80 Facts about the ’80s – List Show (247)

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Hi, I’m John Green, welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube, and did you know that Clara Peller, who said the “Where’s the Beef?” line in Wendy’s ads, got fired from Wendy’s when she did a commercial for Prego spaghetti sauce in which she said, “I found it.” According to Wendy’s, that implied “that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy’s restaurants.” And we all know, there is only one location for the beef.

Anyway, that’s the first of 80 facts about the 1980s I’m going to share with you today in this video presented by our friends at Geico. The 1982 song “Mickey” may now be a high school cheerleader anthem, but Toni Basil was 38 years old when she recorded it. Hacky sack has been around since about 3000 BCE when Chinese Emperor Hwang Ti used to kick around a leather ball filled with hair. Sony named the Walkman after the Pressman audio recorder and Superman.

And speaking of things you don’t hear much about since the 80s, Michael Dukakis is famous for losing to George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. But people forget about his larger contributions to history, like for instance, he declared April 24, 1989 “New Kids on the Block Day” in Massachusetts. In 1987, 25% of all mattress sales were waterbeds. That is interesting.

The crimping iron was invented after a hairstylist who spent hours braiding and unbraiding Barbra Streisand’s hair for a photoshoot. Here is an interesting fact: Casey Kasem did voice work for the Transformers cartoon, but he quit when he read a script containing a character that he found offensive. Roald Dahl struggled to write Matilda because he was genuinely afraid that books were becoming unpopular. I’m glad to know that’s not a new thing.

In 2012, Teddy Ruxpin creator Ken Forsse announced that he disliked the way teddy bears were portrayed in a certain movie. I just hope he’s okay with how teddy bears are portrayed on our wall. By the way, Cellophane, Mark’s actual childhood teddy bear – born in the 1980s.

Before the Karate Kid movie, The Karate Kid was a completely unrelated DC Comics superhero. DC Comics actually appears in the Thank Yous of the movie’s credits because they let Columbia Pictures use the name. According to songwriter Steve Kipner, the Olivia Newton-John song “Physical” was originally written for “a macho male rock figure.”

Speaking of Olivia Newton-John, after John J. B. Wilson watched a double feature of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu, he was inspired to start the Golden Raspberry Awards, also known as The Razzies. According to boombox expert Fred Brathwaite, “These boxes were so heavy that some people would develop massive forearms.”

In the eighties, Christian Bale starred in a commercial for Pac-Man Cereal, thus giving us the name of his inevitable autobiography: From Pac-Man to Batman. By the way, when Ms. Pac-Man was introduced in 1982, her tagline was: “The femme fatale of the game world.”

In 1981, Rick Springfield accepted a role on General Hospital after recording his album. The show got around 14 million viewers daily, which may be why “Jessie’s Girl” hit number one that year. Also, by the way, I thought the central lyric to that song was “I wish that I was Jesse’s girl” until about last year.

1986 was the first time Halley’s Comet was observed via spacecraft, but Chinese astronomers first noticed it in 239 BCE. And speaking of things you can see from space, Simon Le Bon showed up for his Duran Duran audition in pink leopard-print pants. Nick Rhodes said, “Anyone who looks that silly is positively the one.”

It cost over half a million dollars to make Eddie Murphy’s album How Could It Be featuring the infamously bad single “Party All the Time.” The 1988 song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” still has some fans, including Hillary Clinton who received a teddy bear that sings the song from former Secretary of State George Shultz. Her memoir claims, “I kept it in my office, first as a joke, but every so often it really did help to squeeze the bear and hear that song.”

In 2002, Aqua Net Hairspray had an unlikely comeback when the musical Hairspray started on Broadway. Because nothing says fashion like a musical that takes place in 1960s Baltimore. And speaking of hairspray, let’s discuss Jon Bon Jovi. He didn’t like the song “Livin’ on a Prayer” at first. The band included it as a hidden track on an album because he didn’t deem it worthy to be a regular track.

When he turned 18, Laurence Tureaud legally changed his name to Mr. T because he wanted people to call him “Mister,” which he considered a sign of respect. When American Greetings was developing Care Bears, they were top secret and only called “Project II.” “Project I,” by the way, was none other than Strawberry Shortcake.

