Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with nostalgia

Zingers!? Good Grief!

evilcupcakes — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:49:16 -0800

Does anyone know an actual store where I can buy Dolly Madison (now Hostess) Zingers in the greater Seattle area?? The Peanuts Christmas special always has a Pavlovian effect on me, and now I MUST find some Raspberry Zingers!! Since I want to try and find some in the next few days for the office holiday party (I was told this would elevate me to official "hero" status), I would prefer a brick and mortar store, rather than pay for overnight shipping.

You know that website built in the 1920s?

prophetsearcher — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:39:16 -0800

It's 1925. I own a General Store. The General Store has a website (obviously)... Can you describe what that website might look like? How can a visitor to that site recognize it immediately as owned by a 1925 General Store (visually)? I'm trying to design the web site for a 1925- (or so, the specific year isn't too specific) era general store. What elements can I use, specifically, to help establish the style?

To be clear, I don't want the site to look like you're shopping in a nostalgic memory of a 1925 store (so no b/w photos of storefronts, or sepia tones, etc). Rather, the idea is that you're shopping in a store that would have been designed in 1925... Does that make sense?

Also, because I'm aiming for real 'Americana,' I'm less interested in Bauhaus or other 'avant-garde' 20s styles.

For fonts, I found this link, and other useful ones from this post.

But what about backgrounds? Wallpapers? Colors? Icons? What was the "Web 2.0" style of the 1920s?

Any points of reference would be most appreciated. (I think there could be a whole movement of era-designed web sites, even from the future!).

How to buy a classic Erector Set?

JanetLand — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:01:08 -0800

Who had an erector set as a kid? (preferably in the 1970s) I would like to buy a set for a nostalgic friend, but when I search on Amazon, I get so many options! I never had one myself -- what would be the most "classic-ish" erector set for me to buy?

What on earth happened to The Simpsons?

schmichael — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 02:58:32 -0800

What happened to The Simpsons? My family used to love The Simpsons. And I know that everyone says that, but we were nuts. My Dad was an American emigre, and I think The Simpsons helped him to connect in a small, sad way with his lost country. In the days before DVDs with HDD recorders and TiVo, he used to tape every single episode on (severely limited) NZ TV. Over time he managed to get an almost-complete collection of grimy old VHS tapes (current to the current season, at the time about 14). And I used to watch them relentlessly, over and over.

But then I grew up - and, it seemed to me, Simpsons grew down. I grew increasingly bored with the new episodes, and by season 15, I stopped watching. Now, whenever I watch a new episode - which is not often - I usually give up after a couple of minutes. The sense of humour is wrong, the characters are all wrong, the plots are gasping for air... it feels like the show's heart is gone.

When I go back and watch episodes in the vicinity of season 6, I still love it. Episodes like Homie the Clown are just, it seems to me, on a completely different level than current efforts.

How much of this feeling is really coming from the decline in show quality? And can someone explain what exactly has changed in the nature of the show? I saw a recent episode with a slick new intro, and it just felt wrong. It was like they've had to sex the show up, make everything shiny and spotless, increase the tempo to breaking point, to continue to grab people's attention as the competition between media becomes more and more vicious, and TV gets louder, faster, and gaudier.

And am I paying to much creedence to the mementoes of my childhood? Maybe my nostalgia covers up for weaker jokes in the old stuff. Maybe the new episodes are perfectly good without this inbuilt assumption of how the show should work and how the characters should act. And I'm just turning into an old codger sniffing distrustfully at the new-fangled.

Or maybe The Simpsons really has jumped the shark - maybe it's jumped it more than once.

Teach me, Askmefi!

What was that video called?

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:06:27 -0800

What's this kids sing-along video I'm remembering from the '80s? When I was very young (in the mid to late '80s) I had a VHS sing-along tape that I watched all the time. Just to satisfy my own weird curiosity, I'm trying to figure out what it was now. It's like an itch that I can't scratch.

The theme was using your imagination. At one point somebody says "it's scientifically impossible… but imaginatively true" or something to that effect. I remember that all the sets were very sparse. There were a number of kids, and a pirate villain who becomes friendly at the end.

