March 26: Quantum Leap, Sega, Laettner, Microsoft Bob
Plus White Men Can't Jump, Ladybugs, and The Cutting Edge
The Retro
by 11 Points
Modern perspectives on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia
March 26, 2021 • Issue 40
This week in nostalgic history
March 26th
32 years ago, on March 26th, 1989 - Quantum Leap premiered.
Time travel mania was alive and well in late ‘80s/early ‘90s cinema so it was inevitable it would find its way to TV. And it did on this day in 1989, in the form of a runaway train called Quantum Leap. Although the show premiered on this day, it felt like a carryover from a prior era of television: Show opening narration setting up the time travel premise, hologram sidekick, fixing the past without it having any discernible effect on the present or future. Each season raised the stakes as Scott Bakula began jumping into the bodies of people involved in major world events (like Lee Harvey Oswald’s body the day of the Kennedy assassination) or with personal stakes (one time even including his own self as a teenager).
I watched some of Quantum Leap with my parents in real time and have never watched it since. I’ve always believed it was a cult classic — absurd premise, remembered as much for its ridiculousness as its actual content, fandom that outpaces its quality — but it actually might’ve been a bigger success in its time than I thought.
The show jumped time slots repeatedly (five time slots in five years) but maintained surprisingly strong ratings. Also, it won a number of Emmys (for things like makeup, cinematography, and editing) — and both Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell won Golden Globes for acting. Which is kind of absurd, all things considered.
Anyway, I’d be shocked if this one wasn’t rebooted within the next two years.
Also on March 26th: Michael Jackson’s single Man in the Mirror hit number one (1988)… Digital Underground’s album Sex Packets was released (1990)… Driving Miss Daisy won Best Picture at the 62nd Oscars (1990)… Mike Tyson was convicted of rape (1992)… the final episode of Family Feud with Ray Combs as host aired (1993)… Eazy E died from AIDS at age 31 (1995)… the bodies of the Heaven’s Gate cult members were found (1997)… EdTV hit theaters (1999)… the “Melissa worm” infected PCs (1999)… Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of murder (1999)
March 27th
29 years ago, on March 27th, 1992 - White Men Can’t Jump, Ladybugs, and The Cutting Edge all hit theaters.
We live in an era now where sports movies are few and far between; LeBron’s new Space Jam is the first major, not straight-to-DVD/VOD/streaming sports movie I can remember coming out since… um… does Creed II count? Anyway, they just don’t make sports movies anymore. Sports movies don’t get people to the theaters and don’t play well overseas, so as Hollywood’s model changed to “nuthin’ but tentpoles,” sports movies have been an undisputed casualty. In fact, sports movies are now such underdogs you could make a sports movie about a sports movie trying to succeed in theaters.
Three decades ago? People loved sports movies. In fact, we loved them so much this day in 1992 saw three sports movies, all competing for different audiences, hit theaters. You had White Men Can’t Jump for the basketball and comedy fans; Ladybugs for the kids (because nothing says youth demographic like Rodney Dangerfield); and The Cutting Edge for the sports-with-a-side-of-romcom demo.
All three movies still hold soft spots in countless hearts. I certainly reference White Men Can’t Jump quite a bit — and not just when eating foods that begin with the letter Q, try to hear Jimi, or pass the various basketball courts around the L.A. area which featured so prominently in the film. I also recall Ladybugs was a big hit around my middle school and believe I saw it in theaters with a coed (!) group. As for The Cutting Edge… well, I’ve never seen it, but know some people who still swear by it today. Mostly people who would also cut you if you spoke ill of Newsies.