Incidentally, Strawberry Shortcake has her own annual convention in Cleveland that has been going on since 2003. The Cheers premiere in 1982 was ranked almost last in ratings. Its finale, eleven years later, brought in 80.4 million viewers. And speaking of sitcoms, Alf was very popular in Germany. The country actually has a city named Alf, and people kept stealing the sign due to the show’s popularity.

John Hughes wrote Sixteen Candles after an agent sent him a stack of actresses’ headshots, including Molly Ringwald’s. He put her picture over his desk and wrote the bulk of the film in one weekend. But Hughes often wrote pretty quickly. In fact, the script for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took him just six days.

Russell Simmons actually came up with the name Run DMC, which the rest of the group disliked. They wanted to be the Devastating Two or the Dynamic Two MCs. There’s a Rainbow Brite Museum in North Carolina, made up of 1,500 items of memorabilia from one woman’s Rainbow Brite collection.

The “I’ll be back” line from The Terminator was written in the movie’s novelization as “I’ll come back.” In 1984, if you wanted a phone shaped like lips, like the one that DJ had in Full House, it would cost you $70. Nowadays, no one even knows the price of a landline phone. And that’s sad because my cellphone can do a lot of things, but one thing it can’t do is be a hamburger phone, or a banana phone, or a Mickey Mouse phone, or one of those transparent phones where you could see all the wires inside.

Stickers for your car that said Baby on Board were very popular in the eighties, but according to a 2012 study, one in twenty drivers blame such stickers for obscuring vision and causing accidents. Another brand that did well for itself in the 80s: Members Only. Thanks to the famous jackets, the company brought in $100 million annually.

Jane Fonda gets some of the credit, or arguable blame, for making leg warmers trendy. She wore them in her very first workout video and encouraged people to wear them to feel like athletes. Which is easy to make fun of, but then again, that’s why I’m wearing tennis shoes right now.

Another reason for the leg warmer craze: the movie Flashdance, which also gave us the collarless sweatshirt. Actress Jennifer Beals once shrunk a sweatshirt in the dryer, then cut around the collar so it could fit. She wore it to her audition, and the style made it into the movie.

The clapper is notorious thanks to its commercial jingle, but the exact same song was actually used earlier in the 80s in a commercial for Sine-Off cold medicine. Both Dave Coulier and Howie Mandel voiced Animal on the show Muppet Babies. What a great program.

And speaking of Muppets, Fraggle Rock was HBO’s first original series. It was a lot like the content that HBO makes now, but there was less violence than there is in Game of Thrones, less nudity than there is in Girls, and far less Jeff Daniels than we have in The Newsroom… alright, times were so different then.

In the 80s, Van Halen famously requested M&Ms with all the brown candies removed backstage at their shows. They did this not to be difficult, but instead they snuck it into their contract to make sure that the people running the venue actually read the entire rider. If they saw brown M&Ms, they knew there might be some technical errors in the show.

When MTV premiered in the eighties, they wanted to use footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. But Armstrong refused, so they went with Apollo 11. The opening act for Madonna’s first ever tour was The Beastie Boys, who often got booed for their antics.

The Beastie Boys, by the way, wrote “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” as a parody of rock songs. It was a joke. They refuse to play it live and in fact haven’t played it live since 1987. In 1985, in order to convince stores in New York City to carry the new Nintendo Entertainment System, a Nintendo exec promised them that they could send back the ones they didn’t sell, free of charge. But they ended up selling 50,000 that holiday season.

Most popular plumber ever! Oh, it’s awkward because Luigi heard me say that. The last names of Jem and the Holograms were the names of real scientists who worked on hologram technology. Gelly Roll pens were invented in the eighties, but it took a while to come up with the perfect ink formula. After trying things like grated yam and egg whites, a member of the team saw an ad for the food-additive xanthan gum, which turned out to be the missing ingredient.

Thanks to Dynasty and Working Girl, shoulder pads in women’s clothing were popular during the 80s, but designer Elsa Schiaparelli actually invented the style in the thirties. Also, people have been perming their hair since 1872.

