Archive for the nostalgia Category

Slammy Awards: The 5 most hilariously awful musical albums by professional wrestlers

Posted in Hulk Hogan, nostalgia, pop culture, wrestling, WWF with tags , , , , , , , on July 8, 2009 by Paxton

WWF logosI used to watch and follow professional wrestling. In the mid ’80s, the biggest game in town was the WWF.  Wrestlemanias I (1985), II (1986) and III (1987) were HUGE. In fact, Wrestlemania III, at the time, had the largest recorded attendance for a live indoor sporting event in North America and is considered the pinnacle of professional wrestling’s popularity. I had it on VHS but I’ve watched it so many times the video tape actually broke. The superstars that competed in those three Wrestlemanias are known to even non-fans today; Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Macho Man Randy Savage and even Mr T made an appearance to wrestle with Hulk Hogan.  The most recent Wrestlemania was number 25, held in April of 2009, and while professional wrestling is still wildly popular, it has not kept the mainstream audience it had back in the mid to late ’80s.

Wrestlemania I Wrestlemania II Wrestlemania III

Back during the golden years of the WWF, Vince McMahon was in his prime.  He marketed the everlovin’ CRAP out of his little federation.  True, he does it now, but really, McMahon has become almost a mockery of himself at this point.  Back then, he was a marketing genius, now, more a media whore than a media mogul.  Vince’s “all over the place” marketing strategies included video games, a line of giant, plastic action figures by LJN and a cartoon.  Now, companies do that all the time but back in the ’80s, that kind of cross promotion was unheard of.  Then, in 1985, Vince decided to move into the music making space.  Wrestlers have always had theme music that accompany them to the ring.  Instead of purchasing licensed songs, Vince thought they should record their own songs and market them on music albums.  So he gathered pretty much every wrestler he employed at the time and had them record their own theme music.  And the results were GLORIOUS.

Here are those first 5 heinously awful music albums as recorded by the wrestlers themselves.

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I have an article on Skooldays blog

Posted in nostalgia, Pepsi, pop culture, soda with tags , , , , on June 15, 2009 by Paxton

skooldays_site

Just a quick note, I was asked by the blog at Skooldays to write a few nostalgic articles for them.  So every once in a while I’ll be posting a nostalgic memory about an item from our pop culture past, much like I do right here on this blog.  Only, over there, the articles will be a bit shorter.  This week, I had an article posted about Crystal Pepsi. Hop on over to their very cool, nostalgic site and take a look at my article, first, of course, then check out the myriad of other remembrances from our pop culture past.

More AWESOME McDonald’s commercials

Posted in advertising, fast food, food, McDonald's, nostalgia, pop culture with tags , , , , on May 4, 2009 by Paxton

McDonald's Vegas
(Via SA_Steve)

Well, it’s ri-donk-ulous how popular my last McDonald’s commercial article became.  It’s now constantly at the top of my blog traffic. So, I thought, why not write a sequel?  I still search YouTube for old McD’s commercials, so it shouldn’t be hard to find some worthy of a look back.  And, I was right, there are many that I can still talk about.

McDonald’s has always had really, really good commercials.  Especially during the whole McDonaldLand era.  All of those characters were awesome and almost every single one of the characters had their own commercial.  So today, I thought I’d look at my favorite character and a few of his commercials.

The Hamburglar

I love the Hamburglar. He was always my favorite character. He had an awesomely kick ass name and he was a bit of a rebel. Also, check out the striped suit, the dude obviously did some time in prison. How cool is that? A children’s fast food mascot that did hard time. Awesome, indeed. So, in honor of our felon friend, here are a bunch of commercials that feature the Hamburglar.  Click the title of the commercial or the image to see the commercial on YouTube.

hamburglar_touch1 hamburglar_touch2
The Hamburglar Touch
– This was back in the ’80s/’90s when the McD commercials had title cards like a Looney Tunes cartoon. This commercial featured the Hamburglar dreaming about what it would be like to have everything he touched turn into a juicy hamburger.  You can see the Hamburglar in this commercial looks different than the big picture above.  The Hamburglar used to look more like a goblin, but they softened him up in the late ’80s to look more like a Cabbage Patch Kid.  It’s tough to find commercials with the goblin face.

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Star Wars Celebration I: The 10 Year Anniversary

Posted in Colorado, Denver, movies, nostalgia, personal, pop culture, Star Wars with tags , , , , , , , on April 28, 2009 by Paxton

Star Wars Roadtrip

Well, I was going over some pictures a few months ago trying to pick some good ones to upload to my Flickr blog when I came across pictures of my trip to Denver, CO in 1999 for the first Star Wars Celebration. While looking at them, it dawned on me that this trip happened 10 years ago this weekend. TEN YEARS!!! Man, time flies.

The Star Wars Celebration I occurred from April 30 – May 2, 1999 in Denver, CO.  It was held as a “celebration” (obviously) of the original Star Wars trilogy as well as a “release party” for the new Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace (which was set to release in less than a month from that time).

At that particular time I was on a client site in Tampa and I went to the Celebration with my friends Jason Collier and Jonathan Loden. Denver had inclement weather the entire weekend so it was either rainy or sprinkling at all times.  Plus, since this was the first official Star Wars convention in many years, some of the mechanics of the operation were not as well oiled a machine as you would come to see in Celebration II and Celebration III.  Despite that, it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I went.

Let’s take a little photo walk through some of that weekend’s festivities.

SW Celebration I entrance

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I’m OK, you’re OK: The story of OK Soda

Posted in Coca Cola, nostalgia, OK Soda, pop culture, soda with tags , , , , , on April 21, 2009 by Paxton

Sodapalooza

OK Soda logoI’ve been surprised at how popular my history of New Coke articles have been since I wrote them almost three years ago (Oct 2006).  I constantly have people linking and reading the three part saga.  It was fun to write and it was one of my favorite articles on this blog.  So, I thought to myself, why not do a “sequel” to the New Coke articles?  I mean, my energy drink reviews started off as a one-shot article and they became popular enough that I did four of them (and I’m considering doing another). I mean, soda has been one of the tenets this blog was built on.  I talk about new soda flavors, graphics and packaging, as well as wax nostalgic on sodas that are no longer available.  So what soda am I going to pull from the mists of the past?  I’m going to mine the Coke back catalog one more time to discuss OK Soda.

In the early ’90s, Coke was still smarting from the marketing stink bomb that was New Coke. Coke regained its older demographic with the switch to Coca-Cola Classic, but the younger teen generation was still scoffing at the stodgy, elder soda company. Greatly needing to boost their share of the highly coveted Gen-X demographic, Coca-Cola decided to try something new.

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