Nov. 27: My Girl, Good Morning Miss Bliss, PlayStation
Plus the story behind Technotronic. Also Pong. Remember Pong?
The Retro
by 11 Points
Modern perspectives on ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia
November 27, 2020 • Issue 23
This week in nostalgic history
November 27th
29 years ago, on November 27th, 1991 - My Girl hit theaters.
My Girl was Macaulay Culkin’s follow up to Home Alone, meaning it drew millions of his fans to the theaters — and promptly traumatized all of ‘em. Gone was the cup runnething over with Macaulay’s cute kid hijinks and hilarious bad guy torturing slapstick; in its stead was (spoiler alert) a sweet young boy getting killed by bees.
I was old enough that I shouldn’t have been traumatized when I saw this movie in the theaters — and still wound up traumatized. Let’s put it this way: I saw a lot of movies in 1991. I haven’t rewatched most of them. I remember little to nothing about those other movies. I still remember the heartbreaking funeral scene. That’s imprinted trauma.
Also on November 27th: Rocky IV hit theaters (1985)… The Crying Game hit theaters (1992)… Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style aired (1992)… the Simpsons episode Homer Badman premiered (1994)… 101 Dalmatians hit theaters (1996)… Very Bad Things hit theaters (1998)
November 28th
31 years ago, on November 28th, 1989 - Technotronic’s album Pump Up the Jam: The Album was released.
Technotronic was a big deal during a small window in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s; Pump Up the Jam (the song) was popular enough that it still endures today. (The other singles off Pump Up the Jam: The Album fall into the “oh yeah, I remember this song a little” zone.)
I owned this album — the cassette, obviously, not the CD as pictured above, my family weren’t billionaires — and now, three decades later, have researched it and learned Technotronic was actually a middle-aged white guy from Belgium. He is, as you can see, not featured on the album cover.
The vocals were provided by a Belgium singer called Ya Kid K. She, however, is also not the person featured on the album cover. That distinction goes to a model named Felly, who lip-synced Ya Kid K’s lyrics in the music videos. When that information came to light, the album was reissued with Ya Kid K herself on the cover.
All of this strikes me as far more scandalous from top to bottom than Milli Vanilli — perhaps only the reality that Technotronic didn’t quite rise to the same peaks as Milli Vanilli kept this chicanery lower on the radar.
Also on November 28th: The series finale of DuckTales aired (1990)… the series finale of Beavis and Butt-Head aired (1997)
November 29th
48 years ago, on November 29th, 1972 - Pong was released as an arcade game by Atari.
Though Pong’s release is technically outside of the scope of this newsletter, the game certainly warrants a look and carries its own dose of nostalgia. Pong was the first real video game — at the very least, the first successful one — and helped launch the entire video game industry.
Pong has subsequently been referenced in countless pieces of pop culture, has been inducted into the Smithsonian, and still endures so well to this day that Atari is selling a new mini Pong machine for this Christmas season. It’s also maddeningly difficult and unthinkable by today’s video game standards.
Also on November 29th: The Vapors’ one hit Turning Japanese peaked at number 36 (1980)… Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping peaked at number six and Fiona Apple’s Criminal peaked at 21 (1997)
November 30th
32 years ago, on November 30th, 1988 - Good Morning, Miss Bliss premiered.
It’s always interesting when a floundering TV show realizes it has something — so it needs to totally rebuild around that something rather than continuing on its current course. Arguably the most famous example of this — save for Two Guys and a Girl deciding to stop going to the pizza place — was Good Morning, Miss Bliss.
The show, featuring middle schoolers in Indiana, was ostensibly (and misguidedly) a vehicle for Hayley Mills. She was the big star. The show had an uneventful 13-episode run on the Disney Channel from late 1988 through early 1989 and was then unceremoniously cancelled.
In that cancellation, the rights to the show reverted back to NBC, which was producing the show for Disney. And someone, somewhere up the chain, realized they had something with the kids in the cast. (Well, half the kids in the cast. Sorry, Mikey and Nikki.) The show dropped Hayley Mills as well as most of the other adults (it kept Mr. Belding), then transported them to a high school in southern California.
The result, of course, was Saved by the Bell, whose place in history I need not re-litigate here. (My position is well established.)
Also on November 30th: Bo Jackson had his legendary Monday Night Football debut (1987)… the series finale aired of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show (1989)… Elton John and George Michael’s Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me was released (1991)… the U.S. won the women’s World Cup for the first time (1991)… the NFL announced it would be expanding to Jacksonville (1993)
December 1st
24 years ago, on December 1st, 1996 - America Online dropped its minutes restrictions and went unlimited.
I doubt this moment has made many, if any, lists of important moments in internet history, but its contribution to the hockey stick home internet adoption of the mid ‘90s is undeniable. America Online rose to ubiquitous fame (or infamy) in the ‘90s for its barrage of floppy discs and eventually CD-ROMs, with each seeming to offer an escalating number of minutes of internet access. And that’s because, yes, before this day in 1996, AOL usage was metered. The minutes were a precious commodity, ones not to be squandered for frivolity — that being a problem, since home internet use is and was, at its core, all about scattershot frivolity.
