Question of the Day 5.16.12

Name the music video!

Answer to yesterdays’s QOTD: History of the World, Part I. Congrats to @MrsSweatheifer and Kailyn for guessing correctly.

Electric Blue

“If a boy had a chance, a chance with someone like you, are you gonna break his heart, let him cry for the moon…”

Ah, the teenage crush. We’ve all been there. Many times.

And in May of 1988, we officially got our anthem–– Icehouse’s “Electric Blue”.

“Electric who“? you may ask? Well, it may not have been a HUGE hit, but we here at BoTE are pretty sure that once you hear it, you’ll recognize it. And it will burrow into your brain for the balance of the day.

Don’t say you weren’t warned:

Written by lead singer Iva Davies and (Obscure 80s Trivia Alert!) John Oates, “Midnight Blue” was a big hit in Davies’ homeland of Australia, a bomb in the UK, and a certified decent hit stateside–– peaking at #7 in May 1988, and staying on the charts for 21 weeks.

It was such a good song, in fact, Oates reportedly told Davies that if Icehouse hadn’t recorded it, he (Oates) would have taken it back home and made it a Hall & Oates single.

If only. A month before this catchy little ditty peaked in the US, Hall & Oates had their last (to date) Top Ten hit with “Everything Your Heart Desires”.

We’re thinking ol’ John sometimes looks back and waxes nostalgic about the one that got away… “Electric Blue”.

We ♥ Electric Blue.

Question of the Day 5.15.12

Name the movie!

Answer to yesterdays’s QOTD: Hardcastle and McCormick. Congrats to @MrsSweatheifer, @RICANROLL, and Jeffrey Scott for guessing correctly.

Bionic Six

“While leading a scientific expedition across the Himalayas, Bionic Man Jack Bennett, his wife Helen and four teenage children are attacked by bloodthirsty creatures. Jack fights to protect his family, but the struggle triggers an avalanche which leaves them all trapped beneath an ancient glacier…”

With the crowded action figure field in the 80s, new products had to stand out… had to offer something bigger and better than the other guy.

How about a ridiculously diverse family that shares an ungodly array of superhuman powers? How about a set of toys with such a cool history that it’s printed in its entirety on the back of each figure’s package? How about…

Bionic Six!

Long before Pixar even dreamed about The Incredibles, Tokyo’s TMS Entertainment gave us this animated family of freaky-powerful folks. And, of course, we also got a toy line to go right along with it.

The Bionic Bennett Family (dad Jack, mom Helen, and kids Meg, Eric, J.D., and Bunji) joined up with their robot F.L.U.F.F.I. to battle Dr. Scarab and his evil minions of destruction, including Madame-O, Glove, and Mechanic.

On the cartoon each of them had their own bionic power. But in real life (well, the die-cast metal/plastic action figure world, anyway) they each had a cool accessory (be it gun, backpack, or… Eric’s baseball bat?)

Hey, all we knew is these guys were pretty cool, and the fact that they were metal didn’t hurt, either. Sure, they were a little more prone to rust in the ol’ sandbox, but WOW! Real metal!

And the villains? Well, let’s just say that Dr. Scarab’s “deranged surgeon” get-up wasn’t exactly a comforting vision whenever it was time for our annual check-up. And the fact that his accessory was a hefty pair of pliers? Eek.

Plus, there were the cool ‘other things’, too. The Electronic Flying Laser Throne? Genius! And the Secret Headquarters (Super Hi-Tech Bionic Laboratory)? Man… take THAT Star Wars Death Star playset.

Alas, though, the Bionic Six weren’t long for our world. In all, 65 episodes of the cartoon aired in syndication during 1987, but the toys were gone even quicker, it seemed.

Guess there’s always something bigger and better after all. But that’s alright, F.L.U.F.F.I., we remember you.

We ♥ Bionic Six.

Question of the Day 5.14.12

Name the TV show!

Answer to Fridays’s QOTD: My Tutor. Congrats to no one for guessing correctly.

Bring on the Night

“The afternoon has gently passed me by. The evening spreads its sail against the sky…”

In the spring of 1984, it all ended. When The Police walked off the stage for the last time at the end of their Synchronicity tour, well… that was it.

NOW what?

Well, if you were Sting, it meant taking a break from pop/rock music and turning to jazz. The Dream of the Blue Turtles was released in June 1985, turning millions of heads as it arrived.