In the movie Juno, she yells, “ThunderCats are go!” But this wasn’t the catchphrase of the eighties cartoon. Juno probably meant to say “ThunderBIRDS are go,” like the show from the sixties. All the cool eighties kids had a Polaroid 660. The brand itself started in 1944 by Edwin H. Land because his 3-year-old daughter didn’t understand why she couldn’t see a picture right after it was taken. So, he fixed that problem for her and then became a billionaire.

Doc Brown had a chimpanzee in early drafts of Back to the Future, but the head of Universal said, “No movie with a chimpanzee ever made any money.” Which is just completely unfair. I mean, granted “MVP: Most Valuable Primate” hadn’t been made yet, but surely that exec was familiar with the Ronald Reagan movie “Bedtime For Bonzo.”

By the way, in early outlines for The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda was named Buffy. While Jay McInerney was working on his novel Bright Lights, Big City, his publisher said that no great American novels took place in New York. To which Jay McInerney probably said, have you read Gatsby?

Famous guitarist Slash auditioned for Poison but realized he wasn’t right for the job when they asked him if he’d wear makeup. Similarly, Richard Page, the lead singer of Mr. Mister, turned down the lead singer job in two other bands: Toto and Chicago. Because, you know, he was waiting for Mr. Mister to come along.

Believe it or not, America lived in ignorance of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets until the eighties. Supposedly, by the way, they come in four shapes: the Boot, the Ball, the Bow-Tie, and the Bell. It cost $20,000 to create the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man suit for Ghostbusters. The crew had to make three of them, which were all destroyed during filming.

Sonny Crockett’s car on Miami Vice was originally a Corvette that the crew made to look like a Ferrari. But eventually, Ferrari gave the show a Testarossa. Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote and produced Dirty Dancing, was friends with Dr. Ruth – whom you will remember was a sniper in the Israeli army before she was a sex expert! Anyway, Bergstein wanted to cast her friend as Mrs. Schumacher, but Dr. Ruth declined when she realized the character was a thief.

In the 1980s, the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche spent 55 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. According to the book, here are a few things that “real men” don’t do: “have meaningful dialogues,” “catch rays,” “drink light beer,” or “wear gold chains…or anything with more than three zippers.” I don’t know, Captain Jack Sparrow both catches rays and wears gold chains, and for the record, I think I’m a real man and I love quiche!

Okay, let’s speed up! Lisa Frank has her own patented proprietary ink formula. It’s a mixture that makes colors brighter. Cyndi Lauper sang the theme song for Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Eddie Van Halen did the guitar solo in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Fred Astaire almost cameoed in Michael Jackson’s music video for “Thriller.” He even attended a rehearsal.

Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” music video was the first to ever feature spoken dialogue. And Paula Abdul choreographed ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly” video. And people say she’s not talented. Jolt Soda used the same slogan, “All the sugar and twice the caffeine,” for 24 years. “Spandex” is an anagram of “expands.” And hair mousse is named after the French word for “foam.”

It took Erno Rubik one month to solve his own invention, the Rubik’s Cube. The Babysitters Club author Ann M. Martin ghostwrote the first Sweet Valley Twins book, Best Friends. Daniel Waters wrote the movie Heathers hoping that Stanley Kubrick would make it as a three-hour-long dark comedy. Drummer Rick Allen joined Def Leppard when he was just 15 years old. His mom responded to the band’s ad for him.

“Manic Monday” by The Bangles was written by Prince under the pseudonym “Christopher.” That was before his pseudonym was a symbol. People at the actual Top Gun school receive a $5 fine every time they quote the movie Top Gun. And speaking of which, after Top Gun was released, sales of Ray-Ban aviators increased by 40%. But if you think THAT’S impressive, after E.T. came out, Reese’s Pieces sales increased by 65%.

And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that the recording for the star-packed song “We Are The World” lasted until 3 AM because Stevie Wonder wanted to record a verse in Swahili and was waiting for a phone call about correct pronunciations. He should have taken a lesson from me – it doesn’t matter if you pronounce things correctly.

Anyway, when the call finally came, Ray Charles said, “It’s three o’clock in the morning. I can’t even sing in English.” And Wonder responded, “Just relax, we’ll do it in one take, and then I’ll drive you home.”

Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these nice people and made possible by our friends at Geico. Thanks again for watching, don’t forget to subscribe, and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.

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