The Day After was an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. More than 100 million people, in nearly 39 million households, watched the program during its initial broadcast. With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during its initial broadcast, it was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show up to that time and set a record as the highest-rated television film in history.
The movie depicted a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact countries that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri, and of several family farms near nuclear missile silos.
Below are scans of TV Guide’s coverage of the movie the week it aired on television. Enjoy.
Spend your New Year’s Eve enjoying this retro night of entertainment via the 1992 MTV New Year’s Eve Special. It’s a 30-year-old time capsule featuring Cindy Crawford, MC Hammer, Bell Biv Devoe, Marky Mark, EMF, Naughty By Nature, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Guns n Roses!
Back when I was young and being jealous of my friends who had cable television, one of the channels I drooled over the most was The Disney Channel. It seemed so cool that Disney had its own channel! But what I didn’t know at that time was that they released their own Disney Channel magazine too. In it, would be details on everything that was coming to the channel that month so folks could set their watches and not miss any of the great programming that was being offered.
So what we have here is the guide section from The Disney Channel Magazine from December of 1984…the year they were debuting Mickey’s Christmas Carol on the channel. So enjoy this look back at what was coming to the channel that month long ago, and let yourself drift away to the days before streaming and on-demand viewing!
In today’s Retro Ramblings, I’m supplying you with a full-length Christmas movie to watch. It’s a made-for-TV Christmas movie from 1987. And it stars Bo and Luke Duke (well, the actors anyway) driving a big rig full of presents to Alaska. Can you think of any Christmas movie that sounds cooler than this? Well, with the exception of Rocky IV.
Somehow I went almost all of my life without knowledge of this movie’s existence. Then a couple of years ago I was browsing through a TV Guide from 1987 and saw an ad for it. That ad stopped me in my tracks. I immediately went on a hunt for the movie. IT wasn’t on YouTube or any streaming service, and I couldn’t even rent it from Amazon. So I turned to some pirate services and I found it. They say the best things in life are worth waiting for, and in this case, they may be right. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I finally got to watch it.
Here is the synopsis from Google:
Two feuding brothers and one’s teenage son spend four days in an 18-wheeler taking toys from California all the way to Alaska, facing blizzards and their own complicated history together.
Looking at the time this came out, it seems logical that this was the first project that either John Schneider or Tom Wopat worked on after wrapping up their hit TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. And it caught both of them at a great time. The dynamic of their characters in this is unique. While Tom Wopat’s character seems very much in line with his Luke Duke character, John Schneider’s character is a 180 degree flip from Bo Duke…at least at the beginning of the film. But that just adds to the allure of this movie. It may seem cheesy at times, but at the end of the day, I was certainly glad I discovered it and it has worked its way into my Christmas movie rotation. Not quite on a yearly basis yet, but every other year.
I thought I would share this with you this year in case you’ve never heard of it, or have heard of it but didn’t know how available it was now. So when you have some time on your hands this holiday season, give it a watch.
Am I alone in missing the good old days of TV Guide? Not only for the listings that helped you know what to watch when but for the ads for new episodes or specials peppered throughout its pages. With that kind of thought in mind, in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I’d like to present a collection of old ads TV Guide featured for Christmas specials from through the years. I’m even going to limit my commentary and just let you enjoy all the nostalgic goodness. Here we go!
If you’re like me, you just can’t get into the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. While parades, in general, are still very much entertaining, the modern parade features way too much current pop culture for my tastes. I prefer my pop culture to be the ’80s and/or ’90s centric. So I’m presenting you with an alternative to today’s parade with this full video of the 1985 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. This way you can still enjoy a parade, and at the same time take a walk down memory lane.
Last year, I did a series of Wax Pack Flashback videos for The Retro Network that focused on “spooky” or Halloween-themed cards. I’m re-rolling these episodes here on Retro Ramblings for the rest of the month, and I’m starting with this pack of Tales From the Crypt cards from 1993. Watch me open this pack and see what treasures have laid hidden inside for almost 30 years!
