I grew up in the 1980s and I loved my original brick Game Boy. I have all the accessories like the lense and the front light etc. My parents wouldn't let me play video games on the TV so I never got a SNES or Mega Drive etc. Later I got the original psx on my own but that was in 1997 or 1998 when Final Fantasy 8 was released in Europe.
It's hard to imagine now, but the original Game Boy blew my mind because it used cartridges. I don't know of an earlier handheld that had interchangeable games.