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Welcome, dear friends, to your pop culture time machine, covering everything from the iconic, to the ironic.
Welcome, dear friends, to your pop culture time machine, covering everything from the iconic, to the ironic.
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The Retroplex
Saturday, June 25, 2005
TIME Magazine - August, 1985
What a difference 20 years make.
I've been holding onto this particular issue for quite some time now. I'm a baseball fan, and a sometime follower of the Cincinnati Reds (my family's from the area), so - aside from the freakshow value of the cover article, which praises Rose to the roof - it's got some legitimate nostalgia value to me, as well.
Even more interesting, however, is the degree to which the ads (and even feature articles) reveal the degree to which we've changed as a society - both for the better, and for the worse.
I'll be posting this stuff a little at a time. As I've said before, The Retroplex is a work in progress, and I'm still sifting through the layout, and the content decisions I need to make. So, this particular issue will probably go up in several installments.
I've always believed that if one were to kidnap someone from, say, 1985, and bring them 20 years into the future, it wouldn't be the big things that would overwhelm them - it would be the little day-to-day differences.
After all, the pace of giant-scale advancement has slowed somewhat since the days of the Apollo program in the 60s, has it not? We don't have the long-predicted flying cars, or any of the other flashy accoutrements that were supposed to herald our arrival in the 21st century. We got ripped off.
Instead, we've got the same basic cars, in many cases, the exact same commercial aircraft, and, what's more, we don't even have anything as cool as the Concorde anymore. Geez...someone from 1985 could, in fact, travel over the Atlantic at mach 2+ when they wanted to. Not us, boyo...
Still, the little differences that stand out are interesting in their own light. Let's jump in to the magazine, shall we?
Here's the inside cover - an ad for the very first-gen Volkswagen Jetta. My ex-girlfriend drove one of these babies, and it was a pretty nifty little car.
Get a load of the circa-1985 slogan: It's not a car. It's a Volkswagen.
This issue features a load of ads for, about, and by banks of all kinds. I have no idea why, exactly, except for the fact that the S&L crisis hadn't yet hit, and, rather like the dot-com boom, folks were making money hand-over-fist. This particular issue is interesting as a historical snapshot, as it features references to, or articles about several then-brewing historical events that would come to full-kapow in the subsequent few years. For example, we see the first echoes of Iran-Contra, the S&L/junk bond disasters, SDI, and the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. I'll be highlighting these, as well as other pieces that cover the beginnings of some pop culture events (i.e., the beginning of Val Kilmer's film career).
Here's one of the bank ads, aimed at setting you straight regarding the differences between a real bank, and those many pretenders out there...
Random, eh?
Here, though, are my two highlights for this round. First up? This is an ad for "the most powerful personal computer IBM has ever made." Yep - the "IBM Personal Computer AT", with a thunderous 286 processor, DOS 3.0 OS (with XENIX support), and up to 3MB of RAM! Woo-hoo!!
I vaguely remember the whole Charlie Chaplin ad campaign, too. Click on the picture for a larger (and more legible) version.
And now, my favorite of the bunch. See, this magazine - like most in the era - featured several different cigarette ads - something that, in this day and age, is seen just slightly less than, say, ads for the American Friends of Jihad might be. While I detest the cigarette companies with a passion, there's something decidedly nostalgic about seeing evidence that these enormous conglomerates were unstoppable behemoths, with in-your-faceness to burn, and a willingness to basically flip off the entire non-smoking population of the country. They had moxie, they did. This ad - by R.J. Reynolds (now RJR Nabisco) Co. - fairly oozes with snark, managing to backhandedly brand non-smokers with sole responsibility for the Great Smoke Wars of 1985, which apparently raged at the time of publication.
Imagine. This is a full-page ad in a major magazine, defending smokers against the onslaught of discourteousness and invective hurled at them by the cretins of the blackless lung-set. The thought of something like this running in a magazine today only manages to conjure visions of executives being literally tarred and feathered, and thrown into stocks by Oprah, or the yammering screechbirds of The View. Once again, the enjoyment of this one is all in the reading, so, feel free to click on the image to view a larger, more readable version.
