Calling All Children of the '80s
I need your help. I'm teaching my class on children and the media this fall, and I'm finally having to face the facts: My students and I are from different generations. When I started teaching, I was only a few years older than most of my students, so we had a lot of memories in common. Somehow more than a decade slipped by, and now, when I mention media artifacts from my childhood--Kids Are People Too, anyone?--my students (even grad students!) look at me blankly. The only thing we have in common is Sesame Street, and I can't build a whole class around one show. Please, if you know anyone born in the '80s, send them here to share their childhood media memories. I'm talking favorite TV shows, movies, music, books, toys, fashions, media-related pastimes (e.g., video games), anything and everything. Lay it on me! I will be forever grateful.*mwah*
posted by WinterWheat | 1:40 PM
9 Comments:
Hello Love,
I was not born in the 80's, but the TV was my best friend in the 80's.
Electric Company
Kids Incorporated (where Fergie got her start)
Land of the Lost
Great Space Coaster
Neverending Story (original movie NOT the cartoon)
Atari/Pac Man/Pitfall/Poll Posistion
Cabbage Patch Dolls
The Get Along Gang
there is a sampling of 80's things I remember and love. I will keep trying to think.
I will get on the mascara thing soon---thanks for the kind words.
I had not even looked at my blog for about 9 days.
Have a beautfiul day!
For all your 80's culture needs, you *must* check out:
http://www.skooldays.com/
Click on a topic (things like Saturday Morning, Toys, Arcade Games, etc.), then select your decade, and presto! A synopsis of the topic AND a clickable index with info on anything you can imagine!
I'm not affiliated with this site, but am constantly fascinated by it and go there for nostalgia fixes. And as a child of the 80's, I can vouch for its correctness on that decade, at least. HTH!
Jelly Shoes!!!
I'll try to think about more, it's too early for me...
HI! Parisjasmal sent me here to reminisce about the 80s...I loved the Punk look (black rubber bracelets, asymmetrical hairstyles, long sweaters with a belt over leggings -wait maybe that was just last year and I am confused)...anyway, space invader, cat's cradle, strawberry shortcake, Mr. Rogers, Capatain Kangaroo, Metal Charlie's Angels lunchboxes, friendship pins (beads on a safety pin), barettes with thin ribbon braided, then leaving a trail of ribbon hanging from the barette.
Obviously, I could go on forever. Good luck with your class...I'd love to sit in on this one!
Friendship Pins
"The Great American Hero" - my fave tv show
The Get Along Gang! Nice call, PJ
Clothing with puffy paint
Round t-shirt clips
wearing two colors of socks simultaneously
My Little Ponies
Oregon Trail (computer game)
computer that you ran using MS-DOS commands
friendship bracelets (made using embroidery floss)
Best Friend necklaces (the broken heart - split in two - they were silver, I think)
Electric Youth perfume (by Debbie Gibson) - maybe this one was the early 90s
White, lace-up Keds with no socks
french-rolled jeans
those heinous plastic charm bracelets
Garbage Pail Kids - trading cards
I think you might want "Children of the '90s" for undergrads since the kids coming into college in 07 will have been born in 1989. So here's the results of me and my fella's stream of consciousness 90s pop stuff.
Undergrads
TV/Movies:
barney (TV show started in 1992 according to IMDB and I do recall Barney references from when I was living in MI 93-98), pokemon, "scary movie", wes craven (scream), "I know what you did last summer", party of five, dawson's creek, all the movies they made fun of in "not another teen movie", "american pie", ?Austin Powers?, animaniacs (looney tunes babies), pinkie and the brain (95-98), rescue rangers? (89-92), Olsen (?) twins/full house, "all the nickelodeon crap" - I think the mid 90s was when they really started targetting the "tweens". In fact, I think the term "tween" might have come out of that era.
clothes/fashion: abercrombie and fitch (sp?), Gap-kids.
Videogames/tech: Playstation, Nintendo 64, warcraft, final fantasy, mortal kombat, tekken, ultima (culminating in "ultima online, the first online RPG), LAN and LAN party games.
General culture: Rave, glowsticks, pacifiers...age of ecstacy, ridalin (sp?), ADD/ADHD (gets a big and personal response in intro psych labs), school shootings, hip hop culture hits suburbia, "MTV cribs",
For grad students (from my fella who was born in 1980):
Tron, carebears, GI joes, He-Man (Skelator!), transformers, A team, Airwolf, Space Ghost, Knight Rider (relatedly - in the later years of that age group - adolescence: baywatch, Melrose place, Beverley Hills 90210, Buffy, Seinfeld....), X files, Saved by the Bell ("such a bad show"), star wars definitely still kicking around, Ferris Beuler's day off ("everyone in my age group saw that").
These are SO helpful... THANK YOU all! *mwah*
PFG, you're right in that I think I mean children of the 90s, although a lot of this 80s cultural stuff will be relevant too. I teach older students (seniors and incoming grad students), so most were born in the mid- to late-80s, but their childhood memories would therefore be from the early to mid-90s. By "children of the 80s" I meant people who were born then, but I suppose I should have said "people who were children during the late 80s and 90s."
Speaking of, what I REALLY have trouble believing is that some of my students were 13 on 9/11/2001...
- Madonna in her Like A Virgin Days..remember the cover of Time with her that said Sex As a Weapon? or something like that. And all those Madonna wannabees dressed like her in Desparately Seeking Susan? I remember that in those dime slot toy machines you could buy plastic ball containers with those jelly bracelets!!
- Dungeons and Dragons Saturday morning cartoon..it got axed, so the kids never got back home, LOL
- Menudo. a babyish Ricky Martin before General Hospital and the infamous wee-ing comment.
- Pretty in Pink and the whole Brat Pack movie thing. Ref. Time magazine cover with Molly Ringwld with the caption Ain't She Sweet (I'm scaring myself, actually remembering these covers!)
- Gary Larson cartoons
- Calvin and Hobbes
- L'oreal using Andi MacDowell as their sole spokesmodel - she was in every (makeup) ad for a few years.
- Scrunchies - the Scunci (umlaut-y thing over the U, pronounced scrunchy..I never figured out if this was because no one could pronounce scunci) ads in Seventeen. (What is a Scunci? Do Scuncis multiply?
- Amaretto di Saronno ads (can you tell I used to read my parents' Time magazine a lot) with assorted famous 80's people - Carol Alt, Tama Janowitz etc
I was born in 1980. I loved He Man, She Rah and those random Japanese cartoons about transforming lion robots. I also remember my mother refusing to buy my a Gem doll, because Gem was too punk.
I remember the 90's as being the explosion of Nickelodeon (could be that's when my parents broke down and got cable) so I remember a lot of Pete and Pete and green slime and of course Ren and Stimpy. Avant garde and generally wierd cartoons really sky rocketed then. The Simpsons were also a HUGE part of my childhood.
As far as other TV goes I remember trying my best to avoid Full House, Erkle, and Who'e the Boss. I loved A Team, Punky Brewster, and Fraggle Rock. My sister loved 90210, 21 Jump Street, and later on Melrose Place.
I hope this helps.
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