Popular Nostalgia

Memories specific to the US & (or) Canada. These are either events which took place in the US or Canada, or remembered by people from the USA or Canada who were there at the time…

Long ago, before the internet was even really invented, or at least before it was available to people without bottle end glasses, there was no such thing as email. If people wanted to deliver a message on the spot, however, they did have an option. They could send a fax. To do this, you needed [...]

The Toxic Crusaders was a short cartoon that I remember airing on UK TV during my childhood – I can just remember thinking “oh great, another cartoon” while the show started, then the theme tune featured the line “we’re hideously deformed” (or similar) and I was hooked. The toxic crusaders tried to ride the tidal [...]

I remember the cartoon M.A.S.K as one of my childhood favourites – I used to love everything about this cartoon, particularly the fact that they fought crime, all the time. I even got a M.A.S.K paper plate and cup set for my fifth birthday party (postponed because I had chicken pox I believe) so I [...]

Before the time when everyone had a Tv in their room, on their phones, on their computers, maybe even attached to their face.. kids used to read. Kids used to read all the time. (I’m sure they still read a lot now… I’m sure they read this website ) The mothers helper, the baby sitter, [...]

I remember watching this thing when I was a child. I am not altogether sure that I enjoyed it, but TV was a pretty straightforward game back in 1991, you had your basic 4 channels in Britain, and only one of them showed children’s TV without adverts, so it was this or art attack. Come [...]

Cheers, the US hit television series, began in the early 1980s and ran right through for more than a decade. Then we endured around 18 years of repeats of the 200+ shows around the world! However, Cheers has probably the most nostalgia-incurring themetune in existence, and, being based around a bar “where everybody knows your [...]

I remember Albert fondly as one of those cartoons in the mid 1990s that were Okay to watch even though I was probably a little bit too old to still be watching cartoons: it had the occassional big word and grown-up reference in it! Albert was a small man, but was crucial to the Napoleonic [...]

Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears to give it its full title (thanks Wikipedia) was one of my favourite cartoons growing up in the 1980s, and the video above doesn’t really show their main secret that well: Gummi-Berry Juice. When the Gummi Bears drank Gummi-Berry Juice, they could utilise their super-power, which was, rather oddly, [...]

The Muppets were the biggest sewn people for a decade or so in the 1980s and early 90s – and there isn’t a much more nostalgic show than “A Christmas Carol” when it comes to feeling christmassy, so it isn’t really that amazing that the “Muppet Christmas Carol” evokes in me all kinds of twinkly, [...]

Airwolf ran from 1984 through 1987. The supersonic military helicopter with hidden weapons and stealth capabilities flew along the thin line of the Cold War standoff. Its test pilot, Stringfellow Hawke, was played by Jan-Michael Vincent. When Airwolf is stolen by its twisted creator, Doctor Charles Henry Moffet, “the FIRM” asks Hawke to go to [...]

The 1982 TV series starred David Hasselhof as a cop who was shot in the face, but then rescued by a self-made billionaire committed to vigilante action. Wilton Knight treats Michael Long and gives him plastic surgery to rebuild his face. Not only that, but the wealthy do-gooder gives the ex-policeman a new identity and [...]

Pussy Galore was the most famous name of a Bond Girl. Played by Honor Blackman, the superbad female pilot appeared in Goldfinger (1964). Although the book is more forthright about Pussy’s sexuality, the film still hints at her being a lesbian: “I am immune to your charms”. This provides a unique challenge for Bond, who [...]

Reboot was a Saturday morning cartoon in the mid-nineties, when the internet was still very new. It was based on internet features and was drawn in futuristic block-style 3D. The series used loads of words from computing to name the characters. The humanoid characters were “sprites” living in “Mainframe”. They faced a threat from the [...]

Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? was a Saturday morning cartoon series that was shown in the early nineties. It featured the adventures of Zack and Ivy, two teenage siblings who worked as ACME agents and, aided by the Chief, had to stop Carmen and her gang from stealing artifacts. Most children of the nineties [...]

The 90′s cartoon series was shown on Saturday morning TV and was very similar to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. It included lots of movie in-jokes and B-movie skits. The evil Dr Putrid T. Gangreen has created an army of mutant killer tomatoes to help him take over the world. During the mutation process he throws [...]