Some of the songs that I remember:

Yellow Submarine
Going on a Bear Hunt
Pop Goes the Weasel (I think?)
STOP… In The Name of Fish (before you go kersplish)

Is this ringing any bells? I'm just trying to get a title so I can look it up on IMDb or maybe find some clips on YouTube to jog the old memory. I'm suspecting this video was pretty obscure.

You Are Trying To Break My Heart

Lipstick Thespian — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:10:39 -0800

What are your picks for melancholy, lonely, time-stopping and heartachingly beautiful songs? I'm looking for other songs that fit the same vibe as these:

Eddie Vedder - The Long Road
Neil Young - Helpless
Otis Redding - I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)
Peter Murphy - Cuts You Up
Fleetwood Mac - Songbird
REM - Everybody Hurts or You Are The Everything or Me in Honey
My Morning Jacket - Golden or Gideon
Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Follow You Into the Dark
The Decemberists - Eli The Barrow Boy
Eva Cassidy - Autumn Leaves

Basically any song that just makes you sit with it and take a musical time-out, and gets your chest a little tight in that good way.

All genres and styles welcome.

I wrote a book... but I only had a copy for me...

Madamina — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:03:26 -0800

I have this amazing idea for a book that has never been done before and will sell like hotcakes. (No, seriously!) But I have absolutely no idea where to start. What do I do? I am very into local history, and I am astounded -- ASTOUNDED! -- that nobody has ever written a book about Local Phenomenon X. (Sorry to be so coy; I know it's annoying. I'm doing it anyway.)

For the purpose of explanation, let's say that I'm talking about the Empire State Building: you look at it and say, "You're kidding me, right? Surely people have written SOMETHING! I mean, it's the fricking Empire State Building!" Maybe people haven't written about it because it's too big of a subject, or they assume it's been done. Whatever the case, I know that there's nothing out there. Maybe a few historical booklets, but nothing of substance.

The thing about writing a book about the not-Empire State Building is that it could be so awesome. I have access to a huge repository of photos and stories, both in historical archives and from tourists. It's a beloved physical landmark with a great history, but people also have really strong feelings about it: working there, being tourists, the way it looks, what it means to the city, rumors, legends, you name it.

And that's just it. I know it could be a beautiful coffee table book, or even a bigger book with stories and a Website and and and... where do I begin? How do I focus my idea? I have ideas for the divisions (history, famous people who have been there, a tour of the area) but I want to make sure it's not too much of an overload.

(Also, I have ADD. Ooh, is that Julie Andrews over there?)

Things I have on my side:
--I've seen this thread.
--I am a writer and media professional, so even if I don't do it myself I can give it to someone who is good.
--I know the perfect people to get involved with it; one is a great photographer and the other has been involved with Local Phenomenon X for many years. They're young, but they've written a somewhat-similar book that is getting good press.
--People in my area will buy it, no doubt. I'm not concerned about making money, but I could price it really high and they'd still buy it. This is a huge nostalgia item.
--I work for the university and, as I've said, have access to all sorts of public information, experts and the historical society archives.
--My dad has written multiple books (coffee table and nonfiction) and operated his own publishing company, so I know he could be realistic with me about what has to happen.
--I have many contacts at our university press, who would probably publish it (or at least tell me where else I could take the idea).

Am I crazy?

Identify a old computer tanks game.

mtphoto — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:30:53 -0800

What computer tank game did I used to play? In elementary school we played a tank computer game. From what I can remember:
- We played it sometime between 1994-96. So it was probably released in 1995 or earlier.
- I'm fairly certain that game was on a floppy disk.
- There's a good chance that it was a DOS game.

Game play:
* The game showed a bird's eye view of the levels.*
- When the tank earned an upgrade it could shoot multiple missiles.

Name that tv show!

NekulturnY — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 02:24:43 -0800

Name that tv show from the eighties. I vaguely remember a television series that was quite heavy on the aspirations: it showed a bunch of kids on a summer camp zapping around on motorised quads, buggies, speed boats, ponies, bmx bikes and all the other stuff I so badly wanted as an eight year old.

