Author: Retroguy

Retro ’80s Fashion Trends

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When you think back to the ’80s you will no doubt look back on many things with fond memories and in some ways yearn back to those simpler times. Nothing really defined the ’80s as much as the fashion. Some was really good, some – not so much. Here now is a look at some trends you may have forgotten about but likely were into back in the day.

Big Hair

When I say big, I mean large. Perm, fluff, spray – repeat. Not sure who to thank for this look but most videos from the ’80s by female artists were well represented by massive hair. This was a particularly dangerous look if you were a smoker.

Rubber Bracelets

If you owned a rubber gasket company in the ’80s you suddenly had a new demographic besides mechanics and plumbers. Suddenly teenagers everywhere were wearing little black rubber rings as bracelets (thanks Madonna!) and were asking for funky colors besides black (cue the neon again). The more you wore the cooler you looked (and the longer it took you to get ready in the morning).

Shoulder Pads

Not sure who was responsible for the linebacker look, but back in the 80s, both woman and men’s jackets and suits would have padded shoulders whether subtle or extreme. Perfect for when a sudden game of pick up football erupts at a party.

Neon

Thanks to Miami Vice, neon came back in a big way in the 80s and our eyes have never been the same since. Neon was everywhere, not only in actual lighting but the colors of our clothing which is never a good thing. To make things worse, neon colors were mixed with some of the other trends on this list adding to the ugliness in many (who am I kidding?) all cases.

Huge T-shirt with Clips

For some reason, t-shirts came in only two sizes in the 80s. Extra large, and Freakin’ Huge. To tame these beasts, girls would clip them up on one side with a huge plastic clip (probably neon!) to try and normalize the look.

Choose Life / Frankie Says / Don’t Worry Be Happy…..

When you’re wearing a T-shirt that can cover you and all your friends at once, the best thing you can do to distract a person’s eye from realizing how strange that looked was to slap a phrase in huge, bold, black letters. Hit songs of the day by Wham, Frankie Goes to Holly Wood and Bobby McFerrin gave inspiration for the phrases.

Stone and Acid Wash Jeans

There was a time when Levis jeans became lame in the eyes of teenagers. Hard to believe but the in thing was stone wash and acid wash jeans where you basically took a good pair of jeans and splashed bleach onto them and then rolled them in a dryer with rocks to age them. The effect was a patchy mixture of dark and light colour and if you were really hip, they’d be ripped and held together with safety pins to give you that punk, Billy Idol wannabe look. Also – they had to be skin tight. If you could breathe, you were wearing them wrong.
Spandex & Leg Warmers

With the success of the “Twenty Minute Workout” and Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical” video, people everywhere wore spandex, sweatbands and leg warmers whether they worked out or not. In some cases it was a very good look if you were blessed with the right proportions – in most cases though spandex is not a good thing………not a good thing at all. Unless you’re going for the stuffed sausage look, stay away from the spandex.

Off the Shoulder Look

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Jennifer Biels and the producers of Flashdance for giving us the sleeves-off-the-shoulder look and for making welding a sexy career option for teenage girls back in the 80s. Speaking for all males that were going through puberty at the time – thank you…….thank you very much.

Before They Were Famous Part 2

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Here’s the second installment of a glimpse into famous celebrities early start in show business thanks to the retro miracle of VCRs. When you’re first starting out, any role you land to try and pay the bills is a good one.

In our first installment we featured the McDLT commercial with Jason Alexander. Here he is again in another commercial with Bruce Willis for Levis’s Jeans.




Before suffering Growing Pains or sinking on the Titanic, Leonardo DiCaprio was just a cute kid who liked to chew gum and listen to really big boom boxes.




The late Farrah Fawcett was one of the most beautiful women on television. Before her big break on Charlie’s Angels, Farrah took really good care of her most second famous attribute besides her hair, her teeth.

Retro Video of the Day – No Promises

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If you’ve been following my retro videos of the day, you’ll notice I tend to steer towards some of the more obscure and not overplayed tracks. Today is no exception. Australian synth-pop group Icehouse’s first single from their 1986 Measure to Measure album was a sleeper hit called “No Promises”. It reached #9 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts. This album featured the help of Brian Eno which was very evident on many of the songs on this album.

Steven Tyler Hopes To Walk This Way Soon

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Steve Tyler, the lead singer of Aerosmith was showing his age the other night when he fell off the stage while doing his little dance during a performance at the”Buffalo Chip Campground and Trailer Park” – What the hell did I just type? A campground? My how things change. How do you go from playing the Superbowl to a campground?

The 61 year old front man was air lifted to hospital after suffering minor head, neck and shoulder injuries after falling off a catwalk of the stage onto some fans. Back in the day that was called crowd surfing but at 61, that’s just falling into a crowd. The clapper can’t be too far behind at this point.


Cartoon Flashback – Battle of the Planets

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It seems that many of the cartoons kids watch today are based on Japanese Anime which all seem to have a similar look to them. Often times you see faces locked in an expression with only the lips moving (never in sync with the audio) and many scenes seem to be repeated actions from episode to episode. A time honored recipe dating back to the early ’70s.

Battle of the Planets came out on U.S. television in 1978 as a repackaged version of the 1972 Japanese anime program Kagaku ninja tai Gatchaman (which translates into Science Ninja Team Gatchaman). Ninjas in space? Awesome.

