This awesome animated short has been floating around the net for a few weeks now, but hasn’t garnered a fraction of the views it deserves. Space Stallions was created by a group of students from The Animation Workshop attempting to capture the essence of 80’s cartoons like Voltron, Thunder Cats, and so on. Personally, I think they hit the nail on the head. The music was dead on with everything from sequenced arps and laser toms to its poorly written chorus. Visually, they touched on everything you’d expect to see like several of the characters rocking a mustache, Unicorn space-bikes, oh and a keytar sword. While I don’t think I’d ever want to sit through an actual episode should they ever make one, I have to applaud their awesome efforts here. Oh, and if you want to buy a copy of that theme song, you’re in luck. It’s available via BandCamp. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jul 23, 2010 in Television
The latest season highly anticipated season of Mad Men is set to open this weekend so we decided to take a look at the time honored tradition working at a fictional ad agency. Once upon a time ad agencies didn’t have much of a place in pop culture but the book that changed all of that was Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy in 1963. The year before Ogilvy got on the cover of Time magazine and as the 60s progressed so did the golden age of advertising agencies. And television shows picked up on this new career path for the smart set: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Jun 7, 2009 in Star Wars
This humorous segment of one of two episodes from Sesame Street in 1980 that feature C-3PO and R2-D2 (scene 4 of episode 1396 to be exact). Other scenes featured Bob singing about the alphabet with the droids (and of course some kids to help out).
There’s nothing quite better than 70s kung fu films that focus on the theme of revenge! The Thundering Mantis (Hao xiao zi) was directed by Yip Wing Cho in 1980 and stars Leung Kar Yan as Ah Chi. As you may have already guessed Ah Chi is a martial arts student that is expelled from his school after a fight with some henchmen. Not to give away a spoiler, but here is the final showdown scene from the end of the film: Read more…
I always assumed my love of tech was natural, but looking back at this early 80s advert you can see the pressure on every young member of Gen X to grow up and be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. The funny thing is that these early computers struck me as being clunky at the time because my expectations were set by watching science fiction TV shows where computers were much larger but did cooler things. The commercial above and below feature a later version (from 1980 on) of the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer which was lovingly renamed as “The Trash 80” because it was in competition with cooler machines like the C-64 and Atari 400 which were cheaper and better. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 16, 2009 in Television
I hadn’t realized just how geek focused the early advertising for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups was until I came across these two spots: The first advert above is from 1980 and has a bit of a Star Wars feeling to it, while 1982 commercial below is inspired by the first generation of home videogames.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 10, 2008 in Videogames
Hint: If you’re at a party in the year 1980 and people are passing around an issues of Games Magazine — run! By the way it’s interesting to note that this magazine was first published by Playboy in 1977 until 1990. Later it was resuscitated by another publisher and is still in business today.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Nov 1, 2008 in Television
Many think of robocalls a recent phenomena, but this ancient 1980 Trix cereal commercial showcases this old campaign technique. I love how the little girl needs to defend her extreme political point of view that Trix are somehow part of a “nutritious breakfast” not to mention her anti-free market views that the poor bunny should be denied a bowl of his well earned fruit-flavored corn puffs.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Oct 23, 2008 in Animation
The Right Stuf is releasing the classic 1980 anime film Toward the Terra on DVD just in time for Christmas. Back in the day as a 80s fanboy this was one of my favorite flicks, and it still holds up well today judging by the trailer above. Firstly the story line is A+ if your any sort of science fiction fanatic as the plot is very similar to A.E. van Vogt’s famous novel SLAN. Next you have the look of the film which holds up very well some 28 years later!
The latest season highly anticipated season of Mad Men is set to open this weekend so we decided to take a look at the time honored tradition working at a fictional ad agency. Once upon a time ad agencies didn’t have much of a place in pop culture but the book that changed all of that was Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy in 1963. The year before Ogilvy got on the cover of Time magazine and as the 60s progressed so did the golden age of advertising agencies. And television shows picked up on this new career path for the smart set: