# I love the 1980's **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 21, 2004, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347 "2004-10-21T04:41:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Nutty\_Bunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d07c76/32.png) [@Nutty\_Bunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nutty_Bunny)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/21 "2004-10-21T14:46:11Z")
> [@calm kiwi](#): > > You may like the Finn boy’s recent album then. Mellow but those same voices 🙂 I’ll check it out. Thanks. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/22 "2004-10-21T15:12:36Z")
> [@hlanelee](#): > > We certainly had more impressive looking enemies then, ie: snappy uniforms, high tech equipment, and they marched regularly in Red Square. Today’s enemies are “cut and paste”, they look like a bunch of beggars. I lost sleep over the possibility of nuclear holocaust, the threat of terrorism just doesn’t impress me. I’m more likely to be hit by a drunk driver, maybe even a Bush Twin. 😃😃😃 Yeah, this is something everyone forgets about the 80’s. I started high school in 1980 and I remember _knowing_ that one day (not too far in the future) we’d have a nuclear war. Ultravox’s “Vienna” used to make me cry everytime I saw it. I think that feeling was partly responsible for the wild fashions and fun music. I can’t begin to explain how it felt when the Berlin Wall fell and you finally realized maybe we wouldn’t all die… ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/23 "2004-10-21T15:26:55Z")
Whenever I think of the 1980’s, I think of the movie **The Wedding Singer**. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/24 "2004-10-21T15:28:44Z")
I had the advantage if being born in the early eighties (82) and so I am able to remember a lot of stuff from the era, but luckily, since I wasn’t in the age range of 12-30, I don’t have to feel embarassed about anything I did or liked. 😉 Since I was a little kid, what I remebmer most of the kids things, the toys, the cartoons, and movies. Transformers and G.I.Joe were my gods back then. The music I don’t remember much, but I do like some of it, although not from a nostelgia pouint of view, but cause I actually like it. (Not all of it, though.) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/25 "2004-10-21T15:48:02Z")
> [@Nutty Bunny](#): > > The fashions are another story. I had leg warmers, tight Jordache jeans, flourescent clothes, my 1984-Madonna phase, shoulder pads, rolled up jeans (remember getting them really tight against your ankle?) with gigantic slouch socks, off-the-shoulder shirts, acid wash and two tone jeans. I don’t miss any of that stuff at all. Hey, I liked the fashions! Don’t forget the Miami Vice blazers, plastic jelly shoes, mismatched dangly earrings, spandex, and wide belts. Everybody wore kinky costumes and listened to fun music. What’s not to like? ---
**Author:** ![bittersweet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@bittersweet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bittersweet)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/26 "2004-10-21T16:00:56Z")
> [@MsRobyn](#): > > I miss the 80s terribly, at least in terms of the pop culture. I don’t miss the greed nor the paranoia. I wholeheartedly agree with **MsRobyn**. For my 10th grade class picture, I wore a pink crinkled satin blazer (complete with shoulder pads), and my hair was shaped like a triangle…if I had a copy of the photo, I’d share the horror. I still love some of the music from that era. _sigh_ Good times. ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/27 "2004-10-21T16:05:32Z")
I was born in 80, so I caught the 80s filtered down through my sisters. Hence my love of shirts that were way oversized, sidways pony tails, belted sweatshirts (not on me, of course, as I am male, but on girls), off one shoulder shirts… wait a minute. All these fashion styles are coming back! I’ve seen off one shoulder neon lime green shirts! I’ve seen leg warmers! I’ve seen the poodle crimps! Look at The Darkness for some classic late 70s early 80s style arena rock! Brace yourselves, we’re in for a revival. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/28 "2004-10-21T18:05:18Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > I had the advantage if being born in the early eighties (82) and so I am able to remember a lot of stuff from the era, but luckily, since I wasn’t in the age range of 12-30, I don’t have to feel embarassed about anything I did or liked. 