a few observations on this topic, that recently have come up a lot.
Sorry if it's gonna be a bit long.
First of all, a bit of context.
Maybe people forgot what the 80s where like, especially late 80s, especially in USA, maybe they forgot what being kids was like, maybe they were not even born when these things aired.
At the times trends for people were not dictated by young girls half naked on tik tok, but by "the American dream" that in the 80s was to be a yuppie, that the "manual" said were like this
As you can see, yuppies were successful people who played tennis, yuppie women were blonde, of course, usually they stayed home anyway, because their husbands made a ton of money, thanks to cocaine.
That was the culture US projected back then, that's why people of my generation reject the idea that USA are culturally relevant, except for punk, that was the last really interesting subculture that the US produced, but that's another story for another time.
If you don't believe it, here it is "Das Yuppie handbuch", German edition.
Secondly, the shows were not for kids, the shows audience were kids parents, in this case their dads or older brothers, who represented almost entirely the demographic of people who knew what Zelda was and who she was and that no, Zelda's not the guy on the covert art of the videogame box.
So it reflected an US centric male culture, like the fact that Mario is Italian because Japanese are (and were even more at the time) kinda obsessed with Italy, but in USA, being an Italian plumber, they made him sound like this
He starts saying "Hey paesano" which is an idiomatic phrase mainly used in the South of Italy, that nobody uses anymore since a long time ago and those who did where simply mocking very old ways. I haven't heard it since I was a kid, in the late 70s. Of course Mario being Italian with black moustache must be from Naples, right? and he obviously knows how to make a pizza, right? every Italian know how, even if they are plumbers.
This basically to say that in USA those products were a reflection of the culture people were living in, men were assholes, Italians were Italo-Americans not real Italians, Chinese lived in Chinatowns and Japanese took pictures of everything.
The good news is, kids don't get the references.
As an example, my nephew she's 4 years old and she watches Masha and the Bear, which is a Russian product BTW. There's an episode where Bear encounters a female bear and wants to know her. He takes some flowers and a box of chocolates and goes to introduce himself. While he's going Masha realizes that Bear has chocolates and wants to eat them so she tries every trick on the book and in the end she eats them all and Bear is left with no more chocolates to bring to his romantic interest.
Long story short: what my nephew got is that you don't ever eat all the chocolates, because before eating the last one you should ask if someone else wants it, because it's good manners.
She did not understand that it's a metaphor of the difficulty of having a romantic life for parents with kids, especially single parents.
That's something we get, because we are adult and have already gone through it or witnessed it in other's people lives.
You're seeing an idealized fantasy version of the 80s. What a lot of people remember of the 80s was childhood so they lacked awareness of the things that would cause adults stress, and so that's the view shows set in the 80s reflect.
For many people the 80s were not good - the CIA was introducing crack to finance itself (and arguably targeting destabilizing black america), AIDS was killing thousands while significant portions of the world were celebrating the "gay plague" or GRID (Gay Related Immune Disorder), Police still routinely targeted LGBT clubs, being fired for being gay or trans was legal, etc
>“You’re always told things used to be more fun,” Mr. Bollen said. “When I was young, there was that obnoxious person in the corner who wouldn’t shut up about the early ’80s.”
It is not implausible that things have gotten progressively "less fun" than the early 80's. I mean, just think about the drugs alone. Lower drinking age, crackdown on pills and cocaine hadn't happened yet. Police militarization and infantilization of young adults hadn't happened yet. The economy was good. Lower and middle class jobs hadn't fled the country yet. "safe sex" movement/AIDS crisis, etc not yet there. Parents/spouses couln't keep tabs on you 24/7 via cellphone.
I was the same age in the ‘80s as the Stranger Things characters, and I grew up in Indiana too. It was fine. But everything today is better in nearly every way. The internet is spectacular. Porn was very difficult to come by in the 80s, but now you can drink from a firehose of depravity right on your 5G phone. There’s no better time to be alive than today.
As one of those people, well, it didn't stop me. But the terror was real.
reply