So when America Online finally dropped the minutes restriction (perhaps an inevitability, since by then its starter discs were offering something like 10,000 hours free), they unlocked the true essence of the early World Wide Web for literally millions of households. And we’ve never stopped indulging in unlimited web surfing since, for better or worse. (Absolutely, without question, worse.)
Also on December 1st: Zelda II was released (1988)… National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation hit theaters (1989)… Gerardo’s single Rico Suave was released (1990)… the series finale aired of Alvin and the Chipmunks (1990)… Britney Spears appeared on Star Search (1991)… Positive K’s I Got a Man was released (1992)… Apple ended its Apple II line (1992)… Game Show Network debuted (1994)
December 2nd
26 years ago, on December 2nd, 1994 - Heidi Fleiss was convicted of pandering.
The Heidi Fleiss scandal of the ‘90s would, most likely, be much more of a blip on the radar in today’s world as the volume of news balloons to new highs and the aura of celebrity mystique touches new lows. But in 1994? It was finally the National Enquirer come to life!
Fleiss was the “Hollywood madam,” running a multimillion-dollar prostitution ring-to-the-stars in Los Angeles. While she’s never named her clients to this day, various names have been linked to her, including Johnny Depp, Charlie Sheen, and George Lucas. The ambiguity of the client list led to rampant speculation, but as Fleiss remained steadfast in her commitment never to name names, interest in the story dwindled. (Not to mention that less than a year later, Los Angeles would have a far more captivating celebrity crime story upon which to focus.)
Fleiss wound up getting convicted of pandering, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. She did eventually go down for tax evasion and wound up serving 20 months in federal prison in California. Today, she operates a small private airport in rural Nevada and has still never named names.
Also on December 2nd: Naked Gun hit theaters (1988)… the series finale aired of The Smurfs (1989)… Roxette’s single It Must Have Been Love was released (1990)… Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue’s Whatta Man was released (1993)… Janet Jackson’s single Together Again was released (1997)
December 3rd
26 years ago, on December 3rd, 1994 - The Sony PlayStation was released.
Long before this day in 1994, Sony had designs on getting into the fast-growing video game industry. They seemed to find something of a kindred spirit in Nintendo — two notoriously quirky Japanese companies with proclivities for creating proprietary hardware — and in the early ‘90s, the two began teaming up on a console called the Nintendo PlayStation.
The companies had their inevitable falling out in 1991, as Nintendo felt they’d given Sony too much power and began working with Sony’s top competitor, Phillips, instead. The falling out happened in surprisingly grand and dramatic fashion: the two companies were slated to announce their partnership and the Nintendo PlayStation at the 1991 Consumer Electronics Show, but instead used the event to publicly announce they wouldn’t be working together after all.
Sony went off on its own and created the Sony PlayStation as its own brand, totally independent of Nintendo. It was a remarkable success and Sony quickly replaced Sega as Nintendo’s chief rival. A quarter of a century later, Sony is now up to the brand new PlayStation 5 and continues to own a large portion of the video game market — although its chief competitor today is Microsoft, not Nintendo, as Nintendo found its own, different slice of the video game market pie.
Also on December 3rd: Barry Sanders won the Heisman Trophy (1988)… Phillips launched the CD-i (1991)… the Simpsons episode Lisa’s First Word aired (1992)… Boyz II Men’s On Bended Knee hit number one (1994)… the Mars Polar Lander crashed into Mars (1999)
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news.
Last week, we found out Tower Records was coming back online. This week, we’ve learned RadioShack is coming back online. Your move, Circuit City.
Right Said Fred is in the news for the first time in nearly three decades after they went to an anti-lockdown protest in London. They’re going with the position of, quote, “I’m not a COVID denier and I’m not anti-vax, but I defend those people’s right to express their opinion.” And yet they didn’t stand up for the right to play the disco dancing music you want at a party.
Video game historians have revived Sega’s abandoned VR project from the early ‘90s.
A sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 3 just sold for $156,000. It commanded such a high price because it had a rare cover, where the word “Bros.” is printed over Mario’s right hand, rather than above his hat.
Coming 2 America will premiere on March 5th on Amazon Prime.
One of the episodes of the new Animaniacs was briefly pulled off Hulu after a fake phone number in a Pinky and the Brain segment wasn’t fake… and led to the destination you always get when you call a random phone number.
HBO Max has cast its lead in its Head of the Class reboot.
Throwbacks and recommendations
The popular YouTube channel (translation: they have ~10m subs but I’ve, of course, never heard of them) First We Feast cooked Simpsons-inspired steamed hams.
A house went all-out with their Home Alone-themed Christmas decorations.
Because of the holiday I haven’t yet had a chance to watch the new Saved by the Bell, but soon…
Thanks for reading!
-Sam