Sep 30: America Online, Jem and the Holograms, Commando
Plus the 100 best songs of 1982 and the McDonald's Menu Song
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved, forgot, or never knew existed
September 30th, 2022 • Issue 119
Format change: The feedback is in and I’m doing another format tweak to the newsletter. Rather than one long essay each week, I’m switching to ~3 write-ups of events from this week in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
This week in the ‘80s and ‘90s
September 30th
1982 - Cheers premiered.
1984 - Murder She Wrote premiered on CBS.
1985 - The cartoon M.A.S.K. premiered.
1991 - The Jerry Springer Show premiered.
1992 - Snow’s single Informer was released.
1993 - Tevin Campbell’s single Can We Talk was released.
1995 - Silverchair’s one hit, Tomorrow, peaked at number 28.
1995 - Mariah Carey’s single Fantasy hit number one.
1996 - Blackstreet’s single No Diggity was released.
1997 - Microsoft released the Internet Explorer 4 web browser.
1997 - Next’s single Too Close was released.
2001 - Alias premiered on ABC.
October 1st
33 years ago, on October 1st, 1989, America Online launched.
Although America Online as we know it (or once knew it) launched on this day in 1989, the company dates back to 1983.
The original purpose? Allowing people to hook up to a modem, download a game to their Atari 2600, and play it. At least until they turned off the power on their Atari, at which point they’d lose not just their game progress but the downloaded game itself.
As we can say now, the concept of downloading games to a home video game console was decades ahead of its time in 1983.
But even with not-ready-for-prime-time technology, the company that would become America Online survived. By the late ‘80s — after the company was sold and passed around a few times — its owners saw a more realistic, technologically-viable opportunity to compete in the burgeoning online home market against the likes of CompuServe and Prodigy.
Still, online gaming always remained somewhere in America Online’s core DNA. On launch it came bundled with online games and continued to push them well into the ‘90s. (I definitely burned through some of my family’s 500 monthly minutes playing Slingo.)
Today, some 7,000+ wrong business decisions later, AOL is still kicking, even if it’s more of a media brand name than anything else.
1979 - The Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial aired for the first time.
1982 - The first CD player went on sale.
1982 - EPCOT Center opened on the 11th anniversary of Walt Disney World.
1982 - Marvin Gaye’s final album, Midnight Love, was released.
1983 - Bonnie Tyler’s single Total Eclipse of the Heart hit number one.
1984 - The term “cyberspace” appeared for the first time in William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer.
1988 - Mikhail Gorbachev became the head of the Soviet Union.
1989 - Denmark became the first country to legalize same sex civil unions.
1990 - Bette Midler’s single From a Distance was released.
1992 - Cartoon Network premiered.
1993 - Cool Runnings hit theaters.
1993 - ESPN2 premiered.
1993 - Crash Test Dummies’ single Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm was released.
1994 - Clarissa Explains It All aired its series finale.
1994 - The NHL’s 103-day lockout began.
1994 - Candlebox’s one hit, Far Behind, peaked at number 18.
1996 - Matchbox 20’s album Yourself or Someone Like You was released.
1996 - Animal Planet premiered.
1999 - Three Kings and Drive Me Crazy hit theaters.
2000 - The U.S. men’s basketball team won the Olympic gold medal and the U.S. locked up the most gold and total medals.
October 2nd
1982 - John Cougar’s single Jack and Diane hit number one.
1984 - Papa John’s Pizza was founded.
1992 - Mr. Baseball, Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Mighty Ducks hit theaters.
1995 - Oasis’s album What’s the Story, Morning Glory was released.
1995 - The Chicago Bulls traded for Dennis Rodman.
1995 - The jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial reached a verdict.
1998 - Antz and A Night at the Roxbury hit theaters.
2000 - Radiohead’s album Kid A was released.
2001 - Scrubs premiered on NBC.
October 3rd
1984 - Charles in Charge premiered.
1988 - The TNT network premiered.
1989 - SimCity and Prince of Persia were both released.
1989 - Art Shell of the Oakland Raiders became the first Black head coach in the NFL.
