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…

Two pretty blonde twins go to school. One is nice, one is nasty. All sorts of high-jinx ensue as they pretend to be one another. Very similar to Saved by the Bell and Clarissa Explains It All, this was just another fairly poor American teenager series. Jessica and Elizabeth engage in some surprisingly adult humour.

Jaws was one of the funniest villains in the James Bond film series along with Oddjob in “Goldfinger” and Irma Bunt out of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. He starred in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977) and “Moonraker” (1979). He was played by Richard Kiel who, at 7ft 2 inches, towers over all the [...]

896 ATHENS, Greece
Dates: from 6 to 15 April 1896.
Participants: 14 National Olympic Committees (NOCs), 43 events, 241 athletes (men only).
Officially opened by: King George I.
The Games of the Olympiad in Athens were financed by a donation of approximately one million drachmas from a rich businessman, Georges Averof, and by the sale of souvenir stamps and [...]

Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil battle it out with Angelica in the sandpit. My abiding memory of Rugrats is that everyone used to know how to play the theme tune on the piano. Angelica also got on my nerves. The babies talked in silly toddler speak with lots of missing teeth and spittal - getting [...]

I can push a Push Pop, can you push a Push Pop?
I remember these Push Pops being advertised at us very cynically during children’s TV shows so much that my mates and I all rushed out to the shops to buy them.
We soon learned that Push Pops tasted pretty horrible and also, probably owing to [...]

Remember getting spokies in your Frosties? Remember trying to out-do your friends with the number you could fit on your bike? It used to make a racket but we loved spokies. They’re still widely available - especially the Disney ones. Some clever people used to get flashing ones or spokies that made a noise [...]

Moonwalker was released in 1999 as a strange way of linking together a string of Michael Jackson’s songs. It was a success and feature in a number of Christmas repeats to this day.
All I really remember about this film is the scene where Michael Jackson takes on the now embattled Wesley Snipes in a pop [...]

Christmas would not be complete without repeats of this fantastic series of films. There are so many memorable moments, the Chinese orphan, Short Round, driving a car with boxes tied to his feet in Temple of Doom, the fight next to aeroplane propellers in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the infamous Venice boat chase [...]

This was, very possibly, the album of the 1990s. Nirvana didn’t produce one better and, for me, only Pearl Jam’s 10 has stood the test of time anything like as well as Nevermind by Nirvana.
It amazes me a little to think this album dropped onto the scene in the very beginning of last decade, released [...]

The cartoon series that most of us will remember ran from 1983 until 1990 and was a US production. The popular 80’s cartoon “Alvin and the Chipmunks” - featured the Chipmunks as a band with Alvin as the popular, good-looking one, Simon as the intellectual and Theodore as the cute baby-faced brother. Dave was their [...]

On the 21st of July 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. He walked into the Sea of Tranquility at 0256 GMT and reported back with the words: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The Getalong Gang is a fine exemplar of everything that a cartoon should be: informative, fun and featuring a moose AND a caboose.
2 words you don’t often hear in the same sentence these days, more’s the pity, are ‘moose’ and ‘caboose’. A caboose is of course the single train cart club house that the getalong [...]

Clueless typifies teenage girls in the 90’s. Well, how every girl wanted to be in the nineties anyway. For some reason, I always thought that Alicia Silverstone (who plays the main character Cher) was the same actress as Joan Hart (who plays Clarissa and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch). Compare these two images yourselves.
Every young teenage [...]

Sharky and George was originally a French Canadian animation that was then translated into English. The two fishy detectives solved underwater crime, Seacago style. The show is full of marine puns on everyday words -like Silly-Clam Valley

I always wondered why Clarissa was so badly dressed despite having the world’s biggest wardrobe. And why Melissa Joan Hart kept appearing on TV as the same character (she later played Sabrina the Teenage Witch). Clarissa and her Amiga tackled the issues of the day with the help of Sam and a small alligator.