😉 > > Since I was a little kid, what I remebmer most of the kids things, the toys, the cartoons, and movies. Transformers and G.I. Joe were my gods back then. The music I don’t remember much, but I do like some of it, although not from a nostelgia pouint of view, but cause I actually like it. (Not all of it, though.) Delete the references to the movies of the era (as I don’t remember many of them) and add in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Saved by the Bell, Thundercats, Voltron, Pound Puppies, and half a dozen other programs and you have me. Well, I’m not overly fond of the music either although I do like a bit here and there. G’n’R isn’t bad and I do like some of the New Wave-ish stuff. I’m much more fond of the Grunge Era in the early to mid-nineties though. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/29 "2004-10-21T19:19:50Z")
> [@wolf\_meister](#): > > Just to bring you folks off of the “1980’s cloud”, here’s something to bring you back down - **Ronald Reagan** was President during the 1980’s. > > . Also, for you in particular, men’s shorts were well above the knee. Don’t set your time machine for summer, unless you want to see guys knees and lower thighs as far as the eye can rach. ---
**Author:** ![gfloyd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d2c977/32.png) [@gfloyd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gfloyd)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/30 "2004-10-21T19:21:11Z")
Born in 1985, but still an 80s child in some respects. Playing Oregon Trail, woot. I’m not really old enough to have worried about nuclear war, but I’m currently wearing ox blood docs. It would be nifty to see the 80s, but I’ll take 2004 over 1984 anyday. No that wasn’t really meant to be a pun. ---
**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/31 "2004-10-21T20:16:54Z")
> [@tremorviolet](#): > > Yeah, this is something everyone forgets about the 80’s. I started high school in 1980 and I remember _knowing_ that one day (not too far in the future) we’d have a nuclear war. Ultravox’s “Vienna” used to make me cry everytime I saw it. I think that feeling was partly responsible for the wild fashions and fun music. I can’t begin to explain how it felt when the Berlin Wall fell and you finally realized maybe we wouldn’t all die… You reminded me of one of the milestones of my life in the 80s: going to boot camp in 1985. The further we get from the Cold War, the more the memories of my boot camp days stand out as being from another era. In contrast, my high school memories seem more recent and less dated. It is ironic that when I was in boot camp, I often thought of Viet Nam-era bootcamp as being ancient history – the drill instructors never actually hit us or anything, you see, like they did back in the bad old days. Nowadays, I see the Reagan-era military as just as strange and old-fashioned now as the Viet Nam seemed to me back then. In my boot camp days, it was all about the Big Red Menace. Everthing we did was coated in anti-communist rhetoric. It seemed perfectly normal, but I’m sure that if we were to zip into our time machine to Basic Training in 1985, it would feel very different from Basic Training today. Oh yes… They don’t swear at recruits anymore (who’d have imagined this 20 years ago?) ---
**Author:** ![Nutty\_Bunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d07c76/32.png) [@Nutty\_Bunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nutty_Bunny)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/32 "2004-10-21T20:35:16Z")
How could I have forgotten Computer Camp in 1983?? The Commodore Vic-20 rules! 😃 Baseball shirts with your name in fuzzy letters, ironed on the sleeve or on the back of a t-shirt. Speaking of nuclear war: _ **The Day After** _. That movie was so disturbing to me back then, but I saw it again a few years ago and it’s so incredibly cheesy. ---
**Author:** ![emekthian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecae2f/32.png) [@emekthian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emekthian)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/33 "2004-10-22T02:23:29Z")
> [@](#): > > Oh yeah, I forgot about Atari! I spent the better part of the early 1980s playing video games. Amen! Though I’m more of an NES fan myself. The best things to come out of that decade were Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/34 "2004-10-22T02:47:46Z")
Have you guys heard this song “Preoccupied with 1985”? [http://www.absolutelyric.com/lyrics/view/bowling\_for\_soup/1985/](http://www.absolutelyric.com/lyrics/view/bowling_for_soup/1985/) Kind of funny/sad. This thread reminded me of it. Not a bad song ---
