What were the 80's like?

[Jo498]

to make copies for him once. Raise your hand if you remember that smell. (you know you just thought of that scene in Fast Times)

That smell! Great! There were photocopying machines but they were rare. We received hundreds of copies and worksheets on yellowish paper, often low quality so your ink tended to blotch... with that smell.

(I am not aware of which scene in which movie you refer to, though)

[Gertrude]

This scene.

[The Killer Snark]

Of course there are some things it's best that everyone forgets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKmG6zkADW8

[Luzifer's right hand]

I do not remember much of the 80's.

I remember that flying was lots of fun and I was even allowed to enter the cockpit and watch the pilots do their thing. My mum was even allowed to smoke.

I don't not remember anything cold war realted directly until the fall of the wall. I think little children were not bothered with stories about the imminent end of the world where I grew up.

Most of my memories from that time are from life on my grandpa's farm and playing/fighting with my cousins who also lived there(unsupervised most of the time). We played in one of my grandpa's forests most of the time. I also loved the music of the Hoff for some reason... I saw a lot of 80's TV but that was in the 90's we were way behind Germany.

[The Killer Snark]

I will say this about the 80s, and it was the same thing with the 70s, the kids' TV was really good. Willo the Wisp, Dangermouse, Dogtanian and the Three Musketeers, Button Moon, Fraggle Rock, Take Hart, The Wind in the Willows, The Trap Door etc. A whole load of nostagia-inducing classics. I seriously doubt that anyone born in the 90s and later will be nostalgic about the programmes they watched as kids, because there objectively was a massive drop in quality the moment the moment the 80s were over with.

[Elder Sister]

I still do.

Me, too, Jaxom! I scored a Nirvana album not too long ago at a junk store in town and was thrilled with my find.

[Durckad]

I will say this about the 80s, and it was the same thing with the 70s, the kids' TV was really good. Willo the Wisp, Dangermouse, Dogtanian and the Three Musketeers, Button Moon, Fraggle Rock, Take Hart, The Wind in the Willows, The Trap Door etc. A whole load of nostagia-inducing classics. I seriously doubt that anyone born in the 90s and later will be nostalgic about the programmes they watched as kids, because there objectively was a massive drop in quality the moment the moment the 80s were over with.

The 90's had X-Men, Batman: The Animated Series, Exo-Squad, Animaniacs, Freakazoid, Gargoyles, Batman: Beyond, The Tick, plus a bunch of others I'm probably forgetting. The 80's did give us a lot of great animation, but contrary to a lot of people here, I don't think much of it holds beyond the nostalgia factor. Beyond some anime made in the 80's, there's very little of it I'd want to watch again now. Great for stoking the imaginations of children, not so great for adults.

Then again, I'm talking about US animation which very well could be quite different than British animation of the same era (of which, beyond Danger Mouse, I'm not very familiar with).

Yep. You got it. Although I did like the grunge sound of the 90's quite a lot.

I love me some grunge too, but it didn't seem like it lasted all that long before the scene imploded and died out or was overrun by a bunch of copycat bands.

[The Killer Snark]

Durckad - Probably. Kids TV in the 90s was pretty terrible in Britain, but not so in the 70s and 80s. Willo the Wisp is actually more enjoyable when watched as an adult.

[eyenon15]

Saturday Morning Cartoons was a religious event for me and most of my friends.

[drawkcabi]

Saturday Morning Cartoons was a religious event for me and most of my friends.

:agree: :D

What were your favorites?

Mine:

Mighty Orbots (of course)

SuperFriends

Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends/Incredible Hulk

Space Stars

Smurfs

So many others I loved*, but I think that's my top 5.

*Honorable mentions to The Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show, Turbo Teen, Muppet Babies, Thundarr the Barbarian, and Blackstar. Still I could go on and on naming great shows I watched..