1992 - Bill Gates topped the Forbes richest persons list for the first time.
1992 - Sinead O’Connor ripped up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.
1995 - Mariah Carey’s album Daydream was released.
1995 - The O.J. Simpson not guilty verdict was delivered.
1998 - Monica’s single The First Night hit number one.
2001 - Eternal punchline According to Jim premiered.
2003 - Roy of Siegfried & Roy was bitten by a tiger on stage.
October 4th
37 years ago, on October 4th, 1985, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie Commando hit theaters. And 31 years ago, on October 4th, 1991, Hulk Hogan’s movie Suburban Commando hit theaters.
Two movies with “Commando” in their titles came out on October 4th: Commando in 1985 and Suburban Commando in 1991.
Only one was a comedy. Only one drew praise for its humor. And it wasn’t the same one for both.
Commando was an action movie that played a large early role in defining the most bankable Arnold Schwarzenegger movie formula: tons of action with lots of one-liners mixed in.
The reception was quite positive for the movie — with most reviews citing the movie’s surprisingly on-point humor blended in amongst the expected mayhem and carnage.
Suburban Commando was a Hulk Hogan vehicle. Apparently it was originally written for Arnold, but he passed to do Twins, so it went to Hulk instead.
It was a middling comedy and also a middling action movie. Hogan, while on top of the wrestling world at the time, did not have charisma or skills that translated so well to movies.
So while Commando would help set up the Arnold template, Suburban Commando would not set up the Hogan template. Because, as his couple of other future starring vehicles would once again show, there wasn’t a Hogan movie template to be found.
1980 - Queen’s single Another One Bites the Dust hit number one.
1980 - Heathcliff premiered on ABC’s Saturday morning cartoon lineup.
1986 - Dan Rather was attacked by someone yelling, “Kenneth, what is the frequency?”
1987 - The NFL featured replacement players during a strike.
1988 - Televangelist Jim Bakker was indicted for fraud.
1990 - Beverly Hills 90210 premiered.
1990 - Londonbeat’s single I’ve Been Thinking About You was released.
1993 - The 3DO was released.
1996 - D3: Mighty Ducks 3 hit theaters.
1996 - That Thing You Do hit theaters.
1997 - “The Ladies Man” debuted on SNL.
1999 - Faith Hill’s single Breathe was released.
October 5th
1988 - Lloyd Benson defeated Dan Quayle in a vice presidential debate.
1990 - Henry and June, the first NC-17 movie, was released.
1991 - PM Dawn’s single Set Adrift on Memory Bliss was released.
1991 - Marky Mary & the Funky Bunch’s single Good Vibrations hit number one.
1991 - The first version of Linux was released.
1994 - The NBA shortened the three-point line.
1998 - The notorious sitcom The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer premiered on UPN.
1999 - Angel premiered.
2001 - Training Day hit theaters.
2001 - Barry Bonds set a record with his 71st and 72nd home runs in one season.
2002 - Kelly Clarkson’s single A Moment Like This hit number one.
October 6th
37 years ago, on October 6th, 1985, Jem (aka Jem and the Holograms) premiered in syndication.
Jem and the Holograms is underrated — for being one of the most bananas show premises in TV history. That’s a bold statement, but one that’s totally justified.
For those unfamiliar, the premise of the show is a young woman named Jerrica inherits half of her father’s record company (the other half goes to his business partner and her new rival).
But…….. she also inherits a secret invention her father was working on: A hologram machine that can make anyone or anything look different.
So Jerrica uses the machine to create an alter ego, Jem, frontwoman of an ‘80s all female rock group. And she also holograms her sister and friends so they can be in the band.
But………. that’s just scratching the surface. They also live in a house for orphaned teen girls. Rival bands hate them and repeatedly try to murder them. Jerrica has a love interest but is in a love triangle… because he also loves Jem.
And because of the nature of the show and the influence of the MTV era, each episode also squeezes in two or three brief original songs with music videos.
And that insane Long Island Iced Tea approach to cartoon development… worked?
Jem was the number one syndicated kids show by the end of 1986 and was third overall the following year. The toy sales did well enough to take a notable bite out of Barbie sales. (Though that competition also hurt Jem’s sales potential.)
