what was life in america like in the 80s? (Russian, president, Communism)

[ilovemycomputer90]

Originally Posted by katygirl68

I heard that too. Certainly he was just trying to highlight the dangers, but it did much to strike fear into the hearts of parents everywhere. Now we have whole channels devoted to true crime stories that will do the same thing, like the I.D. Channel.

This might explain why parents have become so fearful and overprotective of their children. Too much John Walsh plastered on the television screen every Saturday night. Unsolved Mysteries and the New Detectives didn't help matters.

[katygirl68]

Originally Posted by goofy328

Imagine a time when divorce was not the norm and its effects were actually devastating to children. Unresolved issues so profound you would have assumed some type of abuse had occurred; that was the eighties. Now single parent households are the norm and no one cares about divorce.

I'd say that depended on where you lived. I know more people who have stayed together today than when I was a kid. My mom and dad got divorced when I was still a baby, in 1969. Looking back I can think at least half of my friends came from single-parent homes, and my very best friends were all from single-parent homes. Perhaps I was drawn to them for that reason.

Divorce was fairly common where I was, but now that I'm a mom it seems that my kids friends all tend to have both parents in the home. We do live in the suburbs though, and perhaps my kids are drawn to kids like them.

[cheapdad00]

Originally Posted by goofy328

The fear of the Soviets gripped the nation, that is about it.

I was born in '72.

Born in same year and I feared the soviets (or at least nuclear war). Even though I wasn't allowed to see it, all the publicity surrounding "the day after tomorrow" left an impression on my 6th grade mind. I remember going outside when there was a plane overhead as I thought it may be a missile. As I aged, this became less and less of an issue (obviously).

[mikey2]

I can tell you one thing from personal experience:

I've working in the Mental Health and Substance Abuse field for 25 years and the treatment options and the quality of treatment was so much better in the 80's than it is now.

After 20 years of nothing but cuts, programs either don't exist or have been gutted and exist more in name than anything else.

This "Wisdom" has lead to prisons filled with the Mentally Ill and Substance abusers, costing taxpayers far more than keeping the programs that were cut.

[cheapdad00]

Originally Posted by ilovemycomputer90

This might explain why parents have become so fearful and overprotective of their children. Too much John Walsh plastered on the television screen every Saturday night. Unsolved Mysteries and the New Detectives didn't help matters.

That's my thought. It was also the infancy of the 24 hr news cycle, so over time we have become accustom and conditioned to the "crisis-izing" of everything, just because networks need content.

In the 80s, it was local news at 6 and then 30 minutes of national news at 7 and that was it (barring any real crises - president shot, challenger crash, etc.). We didn't have months of coverage because an 18 yr old coed drank too much on vacation and went missing - a terrible tragic event for the family but not something national news worthy.

[neguy99]

We wore onions on our belts, which was the style at the time.

[ByeByeLW]

South Beach was almost completely deserted. The old Art Deco hotels were mainly white with black trim.

If you lived in Miami you could conceivably witness some Cocaine Cowboy antics.

[In_Correct]

I was born in 1988 so ...

The only thing I know is from television. Based on the television back then, some of it sucked. But some of it was much better than today.

There was still a lot of poor quality dubbed anime. They like to change things in the anime when they translated it. I gave up and decided to learn Japanese for the higher quality production design. There was Gatchaman dubbed (again) with very poor audio quality, Lolo changed his name to Scamper, there is this film called "Adventures of The Polar Cubs" dubbed by Doug Goodwin (a music composer who had a brief stint making Looney Toons specials in 1979.) I have not watched it and after hearing about "The Happy Song", I decided not to.

Velma and Fred went on vacation. This is because of casting problems but instead of put Scooby-Doo franchise on hiatus, they focused the spotlight on Scrappy.

There was an animation studio called Filmation that closed down. A small part of the reason is because it costed a lot of money to produce the cartoons. They decided to compete with Hanna-Barbera, who outsourced to Wang Film Productions Cuckoo's Nest Studio, while Filmation boasted "Made Entirely In The U.S.A."