[eyenon15]

Dungeons and Dragons

Dragons Lair briefly

Bobbys World

Muppet Babies of course

Smurfs had like a 4 hour block

Thundarr

The Flintstones one where they were kids - Captain!!! Caaaaaaaaaaveman..........and son

[drawkcabi]

Dungeons and Dragons

Dragons Lair briefly

Bobbys World

Muppet Babies of course

Smurfs had like a 4 hour block

Thundarr

The Flintstones one where they were kids - Captain!!! Caaaaaaaaaaveman..........and son

Great choices.

I was always amused with the Flintstone Kids, that the technology seemed more advanced in that series than in the one where they are adults. They had the kid that was always building robots, they were made out of wood and stone, but still. I know it's because this series was newer than the other ones, but because these were B.C. years, it just seemed appropriate things got relatively more advanced the further back you went.

ETA:

Back in the 90's I wanted a live-action Captain Caveman and son movie starring Bobcat Goldthwait and Haley Joel Osment.

[Zorral]

Hiphop and rap. MTV. Walkmans. CDs.

Everything cost a lot, lot, lot less, from rent to books.

Land line telephones. Your answering machine was the first thing you looked at when getting home from work -- please, let the message light be on! You waited anxiously for the mail, for it might carry a letter from someone far away for whom you cared very much, an acceptance for one of your stories, A CHECK! Going to the post office to send off a story to a magazine made you feel professional and optimistic. You could mail books book rate, which was very inexpensive. You sent books to all your friends and family all the time.

You could call up a doctor and get an appointment, often for that very day. Even without insurance, you could afford to go, and the doctor would take you.

You didn't need to have I.D. on you at all times, just to get into a public building.

No over-hopped, over-hyped, over-alcoholed, flavored craft beers. But people were doing a lot of, too much, coke.

No Brasilians, no mani-pedi places anywhere, no $tarbux, much less 3 - 4 of them on every block.

But -- your friends were dying of AIDS. Other friends, maybe even you, were getting famous.

But -- rents were starting to go up really fast, and all your friends left your neighborhood looking for somewhere that wasn't gentrifying. Maybe, probably, you did too, and you've been doing that dance ever since. By the end of the 80's a bunch of your artist friends had re-located to Europe.

Farms were in terrible trouble. Willie Nelson created Farm Aid. But when that crisis passed, there were few family farms left and agriculture had become irrevocably Big Ag, too big to fail, and not interested in raising food crops, but cash crops.

Flying had been a great way to travel, and affordable. Then Reagan began de-regulating industry. And everywhere USians went, people loved you, coz you were rich (by comparison, though already places like Italy had gotten a lot more expensive than they'd been for the European traveler a generation earlier).

Reagan declared war on feminism, unions, teachers and everything else, including social security, devalued the dollar, which had been the strongest currency in the world. He began the debasement of English too, by renaming things as something else, starting the movement that "fixing what was broke" meant calling it something else -- design as the answer, design as so vacuous and vague it held no content. He carried on destroying the health care system that began with Nixon de-regulating the insurance industry and taking the post office out of the cabinet and detaching it from government funding.

Dangers to the environment and over population were poo-pooed by the Reagan administrations and dropped out of the public discourse. This was part of changing language, such as the cities and states in places like Florida and the Carolinas trying to make it illegal to even say "climate change," "global warming," "rising ocean levels," etc. Quite like in the South instituting gag orders about "abolition," "slave trade," "emancipation," and putting in prison people who even received mail that used those words -- as well as attempting to institute a gag order in the House, to keep John Quincy Adams and other like-minded representatives to bringing bills and proposals to the floor discussing slavery and the slave trade.

That's what comes to mind immediately, anyway. :)

At least, there's still beer.

[Zorral]

Oh and it was still kinda weird for black and white people to hang out with each other.(beyond elementary school that is)

And if you did hang out with another race you were expected to act like a ridiculous stereotype of that race

Not in our circles. Also in our circles there were a LOT of gay friends. Well, there still are. :)

[Zorral]

I do not remember much of the 80's.

I remember that flying was lots of fun and I was even allowed to enter the cockpit and watch the pilots do their thing. My mum was even allowed to smoke.

I don't not remember anything cold war realted directly until the fall of the wall. I think little children were not bothered with stories about the imminent end of the world where I grew up.