Plots seemed to involve the same bad guy if I remember correctly. I distinctly remember an episode with a bush fire. I think it was Canadian.

Google didn't help, but maybe my fu was low.

Where's my jetpack?!

Ambrosia Voyeur — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:16:42 -0800

Is there a better word for this notion than "futurism?" What's the best word or phrase to connote desire for the idealized future -- that romantic, superficial imagining of things to come which is the flipside of nostalgia?

It's what can make science fiction and utopia/dystopia fantasy stories so alluring, can make you cry "where's my jetpack?!" but isn't confined to mere technophilia.

In the paper I'm writing, I'm using "futurism" to describe the visual style of the film a lot, so I'd like to have another, distinct term to describe the motivation of looking into the future with hopeful, fantastic, or romantic imagination. I figure maybe one of you smart sci-fi literate cookies might have figured this out by now.

Arguments for why "utopianism" or "futurism," etc. are actually the best options are completely welcome to me.

Video Game Nostalgia!

onalark — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 08:44:12 -0800

Help me find some lost video games from my childhood! I'm a child of the 80s, so these games would probably have been released some time between 1985-1995. All I have are bare snippets of memories from the games. Any help in remembering or identifying the three of them would be awesome.

1 - A 'war plane' simulator, except that instead of a cockpit view, it was kind of like a side scroller, and you could change the plane's altitude. I don't remember much except that you were maybe attacking a beach in one level and that to rearm you had to land on an aircraft carrier? Which was just about impossible the way I remembered it.

2 - Some sort of pandemic control game. You were an "Agent' I think, and I remember the color of white? You could take the train stations between towns and were trying to contain the outbreak of the disease, but I don't remember how. I think as the game progressed more of the ordinary citizens walking around would be infected.

3 - This one is definitely the vaguest, but a 3rd-person side scroller, Commander Keen style perhaps, where you were in a set of towers. I think once you finished the level 'one tower', you could get the key or access to the next tower. I don't remember if there was combat or puzzles, just the towers trying to get between them.

Looking for full audio of 70s pop radio broadcasts

Senor Cardgage — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 13:44:19 -0800

Im sort of a 70's nostalgia head, and as such would love to find some audio (format not important) of 70s radio broadcasts, commericals and all. Now Ideally I would like to find files from the mid to late 70s of just raw radio broadcasts. I would love to get the songs, the dj/announcer, even the commercials if at all possible. I want to get as close as possible to being able to pretend Im just listening to the radio.

Of course Im not even sure how possible or likely any of this stuff is to track down, but I figured I'd give it a shot.

As far as genre goes, Im pretty wide open. AM? Disco? AOR rock? All of these would do just fine. I'd even be interested in popular country/western station recordings.

What say ye, MeFiHive?
Is this a futile search?

How do I make my travel memories better?

bodywithoutorgans — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:59:15 -0800

I want to know how to remember my future travels better. I look back at some old travel pictures and think it was all a dream. What do YOU do? My Central America adventures a few years ago include about 30 nondescript pictures in a pub (obviously inebriated), about 40 pictures of pyramids, and 20 pictures tagged "beach", "bus" and other stock photos easily obtainable through google images.

I have a handful of journal entries which in retrospect were begging to be elaborated.

I want to know how you make your past travel memories more vivid instead of discontinuous incidents such as disproportionate photos of mass inebriation in a bar.

I'm not really looking for setting up a blog and uploading a picture every day. I'm looking for creative suggestions like sketching landscapes with markers or something like that. Help me make the past not a big blur!!!

Down the rabbit hole of my memory...

booknerd — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:05:57 -0800

I have some sort of strong, almost visceral feeling of memory related to the word "Vero", as in Vero Beach, FL. Can you help me figure out why? May be related to a story or song from my adolescence... This is so, so far out of the realm of an answerable question that I'll be shocked if I get any responses, but it can't hurt to ask. A month or two ago, I was reading something that mentioned Vero Beach, FL. The word "vero" felt immediately familiar to me, and I had some sort of overwhelming wave of nostalgia. It's been bugging me ever since, and I can't remember at all what it could be due to. I've thought on it more, and I think I might have read and felt strongly about a story, or a book, or maybe some song lyrics, that mentioned a character named Vero (in my mind's eye, it's a girl, maybe blonde, but that could be a red herring), after the place. Or maybe just where the place figured strongly.

