Marmalade - Ob-la-di Ob-la-da
The Searchers - Sweets For My Sweet
The Fortunes - Here It Comes Again
Gary Pickett & The Union Gap - Young Girl
Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames - Yeh Yeh
I really didn't like the P J Proby song, but the others were alright. Overall a good tape, even though the songs on it were from a time way before I was born. This might be a better tape for you if you were around when these songs were current.
I think the reason I ended up with this tape was because my parents had it twice, so I ended up with the duplicate.
Now, like the above tape, I lost this one at some point, but I have managed to re-acquire this one via ebay and have it my collection again now. This was one of my first tapes that I owned too, I think I owned this before the BP ones and the 60s one, as I remember having this when I had my little Philips mono radio/cassette deck (before I got my double-deck ghetto blaster) - anyway, let's have a look at the track listing:
Billy Ocean - When The Going Gets Tough (The Tough Gets Going)
Spandau Ballet - Gold
Sinitta - So Macho
Paul Hardcastle - 19
Mel & Kim - Respectable
Go West - We Close Our Eyes
The Specials - Ghost Town
What can I say? These are all "top tunes" for me, even the cheesy So Macho (yeah, I like it, deal with it) - I played this tape A LOT at the time, and these songs stuck in my head for many years to come, still being on my mind some times.
From the above two Mobil tapes, there was a 70s Volume 1 which I never owned but I'm sure my parents had. They also did a set of "Volume 2" for 60s, 70s and 80s, but I never owned them.
As for the BP tapes, they did quite a few of them: Sixties Mania, More Sixties Mania, Classic Love Songs, Classic Rock, Hits Hits Hits and Hits Hits Hits 2 are the ones I seem to be able to find in the Discogs listings.
Anyway, that's a look at the earliest cassette tapes I had in my collection, original promos from back in the day - the Weetabix tape was from saving tokens and sending off for the tape, and the others were from saving tokens when my parents purchased petrol for the car, and redeeming the tokens at that petrol station.
You don't get promos like this anymore, which is such a shame, as this was a good cheap way to get music back then. The songs on these tape were fairly current for the time (well, in the case of Hits Hits Hits and The 80s)
I'll revisit this idea though and review other cassette tapes that I owned back in the day, as it's an interesting look at the albums that shaped my life and what influenced my music tastes going forward, especially as my music tastes did change quite a lot over the next decade (the 90s)
Thanks for reading my ramblings about my earliest memories of music.