It's a battle that's been going on for well over a century featuring two of the biggest brands of all time. But in the 1980s--the war really heated up... Today we look back on the battle between Coke and Pepsi during a transformative time for not just the two colas, but for society in general. It's the story that involves some of the most iconic commercials of all time, a nationwide taste test challenge (that may have been unfair), a whole new generation, and the King of Pop. The Cola Wars of th...
Jan 22, 2025•58 min
No matter how many times you've seen it--you've probably never seen the whole thing... This is a deep dive into the original Back to the Future to cover specific moments, Easter eggs, and many hidden things that may not be obvious. This episode is also an experimental one as it's a hybrid watch-along. If you're able to put the movie on, I'll be sharing the specific time stamps of the moments and scenes we're covering. So when I share the specific time, you can pause me, jump to that point in the...
Jan 15, 2025•46 min
It's the toy and cartoon that may best define the entire 1980s, a toy that goes back to the 1960s but re-created for a new era. This is the complete history of G.I. Joe, and in this episode we look at: The two fashion dolls from the 1950s that helped inspire it Why two simple words were so important in its initial success The impact of the Vietnam War and oil embargoes How Star Wars walked so G.I. Joe could run The changing era of government regulations and advertising to children How the cartoo...
Jan 08, 2025•53 min
It's been more than 35 years since the 80s ended, but the decade continues to be with us as much as ever--especially when it comes to our entertainment. In this year-in-review special, we look back at all the 1980s-related movies, TV shows, Netflix series, and documentaries that came out in 2024. And there was a lot... Unfortunately, over these last 12 months, we also lost many people with connections to the 1980s, and we look back at some of those notable names. To finish, we look back on the p...
Jan 01, 2025•32 min
By 1987, Jim Henson had already provided us with so much great entertainment from all his remarkable creations--including some pretty wonderful Christmas specials. But his best was yet to come... this is a look back on A Muppet Family Christmas that first aired on ABC on December 16th, 1987. We'll look back at one of the best holiday specials of the decade and why it came from a period when everything to do with the Muppets was firing on all cylinders. This show was the ultimate crossover, but s...
Dec 25, 2024•25 min
It's time for a very 80s Christmas as we travel back to revisit the holiday season during the 1980s. In this episode, we look back at the holiday movie that was a surprise hit and then the story of a beloved TV special that didn't come from the 80s--but was adopted as our own. Next, we look back at the creation of a modern classic Christmas song and finish with the unlikely story of a group of children that managed to dethrone John Lennon... So warm up the cider and toss another Yule log on the ...
Dec 18, 2024•34 min
Some of the all-time great TV Christmas specials go all the way back to the 1960s. But it's easy to forget how many memorable ones came from the 80s. Today we look back at ten of the best specials the 80s had to offer. Some of those shows include: Two separate specials based on a few of the hottest fads of the decade A sadsack comic strip character (not the one you're thinking of...) A powerful brother/sister duo teaming up for a holiday special The return of a beloved icon after 30 years A Chri...
Dec 11, 2024•33 min
If you grew up in the 80s, you grew up in the era of physical media. Our videotape collections allowed us to watch our favorite movies and TV shows over and over, allowing us to develop a deep appreciation for the things we loved. But how did we get here, and how did it all end up changing so drastically? Today we not only revisit the origins of the VCR itself but look at the VHS/Betamax format wars of the 80s and the worthy third competitor: Laserdisc. We also look at the growth of home video, ...
Dec 04, 2024•51 min
It seems funny to think, but in the early 80s, a gigantic industry almost came to a grinding halt... Video games--and arcades--had grown so quickly, and on such a wide scale, that many began to ask if it was ok for our kids to be playing them so much. This is when video games and arcades became under attack as parents, watch groups, and entire cities started to crack down on them. From the U.K. to Canada, to America, regulations began to be put in place to limit young people from even stepping f...
Nov 27, 2024•49 min
In late 1985, Disney had just set the record for the most helium balloons ever released. As a way to kick off their 1986 United Way campaign, the city of Cleveland thought breaking this record would be a great way to draw attention to the fundraising event. But the balloon release didn't exactly go as planned... This is a look back at Balloonfest '86 when an impending storm caused 1.5 million balloons to play havoc with traffic, waterways, and an airport. Besides spreading all the way to Canada,...
