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1980s nostalgia

Pop Culture

Mr. T had an eloquent response to a reporter who made fun of his 'tacky' shoes

He never forgot where he came from.

via Todd Huffman/Flickr and Miguel Discart/Wikipedia

Mr. T and reporter Bobbie Wygant.

When Mr. T burst onto the pop culture landscape in the early ‘80s, he was a curious character, to say the least. People had a lot of questions about his name, copious amounts of gold jewelry and West African warrior hairstyle.

His personality was also intriguing. He was a tough guy but also a very thoughtful man of faith.

In 1983, when TV news reporter Bobbie Wygant asked him a rather rude question, Mr. T gave a very thoughtful response that showed that behind his larger-than-life persona, he understood the importance of humility.

"I'm looking at you with $10 million worth of diamonds and gold and everything and then I'm looking at your shoes that are just a disaster,” Wygant said with a smirk. “Now, will you explain to me what's with these shoes? All taped up, looking tacky."

"Some people might see this as tacky, but there's a message in these shoes. You see, these shoes keep me humble, and if you recall, the last time that we met, I had these shoes and they were in better shape,” Mr. T said.

Mr. T eloquently responds to a reporter who makes fun of his shoes.
— (@)

“But these shoes were handed down through my family,” Mr. T continued. “My father wore them, my brothers wore them and things like that. So they keep me humble. Let me remember that I have brothers and sisters back in Chicago. I got a mother and father that I must take care of. So I see, out in Hollywood, and especially all the money I'm making now, it’s so easy for me to be caught up in all this material stuff and forget where I come from.”

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1980s nostalgia

Education

Sadly, the inventor of the Trapper Keeper passed away. Do you remember these iconic '80s folders?

Now, you can relive the '80s for under $11.

via Amazon

One of the most iconic Trapper Keeper designs.

E. Bryant Crutchfield died in Marietta, Georgia, on August 21 at the age of 85. His son told The New York Times his cause of death was bone cancer. Crutchfield will forever be known for creating an invention that helped kids in the ’80s and early ’90s show off their personalities while keeping their schoolwork in order.

In 1978, according to a profile by Mental Floss, he invented Gen X’s most iconic back-to-school must-have, the Trapper Keeper.

The Trapper Keeper consisted of two parts. The Trapper, a folder with angled pockets to hold your papers and the Keeper, a notebook that holds multiple Trappers. Together, secured by a strip of Velcro and adorned with a radical graphic on the front, they made up the iconic Trapper Keeper.

The idea for the Trapper Keeper came out of a brainstorming session with Crutchfield’s team where they pondered “How to make a binder like a pet,” “How to get a double purchase” and “How to have a knapsack file drawer.” Incredibly, the Trapper Keeper was the answer to all three questions.

One of the main selling points of the Trapper Keeper was the amazing graphics on the front cover. They allowed students to show off their personalities whether they bought one featuring puppies, a Hawaiian sunset, neon ’80s graphics, horses, animal print or a red Lamborghini.

If you changed your mind after buying one, no problem. The Trapper Keeper’s plastic binding usually broke by the end of the school year so your parents would have to buy you a new one in the fall.

\u201c"Few objects evoke Gen X or millennial childhood as powerfully as the Trapper Keeper. Mead introduced it nationally in 1981, and by the end of the decade, the company estimated that half of all middle and high school students in the United States had one."\nhttps://t.co/ZzMZFcsa3K\u201d
— Orin Kerr (@Orin Kerr) 1661499332

See on Instagram

Trapper Keepers lost their popularity in the mid ’90s after the internet meant kids carried fewer pieces of paper. So why are they such an important part of Gen X’s childhood?

“It was fun to be able to show your personality through the binder that you had,” Peter Bartlett, former director of product innovation at ACCO Brands, told Mental Floss. “You don’t really remember a notebook or the pens and pencils you used. But maybe you remember your [Trapper Keeper].”

The great thing is, just in time for back-to-school, you can get a retro Trapper Keeper with awesome ’80s designs delivered the next day (in some cases) from Amazon. They’re a fun back-to-school gift to show the students in your family how cool it was to go to school in the ’80s and ’90s with a Trapper Keeper.

Classic '80s Geometric Shapes 1" Binder was $16.99, now just $10.87

(Next day delivery available through Prime.)