The feeling is definitely attached to my adolescent period, which I've managed to repress pretty deeply, so it's not surprising I can't remember it. This would have been sometime in the mid-to-late 90s, but could have been something older that I read during that period, but that dates from an earlier time. I did a lot of drugs at the time, listened mostly to punk rock, and was on the internet a lot. Read a lot of books and stories. Really, it could be anything, but if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Did the old Trix taste better?

HappyEngineer — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:42:35 -0800

Did the old yellow+orange+red spheres version of Trix taste better than the current multicolored Trix or am I just looking at the past with rose tinted tastebuds? It's possible that it's just nostalgia, but when I was a kid I thought Trix tasted really great. Now it seems much more bland. I'm guessing that it's just me. But if they added lots of colors to Trix then maybe they also changed the taste somewhat.

Does anyone know if the recipe for Trix is the same now as it was 20 years ago (except for the extra colors of course)?

I found a blog spot comparing the shapes, but not the taste:
http://finkythekid.blogspot.com/2007/05/silly-rabbit-that-aint-new-shape-of.html

1987! Remember?

smoakes — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:45:48 -0800

I'm working on a story set in 1987, and I want it to be nostalgia-heavy, a little like The Wedding Singer (except of course totally different). My memory is mushier than I realized, so I was wondering, what do YOU remember from 1987? Favorite movies, TV shows, trends, outfits, general attitudes, anything is helpful. I want the setting to really feel like that time period; it doesn't need to be exactly '87 but the mid-late '80s.
Also how things were different then-now. What, for example, were personal computers like?
Any suggestions for movies that really show what the US was like in 1987 are deeply appreciated as well. Also links to websites that have info about '87 specifically--I've found a lot about the '80s in general but I think if I have the character watching War Games someone might notice.
thanks!

Game-name filter: DOS ninjas?

ab3 — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:32:32 -0800

Idle nostalgic curiosity is driving me crazy - looking for at least the name (at best, a working version) of a late 80s/early 90s DOS (not arcade) 2-d ninja game - very simple, and the most notable characteristic is that the entire game was in uber-simple orange-red-green VGA palette colors against a black background. It's NOT any of the Ninja Gaiden games or anything else easily Googled up. The graphics were very simple but relatively detailed and professionally done and the game involved platformer-style moving through levels, climbing ladders, throwing shuriken at enemies, etc. It was not a one-on-one fighting game.

More likely than not this was free/shareware.

I know this is a longshot, but there's no better place for longshot answers than here, right?

Help me find examples of Soviet-bloc nostalgia art.

matkline — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 11:00:17 -0800

Frederic Jameson's Fear and Loathing in Globalization talks about Eastern European/Soviet nostalgia art, "in which a complete set of mass-produced industrial products, from toilet seats to window panes, from shower heads to automobiles, had been invented from scratch, altogether different from the actually existing Western inventory." Are there any examples of this type of art on the web?

What book introduced me to Sherlock Holmes as a kid?

rwhe — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:56:27 -0800

ChristmasNostalgiaFilter: Help me find the book that introduced me to Sherlock Holmes as a kid. I've recently gotten interested in all things Holmesian after having not read much Conan Doyle since childhood. I'm halfway through the canon at the moment (Sherlock has just returned from the dead!) and am reading Shadows Over Baker Street and much other ancillary material.

I'd like to find the edition that got me interested in Sherlock Holmes as a kid. I read it one Christmas vacation in the early 1970s in Montreal. It might be the Educator Classic Library edition of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which is not the same as the original volume of the same title but more of a Holmes miscellany (see link for contents).

The cover of this edition was immediately familiar when I found it online. I also distinctly remember reading some of the stories in this edition, such as "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", but I seem to recall the volume I read also had "The Final Problem", in which Holmes wrestles Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. I also seem to recall large color illustrations for the stories (including one of the Falls), but my wife has the Educator Classic Library edition of Around the World in Eighty Days, and while it has a vivid color cover, it has only small black and white interior illustrations.