Nov 20, 2024•28 min
On September 22, 1982, a new show debuted on NBC. It felt like a throwback to the family sitcoms of yesteryear, but, at the same time, felt like a big risk... The early 1980s seemed to be a time when the family sitcom had disappeared. Primetime TV at the time was all about dramas, and the popular sitcoms were shows like M.A.S.H and Three's Company. The new NBC show came out to little fanfare and barely had an audience in its first season. It was the same thing for the second season. But in the t...
Nov 13, 2024•45 min
It's a year that, thanks to George Orwell, had been in the public consciousness for decades. But when it finally came around, 1984 ended up being memorable for many different reasons... Today, we look back on the movies, TV shows, cartoons, music, tech, and sports that made up a pretty remarkable year. It's a year that featured some of the biggest movies of the decade, an era-defning album, a few beloved cartoon shows, and one of the biggest sports spectacles of the 20th Century. But Orwell's dy...
Nov 06, 2024•48 min
Welcome to the Everything 80s Halloween Spooktacular! Today, we travel back to revisit Halloween in the 80s and take a look at three things: The first is one of the goriest and most violent video games ever made up to that point. Then we look at five forgotten horror movies from the 80s and finish with the history of a certain Mistress of the Dark... So grab some candy corn, light the pumpkin (or cultivated winter squash of your choosing), and enjoy the Everything 80s Halloween Special. Early an...
Oct 30, 2024•30 min
It's just not the Halloween season without them... Today, we go back to witness the creation and release of everyone's favorite breakfast monsters. it's a story that goes back to the early days of cereal, the silent film era, the monsters of the 60s, and their release in the '70s. But it was during the 1980s that Monster Cereals continued to grow in popularity. It was also during the '80s that the Monster Cereals experienced some of their biggest changes--both physically and to the Monster lineu...
Oct 23, 2024•42 min
The Brits had taken over music and pop culture in the 1960s, and then--to a lesser extent--they did it again in the early 80s. But now, it was time for the Aussies to take over... This is a look back on the 1980s Aussie invasion, a time when the Land Down Under heavily influenced radio, record stores, TVs, and movie theatres in North America, and around the world... Whether you played knifey-spoony before or not, it was hard not to be aware of the Australian influence. From Kylie Minogue to Midn...
Oct 16, 2024•41 min
It's the decade that gave us some of the most beloved cartoon shows of all time. Some of those cartoons became huge franchises that continue to be a part of our modern entertainment. But not everything could be a hit. Today we look back on 10 of those forgotten cartoons (plus a few bonus ones). Hopefully there are a bunch here you remember, but there are also some great deep cuts and some true blasts from the past. These are cartoons that could have been huge, but whether it was bad time slots--...
Oct 09, 2024•32 min
"So we go into NBC, we tell them we've got an idea for a show about nothing." "Exactly" "They say what's your show about? I say nothing." "There you go" "I think you may have something here..." This is the conversation that takes place between Jerry and George in a Seinfeld episode from season 4 called "The Pitch." It was the fictionalized version of the real process that led Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David to create one of the biggest and most successful shows in television history. Today we tra...
Oct 02, 2024•46 min
Here's an idea: 5 robot lions that turn into a super robot. Sounds pretty simple and straightforward, doesn't it? But the story of how Voltron came to be was much more complicated. It's a story that begins in Japan, involves multiple anime shows, and then goes through the ardous process of being transformed for a North American kids audience. It's the show that caught everyone off guard when it became a surprise hit. This hit quickly spread worldwide, and the giant robot soon became a cornerston...
Sep 25, 2024•41 min
If you grew up in the 80s, there's a good chance that the very first computer you ever used or owned was a Commodore 64. And this is because it's the machine that changed home computing forever... Today we look back on the history of the Commodore 64. It was the machine intended to be for the masses. A machine that was not only practical and usable, but above all: affordable. The C64 is the computer that also changed the gaming industry forever, and quickly went on to become one of the most succ...
Sep 18, 2024•40 min
What do you get when you combine Pong, the Disneyland Tiki Birds, and a coyote? You get the foundations for one of the most beloved children's restaurants ever. Today, we look back on the history of Chuck E. Cheese, a restaurant that has had a tumultuous existence, but was always the ultimate birthday destination. We'll look back on its origins, the various names it went through, the success, competition, downfall, and resurgance. We'll also take a look at Chuck E. Cheese himself, a spokescharac...