The show ran its course by 1988, the standard short-sounding run shared by virtually all animated series of the time.
A complex ownership battle has prevented a real reboot and a 2015 live-action movie bombed.
And maybe there shouldn’t ever be a reboot. Some premises are too wild to ever emerge from the fleeting moment in time where they made sense. Jem certainly feels like one of those.
1986 - Double Dare premiered on Nickelodeon.
1987 - George Michael’s single Faith was released.
1990 - Maxi Priest’s single Close to You hit number one.
1991 - Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
1992 - Soul Asylum’s album Grave Dancers Union was released.
1992 - Ross Perot aired his first presidential infomercial.
1993 - Michael Jordan announced he was leaving the NBA to play baseball.
1998 - Matchbox 20’s album Back 2 Good was released.
2000 - Meet the Parents hit theaters.
2000 - CSI premiered on CBS.
5 ‘80s and ‘90s trivia facts
Baylor University banned dancing on campus until 1996.
The Southern Baptist school had a 151-year ban on dancing but finally lifted the ban in 1996 with caveats of “no pelvic gyrations, no excessive closeness, no Dirty Dancing.”
For more than 30 years, phones from the early ‘80s shaped like Garfield the Cat washed up on the shores of beaches in Northern France.
Finally, in 2019, someone found the wrecked shipping container that was the source of the phones for all those years.
The entire game of Super Mario Bros. was just 40 kilobytes.
In comparison, the average photo you take today is at least 50 times that size.
About one-sixth of Dazed and Confused’s $6.9 million budget went toward music rights.
The ‘70s music — like Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion, Foghat’s Slow Ride, Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Tuesday’s Gone — cost a whole lot to secure.
Weezer’s first gig was opening for Keanu Reeves.
In March of 1992, Weezer played their first show, opening for Keanu Reeves’s band Dogstar.
Everything old is new again
A look at the reboots, revivals, throwbacks, retro insights, and nostalgia in the news
The official trailer is out for I Love You, You Hate Me, the docuseries about the rise and fall of Barney the Dinosaur. The series premieres October 12th on Peacock.
The trailer is out for Nothing Compares, a documentary about Sinead O’Connor’s rise and exile. It comes out today on Showtime.
Lisa Kudrow will star in Time Bandits for Apple TV+, which is a series reboot of the 1981 movie.
Vanessa Williams is creating a limited series about becoming the first Black woman to win Miss America in 1983 — then having the title stripped after Penthouse published nude photos of her without her consent.
AMC renewed the Interview With the Vampire series reboot for a second season ahead of its premiere on October 2nd.
Airbnb is letting someone book a one-night stay at a Salem, Mass., recreation of the Sanderson Sisters’ cottage from Hocus Pocus. The booking lottery is on October 12th.
Jon Hamm gave back 60% of his salary to get the Fletch reboot made. (The movie came out with pretty much no fanfare on VOD earlier this month.)
Aqua has confirmed Barbie Girl will not be used in the new Barbie live-action movie because it would be “cheese on cheese.”
Coolio passed away on Wednesday at age 59. Here’s a great video from 2013 of him doing Gangsta’s Paradise in a dorm room along with a guy playing acoustic guitar.
Recommendations of the week
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you loved
Rolling Stone just released a list of the 100 best songs of 1982, which they call, “the year that invented pop music as we know it today… one of the most experimental, innovative, insanely abundant music years ever.”
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you forgot
In late 1988 and early 1989, McDonald’s gave away vinyl albums featuring the Menu Song — a song reciting the items from the store’s menu. (Which I, somehow, found myself knowing a decent amount of. Need to reallocate that brain space to literally anything else.) And they even gave away $1 million to one person who got a special record.
The ‘80s & ‘90s pop culture you never knew existed
A clip surfaced this week of Michael Jackson dropping his falsetto voice during a 1997 concert in Denmark and speaking in a regular, deep-ish voice during the spoken part of In the Closet.
Have a great week!
-Sam
Always look forward to my The Retro email each week. Thanks.
Love the new format!