Military’s version of the He-man Attack Track
U.S. Defense Department Ripsaw MS1 by Howe and Howe is a large UGV (unmanned ground vehicle) that seems to be able to over just about anything.
Ok. I guess the UGV doesn’t look that much like the He-Man Attack Track. Once I found a picture of it I realized that it is not at all like I remember. Its still cool though.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Jem and the Holograms
I swear, I went researching all the links and content here and found only ONE reference to Jem and the Holograms and the link to the picture (and the site taken from) doesn’t even work anymore. Fail.
Now look. I was one of those girls that loved Transformers (G1, all the way) and G.I. Joe just as much as the next person did, but I will ALWAYS have a spot for Jem and the Holograms. It was the first show that was really geared towards girls (and not in that cutesy Strawberry Shortcake or Care Bears way) and gave me all the things I loved about the first two I mentioned while catering to my girly needs. Don’t buy it? Sit down and watch some of those old episodes. They had music, drama, fashion, action… Jem had it all. Jem and the Holograms also opened my eyes to multicolored hair… much to my mother’s dismay.
Jem was a must watch show for me. Music has always been a fueling point of my creativity and there was always at least one to two songs guaranteed per episode. And there were, at any given time, two bands to choose from! When the Stingers came into play later in the seasons that was just three times the awesome (not to mention the new possible love triangle for Jem… who really needed to be more honest with Rio. Just saying.)
Yes, I’m smart enough to realize that the acting and animation weren’t always the best, but they made characters that grew on you and put them in situations you could sympathize with. As the title song said, Jem had “glamour and glitter, fashion and fame”. Above all else, Jem really embodied the 80′s without being too overwhelming with the negative aspects of the decade (the overindulgence, drug use, and the list goes on and on). It’s something I can send my kids to (and they roll their eyes at me) when I want them to know what the 80′s was about from an entertainment perspective.
So yes. Jem and the Holograms. Go educate yourself on this awesome 80′s show while I figure out how to add actual Jem content to this site. I swear… the lack of Jem content here depresses me.
Popularity: 6% [?]
The 80′s and It’s Remakes = Fail?
Howdy, new writer on board. *waves*
When asked to come on board and add some content to this lovely hat-tip to the 80′s, I had some serious things to ponder. The first and foremost thought was honestly what the hell do I even remember about the 80′s? Being a horror movie fangirl, I didn’t need to look further for starters than that genre, putting my finger directly on my DVD boxed set of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Of course, these days, I can’t think about a beloved slasher film (or ANYTHING really from the 80′s) without having to think about the *dundundun* remakes that are consistently popping up all over the place. I’d like to believe we are able to embrace the past and move forward, not sit back and think Wow, this idea was killer! But I know how to make it better. Think of all the original content we are missing out on by trying to redress things we had no problem loving when we were kids or teenagers.
But, for the sake of an article on a site dedicated to 80′s memorabilia, we’ll just stick with the classic Nightmare on Elm Street film unless I feel long winded and delve into other topics along this same vein.
I’m just gonna have to start off by questioning how anyone who’s seen the original could sit back and remotely pretend it wasn’t scary enough. Robert Englund has played a consistent scary bastard for several films in the series, the first being the most notably unsympathetic Freddy to ever grace the screen. As a child? I had to sleep in my sister’s bed for a week (and it was a twin matress… I laugh just thinking about how the hell we fit on there without one or the other elbowing an eye out). Getting sucked into a mattress by a dream demon is serious business, and for the time the special effects and setup they used to pull even that particular scene off were impressive.
When talking about the new remake (gag me, really), one of the things I’ve heard is that “This Freddy doesn’t talk, thus making him scarier than the original version.” To this I say… HELLO, anyone home? The original film had very scant dialogue for Freddy and he was nothing like the later films where his sarcasm and delight in torment and death truly shined and made him an icon more so than before. Freddy needs to be scarier? Pu-lease.
When this Nightmare on Elm Street remake hits theaters, you won’t find me there. You probably won’t find me watching it on DVD either. It just seems sacrilegious to put money into something that is MORE than capable of still functioning as a scary cinematic piece of brilliance. Then again, maybe I will see it, just so I can sit back and say “I told you so.”
Come on, America. I know you have fresh and invigorating content out there. Quit trying to spruce up your childhood memories just so you can show them off to your friends or to your children. Just sit back, put in the original classic film, and enjoy it as it was originally envisioned… scary Freddy Kruger proclaiming “THIS is God” and all.
*For the record, I do think some remakes have been good for a series in various ways for various reasons. I am, however, a purist at heart when it comes to some of my childhood/teenage fandoms. Horror movies would, obviously, be one of my biggest gripes.
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Thunder Cat Movie!
Will there be a Thunder Cat movie? Who the hell knows!?