Also on March 27th: Buckner & Garcia’s novelty song Pac-Man Fever peaked at number nine (1981)… the Price Is Right became the longest-running daytime game show ever (1987)… Madonna’s single Vogue was released (1990)… Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block was arrested for arson after setting a hotel carpet on fire (1991)… Bruce Springsteen released two albums at the same time, Human Touch and Lucky Town (1992)… Magic Johnson became the head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers (1994)… Skee Lo’s single I Wish and Take That’s single Back For Good were released (1995)… Forrest Gump won Best Picture at the 67th Oscars (1995)… the FDA approved Viagra (1998)
March 28th
29 years ago, on March 28th, 1992 - Christian Laettner hit a turnaround buzzer beater to defeat Kentucky in the NCAA tournament.
Before Christian Laettner hit what’s (arguably) the most famous shot in college basketball history, the game between his Duke Blue Devils and the Kentucky Wildcats was already a contender for one of the best college basketball games of all time. The game went back and forth, both teams playing out of their minds, and was so tight it went to overtime after a flurry of late fourth quarter drama.
Overtime ended with Laettner’s shot. He caught a full-court pass from Grant Hill and hit a turnaround jumper from the foul line as time expired to win the game by one point. I remember watching the game in real time — it was really my first NCAA tournament, having only become a basketball fan in the prior year — and even then realizing I’d seen something that felt once-in-a-lifetime.
That shot would turn out to be Christian Laettner’s definitive career highlight. He would wind up on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, but was the clearest 12th banana that ever 12th bananaed. While he’ll go down in history as one of the great college basketball players of all time, his game never really clicked at the next level. His journeyman NBA career spanned 13 seasons, with one All-Star appearance (in 1997; I have no memory of that) and six teams.
But that shot in 1992? It lives on in annual replays of the great March Madness moments, often capping off the montages as the single greatest moment of them all.
Also on March 28th: Blondie’s single Rapture hit number one (1981)… the Baltimore Colts bolted in the middle of the night for Indianapolis (1984)… Des’ree’s single You Gotta Be was released (1994)… Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett separated (1995)… Phil Collins left Genesis to focus on his solo career (1996)… Big Pun’s single Still Not a Player was released (1998)… Lord Tariq’s one hit, Deja Vu, peaked at number nine (1998)… Futurama premiered on FOX (1999)… Stone Cold Steve Austin defeated The Rock at WrestleMania XV (1999)
March 29th
29 years ago, on March 29th, 1992 - Bill Clinton said he did not inhale.
Maybe we should’ve learned you couldn’t really trust a Bill Clinton denial on this day in 1992. Clinton, then on the campaign trail for president, was asked if he’d smoked marijuana. He admitted he had in England as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford: “I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t inhale it, and never tried it again.”
While this heavily-couched admission was newsworthy, it essentially primed the pump for the even-more-famous denial he’d make six years later: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” And technically, he didn’t have sexual relations with that woman, depending on one’s definition of sexual relations. Much like he didn’t smoke marijuana, depending on one’s definition of smoking marijuana.
Man, this guy was smooth.
Also on March 29th: Michael Jordan led North Carolina to the NCAA title (1982)… Chariots of Fire won Best Picture at the 54th Oscars (1982)… Police Academy 2 hit theaters (1985)… Falco’s single Rock Me Amadeus hit number one (1986)… Hulk Hogan bodyslammed Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III (1987)… Rain Man won Best Picture at the 61st Oscars (1989)… the pyramid at the Louvre opened (1989)… Career Opportunities hit theaters (1991)… Unforgiven won Best Picture at the 65th Oscars (1993)… Ellen premiered (called These Friends of Mine) (1994)… the Baltimore Ravens chose their team name (1996)… DJ Kool’s one hit, Let Me Clear My Throat, peaked at number 30 and Luscious Jackson’s one hit, Naked Eye, peaked at number 36 (1997)… Stone Cold Steve Austin won his first WWF title by defeating Shawn Michaels at WrestleMania XIV (1998)
March 30th
40 years ago, on March 30th, 1981 - President Reagan was shot just a few hours after my wife was born.
