Popular Nostalgia

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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, [...]

This Queen album, with the title track “A Kind of Magic” came out in 1986 – the video above is Freddie Mercury and Queen playing “A Kind of Magic” live at Budapest in that very year. Queen were really rather good, weren’t they. This track reminds me of my 1980s childhood perhaps more than any [...]

Count Duckula was another cartoon that I grew up watching in the late 1980s and early 1990s – enjoy the episode above – I hadn’t remembered the intro was quite so long! This was one of my favourites, probably because it was pretty dark and macabre. Count Duckula was made for four series and there [...]

This track, Coco Jamboo, came out in 1996 courtesy of the German reggae style outfit known as “Mr President” – this was an instant summer classic which spun us round and round the waltzers in the summer of ’96. Another treasured memory.

This song will probably place you in a certain period of your life, at the dawn of a new Millennium, when things like the “Bomfunk MCs” were just a new group of people who you hadn’t really heard of. The latter part is still true, but this track, “Freestyler” is one of those pieces of [...]

This advert came out in the UK in 1993. It was an instant hit and many people still sing the  lines and ice cream vans play the tune: Just One Cornetto Give it to me Delicious icecream For me to eat Its taste is just supreme Give me Cornetto From Wall’s Ice Cream The theme [...]

Hands up who remembers the Really Wild show that used to be on BBC TV during (I think) the early 90s and possibly the late 80s too. This show features Michaela Strachan, who was the first woman most young boys fancied, and Terry Nutkins, who certainly was  not her male counterpart in the fanciability respect, [...]

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 [...]

Polly Pocket was pure nineties. The only thing I remember about them was the adverts, even though I had a toy myself. There was a little box which opened up to reveal Polly and her little house. You could take the game anywhere with you and buy bits to add to it. There’s a new [...]

The old love story between Curly and Laurey is set in frontier America with farmers and cowboys aplenty. There are frequent songs as the film follows the musical faithfully and catered to audiences used to the format. The songs were released on LP in several volumes and have since become rare collectors’ items. The title [...]

The 1984 “A Christmas Carol” was a television movie adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 novella. Directed by Clive Donner, staring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. Filmed on location in Shrewsbury, England. Originally aired on December 17, 1984. Scott was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special [...]

The McCallister family are late for their holiday and rush to the airport. Big Sis counts the family wrongly and they leave behind eight-year-old Kevin who is still sleeping. The night before, Kevin had an argument with his older brother and wished his family would just go away. He thinks it has come true when [...]