Until next time, 'Plexers, May your G.I. Joes be 3.75" tall, and your Swatch run smoothly. See you soon.
I've been holding onto this particular issue for quite some time now. I'm a baseball fan, and a sometime follower of the Cincinnati Reds (my family's from the area), so - aside from the freakshow value of the cover article, which praises Rose to the roof - it's got some legitimate nostalgia value to me, as well.
Even more interesting, however, is the degree to which the ads (and even feature articles) reveal the degree to which we've changed as a society - both for the better, and for the worse.
I'll be posting this stuff a little at a time. As I've said before, The Retroplex is a work in progress, and I'm still sifting through the layout, and the content decisions I need to make. So, this particular issue will probably go up in several installments.
I've always believed that if one were to kidnap someone from, say, 1985, and bring them 20 years into the future, it wouldn't be the big things that would overwhelm them - it would be the little day-to-day differences.
After all, the pace of giant-scale advancement has slowed somewhat since the days of the Apollo program in the 60s, has it not? We don't have the long-predicted flying cars, or any of the other flashy accoutrements that were supposed to herald our arrival in the 21st century. We got ripped off.
Instead, we've got the same basic cars, in many cases, the exact same commercial aircraft, and, what's more, we don't even have anything as cool as the Concorde anymore. Geez...someone from 1985 could, in fact, travel over the Atlantic at mach 2+ when they wanted to. Not us, boyo...
Still, the little differences that stand out are interesting in their own light. Let's jump in to the magazine, shall we?
Here's the inside cover - an ad for the very first-gen Volkswagen Jetta. My ex-girlfriend drove one of these babies, and it was a pretty nifty little car.
Get a load of the circa-1985 slogan: It's not a car. It's a Volkswagen.
This issue features a load of ads for, about, and by banks of all kinds. I have no idea why, exactly, except for the fact that the S&L crisis hadn't yet hit, and, rather like the dot-com boom, folks were making money hand-over-fist. This particular issue is interesting as a historical snapshot, as it features references to, or articles about several then-brewing historical events that would come to full-kapow in the subsequent few years. For example, we see the first echoes of Iran-Contra, the S&L/junk bond disasters, SDI, and the beginning of the end of Apartheid in South Africa. I'll be highlighting these, as well as other pieces that cover the beginnings of some pop culture events (i.e., the beginning of Val Kilmer's film career).
Here's one of the bank ads, aimed at setting you straight regarding the differences between a real bank, and those many pretenders out there...
Random, eh?
Here, though, are my two highlights for this round. First up? This is an ad for "the most powerful personal computer IBM has ever made." Yep - the "IBM Personal Computer AT", with a thunderous 286 processor, DOS 3.0 OS (with XENIX support), and up to 3MB of RAM! Woo-hoo!!
I vaguely remember the whole Charlie Chaplin ad campaign, too. Click on the picture for a larger (and more legible) version.
And now, my favorite of the bunch. See, this magazine - like most in the era - featured several different cigarette ads - something that, in this day and age, is seen just slightly less than, say, ads for the American Friends of Jihad might be. While I detest the cigarette companies with a passion, there's something decidedly nostalgic about seeing evidence that these enormous conglomerates were unstoppable behemoths, with in-your-faceness to burn, and a willingness to basically flip off the entire non-smoking population of the country. They had moxie, they did. This ad - by R.J. Reynolds (now RJR Nabisco) Co. - fairly oozes with snark, managing to backhandedly brand non-smokers with sole responsibility for the Great Smoke Wars of 1985, which apparently raged at the time of publication.
Imagine. This is a full-page ad in a major magazine, defending smokers against the onslaught of discourteousness and invective hurled at them by the cretins of the blackless lung-set. The thought of something like this running in a magazine today only manages to conjure visions of executives being literally tarred and feathered, and thrown into stocks by Oprah, or the yammering screechbirds of The View. Once again, the enjoyment of this one is all in the reading, so, feel free to click on the image to view a larger, more readable version.
Until next time, 'Plexers, May your G.I. Joes be 3.75" tall, and your Swatch run smoothly. See you soon.