This hype has been circling the Internet for a few years and I, for one, am tired of it. So the next bastard that talks about a Thunder Cat movie is going to die a horrible death! SO SAITH 80sRewind!!
But seriously.. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay wake with my Vulture Man action figure crying real tears for a time dead to me now. Long ago on a planet called 3rd Earth where Mumra, the everliving, ruled creatures of a post-apocalyptic realm.
Popularity: 2% [?]
I remember when John Lennon Died
I remember the day that John Lennon died.
I was 6 years old and living in Washington state at the time. It was one of four events that took place that I recall vividly in 1980.
They are all things I will never forget:
1) Mt St. Helen’s erupted and kill some people (it rained ash)
2) My sister almost drowned in a lake some kid save her (and I got spanked for letting her go outside)
3) Some kids attacked me because I was black (1st time I experienced racism. Mom actually had to explain what it was)
4) John Lennon died
I was over my friend’s house. His parents were watching the news an crying. I asked them what was wrong. They told me John Lennon died. I asked them who he was. They told me he was in a band called the Beatles. They said, “He was a great man who wanted peace for everyone in the world… and now he’s gone.”
I remember feeling sad, too. I thought, “now we can’t have peace… that’s terrible.”
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Some thoughts: Born in the 80s
My buddies girl friend was born in the actual 1980s. So, of course, she knows almost NOTHING about the 80s. She was like 2 years old when Duran Duran was “Hungry Like The Wolf”. Naturally most of her childhood memories are from the 90s (which is just super strange to me).
Anyway, it got me thinking about how I feel about 1970′s. She feels the same way about Ronald Reagan as I do about Jimmy Carter. I have no idea what Jimmy Carter was like. Most of what I’ve heard comes from angry conservatives. According to them, he was the worse president in history. I do know he helped popularize Habitat for Humanity which I think is pretty cool.
Really most things I know from the 70s are from TV reruns and history. I do remember some of the R&B music. My mom would always listen to 70′s R&B and I actually remember hearing it as a kid. I remember hearing a song called Float ON by the Floaters:
I don’t really remember any disco. But that is probably a good thing.
Popularity: 4% [?]
80s Ghetto Blaster
The first ghetto blaster I saw was on LL Cool J’s video, “My Radio”. Mounted on LL’s thin frame was a massive rectangle blasting music as he torched the streets of New York with funky fresh lyrics. He was in uniform, an red Adiddas gear. It was in your face cool, it was aggressive and it was annoying all at once. It was hip-hop in the 80’s.
And now its history. These days a guy would have to get an ipod mounted ghetto blaster.. hey.. not a bad idea!
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80s Hot or Not
Molly Ringwall was hot and still is hot. She pulled off the teenage cool girl very well.
I never really got the appeal of Debbie Gibson and Kursty Alley. Its not that I didn’t think they were decent, I just didn’t understand the mania surrounding them.
Soleil Moon Frye was a really little kid when she gained success in the 80s. No one new she’d bloom into the sultry sexpot she is today. There was a hint of this when her TA-TA’s got bigger than her body at age 14. They got so big that she actually had a MAJOR reduction as a teenager.
Allyssa Milano was always gorgeous and always will be. She was probably the hottest fetus ever to steam up a womb.
Venessa Williams is/was a natural beauty that is timeless. The first black woman to win Miss America.
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Trash tech from the 80s – TRS 80 from 80s
It is ok TRS-80 (AKA TRASH 80s). Someday we will laugh at laptops as yesterday’s supercomputer have the weight and mass of cardboard. Sure we laugh at the monochrome 800×640 CRT’s but one day our kids will “LOL” at our 22 inch touch screen LCDs when they compare it to their holographic virtual reality interfaces. Just the other day me and some other IT professionals marveled at how 1gig used to be considered a lot of hard drive space. Today 500gigs is a decent amount, but one day (soon) 500 Terrabyte will be normal. Right now it is seriously inconceivable that any normal house hold would need more than a few Terrabytes of space. Technology continues to blow my mind.
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Coolest thing about the 80s
The coolest thing about the 80’s was the music. Back in the day some of it sounded and felt a little corny. Songs like “I’m turning Japanese” by the Vapors and “Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats were kind of weird (with complimentary WTF videos) but that was the appeal. They were Avante Garde, daring and outside of the box. Unfortunately, you don’t get as much of that anymore in pop music, or on the radio.
Looking back I definitely appreciate 80s music better. It seemed more free creatively. That is not to say that there has not been anything as good or even better since the 80’s but artists willing to take risks seems harder to come by.
Since I’m a bit of a tech head, I wanted to say my favorite thing from the 80s was the personal computer, but for one thing I didn’t own a computer in the 80’s and for another the pc came out in the late 70’s. Still, I’m sure there are lots of technical advancements I could have mentioned instead of music.
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