The music was one thing, sure–– but for the story BEHIND the music, we had to wait until November… when Michael Apted’s documentary Bring on the Night hit theaters.

Chronicling the rehearsals for and the opening of the Blue Turtles tour in Paris, Bring on the Night took us inside the reinvention of Sting after the demise of The Police. Alongside stellar musicians like Kenny Kirkland, Branford Marsalis, and Munch Jones, Sting proved that he still had plenty of music left in him, and the result was one of the better albums of the decade. So it only follows that the movie would be pretty darn awesome, too.

Featuring rather candid interviews with Sting (who’s just a wee bit pretentious and obnoxious at times), footage of Sting’s second child being born (on the 2nd night of the tour), and some killer concert footage (including arguably the best “Message in a Bottle” ever recorded, as the closing credits), Bring on the Night was a movie for Sting (and Police) fans the world over.

Turns out it wasn’t the end after all.

We ♥ Bring on the Night.

Question of the Day 5.11.12

Name the movie!

Answer to yesterdays’s QOTD: Bryan Adams’ “In the Heat of the Night”. Congrats to Todd for guessing correctly. Half credit to @Queenofthe80s.

Spandex

We blame Joseph Shivers.

Somewhere in a DuPont lab in 1959, our man Joe created a polyurethane fiber that could stretch and then (magically!) snap back to its original size.

And somewhere a 5-year-old David Lee Roth smiled.

…for while this crazy new invention was indeed revolutionary, it wouldn’t hit its stride (fashion-wise) until the early 80s–– just in time for Mr. Roth to slap on some leggings and jump around like a Russian gymnast on crack.

If you were in a hair metal band, if you considered aerobics a delightful little hobby, or if your name was Madonna, Spandex was as much a part of your wardrobe as underwear (and sometimes more-so).

It was comfy, it let you move around like you were naked even though you had clothes on, and it came in more colors and designs than Cabbage Patch Kids.

…even black and yellow-striped. Right, Dave?

No, not everyone could pull it off (read: anyone even the least bit ‘pudgy’), but for those of us (Oh, who are we kidding… those of YOU) who could, well–– was there a more prominent fashion trend in our favorite decade?

Spandex is still around, sure, but these days it seems to remain mostly in dance studios, gyms, and on athletic fields.

Whew.

We ♥ Spandex.

Question of the Day 5.10.12

Name the music video!

Answer to yesterdays’s QOTD: Turbo Teen. Congrats to Taps and Tiffany for guessing correctly.

Amazing Stories

Generally the words ‘Steven’ and ‘Spielberg’ were guaranteed gold in the 80s, but every so often even the best have a bad day, And while NBC’s Amazing Stories could hardly be considered ‘a bad day’, let’s just say that a lot of people blew it by not watching. And after only two seasons, it was gone.

Taking his inspiration from the pulpy sci-fi mag from the ’20s-’50s, Spielberg created Amazing Stories as a fun little diversion (think The Twilight Zone… but a little more on the ‘fun’ side, instead of the ‘creepy’ side).

Each half-hour episode told a bizarre, out-there story of weird, unexplainable things happening to perfectly normal people. From the young man fighting at the Alamo in 1836 who finds himself in present-day San Antonio, to the geeky guy (Jon Cryer) who discovers a secret potion that makes his pin-up posters come to life, Amazing Stories was… well, amazing. Fun, inventive, and awesomely bizarre.

Among our favorites is the ‘Thanksgiving’ episode from Season 2, when Kyra Sedgewick finds something living at the bottom of her well. But, of course, the pilot episode is what kicked it all off, and it’s still great all these years later.

The other great thing about Amazing Stories? Heck, it was chock-full of big names. The directors of the episodes included Spielberg himself, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, and Robert Zemeckis. And the stars? Whew. Charlie Sheen, Kevin Costner, Keifer Sutherland, Eve Arden, Christopher Lloyd, and even Sid Caesar… and that’s only a few.

We’ll go ahead and blame NBC for Amazing Stories‘ relatively quick flame-out–– because there’s really no other explanation. The network put it on Sunday nights in the fall of 1985 opposite the unstoppable train that was Murder, She Wrote… and they also put it right after Silver Spoons. Don’t know about you, but we’re thinking they may have lost a little bit of their lead-in audience.

Sure enough, after two years, Amazing Stories was history. Though, if ever there was a show that deserved to be resurrected…

We ♥ Amazing Stories.