After Chuck Jones made a "The Chipmunks Christmas" special, he basically retired. Alvin & The Chipmunks was produced by Ruby-Spears instead. Chuck Jones musician Dean Elliott went to work for Ruby-Spears. Chuck Jones and Dean Elliott are dead now.

All the super hero cartoons had a stupid pet monkey in them. Whenever you didn't have a monkey, you'd have some other idiotic character. He-Man, Thunder Cats, Centurions, Captain Planet (not a 80s show but still) ... all had stupid unnecessary monkey or monkey-like characters in them.

Michael Jackson was EVERYWHERE. (He's dead now.)

We had Mantenna, not Squidward.

There were many game shows back then. They slowly went away because of an increase of talk shows, and then another increase of court shows.

The game shows looked very futuristic. One production designer built the "Bullseye" set in 1979. He later redesigned another game show "The Jokers Wild". Betty White's then husband had a game show called Password which was on and off the air since 1961 He was named Allen Ludden. Other memorable game show hosts are Bert Convy, Jack Barry, Dick Clark, and Bill Cullen. All are dead now. A very infamous game show was Press Your Luck, which was a revival of Second Chance, Second Chance. This new version was state of the art, equipped with a computerized game board with cartoon villains. Nobody cares about that. It is now remembered for a contestant who cheated. You can't search about Press Your Luck without a search tip of of the contestant's name tacked on. The game show host and announcer are dead too. (also, that contestant is dead).

In the beginning of the 1980s, Chuck Woolery was the host of Wheel Of Fortune.

There was this show called "The Cosby Show". It was about an upscale family. There was another called "Roseanne" which was about a family living in a cold little town in Illinois, hurt by the real world economic crisis in the 1980s.

MTM Enterprises was still around.

There was a computer company called Commodore / Amiga which was very popular in the 1980s. They immediately lost the competition in the 1990s.

In the 1980s, (and 1990s) the mac was not a PC.

Computers were much more interesting back then. They were not compatible with each other. (That was considered a good thing) But they were very expensive and portable computers were even more expensive.

Cable TV was around but there wasn't as many TV stations.

TV signals were "analog". There were VCRs, not DVRs.

The Internet, (the few who had it) was very expensive.
If I am Correct, there were no websites back then.

99.9% of Cameras were not digital. No camcorders were digital. They were either film or tape.

Color printers were very expensive.

There was few Wal Marts back then.

There were tons of other businesses which aren't around anymore.

Very few Public Transportation back then.

More "Import" cars began to be sold "domestically".

Not very many energy efficient light bulbs back then.

No iPod, no solar yard lights.

Yes, there was dry erase boards back then. They have existed since 1970. See Mary Tyler Moore (show) and Murphy Brown. They were there, hiding in the background.

The equivalent of text messaging or instant messaging was done on Teleprinters.

Everybody talked on the phone back then. They were these bulky land lines. And everybody answered the phone even without caller ID. There were pay phones back then. All of that must have been annoying!

Also, people did talk on their cell phones in their cars. (or actual CAR Phones)

Trucks and SUVS were UGLY.

Also, people seemed to have more hair back then.

[luzianne]

The 80s, to me, were a letdown after the 70s. The 70s were great. Great music, great "atmosphere," cheap gas, just a great time to be alive. With the 80s came hair bands and more pop rock than hard rock/what is now classic rock.

John Lennon was killed in 1980. A few months later there was an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. Even with those two events, we as a nation were a lot more innocent and untouched than we are now. The thought of terrorism, domestic or foreign, never crossed our minds. It wasn't until the Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s that I heard on the news that officials thought it was the work of a domestic terrorist.

We were pretty sheltered. We felt safe. Maybe we were just oblivious, but it just seemed like a better/safer time. But the 70s were better.

[Chubsworth]

There wasn't internet pornography. Teenage boys spent entire weekends watching scrambled cable channels in hopes of catching a couple seconds of boob. Each junior high clique had at least one member with a pervy uncle who had a mother lode of "pornos" hidden away near his hot tub.