For today’s installment of Retro Ramblings, I’m you with a few of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons from the ’80s. I put a couple of stipulations on myself for this one. First, only Saturday morning cartoons. No before or after-school syndicated cartoons, so that knocked stuff out like He-Man and G.I. Joe. Second, all the cartoons on this list had to debut in the ’80s, so no Scooby-Doo either. I’ll tackle all of those missing cartoons at some point in the future, but for now, let’s get into these Saturday morning cartoons of the ’80s!
The Smurfs
To me, The Smurfs were not only one of my favorite cartoons, but I think the case could be made that it was one of the best cartoons to come out of the decade. I loved the medieval setting along with all of the forest stuff in it as well. For some reason, I was always a fan of seeing stuff get built, and The Smurfs had a lot of that. I remember when Handy had to get everyone together to build a dam. I’m sure I pulled out some LEGOs and tried to recreate that at some point during that Saturday afternoon.
Disney’s Adventures of the Gummi Bears
A lot about why I loved the Smurfs also applies to why I loved The Gummi Bears. Medieval theme? Check. Lots of forest action? Check. Getting to see them build stuff? Check off that one as well. Beyond the Smurfs though, the Gummi Bears had such rich colors in its animation, and the lore behind it I found more engaging than that of The Smurfs. It hit on all cylinders for me and was a cartoon that I dared not miss on Saturday mornings.
Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling
Being into pro wrestling like I was, there was no way I wasn’t going to watch this one. I can remember knowing about it well in advance of its debut, probably from constant hyping on WWF Superstars if I had to guess. But even though most of the plots had little to nothing to do with actual wrestling, it was still a really fun cartoon. As much as I enjoyed the animated part, I believe I enjoyed the live-action comedy scenes just as much.
Mr. T
I didn’t know any boy at school around my age who didn’t watch The A-Team. And I also didn’t know any boy around my age at school whose favorite character on that show wasn’t B.A. Barracus played by Mr. T. We were all totally enamored with the guy. Hell, I still am. I even wrote a feature for The Retro Network about 12 Things You May Not Know About Mr. T. So the cartoon was just a natural extension for me. I don’t know how or why they landed on the concept of having Mr. T coaching a teen gymnastics team, but whatever, it worked. The stories were simple, but the action was fun. And much like Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling, I loved the live-action segments with Mr. T himself.
Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
My older brother had been into comic books since the late ’70s, and I would see his books and want to read them, but I was just at an age where they couldn’t hold my attention long enough for me to actually read them. So having this cartoon to watch at that time filled my need for comic book characters in a much easier-to-digest format. I loved it then for what it was, but now as an adult, I appreciate it even more when I go back and watch it because the show featured so many cool characters over its run. If you haven’t watched it in a while, I suggest you give it another look on Disney+.
That’s it for this edition of Retro Ramblings. But don’t worry, there’s plenty of more posts here for you to go explore.
We all have some TV shows that we were very fond of that didn’t last more than a season. Well, in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I want to talk about a show that never made it past the pilot that I was a huge fan of. Tag Team.
In the mid-late ’80s, professional wrestling, and the WWF in particular, was big business. A lot of the WWF superstars were becoming household names thanks to Vince McMahon and his traveling circus. Two of the better-known superstars were “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Piper had spent years as the biggest bad guy wrestler on the roster, while Ventura was well known as one of the voices of the shows as color commentator. Each broke out of the WWF world to become moderate successes in Hollywood. Piper had starring roles in B – Movies like Body Slam, Hell Comes to Frogtown, and They Live. Meanwhile, Jesse was becoming a solid backup man in action flicks with Running Man and Predator.
In 1991, they teamed up on the small screen in the pilot episode of Tag Team. The show’s premise was simple. These two wrestlers couldn’t wrestle for a living anymore, so they decide to become cops. That decision was made after they used their wrestling moves to stop a robbery at a grocery store. It was a simple idea, but one that a television series could conceivably be based around.
As the air date for the pilot episode drew closer, Vince McMahon was hyping the debut of the show on his wrestling shows, and as a 13-year-old wrestling fan, I was salivating. I marked the date and time on my calendar so I wouldn’t miss it. Here was another chance to inject more wrestling into my world, and I wasn’t going to miss it. Although I can’t recall what night of the week that this premiered, I DO remember getting everything set up in my room for it. My chair was at the right angle, I had a frosty beverage at my side and some sort of snack at the ready. I was pumped.
