The Retro
by 11 Points
Modern perspectives on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia
May 28, 2021 • Issue 49
This week in nostalgic history
May 28th
34 years ago, on May 28th, 1987 - CompuServe released the GIF image format.
When an engineering team at the early online (not even “internet”) service provider CompuServe came up with a compressed image file called the Graphics Interchange Format more than three decades ago, there’s no way they could’ve foreseen its rich future. After all, the original GIF format was designed to meet the low-powered needs of the time: super limited color palettes with an emphasis on compression, not photo realism. The evolution a few decades later was not on the roadmap.
GIF adoption was fast and, as the World Wide Web took shape, GIFs became one of the two primary image formats supported by the era’s most popular browsers. (JPGs, which worked better for photos, were the other.)
GIFs became something of a punchline in the late ‘90s, though, as they became inseparably linked with cheesy Web 1.0 graphics like the dancing 7-up Spot or the flashing orange light on a “This website is under construction” skeuomorphic construction sign. The PNG format swooped in and all but took over the role of GIFs — PNGs could do basically everything GIFs could do in terms of compression and transparency, but better. Plus, they didn’t have any pesky patent ties back to good old CompuServe.
But what PNGs couldn’t do was animation. Neither could JPGs. And as high-speed internet became more widespread, allowing for larger file size images, people started realizing large, video-quality GIFs were a fast way to share a quick, often meme-ified, sound-free video clip.
And as the medium took off, GIFs didn’t just come back from the dead to their old position as one of the go-to web image formats — they created their own entire category of entertainment.
Also on May 28th: Rocky III hit theaters (1982)… Irene Cara’s single Flashdance… What a Feeling hit number one (1983)… Whitney Houston’s album Whitney was released (1987)… George Michael’s single One More Try hit number one (1988)… Jodeci’s album Forever My Lady and NWA’s album N***** 4 Life were both released (1991)… Cliffhanger and the Super Mario Bros. movie hit theaters (1993)… the series finale aired of Tiny Toon Adventures (1995)… Phil Hartman was murdered (1998)… Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper went on display in Italy after 22 years of restoration (1999)… Notting Hill hit theaters (1999)
May 29th
39 years ago, on May 29th, 1982 - Survivor’s single Eye of the Tiger was released.
Eye of the Tiger was not the first pick for the signature song of Rocky III. Sure, today you can’t picture the movie without the song or vice versa, but during development, Sylvester Stallone’s top pick for the movie’s signature song was Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. Queen told him no.
So Stallone was presented with another song, one composed specifically for Rocky III. That song was from Joe Esposito and writer Bill Conti, and was called You’re the Best. Stallone didn’t like that either.
So he reached out to the band Survivor, which was… doing alright at the time. They’d previously released two albums which received so-so receptions and limited radio play. But Stallone liked one of their songs (Poor Man’s Son, a song I’m pretty sure I’d never heard before), so he asked them to create a theme song for Rocky. They wrote Eye of the Tiger, which would become their breakout hit. It was a number one song, won a Grammy for best rock performance, was nominated for an Oscar, and turned Survivor into a band of ‘80s hitmakers who are still going strong today.
As a footnote, back to You’re the Best. Even though Stallone rejected it, that song clearly belonged in some movie. Esposito and Conti tried Flashdance, but the producers went with the song Maniac instead. Finally, two years later, You’re the Best wound up as the song playing during the climactic tournament scenes in The Karate Kid. And it seems every song ultimately wound up with its best fit during that game of ‘80s soundtrack musical chairs.
Also on May 29th: Larry Bird was named NBA Rookie of the Year, beating Magic Johnson (1980)… George Michael’s single I Want Your Sex was released (1987)… Soul II Soul’s single Back to Live was released (1989)… Rickey Henderson set MLB’s all-time career stolen base record (1990)… Sister Act hit theaters (1992)… the Apple Newton was announced (1992)… Jose Canseco was injured after convincing his manager on the Texas Rangers to let him pitch (1993)… TLC’s single Waterfalls was released (1995)… Jeff Buckley drowned while swimming (1998)… Hope Floats and Almost Heroes hit theaters (1998)
May 30th
27 years ago, on May 30th, 1994 - Kim Jong-Il shot a 38 under par with 11 holes-in-one in a round of golf.
According to the poindexters at the Guinness Book of World Records, the best round of golf in history was a 55 (16 under par), shot by Rhein Gibson in Oklahoma on May 12th, 2012. Apparently they’ve never heard of this round by Kim Jong-Il — the first round of his entire life.
At age 52, he decided to try his hand at the sport and played North Korea’s only golf course, located in the capital Pyongyang. The course was 7,700 yards, well above PGA Tour average, but Kim still managed to power in 11 holes-in-one and shoot a 38 under. And there were even witnesses who saw it.
While this sounds like an absurd propaganda play, it turns out it was only a semi-absurd propaganda play. According to a reporter from Golf magazine who looked into the round back in 2016, the person scoring the round didn’t know how to score at golf — and tracked performance relative to par, not based on strokes. (E.g., he gave Kim 0 for a par, 1 for a bogey, and so on.) The state-run North Korean media saw the scorecard, didn’t know it was scored under Marquess of Queensberry rules, and blasted it far and wide accordingly.
