THE FANTOM ZONE: 80's TV shows

Showing posts with label 80's TV shows. Show all posts

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos (1986) - A Look Back

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Bear and the Gang starring the Boston Bruins -- in the style of classic 80's TV intros

I'm no sports fan, but I found this hilarious.

-Deceptisean

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Halloween Costumes: a mask and a bib are all you need...

With Halloween fast approaching, I thought I’d examine an industry that has greatly improved over the decades. If you go to the Disney store or anywhere else for that matter, you’ll see Halloween costumes that have authentic materials and actually look like the licensed characters they’re supposed to portray. But if you were growing up in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, chances are you wore a crappy costume from either Ben Cooper, Halco or Collegeville. How crappy? Well, it’s amazing to think that a hard plastic mask with a fragile elastic band and what amounts to a garbage bag with simply the character’s picture on it to cover your torso were the norm for literally decades, but they were. Kids never complain when they donned their Batman mask with a plastic bib displaying a graphic of Batman doing an action pose. Nowadays, costumes are far more sophisticated with the costume actually looking like the character rather than a walking billboard advertisement for them.

These costumes were uber popular for decades, but really – they were still garbage bag grade plastic draped over your body. So, why were they the dominant force in Halloween attire for so long? Simple: they were cheap and they were everywhere! Ben Cooper, Halco and Collegeville were the masters of mass production. And they licensed the crap out of just about anything you can think of. Sure, there were Peanuts, Bugs Bunny, Superman and other bread-and-butter mainstays, but there was also Small Wonder, Krull, Fire and Ice and Scott Baio costumes, just to mention a few. So come with me now on a trip down memory lane, to a time when your breath would liquify in your semi-toxic hard plastic mask and your garbage bag costume would flap in the cold wind on a Halloween night.

First off, costumes that aren't that bad:

As you can see, some of the costumes actually looked like what they were supposed to. For all you kids of the 90's and 2000's, yes, Freddy was marketed to kids. These were the 80's. Every R-rated movie was marketed to kids because everybody knew they were watching. Oh, and for the uninitiated, the dude up top is Max Ray from the Centurions cartoon and toy line. But that's not the most random costume.

There were many more costumes based on video-games. But these might be two of my favourites (aside from the Missile Command costume, the mask of which I can't find a picture of -- was it a missile on your face or something?). Q*Bert was already the subject of cartoons and colouring books, etc. at this time, but here he gets the typical plaster-a-graphic-of-the-character-on-a-bib treatment common to these costumes. And Asteroids! I mean, you're basically making a costume on an abstract concept. There are no characters in that game. The mask is a frickin' asteroid for eff sakes! What was everybody thinking when they made this costume??

And what kid wants to dress up as Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater?? (and no, I'm not joking. That really is a costume of Jackie Kennedy wearing a sweater).

Ah, the ever famous costume of Tattoo from Fantasy Island. I can just see kids in the Woolworth agonizing over whether to get the Spider-Man costume or this gem. Truth be told, Fantasy Island was a hit with the kiddies. But then again most everything was when your parents watched stuff like Love Boat and St. Elsewhere and you had no choice in the matter. sigh

I know My Little Pony was popular and all, but what girl wants to be a horse?

Yes folks, kids could even dress up as their favourite food, although why you would pick peas over candy to dress up as is anyone's guess.

Even sitcoms were not free from the wrath of Halloween costume licensing. Small Wonder is relatively obscure today but was inexplicably popular for about 6 months. That said, Tiffany Brissette should sue for this likeness. Not only is she creepy, but she looks 47.

Remember when Rambo walked around with a shirt that had a picture of himself on it? Yeah, me neither.

Today, due to their camp value and the fact that they represented any and every fad in pop-culture in their time, these costumes are heavily prized possessions on the collectors’ market and have risen in price over the years. Sure, you can get masks of this era (some of which are actually pretty cool looking) for a couple bucks on e-Bay, but others, like the 60’s Spider-Man costume fetch upwards of $100.

These sites have a bunch of cool pictures of more costumes. Some are quite good, but a majority are too astonishing for words:

http://www.retrocrush.com/archive2003/costumes/

Worst costumes ever! EVER!:

http://www.retrocrush.com/costumes/

A scan of the 1980 Ben Cooper catalog:

http://www.plaidstallions.com/bencooper/index.html

Until next time,

Deceptisean

Monday, October 12, 2009

Photon: flashlights have never been cooler!

Alright all, in keeping with our new format I'm going to be looking at one interesting footnote in pop-culture outside of movies. One forgotten craze with an even more forgotten TV series under its belt. That's right, I'm talking about PHOTON!!

Just what the hell is Photon? In the early 80's, Photon was a craze that took the U.S. (and Canada to some extent) by storm. It's probably better known by its knock-off comeptitor Lazer Tag. Basically you strapped on awkward acessories that included a big honkin' receiver to your torso and run around with a "Lazer Pistol" that you would then shoot at someone's receiver while they tried to shoot at you in a sort of high-tech paint-bell-esque game. Photon actually came out before Lazer Tag and, in its hey-day, openned over 40 "Arenas" around the U.S. where families could go and shoot each other sensless with glorified flash-lights shaped as pistols. In all this fury, the folks who dreamt up Photon partnered with toymaker LJN to produce toys based on the property. But LJN needed more than just cheap guns to base a figure line on. And so the Photon TV show was born. And this wasn't some cheap cartoon. No, no! This was in live-action, no less.

Ah, the 80's! It was a time that embraced care-free high adventure and joyful violence with larger than life colourful creatures. And that's just what this show did. By today's standards, the show has such cheese-ball special effects, with just about everything enmired in bluescreen effects. But this stuff was incredibly ambitious for its time. Half the cast is animatronic for eff sakes. And it's 1986!

Basically, the story revolves around an earth kid who gets recruited into an intergalactic team who protects Photon, a light that has been around for eons and is important for some reason (the bad guys want to extinguish that light of course). The good guys consist of a talking lizard named Leon, a big booger-looking creature named Pike, a masked, female chauvanist (I wish I were lying) a big robot dude with a mullet (!) and some orphan earth child genius (and yes, you guessed it, he's annoying), not to mention the highly eye browed new recruit Bhodie Lee whom the show revolves around.

It's a fun little show and all the creatures are wicked. The action is very Star Wars esque with lots of flips and jumps before actually shooting someone. And the music! Every top 40 hit is here from Dancing on the Ceiling to Whip It is here whenver the action gets heavy. It's all about the cheese, people! Looking at the toys and the cool looking characters, it really is a shame that the Photon TV series didn't catch on with kids. Still, it remains an interesting footnote in pop culture and a virtual time capsule of 80's campy adventure series.