As I remember it, the episode was pretty good, and I thought it was really cool that these two wrestlers were going to be in a television show every week. Unfortunately, I wasn’t aware of just how exactly television worked at that time, and was quite disappointed when the show never aired again. The series wasn’t picked up, and the show was thrown into the huge pile of “could’ve been” with hundreds of other series that were never picked up.
I listened to a podcast featuring Ventura and Piper that was recorded a long time ago before Piper passed away, and Ventura explained why the series wasn’t picked up. The two companies who were producing the show together, Disney and Corelco, got into a lawsuit with each other over something not even remotely related to the Tag Team series, and while in litigation, the show was left in limbo since neither side was doing business with each other at the time. When the lawsuit dust settled, too much time had passed and the Tag Team series was abandoned.
It’s a real shame because the two had great chemistry together in the pilot, the premise was solid for an action/comedy show, and would have probably drawn decent enough ratings to keep the 13–episode first season on the air. Whether it would have been picked up beyond that is anyone’s guess, but I know one 13-year-old who would have watched religiously.
Watch the pilot below and decide for yourself if it had a shelf life or not.
This edition of Retro Ramblings is kind of a combined post. A combination of a classic commercials posts mixed with a forgotten foods post. It’s two great tastes that taste great together! Let’s watch some old cereal commercials and let our mouths water and our memory glands tingle.
Honey Nut Cheerios starring Hulk Hogan (1985)
My earliest memories of eating cereal center around eating Cheerios. I guess my Mom wanted me to eat a healthier cereal like that instead of the really sugary kinds. That was until I saw this commercial. Being the huge wrestling fan that I was, I wasn’t hearing anything about not switching my Cheerios to Honey Nut Cheerios because Hulk Hogan liked them. It wasn’t long until the switch was made, and then once the sugary cereal barrier was broken, there was no turning back.
Mr. T Cereal (1980 something)
Of course, I was on the A-Team bandwagon from the beginning, and yes, B.A.Baracus was my favorite character. Then the Mister T cartoon hit, and I was all in on that too. So when Mr. T cereal dropped, I was down. I can’t even remember what it tasted like, but the commercial mentions brown sugar, so it was a sweetie. And since I had already popped my sweet cereal cherry, this was a logical step. But the song in this commercial. I ain’t gonna lie, that’s just a bad jingle. But with the excitement and the urgency in the vocalist’s voice, you knew you just had to get to the store and get a box of this.
Smurf Berry Crunch Cereal (1983)
Back in the early to mid-’80s, what kid worth their salt didn’t like the Smurfs? It was hard NOT to like them because the little blue bastards were everywhere. They had the hit cartoon, toys, pajamas, clocks, socks, velvet posters, and so much other crap, you really couldn’t get away from them. And then came the cereal! And if you were already a fan of the cartoon, this commercial was just like an extension of that. It made it feel like buying a box of this stuff was your duty as a fan. I bought in hook, line, and sinker. But of all the cereals on this list, this may have been my favorite. It was pretty much like Cap’n Crunch Berries cereal, but with a more fun theme. In the future, we’ll have to cover the sequel cereal, Smurf Magic Berries. That stuff was the shit too!
Kellogg’s Nut & Honey Crunch (1987)
This cereal was so good. Since in theory, it would seem healthier than the other cereals already mentioned, I guess my Mom was more than ok with buying this for me. And of the cereals on this list, this by far had the best hook to the commercial with everyone saying the name of the cereal, but whoever is around takes it the wrong way. It was a simple gag that they could do a lot with, and they did. Like the spoof at the end with the cowboys. I imagine calling one of those tough sumbitches “honey” would have resulted in a beatdown of the first order. It was a different time. But the cereal was damn tasty.
Kellogg’s Big Mixx Cereal (1990)
What in the hell is that mascot supposed to be? If you listen to the people in the commercial, they’re just as confused as I am. While it may come across as hokey, it’s still a pretty cool visual mixing up the different animals to emphasize the mix of the cereal. The moose head is the best part, and that’s not up for debate. I don’t ever remember having this cereal, but these days, it seems like I would embrace it like a warm blanket on a cold night. This is one that needs to come back to store shelves. And bring back the commercial too. It’s one I wouldn’t mind sitting through while streaming an old episode of Buck Rogers or something equally as awesome.