But again, it was still a clear propaganda play, as obviously there was still cheating involved. You’d have to assume Kim was shooting septendecuple bogeys on every hole, and after those 17 or so strokes, someone was saying “I think it was four?”
Also on May 30th: Cal Ripken’s record-breaking consecutive games streak began (1982)… Barry Bonds made his MLB debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1986)… the Rockers made their WWF debut (1987)… Bobby Brown’s single On Our Own was released (1989)… Paul Simon and Edie Brickell were married (1992)… Vanessa Williams’s single Colors of the Wind was released (1995)… INOJ’s single Love You Down was released (1997)
May 31st
23 years ago, on May 31st, 1998 - Geri “Ginger Spice” Halliwell left the Spice Girls.
The Spice Girls were as manufactured a group as you’ll get this side of O-Town; however, they weren’t manufactured to dissolve this quickly.
A music management firm in the U.K. decided to put together a girl group as a natural offshoot of the success boy bands were seeing in the early ‘90s. Auditions were held in ‘94 and five were ultimately chosen. The group was called Touch. They wound up splitting off from the managers who put them together and signing with Simon Fuller (who would go on to create the Idol series and become recognized as possibly the most successful British music manager ever).
They finally released an album in 1996, it was an international hit, and the Spice Girls were global stars. They released a second album in 1997. And then, a year later, with the group’s popularity still hitting “frenzy” on the meter, Geri Halliwell suddenly quit. She’s offered various reasons over the years, from exhaustion to alienation from the group to “being a brat.” It was likely some combination of the three.
Regardless, it signaled the beginning of the premature end of the Spice Girls. The four remaining members tried to keep touring and in 1999, the four recorded the Spice Girls’ third and final studio album. It did notably worse than the previous two.
The Spice Girls have, inevitably, reunited periodically since then (with Geri). They came back in 2007, then again in 2010, then again in 2018 — although this final time, Geri was in and Victoria Beckham was out. So we’re due for another reunion pretty soon, though, if the trend line holds.
Also on May 31st: Lipps Inc.’s single Funkytown hit number one (1980)… the Philadelphia 76ers swept the L.A. Lakers to win the NBA Championship (1983)… Fletch hit theaters (1985)… Sega’s Zero Wing, the game featuring the future meme about All Your Base, was released in Europe (1991)… Night Court aired its series finale (1992)… the Beastie Boys album Ill Communication was released (1994)… Michael Jackson and Janet Jackson’s single Scream was released (1995)… Eddie hit theaters (1996)… the series finale aired of the Larry Sanders Show (1998)… Survivor premiered on CBS (2000)
June 1st
33 years ago, on June 1st, 1988 - The first edition of the video game (then called) John Madden Football was released.
In 1987, Tecmo Bowl hit arcades. It was a simplified, action-focused football game. Players had just four football plays from which to choose, then fuzzy, rudimentary — yet groundbreaking for the time — football action would ensue.
John Madden Football originally took a very different approach. Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts, was a big fan of the Strat-O-Matic sports simulation games; those were text-based, roleplaying tabletop games that were the ancestor of fantasy football with a dash of Dungeons & Dragons thrown in. So when he teamed up with former NFL coach-turned-broadcaster John Madden, the plan was to make a cerebral football game.
Both Hawkins and Madden agreed the game should be more simulation than action. They wanted full 11-on-11 football, even though the computer hardware couldn’t really support that level of graphical action. They wanted a full playbook — and even the option to diagram your own football plays. They were far more concerned with what the player would do before the huddle was broken and ball was snapped than what the player would do, you know, actually playing football.
The game wasn’t a runaway success in its first year, when it was only available for the Apple II line of computers, but it was a passion project and, above all, EA staking its early claim in the sports video game world — a world they’d go on to controversially dominate in the years to come. The franchise puttered along, heading to the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS, before making the leap to Sega Genesis in 1992.
That hardware finally allowed for some great football action, the playcalling was simplified (not down to the Tecmo Bowl four plays, of course, but there was no more intense diagramming even as an option), and the game was EA’s first true hit.
Now, of course, the series has become Madden — not just the signature football video game franchise, but the signature sports video game franchise. There has been a new version of the game every year from 1990 until today, and Madden NFL 22 will join the list later that summer.
Also on June 1st: CNN launched as the first all-news network (1980)… Star Trek III: The Search for Spock hit theaters (1984)… Total Recall hit theaters (1990)… Comedy Central launched, replacing the Comedy Network (1991)… Sting’s single Fields of Gold was released (1993)… the Reggie Miller flashed a choke sign in a playoff win against the New York Knicks (1994)… the FX network launched as Fox’s first foray into cable TV (1994)… MLB debuted on Fox (1996)… the first episode of MTV’s Challenge aired (1998)… Napster launched (1999)… Jennifer Lopez’s album On the 6 was released (1999)… Fastball’s single Out of My Head was released (1999)…
June 2nd
22 years ago, on June 2nd, 1999 - Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets was released in the U.S.