It's possible that I actually read a couple of books as a kid, only one of which is the edition I found online. In that case, what is the book with "The Final Problem" and the color illustrations of Reichenbach Falls?

It's also possible that the notional color illustrations were the result of a vivid kidhood imagination. Or perhaps unlike my wife's book in the same series, this one has color interior illustrations.

I'd be grateful for any light MeFites can shed.

Nostalgiafilter: Does anyone remember an animatronic Grinch display at department stores in the 1970s?

Senor Cardgage — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 08:25:16 -0800

Does anyone else that grew up in the 70s/early 80s remember the animatronic Grinch Christmas exhibit thing? Growing up in Omaha in the late 70's I vividly remember how, for at least 2 Christmases in a row, our major downtown department store had a gigantic (to a 5 year old anyway) walk-through How the Grinch Stole Christmas display exhibit thing. It was very elaborate and definitely much more than just a sales display. In fact, we had to take a freight elevator to get to on of the upper warehouse floors, where it had taken over an entire floor.
You would walk from scene to scene, as animatronic robots modeled largely (as I recall) on the Chuck Jones cartoon would play out around you. This was much more all-encompassing than a Marshall Fields-style window display and I remember it being more like walking through the It's a Small World ride. Of course the fact that I was a small child at the time may be causing me to overstate the hugeness of the thing in my memory.
I've been trying for a decade to find more information on this, and all Ive been able to come up with is that it may have also happened at other department stores in the Federated chain. That and I also remember a very similar set-up a few years previous for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It's odd because this sort of pop nostalgia seems tailor-made for the internet. I would have expected to see multiple sites by now. :(

So I come to you, bloodhounds of the MeFiVerse!
Does anyone else in the world have any idea what Im talking about!?!?

So the children of today! Have no time for child's play!

liketitanic — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:15:35 -0800

Do any of you D.A.R.E. graduates remember the "music video" produced by (I think) a D.A.R.E. officers' band, which wrote and performed this awful song (the first one listed there)? I saw it about 16 years ago. Where can I find it online? The video was really, incredibly bad and hilarious--though of course when I was eight I found it DEEPLY MOVING. I'm looking for it on YouTube or the like as evidence--any idea where I might find it?

Pepperoni Veteran

hnnrs — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:24:56 -0800

Can anyone identify the pizza-soldier toy from the bottom right of this picture? I know I used to have one as a kid, but I can't remember much more about it...

Trying to remember a children's science fiction book series from my childhood

Schmucko — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:33:18 -0800

I'm trying to remember a children's science fiction book (or series of books) that I read about 35 years ago. One had a giant tentacled creature that held the good guys in its tentacles--drawn either on the cover or within the book. The other book I think was called "The Boy With the Power". The boy of the title I think was eventually revealed to have telekinisis or something, but as the book starts, he has amnesia and wakes up on a planet of Alpha Centuri, where he walks by a barbecue, smells hot dogs and hamburgers, and finds the hambergers tastier. Odd collection of things I remember--can anyone find links to the actual books?

WTB: madeleines

Beardman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:10:12 -0800

What are some vivid examples of nostalgia in film and literature? Specifically, I'm looking for descriptions or depictions of someone nostalgically remembering their past. This could be a fictional character, a real person in a biography or memoir, or the narrator of a poem.

I've used the phrase "nostalgically remembering" at the risk of sounding redundant, in order to clarify that I'm not after films and books that are just "nostalgic" in the sense that they're about happy childhoods. What I need are depictions of the process of remembering itself. (So, for example, the fact that "The Remains of the Day" is a period piece doesn't suffice to make it nostalgic in my sense...contrast this with "Wild Strawberries," which also depicts a longing for the fin-de-siecle, but is about the protagonist longing for it.)

The more acute the longing, the better!

Some Kinda Fun?..anybody?

bonobothegreat — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:15:21 -0800

The band Teenage Head was HUGE when I was in highschool in the early 80's. Were they popular anywhere outside of Southern Ontario?