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…

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 […]

Crop tops were a fashion accessory of the early nineties and went hand in hand with lime green shirts, jelly shoes and shag bands. There was something on the news about a girl getting a kidney infection because her crop top didn’t keep her warm enough. Dads made comments about needing woolly jumpers and Julia […]

Snow White was the first full length animated feature to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history. If you’re in any doubt about how a woman should behave, check out the Disney 1930′s idea of female etiquette. It’s brilliant. Move like a ballerina and clean as though […]

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 […]

The CBS executives hated this feature when they saw it because it had readings from the Bible, jazz and children’s voices, but it was a hit. Linus recites a reading from the Gospel of Luke (whilst carrying his blanket) under a spotlight and we all know what we forgot over the last two weeks: Charlie […]

Johnny Mathis had to choose between becoming an Olympic athlete and starting his recording career after both opportunities came along at once. He stuck with the latter and became a record breaking success, nicknamed the “velvet voice”, yet his athletic records still remain at San Francisco State University. This track has to be the cheesiest […]

This song has been sung by some of the 20th Century’s sexiest women. Santa Baby was originally sung by Eartha Kitt who delivered the sultry Christmas list with the tongue-in-cheek it deserves. Kylie Minogue and Madonna have both covered it but the beauty of its original release in 1953 was how risque it would have […]

The biggest selling track of Brenda Lee’s career is “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”. In 1958, when she was 13, Owen Bradley asked Lee to record a new song written by Johnny Marks, who wrote “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” (Gene Autry) and “A Holly, Jolly Christmas” (Burl Ives). Lee recorded the song, in July with […]

Perry Como & The Fontane Sisters with Michell Ayres & his Orchestra released their version of the “It’s Beginning to Look Like Christmas” on September 10, 1951. Bing Crosby also did a version and so have many other artists. The song was written in Nova Scotia and refers to a Christmas tree there in the […]

The story of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer was written in 1939 by Robert L. May, a copywriter for the Chicago-based Montgomery Ward department stores, as a promotional gift for the store’s customers. May considered Rollo or Reginald before settling on Rudolph. Rudolph’s story was made into a song when May’s brother-in-law, songwriter Johnny Marks, developed […]

Nat King Cole recorded The Christmas Song for the first time in 1946 with his group The Nat King Cole Trio. The record company re-recorded it with a string section, and Cole recorded it again in 1953 with Nelson Riddle. Capitol Records released it in December of 1960. It stayed on the chart for a […]

In the 1970′s Wonder Woman hit US television in the shape of Lynda Carter. The series started with Major Steve Trevor crash landing in the Bermuda Triangle onto Paradise Island. He finds a society of Amazon women who compete for the opportunity to take him back to the US. Wonder Woman wins and dresses up […]