Popular Nostalgia

Memories specific to the US & (or) Canada. These are either events which took place in the US or Canada, or remembered by people from the USA or Canada who were there at the time…

Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears to give it its full title (thanks Wikipedia) was one of my favourite cartoons growing up in the 1980s, and the video above doesn’t really show their main secret that well: Gummi-Berry Juice. When the Gummi Bears drank Gummi-Berry Juice, they could utilise their super-power, which was, rather oddly, [...]

The Muppets were the biggest sewn people for a decade or so in the 1980s and early 90s – and there isn’t a much more nostalgic show than “A Christmas Carol” when it comes to feeling christmassy, so it isn’t really that amazing that the “Muppet Christmas Carol” evokes in me all kinds of twinkly, [...]

Airwolf ran from 1984 through 1987. The supersonic military helicopter with hidden weapons and stealth capabilities flew along the thin line of the Cold War standoff. Its test pilot, Stringfellow Hawke, was played by Jan-Michael Vincent. When Airwolf is stolen by its twisted creator, Doctor Charles Henry Moffet, “the FIRM” asks Hawke to go to [...]

The 1982 TV series starred David Hasselhof as a cop who was shot in the face, but then rescued by a self-made billionaire committed to vigilante action. Wilton Knight treats Michael Long and gives him plastic surgery to rebuild his face. Not only that, but the wealthy do-gooder gives the ex-policeman a new identity and [...]

Pussy Galore was the most famous name of a Bond Girl. Played by Honor Blackman, the superbad female pilot appeared in Goldfinger (1964). Although the book is more forthright about Pussy’s sexuality, the film still hints at her being a lesbian: “I am immune to your charms”. This provides a unique challenge for Bond, who [...]

Reboot was a Saturday morning cartoon in the mid-nineties, when the internet was still very new. It was based on internet features and was drawn in futuristic block-style 3D. The series used loads of words from computing to name the characters. The humanoid characters were “sprites” living in “Mainframe”. They faced a threat from the [...]

Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? was a Saturday morning cartoon series that was shown in the early nineties. It featured the adventures of Zack and Ivy, two teenage siblings who worked as ACME agents and, aided by the Chief, had to stop Carmen and her gang from stealing artifacts. Most children of the nineties [...]

The 90′s cartoon series was shown on Saturday morning TV and was very similar to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. It included lots of movie in-jokes and B-movie skits. The evil Dr Putrid T. Gangreen has created an army of mutant killer tomatoes to help him take over the world. During the mutation process he throws [...]

A group of adventurers go on a quest to collect the Thirteen Treasures of Rule, which possess the power to stop  “Dark Water” from consuming the alien world of Mer. The Darkwater is like a sticky oil with a mind of its own – attacking good things and choking them. Because of problems in production, [...]

The Yogi Bear cartoons were on in the early 90′s and whilst I remember them, I don’t remember much. Yogi, and his best friend Boo Boo, lived in Jellystone National Park stealing “pic-a-nic baskets” off holiday makers. The original cartoons were around in the 1950′s and every decade thereafter. Park Ranger Smith would occassionally arrive [...]

Bill and Ted were the epitome of 80′s cool. With their long hair and jumpers tied round their waist, these “dudes” aimed to change the course of history, but not before they’d passed their history report. This film was notable for featuring a young Keanu Reeves. A man from the future, Rufus, turns up in [...]

Ricki Lake was a hugely popular talk show in the nineties. The titles were by far the funniest part. Contentious from the off, guests were never given much chance to be reasonable. The Ricki Lake show gave British viewers an insight into American attitudes different from their own. Things such as “I’m proud to be [...]

Cheese.com. This film is full of those moments that make you proud to be American. Even if you’re from Bradford. Or France. You wonder whether the writers had to keep a pen in one hand and a bucket in the other for some of these lines: Colonel William Sharp: Miss Stamper? Colonel Willie Sharp, United [...]

Strike a pose and dance like Madonna. Arms all over the place. You can now even go and dance to 80′s music in a modified nightclub aerobics class. Everyone’s done it and there are a thousand Youtube spin-offs of the complicated mime-style poses which make up the Vogue dance. The difference between Vogue and other [...]

Mighty Max was an off-shoot of the Polly Pocket toy line and was aimed at boys. The plastic playsets are now worth a fortune to collectors as some of the pieces are so rare. The “Doom Heads” amongst other toys, sparked a trend for including a playset inside the head of a character. An animated [...]