At 2:27 P.M. Eastern time on this day in Washington, D.C., John Hinckley Jr. shot (but did not kill) President Ronald Reagan outside of the Washington Hilton Hotel. I know this date off the top of my head… because roughly 550 miles away, in suburban Detroit, my future wife was mere hours old. My future mother-in-law would watch the coverage of the attempt on Reagan’s life while taking care of her brand new daughter (who I would meet almost three decades later, at a bar best known for staging weekly turtle races). I’m not sure I should conflate my wife’s birth and the attempt on Reagan’s life so flippantly, but if I wasn’t going to do it on the 40th anniversary of both, I was never going to do it.
Also on March 30th: Phil Collins’s single One More Night hit number one (1985)… Fraggle Rock aired its series finale (1987)… Platoon won Best Picture at the 59th Oscars (1987)… the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie hit theaters (1990)… Gloria Estefan’s single Coming Out of the Dark hit number one (1991)… Snap’s single Rhythm Is a Dancer was released (1992)… The Silence of the Lambs dominated the 64th Oscars (1992)… Charlie Brown hit his first home run in Peanuts (1993)… Rolls-Royce was purchased by BMW (1998)… Craig Kilborn took over as host of the Late Late Show on CBS (1999)… Fabio was hit in the face by a bird while on a roller coaster (1999)
March 31st
22 years ago, on March 31st, 1995 - Microsoft Bob debuted.
In the mid ‘90s, personal computers were rapidly becoming more prevalent in the and Microsoft Windows was cementing its place as the operating system of choice. But Microsoft was concerned all these new computer owners would find themselves just baffled by the whole endeavor; things which, to us today (and really, to most of us back then), are second nature like pointing and clicking or copying and pasting.
So they came up with a plan: Friendly animated assistants to guide new users through tutorials on the remedial computer usage.
The first round of these assistants came in a software package called Microsoft Bob, which debuted today in 1995. The acid trip array of characters included a dog named Rover, a gargoyle named Baudelaire, a red dot named The Dot, William Shakespeare, and more. The characters would guide users through the Bob software, acclimating them to all the basics of Windows computing.
The entire thing was a mess. Microsoft took a beating in the press for being so condescending while infantilizing its users. Bob never had much widespread adoption. Beyond the bad publicity, Windows 95 came out mere months later — so Bob and its tour through Windows 3.1 became obsolete.
Of course, Bob wasn’t the last we’d see of Microsoft trying to use cute animated creatures to acclimate users to software. When Microsoft Office 97 came out a few years later, we met Microsoft’s most famous animated helper of all — Clippy. Without Bob, there would’ve been no Clippy. And without Clippy, where would any of us be today?
Also on March 31st: Ordinary People won Best Picture at the 53rd Oscars (1981)… the Doobie Brothers broke up (1982)… Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life hit theaters in the U.S. (1983)… Kenny Loggins’ single Footloose hit number one (1984)… WrestleMania I took place in New York (1985)… Max Headroom premiered on NBC (1987)… Prince’s album Sign O’ the Times was released (1987)… Heathers hit theaters (1989)… the Guns N’ Roses single Patience was released (1989)… Def Leppard’s album Adrenalize and Kris Kross’s album Totally Krossed Out were released, as was Sophie B. Hawkins’s single Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover (1992)… Brandon Lee was shot and killed on the set of The Crow (1993)… Madonna had a highly censored appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman (1994)… Tommy Boy hit theaters (1995)… Selena was murdered (1995)… Shawn Michaels defeated Bret Hart at WrestleMania XII (1996)… the video game Starcraft was released (1998)… the Backstreet Boys single Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) was released (1998)… The Matrix and 10 Things I Hate About You hit theaters (1999)… The Cranberries announced tickets to their upcoming tour would only be sold via their own website (1999)
April 1st
30 years ago, on April 1st, 1991 - The Sega Game Gear was released to take on the Nintendo Game Boy.