Battle of the Planets was based on the story of five “remarkable” teenagers, Mark, Jason, Tiny, Princess and Keyop, known as G-Force (not to be confused with the hamster movie of the same name) who spent their days trying to protect Earth from the evil planet “Spectra” and other attacks from “beyond space”. Their mother ship, The Phoenix, was aptly named for it’s ability to transform into a fiery bird (a Phoenix to be precise) and basically become a bird shaped blow torch in space.

Remarkable Teen-Agers wearing numbers



Some of the elements from the original Japanese show were changed or removed for the American audience like profanity, excessive violence and the transgendered leader of the main villain Zoltar.

Zoltar – Looking fierce and Fab-u-lous

In the American version, the female portion of the script was rewritten as being Zoltar’s evil sister (obviously bad parenting at work here). Because of the popularity of Star Wars, the producers also added an R2D2 type robot, 7-Zark-7 and made the show based in space as opposed to the Japanese version which was land based and a bit darker and more violent.

7-Zark-7 at the controls of his DJ booth?

The show itself had some decent stories though many scenes were repeated from episode to episode like the shot of the kids lounging in between missions or their interactions with 7-Zark-7 but overall the show was pretty entertaining. When compared to the Japanese version, the Japanese version has a more consistent story line and theme as opposed to the American version which seems to have some elements forced together to work for the American audience. If you have nothing to compare it to though, you loved it and probably remember trying to run home after school in time to catch another episode of Battle of the Planets – even though you probably saw each episode about 50 times!

Retro Video of the Day – Rockit / Holiday

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Herbie Hancock is an accomplished Jazz keyboard player who in 1983 released a real groundbreaking track that changed a few things. “Rockit” from his Futureshock album was a very unique sounding song but what took it over the top was the futuristic and slightly disturbing video and the use of a technique that would eventually be better known as “scratching” as well as other turntable techniques. Many scratch DJs that made it big in the 90s and today cite Rockit as the record that turned them on to the turntable as an instrument.

The video was directed by Godley & Creme who were two of the creative minds behind the group 10cc and had a number of hits of their own during that time. The video won numerous awards including five MTV video music awards in 1984.

It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play for three weeks until it was knocked of by a song by a new artist you may have heard of – “Holiday” by Madonna.

Retro Bonus !

Director John Hughes Dies (1950-2009)

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Retro lovers around the world will be sad to hear the passing of one of the most prolific write and director of ’80s teen movies along with other great comedies. John Hughes passed away yesterday of a heart attack while walking in Manhattan.

His credits as a director include such classics as The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck and Curly Sue.

As a writer and producer, the list includes some of the above along with Pretty in Pink, Home Alone, Maid in Manhattan, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Some Kind of Wonderful, 101 Dalmatians and much much more.

Before his career in film, he began as a joke writer for people like Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. His impact on our pop culture is undeniable thanks to his strong emphasis on using pop music in all his films creating not only a great mood for the film but amazing soundtracks as well.

He will be missed. Here are a few memorable examples of his work.

Retro TV Ad of the Day: Pop-O-Matic Trouble

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You know you used to watch a lot of TV as a kid when you catch yourself mumbling a certain part of an advertising jingle from time to time even though the commercial hasn’t played on air in over 30 years.

Case in point – the Kohner Brothers “Pop-O-Matic” Trouble. Originally made by Irwin in 1965, it eventually was made by Milton Bradley which is now part of Hasbro. This probably explains why the board games of today aren’t as good as back then with all the major brands are buying each other up – so much for competition. But I digress.

Although the game was actually called Trouble, you probably knew it more as “Pop-O-Matic Trouble” thanks to the popular commercial from around 1970 that showcased the plastic domed dice container that when pushed down would “pop” the dice ensuring a fair roll of the dice, faster game play and guaranteed annoyance to parents everywhere due to the constant popping sound.

Furniture Inspired by Vintage Video Games

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If you grew up in the 60s and 70s, and you wanted to build furniture inspired by you’re favorite games, chances are you’d have to settle for a Scrabble couch with a matching love seat. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you’d have a whole new set of games to get inspiration from because chances are, you were a gamer.


So when you finally had enough to build your dream house, you considered your options and looked at different plans and eventually settled on a design you could really relate to – a house shaped like an NES gaming console.


So now you move in and arrange all your nic-naks neatly on your Tetris shelves but still it’s not enough. Sure, you have Atari coat hangers but honesty, you’ll never be comfortable without more furniture. Lucky for you, there are many more pieces of furniture that will fit well in your decor and match the shelves and hangers. Click the hanger below to see more video game inspired furniture. You know you want them.

Vintage Body Building Ads

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We’ve all seen them. Every magazine in the ’70s and ’80s used to feature the cheesy body building ads in the back of the magazine promising a new body in virtually no time at all in as little as 15 minutes a day. You see similar ads today promising the same thing only there are few difference.

For one thing, the ads today do not feature a weakling that gets constantly bullied only to send away for the program, bulk up and then go back and beat the living crap out of the bully. Today the ads usually show someone who is overweight and has trouble zipping up their pants or just pear shaped in the worst way. They send for the program and instantly they have rock hard abs and killer buns of graphite (steel is so ’80s).

When I was younger I actually sent away for Charles Atlas’s program and surprise surprise it was simply working out with weights. Nothing fancy, no expensive machines or gizmos – honest to goodness hard work and training was and is the only way to a more perfect body. Some things never change.

Click here to see a collection of other vintage body building ads featuring a bunch of weaklings beating up bullies.