Most of my memories from that time are from life on my grandpa's farm and playing/fighting with my cousins who also lived there(unsupervised most of the time). We played in one of my grandpa's forests most of the time. I also loved the music of the Hoff for some reason... I saw a lot of 80's TV but that was in the 90's we were way behind Germany.

That's right! I'd completely forgotten. People still smoked. Everybody smoked everywhere and smoked a LOT.

How could I forget that? And how awful it was for people who had allergies and asthma, and had to work in bars and restaurants?

That's something really good that's happened, the no-smoking thing.

[Aemon Stark]

From a political angle, in Canada we had Trudeau's last term and the patriation of the Constitution (and the Charter).

Then we ended up with Mulroney and free trade, serial failed constitutional initiatives in Meech Lake and Charlottetown that literally came within 1% of breaking the country apart, and of course destroyed the old Progressive Conservative party. But really I don't remember any of this from the time because about the first political memory I have is from when Mulroney announced his resignation in 1993.

Fairly hard to comment on a decade when you didn't exist for a few years out of it and otherwise remember less than half of it. Now if we were to have a 90s thread...

[Zorral]

Most of all what I remember is things still worked: banks and phones and hospitals and highways and everything else. It was in the 80's when things started to quit working -- except mass transit in NY-- it was the canary in the mine, showing the direction we were going, with defunding any public utility and service, all in order for politicians to show they weren't Liberals!

And there was no mass surveillance, and you could be private.

[Steve Stark]

You all forgot to mention that I was born right smack dab in the middle of the 80s, and thus the wisest and sexiest man to ever walk upon this planet came to be. I'm a pretty big deal.

In all seriousness, when I look back at the 80s (movies, MTV videos, TV shows, etc.) since I was too young to actually care what was going on from 1985 through 1989, I have to say that the fashion sense of that time was...ridiculous. Probably the most hideous year for fashion, if you ask me. The music was hit or miss for me, but certainly some good stuff came from that decade.

Mostly technology. Look at the rise of Nintendo, and what would become the video game franchise craze that would take over children's minds (and many adults). And cell phones. They were clunkers at first, but they changed the way in which we lived, communicated, and conducted business. Now people can't seem to live without staring at them at all times (a personal pet peeve of mine/don't get me started).

Personally, I could talk more about the 90s since that is when I actually knew what was going on and when I grew up. But good topic. Nice to see people's opinions. I loved the smoking one, because people DID indeed smoke everywhere. Inside and out.

[Steve Stark]

And there was no mass surveillance, and you could be private.

That is probably the best comment so far.

In the 90s the internet, surveillance, video cameras everywhere, and then later iphones recording everything, social media, youtube...you name it. I wish I lived in a world where privacy like that still existed.

[drawkcabi]

That's right! I'd completely forgotten. People still smoked. Everybody smoked everywhere and smoked a LOT.

How could I forget that? And how awful it was for people who had allergies and asthma, and had to work in bars and restaurants?

That's something really good that's happened, the no-smoking thing.

My parents owned a restaurant and my mom was allergic to smoke.

I remember them coming home always having the smell of smoke on their clothes, but to me that smell meant, mom and dad are home! So I remember it fondly, but yeah, smoking made some things really miserable for my mom and if she ever dared ask people not to smoke she'd get a lot of dirty looks.

A few people were even incredulous with our "no lit cigars or pipes" restaurant policy.

The wait staff there though, 90% of them smoked and most of the time if they didn't smoke when they started, they did by the time they left.

I remember those plastic-metal ash trays in McDonald's and every other fast food place. There was a scale to ashtrays depending on the quality of the establishment. The fast food places had the aforementioned aluminum-metal-plastic ones that could be crumpled and thrown away. Diners and places like Sizzler, Bob's Big Boy, or Ponderosa had harder plastic ashtrays that could be washed and used over, and the more upscale restaurants had glass ashtrays.

ETA:

I remember as a kid getting cigarette burns more than once from walking or running by people with cigarettes hanging from their fingers and being scolded for not looking where I was going.