This Trapper Keeper epitomizes everything ’80s. For some reason, the default design in that era was geometrical shapes laid on top of a grid. Kids back then had to be sure to write their name in this particular design because everyone had it.

Order yours now >>

Classic '80s Animal Print 1" Binder was $16.99, now just $10.87

(Next-day delivery available through Prime.)

Ever wanted to carry a Trapper Keeper to school that looks like it was modeled after David Lee Roth from Van Halen’s tights? This is for you, my gnarly friend.

Order yours now >>

Classic '80s Palm Trees at Sunset 1" Binder was $16.99, now just $13.75

(Next-day delivery available through Prime.)

This Trapper Keeper features a graphic that perfectly encapsulates the ’80s dream. It’s what you see after you spent all day in a halfpipe or just got out of the water after a long day of surfing.

Order yours now >>

Classic '80s Laser Beam Sunset 1" Binder 24.59

This Trapper Keeper puts one in the mindset of the average person in 1984. Yes, they had their sights on a beautiful sunset. But they were also completely consumed by laser beams, neon and geometric grids.

Order yours now >>

Classic '80s Funky-Looking 1" Binder $10.90

This Trapper Keeper may be retro, but it's clear that even in 1982 this wasn’t cool. Yes, it has checker print, which was always radical. However, the streak of Andy Warhol pink mixed with the clown-dog prints is a little extreme even for an era defined by excess.

Order yours now >>

Upworthy may earn a portion of proceeds from the sales of these items

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1980s nostalgia

Television

This 1980 promotional video for ABC is creating waves of fun nostalgia

It's a fun little game of spot the TV star.

YouTube

Can you name these ABC stars from the 1980s?

Ah, the '80s. It was a totally tubular time for television—the sitcom still reigned supreme, dominating the time slots. In 1980, watching TV was an event—there was no DVR, no streaming. Heck, everything went off the air in the middle of the night and there weren't even infomercials for life insurance or compilation CDs (there weren't even really CDs yet!). As fall approached and the new TV season started, networks would go all out in their promotion. ABC wasn't yet the network behemoth it is now, but it was pretty close. It had some incredibly popular shows in 1980, including the whole "Happy Days" universe.

Ahead of the fall season, the station created a series of promotional videos that were used to entice people to come back and watch TV after the summer hiatus. They were so extra and over the top, but it makes sense if you remember the fact that they're promotional tools. This one from the 1980 "You and me and ABC" campaign features the network's top stars in a very of-the-moment-style dance party setting. See how many stars you can recognize.

1980 ABC PROMO You and Me!

The video has been making the rounds on Twitter, and everyone is playing the game "spot the network star." It's actually quite fun. In this one, I spotted Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams from "Laverne & Shirley," Joyce DeWitt from "Three's Company," Hal Linden from "Barney Miller," Tom Bosley and Al Molinaro from "Happy Days," Roscoe Lee Browne from "Soap" and Robert Guillaume from "Benson," among others. People on Twitter are absolutely losing their minds over how attractive Henry Winkler (still in his Fonzie days) looks with a beard. It actually took me a minute to recognize him!

The side effect of seeing these resurrected ABC promo videos from the '80s is realizing that young, bearded Henry Winkler was a total goddamned smoke show!
WAY hotter than Fonzie.
— Nathan Crowder (@NateCrowder) July 28, 2022

Contract obligations!
— Danny Deraney (@DannyDeraney) July 27, 2022

There's another, longer promo video from the same season that's even more hilarious than the first one. In it, a series of ABC stars show up in a random town to paint a mural on a building to tell everyone to watch ABC that fall. Again, see which stars you can spot.

You & Me and ABC promo 1980

"STUNNING ABC promo that will never be equaled...The emotion, the tight editing, and all those ABC stars...One of a kind!" one comment on the video reads.

In a LinkedIn post from 2018, John Knox, a brand manager, tried to give some insight into why the network would put so much money into promos like these. "I strongly believe that these worked on the same premise that jingles do," he explained. "Ear-worms are damn good marketing - always. These ear-worms happened to combine visuals of fleeting glances of celebrities you know."

They don't make promos like this anymore, and it's kind of a shame. But thanks to the internet, these will live forever.

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nostalgia

Pop Culture

19 super-specific memories that are giving people instant childhood nostalgia

Certain sensations bring up incredible memories.

via Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr

Memories of childhood get lodged in the brain, emerging when you least expect.