Saved by the Bell nostalgia is running wild these days, what with the new reboot series doing well on Peacock and all. So I thought it was a good time to revisit when I opened an old pack of Saved by the Bell cards from 1992 on my Wax Pack Flashback show on The Retro Network YouTube channel.
Now back in the day, even though I was really into cards during the time period, I never saw a pack of these. Being the huge Saved by the Bell fan that I am, I know I would have been all over them. But I wasn’t even aware of their existence until I stumbled across them for sale on eBay.
Watch the video below to see a pack of them, and hey, if you had them back in the day, let me know your memories of them in the comments when you’re done watching.
Man, what better way to keep getting pumped up for Christmas than watching some old Christmas commercials! No? You’re not a fan of commercials, are you? Well, once upon a time I didn’t use to be. But that was back in the days before Tivo, Netflix, and other streaming services that allow you to skip all the advertising.
These days, I find myself kind of missing commercials. Not every commercial break, but some old commercials in particular. It was rare, but sometimes commercials could actually enhance the show you were viewing. Hang on…hear me out! I can remember watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol Special that aired on NBC every year in the mid-late ’80s, and when the commercials that aired were Christmas in nature, it kept the cool Christmas vibe going for my young self. So these commercials we’re viewing here today get a pass. That seems like enough of an opening…let’s get to five of my favorite classic Christmas commercials.
Folgers Coffee – Peter Comes Home for Christmas
I’m not sure why this commercial ever touched me as a kid. It probably had something to do with the fact that my old man traveled a lot, and there were times he would come in early in the morning like this. Never at Christmas though. He was always in town for that. But whatever the reason, this commercial has continued to resonate with me for all these years since I first saw it air.
I think it really embodies the spirit of Christmas in the form I like to think of it. Families being together, and enjoying simple things in life like a fresh cup of coffee is endearing to me. I actually keep this commercial on my Christmas playlist on YouTube to make sure I see every season.
Polaroid Cameras
One of the great frustrations for me growing up was trying to prove or disprove that Santa Claus was real. I tried my own ways of getting to the bottom of things, but trying to snap a picture with a Polaroid camera was never one of them. I give these two kids an A for effort here, as their plan kinda worked. They just didn’t anticipate Santa being a petty thief and sneaking away with their snapshot.
Budweiser Clydesdales
There’s something about those old Budweiser commercials featuring their famous Clydesdale horses that I just love. Now, there was never any drinking in our family, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying these commercials. And this one, in particular, is really good. Just seeing those horses tromp through the snow with the Christmas music in the background is enough to take me way back in time to maybe a Friday night in front of the fireplace while the folks watched the latest episode of Dallas. It makes me think of all those good old days in the ’80s.
Fruity Pebbles Cereal
Ok, so here is another product I identify with Christmas, based pretty much on just this commercial. Now I’ve always loved me a big bowl of delicious Fruity Pebbles, and it doesn’t have to be Christmas for me to enjoy them. But I always make sure I have some on hand for the holiday season. When it gets to be about October, I start keeping my eyes out in the stores for the special Christmas edition of the cereal with the red and green pebbles.
This commercial embodies the Christmas spirit as well as Fred finally lets Barney have a bowl of his Pebbles that he’s always after. Maybe those kids should have paid attention to this lesson and let the Trix rabbit have some for Christmas.
McDonalds Ice Skating
Of all the commercials on this list and all the commercials that have ever aired with a Christmas theme, this one is my favorite. I’m not sure I can pinpoint exactly when I first saw it, but I CAN pinpoint when it first connected with me. It was on during the airing of Mickey’s Christmas Carol in 1985. For whatever reason, watching the sad tale of the little boy who was left behind while everyone was ice skating was something that I held on to. Nowadays, I include this commercial on every bootleg Christmas special I put together for my kids. I really don’t associate Ronald McDonald with Christmas in any other way, but for this 30 seconds, he’s as big a hero as Santa Claus.
Well, that’s it. Five classic Christmas commercials that I never minded seeing pop up in the middle of my favorite show. Do you have any old favorites? Share them in the comments if you do.