In the early ‘90s, Sega was having perhaps its finest moment. After playing second fiddle to Nintendo throughout the first generation of consoles (the NES sold roughly 5x the units of the Sega Master System), Sega did a brilliant job marketing its second-generation console, the Sega Genesis. They positioned it as the cooler alternative to the stodgy Super Nintendo — and the gambit worked. As the two consoles came out of the gates, it was the Sega Genesis outselling the Super Nintendo in North America. (That lead didn’t last and, when the dust settled many years later, the SNES outsold the Genesis by about 20 million units. But at the beginning? It was all Genesis.)
But with its strongest market position to date and Nintendo looking like it finally might face some real competition, Sega felt ready to make another move. The Nintendo Game Boy was a runaway success, but a flawed one — the flaw coming in the form of its infamous monochrome screen. This gave Sega an opportunity for clear brand differentiation in the handheld space: Go full color. A full color screen even tracked with their overall brand image; Genesis was cooler than SNES, and so could Sega’s handheld be cooler than Game Boy.
The result was the Sega Game Gear, released on this day in 1991 in North America and Europe (six months after Japan).
The Game Gear wasn’t a flop. That would certainly be overstating it. But it would be properly stating it to say the Game Gear never even remotely challenged the Game Boy’s position atop the handheld market.
While the Game Gear had some notable flaws — like the color screen just eating through batteries to the tune of six double A batteries lasting less than five hours — the biggest problem of all was one that’s reared its head over and over across all mediums for decades: Content.
Nintendo’s Game Boy had a spectacular library of games. Sure, they were in monochrome, but they were fun and there were tons of them. When the Game Gear launched — nearly two years after Game Boy — the number of available titles was… six. Yes, six. They eventually worked their way up to 300 over the life of the console, but that pales in comparison to Game Boy’s quadruple digits.
While I can’t say for sure, it’s entirely possible Nintendo learned a lesson here that would power the company through the next three decades and beyond. If your games are good enough, they will overcome the competition’s bells, whistles, and superior technology. It’s why Nintendo’s best asset remains its first-party game library; pretty much every Nintendo system for several generations now has been less technologically powerful than its rivals, but it sells like crazy anyway, because it’s giving tens of millions of people what they actually want.
Also on April 1st: Marvin Gaye was murdered by his father (1984)… David Lee Roth left Van Halen (1985)… Beetlejuice hit theaters (1988)… the Ha! network, which would become Comedy Central, premiered (1990)… the Ultimate Warrior defeated Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VI (1990)… Duke won its first NCAA men’s basketball title (1991)… Major League 2 hit theaters (1994)… Sister, Sister premiered (1994)
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news.
During the pandemic, people turned to… Family Matters for comfort? People streamed the show on Hulu for 11.4 billion minutes last year, up 392 percent from 2019. While Friends saw nearly nine times the streaming hours, its jump from the previous year was nowhere near that of Family Matters.
Ace Ventura 3 is in the works for Amazon.
Meat Loaf is creating a reality competition dating series based on his 1993 song I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). I mean, that’s just genius.
Chris Columbus, who directed many films as well as the Pinta, confirmed a longtime rumor about an R-rated cut of Mrs. Doubtfire. However, he killed a rumor about an NC-17 version. That doesn’t exist.
The 700th episode of The Simpsons aired this past Sunday night. It would take 12 more years for them to get to 1,000.
The Library of Congress has added The Rainbow Connection by Kermit the Frog, Celebration by Kool & the Gang, Rhythm Nation 1814 by Janet Jackson, Illmatic by Nas, and more to its registry.
RadioShack is maybe making a comeback. A brand that buys up famous but dead brands (like Pier 1 Imports and Dressbarn) has now bought RadioShack with the goal of turning it into an eCommerce electronics retailer.
Throwbacks and recommendations
Here’s a throwback look at the obscure M.C. Hammer U Can’t Touch This Tiger Electronics handheld game.
Passover starts tomorrow night, and a rabbi from Brooklyn wrote a Seinfeld-inspired Haggadah.
Thanks for reading!
-Sam