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’80s Nostalgia Is Sooo Yesterday
I just saw this store display a few minutes ago. This is after seeing a limited (thankfully) release of Crystal Pepsi a couple of months back. I’m still bummed that the wave of ’80s nostalgia didn’t also bring back New Coke and Max Headroom. This has me wondering what other oddities and trinkets we’ll soon see re-appear.
Does this mean that grunge music will briefly slough its way back into regular play (and does that mean I’ll have to endure the second coming of Nirvana)? I know the hipsters already like their plaid work shirts, but they wear them extra tight, and ironically at that. Will we have Seinfeld and Friends reunion specials? Will we have retrospective investigative reports on all of the Clinton scandals? What products or toys do we want to see make a comeback?
This leads me to a topic we hashed out in the PIT some weeks ago: the (alleged) inability of late gen X-ers and the follow-on Millenials to grow up. I have a theory. When I was growing up, my Boomer parents could wax nostalgic about their favorite childhood shows but could not revisit or rewatch them, much less inflict them on us as such shows were available only in syndication — you’d have to stay up late and maybe catch them just before ABC or NBC signed off for the evening. We did not have cable TV at our house (though we did have a satellite dish, if you know how to operate it) so we largely missed the cable channels that were re-broadcasting the bulk of the stuff.
They could not show us their toys either — most of those had been played to death or pitched into the trash. The clothing had long since gone to charity. The music, at least, was saved on vinyl, but we moved to compact discs rather quickly so the records lingered on the shelf and gathered dust (and besides, the turntable was so finicky at our house that if you breathed wrong the needle would jump). So the childhood of my parents was locked away beyond the recesses of memory, leaving us free to live our own. Except our own didn’t end. The 80s saw the rise of the perpetually renewing toy/TV franchises. We still have Transformers, My Little Pony, and Star Wars. We still have Legos. We have the Barbie behemoth. Our own childhoods are endlessly reformed and replayed before our eyes on a daily basis.
The internet has accelerated this. Now we can spend a few minutes on Amazon and Ebay and rebuild the toy sets we had when we were 12. Even more, we can order a plethora of art statues, posters, reprints, “collector pieces”, vintage toy re-releases, and more. Some of us are known to have miniature shrines, entire shelves, maybe entire tabletops or rooms filled with the preserved and reinvigorated debris of our past. Our childhood is omnipresent, and we can re-watch it on Amazon, YouTube, Netflix, and other sources. Our kids can and do watch it with us. We never have to move on.
Of course this aids the rights-holders to whatever was made 20 or 30 years ago. Developing a new product or brand is hard work, but you can often make a quick buck by just reproducing what you already coined, just as people start to reminisce about it. Hence the Zima I found today (yes, I bought a 6-pack — I have a sweet tooth). It’s even in the original style bottles (the ones with the triangular flutes, as opposed to the cheaper round bottles they used at the end of its run over a decade ago). Our past lives on with its promises of a happier and care-free youth, and even with our balding heads and graying whiskers it is just a few mouse clicks away. So tonight I’ll crack open a Zima with my wife as we sit out on the deck, and we’ll remember the first time we, newly engaged, drank them at that off-campus apartment I had in college, and we’ll remember what it was like to look forward to an unknown future. Sometimes nostalgia is sweet.
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My preference remains for Regular Diet Coke, which doesn’t taste as weirdly artificial as Zero. Of course, Coke with Splenda isn’t bad, but you can’t find it where I live. Perhaps they should try Stevia.
Stevia is awful. It’s so bad, that they would only risk selling Diet Coke with Stevia in the rectum of Europe.
You know, I have an unusual memory of those “Pepsi Challenge” commercials, from back in the day.
There were a whole bunch of commercials you’d see, since they were really cheap to produce, and they liked to show ones shot relatively close to you during local programming (afternoons, and Saturdays after cartoons and before the national sports programs began).
Anyway, I remember seeing one on either KTLA or KCAL one Saturday afternoon during the local movie show that must have been shot at Magic Mountain. What made it memorable was that it’s the only one I can remember that had the majority of the commercial shot from behind the person questioning, so you could actually see the bottles. Interesting enough concept, except…
While the girl who’d done the tasting was pointing at one of the bottles, which were behind a screen so she couldn’t see them, the guy running the challenge was clearly asking her if she was certain of her choice. And while she was nodding excitedly, the guy actually switched the bottles.
Even 10-year-old me found it amazing that commercial had ever made it to air. And 10-year-old me began a life of a skeptic when it comes to claims made in advertising.
Coincidentally, I took the Pepsi Challenge at Whalom Park in Massachusetts. I could easily tell which was which. My recollection was that the Coke seemed to be unusually cold to the point of being noticeably less pleasurable than drinking Coke out of my refrigerator. The Pepsi tasted as expected. Either it was not as cold, or its taste was not as sensitive to the cold.
I’ve never done the Pepsi Challenge (my house was definitely a Coke house, and even if I’d found that I preferred Pepsi, there was no way it was entering our house), but after seeing that commercial, such tricks would not surprise me. It’s not as if it was a scientific study, after all…
By the way, after having had “real sugar” Coke around the world, I find that it’s immensely better at room temperature, rather than 45°. Coke with high fructose corn syrup is the opposite, in my opinion.
In Gillian Anderson’s defense, she grew up in London. She has British parents – born in US while they were in the US, so she’s got joint US-UK citizenship. Madonna, to the best of my knowledge, has no such excuse.
The scripts were weak. I still watched the whole thing and will watch any subsequent revival, though, so someone has clearly hit on the right combo of nostalgia plus something new equals advertising revenue.
Swedish Burkini Team?
I would like my 1980s knees and hip back. Thanks for asking!
You are still hip, Kate. ;-)
That is so bad, it’s good.
I apparently wasn’t paying enough attention, I don’t know if it was mentioned but Zima has alcohol. I picked some up on a whim a couple days ago and didn’t realize that until I tasted it. It tastes ok.
This is the first time I’ve gotten alcohol without being carded. Is it because it’s only 5%?
My husband figured it was because I was hauling 5 kids through a grocery store.
The checker figured you needed it badly enough with the 5 kids that it was entirely justifiable.