Random Thoughts: The A to Z Blog of the Overactive Mind

 The Toy That Taught an Entire Generation that Shopping Was a Contact Sport There  are moments in history when humanity reaches a turning point.  The moon landing. The invention of the internet. The first time someone put cheddar cheese on a hamburger. Allowing a chronically overthinking sarcastist (yes, that's a real word.... now) to have his own forum. All noble in their own way. Then there was the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of the 1980's, when otherwise respectable adult human beings temporarily forgot they lived in a somewhat civilised society in the pursuit of a cloth baby with a face like a potato and the general expression of someone who wouldn't give up where the bodies were buried. These weren't dolls. They were, in fact, tiny pudgy-cheeked cult leaders. And they had many, many followers and wannabe followers, The Great Winter Panic Are you old enough to remember the hysteria? Parents were stampeding through stores like extras in a low budget zombie movie, desper...

  At some point in the 80's, minds were lost, the fashion police went on strike, and somebody somewhere suggested: "Hey! Why don't we take a pair of way oversized knitted socks, cut the toes out, and scrunch the rest up around our calves until our legs look like upside-down, overused Q-Tips." And the world aggressively nodded: "OK!" Neon was everything. Everything was already big, grandiose by design, and built to grab your attention. But that wasn't enough. Designers, trend makers, fashion icons... in the 80's they all asked the same basic question. How do we make this visible from space? And then the trend was embraced with the kind of commitment usually reserved for cult-like religious movements and/or pyramid schemes. Suddenly, legwarmers were everywhere. Aerobics class? Legwarmers. Shopping mall? Legwarmers. School? Legwarmers. Office? Trip to the dentist? Beach day? Yep, probably legwarmers. The remarkable thing wasn't that people wore them...

  More peace treaty than entertainment, Saturday morning cartoons quietly negotiated a truce between parents who needed sleep and children who woke at dawn like feral animals. Quietly... as long as the TV was on another floor of the house. No alarms were needed. As kids, we naturally got up at dawn, driven by the knowledge that missing the opening theme music to our favorite cartoon might be the death of joy itself. Pajamas were mandatory. Except for my brother, who took their confining role as a personal afront to his freedom. Necessary for the full experience, too, was a bowl of cereal large enough to qualify as an Olympic event. Milk was poured haphazardly. "Nutritional value" was heresy. The television set became a shrine. We parked our butts inches from the screen, soaking in animation and advertisement with equal devotion. Cartoons and commercials taught us valuable lessons: - Friendship is worth fighting soldiers for - Teamwork is how you get rid of sadness - There was...

  As kids, we were sold a powerful lie! The Care Bears were NOT gentle creatures.... Sure, they looked like happy, pastel-furred ambassadors of love that took cues from Mary Poppins and floated down from cotton candy clouds to teach children how to feel feelings properly . Propaganda! Pure and simple. Look back on them closely. Really look... cast your mind back to Saturday mornings in the 80's by the TV, half-eaten bowl of Cap'n Crunch resting in the crook of your crossed legs. You can see it now, can't you?? Care Bears Were Running a Plushy Authoritarian Regime Here's proof: Each one had a symbol on it stomach: uniformity is step one. Those symbols evoked feelings: branding is step two. Every life they touched was sorted by emotional function; a rainbow based caste system.  Logical conclusion? Cult-like regime whose greatest weapon was colour-coded emotional engineering. Happy? Blue. Grumpy? Also blue, but angry. Love? Pastel pink, of course. And what, pray tell, h...

  Friday night in the 80's was a military operation. It required speed, stealth, an unwavering commitment to personal and family values, and a membership card. The battlefield was Blockbusters... ...where hope went to die. And die brilliantly under fluorescent lighting and inside empty video cassette shells. An entertainment starved schlub couldn't simply rent a movie on demand in the legwarmer years. There was no such beast as streaming . But there was this entity known as scarcity . Maybe better known as supply and demand. It was definitely a mood maker. All foul. If the copy of the movie you wanted was gone, it was gone. The poor teens working their after school jobs behind the counter tried to do their managers proud by saying the movie was "temporarily unavailable." Lies! And we knew it!! The tape you wanted was taken by some other schlub's family. Because they were quicker, stealthier, or more aggressive in their task handling. Or they knew people; had conne...

  Romance was complicated in the 80's. Some will argue that it's always complicated. Unless you're blessed with movie-star level good looks and no sense of embarrassment/shame whatsoever. I only have one of those. But it was especially complicated in the neon decade. Mostly because finding ways to express those types of feelings seemed inefficient, messy, and way too frequently required rewinding. Texting? Not a thing. Say it out loud? And risk being seen as a hormone-driven lunatic with an unbalanced mullet? Nuh-uh! No way!! One made a mixtape. And then one lobbed it at another one like a ticking emotional device and awaited a response. Mixtapes Were Curated, Not Casual Handing someone such a tape said, "I've spent hours thinking about what you'd say or do if I ever worked up the courage to actually tell you I'm interested. Here... uh... Whitesnake." You should've spent that time doing your homework or developing coping skills. But no, you squande...

  Pac-Man wasn't a video game. Let's be clear about that right from the get-go. It was nothing short of a psychological experiment under the guise of an anxious little yellow pie chart. How do I know? Several red flags: You are a mouth, consuming pellets of questionable origin and - from the glow - radiation levels. Colorful nightmares are hunting you relentlessly. No real narrative, explanation, or escape. Eat and run, eat and run, eat and run until inevitably caught and drained of all life force with a spin and a weirdly descending soundtrack. Childhood fun! Am I right? The other sounds rewired that childhood. Wakka wakka wakka became recognized as the sound of compulsive consumption. Danger closed in from all sides, but that noise told you, "Hey! You're doing great. Keep going!" To this day, I hear it whenever I open my fridge on a full stomach. The ghosts were the ultimate villains. They disguised themselves in bright pastel colors and had fun-sounding names....

  The 80's mall was a lot of things. A shopping centre was NOT one of them. It was: A lawless biome where "Lord of the Flies" played out over and over again on weekends, and on Tuesdays at the arcade. A concrete savannah where the native wild teenager roamed in packs. The place where parents, though tethered to their toddlers, still managed to lose them by the fountain An environment where hormones went on full display; a zoo where the always accessorizing met the chronically lustful. Who was in charge of this mess? Nobody ever really knew. You stepped inside, and civilization loosened its belt until the pants of reality hit the faux-marble floor. Time bent. Morality wobbled. Somebody farted in the glass elevator. And at the precise coordinates that landed a youth between Orange Julius and the vintage lava lamp display at Spencer Gifts , an uninvested mall employee with a survey clipboard said, "Have at it, kid. Good luck in there." Survival challenges started...

  Gather around for a twisted tale. More twisted than usual, anyway. A story from a mythical land where television channels were based on themes they actually stuck to. Whaaaaaaaaaat?? Truth. Like MTV - Music Television - played music videos. Of actual music. All day. On purpose. Gen Z'ers out there are going to believe this is folklore whispered by an aging writer staring nostalgically at flowered wallpaper and wondering where all the time went. Well... phooey. It's the truth. In the days of yore (the 80's), MTV wasn't just a content dump; it was cultural rewiring at its finest. We were hit with guitar solos, face melting riffs, synths, eyeliner, and a mystery glow from the ole boob tube that helped us cope with new and exciting feelings we didn't yet have words for. Video Jockeys (VJs) announced new videos like they were royal decrees. They told us what mattered.  We wore leather jackets indoors because it was cool and sunglasses at night because Corey Hart said s...