I chose the U.S. publication date for Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets, the sequel to the first Harry Potter book, because it was 11 months after the book was released in the U.K. While Harry Potter was a major hit in the U.K. and the second book was eagerly anticipated and facing high expectations, that was not quite the case in the U.S.
At this point in 1999, U.S. Harry Potter mania wasn’t really in full effect. Maybe everyone was too busy with Ricky Martin mania. Or swing dancing. Something was preoccupying the zeitgeist.
The first Harry Potter was published in the U.S. in just September 1998, more than 14 months after it was published in the U.K. It was gaining some momentum and starting to win some awards in the U.S., but still wasn’t ubiquitous. But when the sequel arrived in June, it was enough to finally get the flywheel going — and, of course, it’s still going today.
Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets shot to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Then, in August, it was supplanted — by Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone. The two books would dominate the charts so thoroughly the New York Times eventually had to acquiesce to pressure from the publishers and split their list into adult bestsellers and children bestsellers just to give any other books a chance.
Also on June 2nd: Barbara Walters asked Katharine Hepburn what type of tree she would be (1981)… RJ Reynolds and Nabisco proposed their merger (1985)… Ken Griffey Jr. was the number one pick in the MLB Draft (1987)… No Holds Barred and Dead Poets Society hit theaters (1989)… Partners in Kryme’s one hit, Turtle Power, peaked at number 13 (1990)… Liquid Television premiered on MTV (1991)… Wilson Phillips’ album Shadows & Light was released (1992)… the Bridges of Madison County hit theaters (1995)… Nicole’s single Make It Hot was released (1998)… the series finale aired of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (1999)… The Wire premiered on HBO (2002)
June 3rd
29 years ago, on June 3rd, 1992 - Bill Clinton played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show.
During the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign, as Bill Clinton was looking to differentiate from current president George H.W. Bush and compact capitalist Ross Perot, his team quite clearly came up with a new strategy: He had to be the “cool” one. Clinton was only 45 at the time, and, if I recall correctly, Bush and Perot were both around 150. (My childhood memories might be a little off.)
So Clinton did something super duper serious presidential candidates rarely — possibly never — did: He appeared on a comedy talk show. And not just any show; he went on the coolest possible talk show which, at the time, was the syndicated Arsenio Hall Show. He wore Ray-Bans like a Blues Brother and played Heartbreak Hotel on a saxophone.
He and his team were making a high-stakes bet that Clinton’s charisma and skill as a politician would sell the whole bit as a genuine expression of organic coolness and not a calculated political stunt. And the bet paid off. Clinton gained traction with younger voters and Black voters, successfully differentiating himself from the other candidates.
Since then, it’s hard to think of a major presidential candidate who hasn’t followed the “How do you do, Fellow Kids?” precedent established by Clinton here. At this point, Saturday Night Live is basically a required campaign stop, and that’s just scratching the comedy surface.
Also on June 3rd: Darryl Strawberry was the top pick in the MLB Draft (1980)… WarGames hit theaters (1983)… Larry King Live premiered on CNN (1985)… Big and Funny Farm both hit theaters (1988)… the Tiananmen Square Massacre began (1989)… Michael Damian’s single Rock On hit number one (1992)… Michael Jordan shrugged after hitting a three-pointer against the Portland Trailblazers in the NBA Finals (1992)… Renaissance Man hit theaters (1994)… Bryan Adams’ single Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman hit number one (1995)… Zenith introduced the first HDTV in the U.S. (1996)… Six Feet Under premiered (2001)
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news.
Everyone who watched ESPN in the ‘90s knew the Tom Emanski defensive baseball drills commercial featuring an endorsement from MLB star Fred McGriff. On Monday, McGriff admitted he never watched the videos.
HBO Max is developing a Garbage Pail Kids animated TV series.
The Friends reunion premiered last night on HBO Max. Also, Matthew Perry’s slurred speech in a promotional interview has been chalked up to an emergency dental procedure.
Yeardly Smith, the voice of Lisa on The Simpsons, says the only way Paul and Linda McCartney would do guest voices on the show is if Lisa became a vegetarian and stayed that way for the duration of the series. And Paul still checks in occasionally to make sure the promise is kept.
Rand Paul got a suspicious package of white powder at his home and blamed it on… Richard Marx?
There’s an openly gay character in the new Rugrats reboot on Paramount+.
Rachael Leigh Cook says there was a part written for Freddie Prinze Jr. in the She’s All That reboot but “it ended up not being a good fit for him.”
FOX released a preview of its Fantasy Island reboot.
Throwbacks and recommendations
With NFL kicker Adam Vinatieri announcing his retirement after 24 seasons, ESPN put together a list of the last ‘90s players in the big four American sports leagues.
Here are “11 surprising celebrities” who sang over the credits of ‘90s Disney movies. “Surprising” is a stretch but the list has its moments.
Thanks for reading!
-Sam