If only we knew at the time how good we had it, amirite? In the moment, it seldom seems like we’re living through simple times. The bills never take a month off, there are always chores to do, and you have to drudge away at work all day, every day just to fund your meager lifestyle and have any hopes of ever retiring.
So a trip down memory lane can be just the tonic for the soul we all need, a reminder of when times were indeed simpler – or at least felt that way.
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“My dad in the 1980s.”
![Image credit: Reddit | [deleted]](https://static.diply.com/E5Dq8MBD38FionYNSazn.jpg)
Not sure we needed the date on that, but I suppose aviators and mustaches do have a certain timelessness to them, much like Magnum P.I. is timeless.
But really, if the uploader’s dad wasn’t Jesse “The Body” Ventura, then he sure wanted to be.
Yes, that hair is on purpose.
It’s important that more recent generations understand that, yes, in the 1980s, hairstyles were largely done on purpose. In this guy’s case, the hair was a “lovesong” to his idol, Robert Smith of The Cure.
Makes sense now, doesn’t it?
Look familiar?
Because we know this guy – just in a very different look. Would you even guess that he’d go on to become a founding member of N.W.A.?
Seems like a stretch, but yes, this is the one and only Ice Cube.
Remember riding BMX bikes?
It was the same story for tons of kids in the ’80s – after school, you rode bikes.
“My cousin in Mexico City in the early 80s, he posted: ‘en esos tiempos lo importante era ver quien volaba mas alto’ (in those times, nothing matter except who could fly the highest),” the uploader wrote about this pic.
Good times, but also, can’t help thinking that helmets were an improvement.
Where’s John Candy when you need him?
Well, these guys probably didn’t actually need John Candy, as fun as he would have been to have around. This is the real-life Jamaican bobsled team whose 1988 Winter Olympics run became the basis of Cool Runnings .
You know it’s a craze when…
After about 1984, just about every toy out there had to transform. Optimus Prime and the gang absolutely dominated toy culture, as these mid-’80s McDonald’s Happy Meal toys demonstrate.
Just some ’80s martial arts legends.
While Arnie and Sly were machine gunning bad guys on the big screen in the ’80s, Jean-Claude Van Damme aka “The Muscles from Brussels” was kicking the butts of Tiger Tong Po (played by Michel Qissi, pictured on the left above) in Kickboxer and Chong Li (played by Bolo Yeung, picture on the right) in Bloodsport .
That’s a slice of 1993 right there.
That’s RuPaul, Muggsy Bogues, Charles Barkley, and Kurt Cobain, all at the top of their games, on the same episode of Saturday Night Live .
It’s only missing a velociraptor and Mrs. Doubtfire to be the most 1993 picture ever.
It had to be yellow, too.
How many of us sported one of these around, whether we were out jogging in leg warmers or not? It finally gave us the freedom to take our music around with us and the bright yellow kinda showed it off.
And you had to make your own mix tapes.
Yep, camped out on the shag carpet, recording songs off the radio, trying to print the titles and artists as neatly as possible in those little liners they gave you – it’s all coming back to me.
No CGI necessary.
Well, George Lucas managed to get by with very little in the way of computerized help bringing his vision to life, anyway.
Check out all the models that went into Return of the Jedi – even as Lucas’s Industrial Lights and Magic was inventing the tech that makes movies as shiny and incredible as they are today, he was using tons of practical effects, too. Something tells me it didn’t hurt the merchandising, either.
Don’t think she felt rolled on this occasion.
Well, she already had his list of what he wasn’t gonna do – did Princess Di get Rick Astley’s take on what he would do in this meeting?
Some things never change.
In the early days of the internet, Milla Jovovich did an online chat on AOL, in conjunction with MTV, answering questions from fans – basically a Reddit AskMeAnything a full decade before Reddit even existed.
Her reactions do tell a story .
Did she tell him about the Twinkie?
Just a nice, sweet moment between Harold Ramis and his daughter on the set of Ghostbusters . What a classic.
Getting acquainted.
See, this is why Ripley is such an icon – because she was played by an icon. Yes, that’s Sigourney Weaver testing out a flamethrower in preparation for Alien . I think it works.
Now that’s proper.
Hard to think of a better setup to watch the MLB All-Star game in San Diego in 1992. Nowadays, they might still be sitting in and around the truck, but they’d all be streaming the game on their phones, missing out on the gorgeous night.
The power of love.
Two of the biggest reasons why Back to the Future conquered 1985: Michael J. Fox and Huey Lewis.
And here I never realized Huey had a bit part as one of the judges for the battle of the bands.
I can still smell the hairspray.
Just your average late ’80s high school yearbook page. Looking back, it’s little wonder that hairspray was blamed in the depletion of the ozone layer, don’t you think?
Did school pics ever get better than this?
“In 1991, my Alabama school photo featured me bursting through a paper wall, on a skateboard with no back wheel, sporting what some might call a mullet,” the uploader recalled. How very Bart Simpson.
“As far as I’m concerned, we were as cool as it gets. Halloween, 1984.”
These kiddos could have been the inspiration for Monster Squad . Love it, especially the hard plastic store-bought masks that sliced into your neck, held on by thin elastic bands that simultaneously dug into your ears.
