Before Survivor changed reality TV forever, and after American Gladiators had already proved that people loved watching regular contestants get destroyed by larger-than-life athletes, television gave us one of the strangest competition shows of the late ’90s: Battle Dome. Premiering in 1999, Battle Dome tried to combine the athletic spectacle […]
Before MTV became dominated by reality TV, there was a strange little window where the channel still felt unpredictable — and somehow, that window gave us The Sifl and Olly Show. Hosted by two sock puppets, Sifl and Olly was part sketch comedy show, part music show, part fake public-access […]
Cartoon Network wasn’t supposed to become one of the most creative kids channels ever made. When it launched in 1992, it was basically a rerun machine — a place for Ted Turner to air the massive cartoon library he already owned, from Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry to The […]
Camp Anawanna, we hold you in our hearts… For a whole generation of Nickelodeon kids, Salute Your Shorts feels like one of the defining shows of the early ’90s. Budnick, Donkeylips, Sponge, Dina, Telly, Z.Z., Ug, the Awful Waffle, and “Zeke the Plumber” all became permanent pieces of Nickelodeon nostalgia. […]
The Lost Boys is one of the coolest vampire movies of the 1980s — motorcycles, boardwalk lights, leather jackets, comic books, “Cry Little Sister,” and one of the most unforgettable saxophone performances ever committed to film. But watching it now feels different. Released in 1987, The Lost Boys helped reinvent […]
Before Max Headroom became one of the creepiest unsolved mysteries in television history, he was supposed to be a joke. In this video, we look back at the strange rise of Max Headroom — the fake “computer-generated” TV host who became an 80s pop culture phenomenon, a New Coke spokesman, […]
PBS gave us some of the most beloved children’s shows of all time — Sesame Street, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 Contact, Ghostwriter, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and so many more. But not every PBS kids show became a classic. In this video, we’re looking back […]
In 1990, Hollywood wanted the next Batman… and Disney gave them Dick Tracy. Warren Beatty’s bright yellow comic strip blockbuster had everything a summer movie was supposed to have: Madonna, Al Pacino, massive marketing, McDonald’s tie-ins, action figures, a hit soundtrack, and some of the most incredible visuals and sets […]
Before it became the fun chrome-spaceship adventure every ’80s kid remembers, Flight of the Navigator started with one of the darkest premises in family movie history: a 12-year-old boy disappears in 1978, comes home in 1986, and hasn’t aged a single day. In this nostalgic retrospective, we look back at […]
Carolco Pictures was the studio behind some of the biggest, loudest, most unforgettable movies of the late ’80s and early ’90s — Rambo: First Blood Part II, Total Recall, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Basic Instinct, and Cliffhanger. For a while, Carolco looked like the future of Hollywood: an independent studio […]