Sep 11, 2024•39 min
With a Beetlejuice sequel finally about to hit theatres, we revisit the original 1980s classic by traveling back to 1988. It was a movie that many weren't too sure of--including some of its cast. Today we look back on the making of Beetlejuice, how the original version was going to look quite different from the version we know, and how the movie almost went by an entirely different name... It was a film that one of its stars believed would ruin everyone's career, but it ended up becoming a cultu...
Sep 04, 2024•30 min
"Ford to City: Drop Dead..." These are the words that appeared on the cover of The Daily News in 1975. Financially, New York was hanging by a thread and the city appealed to President Gerald Ford for some federal help. As the 70s came to an end, and the 1980s began, it felt like a make-or-break decade for the city that never sleeps. Today, we look back on a tumultuous decade for the Big Apple and how it started to turn the corner. But a lot of amazing things came out of NYC in the 80s, and we al...
Aug 28, 2024•36 min
When you think back on the video game consoles of the 80s, I'm sure Atari, Nintendo, and Sega immediately come to mind--but there are many others... The early 80s gave us an explosion of new video game consoles as many companies wanted a piece of the white-hot home video game market--but little did they know what was waiting for them in 1983... Today, we look back on some video game systems that came and went quickly, others that got caught up in all the competition, and a few that even gave Ata...
Aug 14, 2024•35 min
As a new decade began, the late-night sketch comedy show found itself hanging in the balance. The start of the 80s represented a time of massive transition for Saturday Night Live and the show underwent some major changes. The 1980s became a make-or-break period for the late-night institution. Today we look back on this tumultuous time for SNL, how it managed to turn the corner, and then brought us some of the best performers, writers, and sketches in the history of the show. The Everything 80s ...
Aug 07, 2024•46 min
It seems weird to think, but there was a time when Hollywood didn't look favorably at comic book and superhero movies. The original Superman from 1978 had been successful, but for comic book films, the 80s seemed like a string of flop after flop. This all changed in 1989. Tim Burton's Batman was a project ten years in the making that no one believed in. Not only was Batman facing a giant uphill battle to get made, but the casting of the Caped Crusader created one of the biggest fan backlashes ev...
Jul 31, 2024•46 min
It's been exactly 40 years since one of the most important Summer Olympics in the history of the modern Games. The Summer Olympics were coming off two less-than-ideal previous editions and very few cities even wanted to host. Add to this a Soviet-led boycott, and the 84 Summer Games faced serious uncertainty. However, the Los Angeles Summer Games changed everything about the Olympics as we knew them. The technology, the presentation, the broadcast, and the corporate sponsorships transformed the ...
Jul 24, 2024•40 min
What do you get when you combine Nerf with the Garbage Pail Kids? You get Madballs, one of the most memorable toys of the 1980s. Madballs came out during a time when a big segment of the toy industry followed the motto, "If it's gross or smells, it sells." Madballs continued with that formula of gross-out humor and quickly made a dent in the toy market (and on heads...) Today we look back on the creation, launch, and remarkable success of Madballs, along with the controversy that resulted in the...
Jul 17, 2024•31 min
When does performance art go too far? How long do you suspend disbelief before you start asking yourself whether what you are seeing is actually real? Or is that the whole point... When it comes to performance art, there may be no better performer ever than Andy Kaufman. And in the 1980s, he took his unique brand of comedy to a wider audience than ever before. Most people knew him from Taxi, but an even wider audience would know him from two shocking network television moments--one that even hap...
Jul 10, 2024•40 min
1987 was a good one. So was 1989. But summertime at the movies may not get much better than the magical summer of 1984. Today, we travel back exactly 40 years to one of the defining summers of the entire 1980s. The summer of '84 gave us blockbuster after blockbuster and fully cemented the summer movie season as one of the most important of the year. A huge sequel, a coming-of-age classic, a new horror favorite, and a supernatural comedy are just some of the era-defining films that came out. It's...
Jul 03, 2024•35 min
After the phenomenal success of Sesame Street and then The Muppet Show, it seemed as if things couldn't get much better. But as the 1980s began, Jim Henson was just getting started... Two groundbreaking films, new Muppet movies, and one of the most beloved children's series of all time--these are just some of the amazing creations by Jim Henson in the 80s. But it goes even deeper: countless TV specials, a Sesame Street movie, a cherished cartoon show, and even a few holiday favorites. For Henson...
Jun 26, 2024•38 min