**Author:** ![Nutty\_Bunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/d07c76/32.png) [@Nutty\_Bunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nutty_Bunny)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/35 "2004-10-22T14:37:29Z")
> [@Laughing Lagomorph](#): > > Have you guys heard this song “Preoccupied with 1985”? > > [http://www.absolutelyric.com/lyrics/view/bowling\_for\_soup/1985/](http://www.absolutelyric.com/lyrics/view/bowling_for_soup/1985/) > > Kind of funny/sad. This thread reminded me of it. Not a bad song Yes, unfortunately. It describes me to a ‘T’. :o ---
**Author:** ![Sean\_Factotum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/50afbb/32.png) [@Sean\_Factotum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sean_Factotum)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/36 "2004-10-22T15:03:26Z")
> [@START](#): > > Anyone else want to come get in the time machine with me and go back to the 1980’s. Only if I can now avoid the party where I met the former Mrs Factotum. About the only thing I’d do different (other than the aforementioned) is spend a lot more time writing down things about the local music scene. It would help with the book I’ve been trying to put together on the subject. ---
**Author:** ![Moirai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/96bed5/32.png) [@Moirai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moirai)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/37 "2004-10-22T20:00:49Z")
I graduated from high school at 17 in 1985, so I came up during the best/worst of it! I think I burned my yearbooks just to destroy the pictures! 😉 The bands I dimly remember seeing live were X, Oingo Boingo, The B-52’s, Souxsie & The Banshees, David Bowie, The Who, Sparks, Police/Sting, Madness, Untouchables, Duran Duran, Squeeze, and a whole bunch more that never got saved in the diminished capacity of my brain at the time. The clothes were just _wrong_. Go back? No thanks. I like it here, even though I’m _old_ now! ---
**Author:** ![audiobottle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@audiobottle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audiobottle)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/38 "2004-10-22T20:10:44Z")
Wait, I’m pretty sure that Nintendo was late, late 80s, like 89 or something, and those other games might even be into the 90s. So I don’t know if that counts. I do remember playing my old Colecovision though. At least I think that’s what it was. And the Cabbage Patch doll craze. I had a Pound Puppy too. For some reason, I seem to remember a lot of pastel colors in clothing. ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/39 "2004-10-22T20:31:41Z")
Wow… Stirrup pants. Shoulder pads. Jelly shoes and jelly bracelets. In neon colors. Doctor Marten shoes. Crimped hair. Blue mascara. Michael Jackson’s _Thriller_. Big, heavy, stiff skateboards with giant plastic nose guards. The Cars. Off-the-shoulder clothing. Giant tennis shoes with no laces. Run DMC. Acid-washed stretch jeans, ohhh yeah. 49ers. Respressed memory therapy. Cocaine. Family Ties. Those awful tiered ruffle skirts that are back in style, sort of. And never, ever forget _The Devil in Miss Jones_. ---
**Author:** ![Already\_in\_Use](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a9adbd/32.png) [@Already\_in\_Use](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Already_in_Use)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2004, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347/40 "2004-10-22T20:37:42Z")
Bah, I wouldn’t want to time-travel back to the '80s. If I did, I wouldn’t be on the Internet right now! Well, maybe I would, but all the porn would be ASCII. As for fashion and music, I think the best past time to be living would probably be the mid-'60s, with countless great bands and space-age clothes and spiffy recycled military uniforms. There was some good music in the '80s, though. Queen and Devo were great bands, and some lesser-known noisy no wave stuff was pretty decent. Still, I think that culturally speaking, the best time to be alive is today, since we can still listen to all the old music, watch the old movies, wear old clothes if we want to, but also go out and find the amazing new things happening. I’m sure there was a lot of great obscure art and music happening in the '80s. but I would have had a much tougher time finding out about it then than today, since so much cool stuff is available on the Internet. I also wouldn’t be too keen on living during the Reagan administration, except that the Bush era isn’t that great either. It might be nice to relive the '90s Pax Clintonia. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-the-1980s/270347.md?page=3)