There are certain pleasurable sights, smells, sounds and tastes that fade into the rear-view mirror as we grow from being children to adults. But on a rare occasion, we’ll come across them again and it's like a portion of our brain that’s been hidden for years expresses itself, creating a huge jolt of joy.

It’s wonderful to experience this type of nostalgia but it often leaves a bittersweet feeling because we know there are countless more sensations that may never come into our consciousness again.

Nostalgia is fleeting and that's a good thing because it’s best not to live in the past. But it does remind us that the wonderful feeling of freedom, creativity and fun from our childhood can still be experienced as we age.

A Reddit user by the name of agentMICHAELscarnTLM posed a question to the online forum that dredged up countless memories and experiences that many had long forgotten. He asked a simple question, “What’s something you can bring up right now to unlock some childhood nostalgia for the rest of us?”

It was a call for people to tap into the collective subconscious and bond over the shared experiences of youth. The most popular responses were the specific sensory experiences of childhood as well as memories of pop culture and businesses that are long gone.

Ready to take a trip down memory lane? Don’t stay too long, but it’s great to consider why these experiences are so memorable and still muster up warm feelings to this day.

Here are 19 of the best responses.

1.

"An eraser that looks and smells like a very fake strawberry." — zazzlekdazzle

2.

"Remember the warm, fuzzy static left on your tv screen after it was on for a while. A lot of you crazy kids WEAPONIZED the static to shock your siblings!" — JK_NC

3.

"Waking up super early on Saturday morning before the rest of the family to watch cartoons." — helltothenoyo

4.

"When you'd watch a vhs and it would say 'and now your feature presentation.'" — Mickthemmouse

5.

"Eating one of those plastic-wrapped ice pop things after a long day of playing outside in your backyard with your friends." — onyourleft___

6.

"Scholastic book fairs." — zazzlekdazzle

"The distinctive newspaper-y feel of those catalogues, the smell of them. Heaven. I would agonize over what books to get, lying on my living room floor, circling my options in different colored gel pens, narrowing it down to 2-4 from a dozen in an intense battle royale between slightly blurry one-line summaries. I know my mom's secret now. She would've bought me the whole damn catalogue. But she made me make my choices so that I really valued the books. I'd read them all immediately, reading all night if I had to, hiding in a tent under my covers with a flashlight I stole from the kitchen. I thought I was getting away with something. As an adult, I notice, now, that the flashlight never ran out of batteries." — IAlbatross

7.

"Watching 'The Price Is Right' when you were sick at home." — mayhemy11

8.

"That feeling of limitless freedom on the first day of summer vacation. That feeling of dreaded anticipation on the last day of summer vacation." —_my_poor_brain_

9.

"Blockbuster." — justabll71

10.

"The noise when picking up the phone when someone was surfing the web." — OhAce

11.

"The TV Guide channel. You had to sit through and watch as the channels slowly went by so we could see what was on. It blew getting distracted by the infomercial in the corner and then realizing you barely just missed what you were waiting for so had to wait for it to start all over." — GroundbreakingOil

12.

"Light Bright. I barely remember it myself but you’d take a charcoal-black board and poke different colored pegs through it. You plug it in to the electrical outlet and all the pegs light up creating whatever shape you made in lights." — 90sTrapperKeeper

13.

"You knew it was gonna be a good day when you walk into PE class and see that huge colorful parachute." — brunettemountainlion

14.

"Ripping handfuls of grass at recess and putting them on your friend." — boo_boo_technician

15.

"In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum-security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can hire The A-Team." — Azuras_Star8

16.

"Watching 'Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.' There was something so special about the intro where he would sing Won't You Be My Neighbor while he changed his jacket and shoes. I loved every second of it, and would watch in utter content and fascination each time as if I'd never before seen him zip his cardigan up and back down to the right spot and change his shoes with the little toss of a shoe from one hand to the other." — Avendashar

17.

"Somewhere between blowing on some cartridges and pressing the cartridge down and up in the NES to get it to play." — autovices

18.

"That feeling when you are going as high as you can go on the swings. Power? Freedom? Hard to describe." — zazzlekadazzle

19.

"Cap guns. But smashing the entire roll of caps at once with a hammer." — SoulKahn90

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1990s nostalgia