Posted by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont
There’s a new Charlie’s Angels series coming this fall, and yet another Planet of the Apes movie due in August. A Dallas remake will feature the rivalry between Bobby and J.R.’s sons. Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody is making a movie based on Sweet Valley High.
The pop culture of the 1970s and '80s is rising again, which should be no real surprise considering that the kids who grew up with it are now adults, making marketing and spending decisions. We’re two of those kids, and our book, Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?: The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s & '80s, celebrates the culture we grew up with, so long overshadowed by that of our older siblings, the Baby Boomers.
One of us, Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, grew up the only Generation Xer in a household with six Baby Boomer siblings and two G.I. parents. The other, Brian Bellmont, was one of four Gen Xer boys. We weren’t at Woodstock, but we sure liked him as a little yellow bird. We don’t remember the Moon Landing, but we remember Moon Boots.
While Baby Boomer nostalgia was draped all over our youth, our own childhood memories seemed to slip quietly away. Sure, Generation X itself had a brief flurry of attention in the early 1990s, kicked off by author Douglas Coupland, but that seems to be met only with negative backlash, ending in an entire generation being branded “slackers.” Who could blame Generation Xers for shunning that name, and further media attention?
But sometimes you can learn the most about a generation through the small things. Gael started her Weblog, Pop Culture Junk Mail, in 1999, sharing everything from bits about the royal family to musings on the comic strip “For Better or For Worse.” It was obvious from the beginning that her retro posts were those that found a most receptive audience. When she would write about the disappearance of the original taco flavor of Doritos chips, or reveal that Hostess Choco-Diles (think a chocolate-dipped Twinkie) could still be purchased online, comments and emails flooded in, even months after the original post. In the meantime, Brian was interviewing and writing about icons of our childhoods, from Adam “Batman” West to George “Mr. Sulu” Takei.
Kids of the ‘70s and ‘80s were out there, and they were wondering what the heck had become of their past. When we two college friends who always found a pop-culture kinship in each other decided to combine forces on a book project, remembering lost pop culture was a natural topic.
We soon found there were dozens of lively stories in the memories we were resurrecting. Jell-O Pudding Pops themselves had been hot during the 1980s, with uber-dad Bill Cosby hawking them in TV commercials. They vanished in the ‘90s, and made a surprising return in the early 2000s, but in a different shape. Jell-O had licensed the concept to Popsicle, and the once-flat Pops were now more rounded, and devoted fans claimed they didn’t taste the same, either. At least one regional dairy-product company, Kemps, still makes a version of the frozen treats, but they can be tough to track down.
Pudding Pops are far from the only childhood friend that was born again. Schoolhouse Rock released new videos in 2009. Doritos tried again with their (supposed) original Taco flavor in 2011. The owners of Benji are planning a new movie about the beloved pup.
Sure, pop culture items can be viewed as light and fluffy and disposable. But your memories aren’t. As we write in the book, it’s not the items themselves as much as what they meant to you at the time. Malibu Barbie may not be the best Barbie doll ever made, but if she’s the one you played with for hours on your cousin’s orange shag carpeting, laughing till your sides ached, then yes, to you she is the best Barbie ever made. The Evel Knievel Stunt Cycle may not be the highest-tech toy ever, but if you fondly remember winding it up and launching it across the room, over a checkerboard ramp and into your little brother’s diorama about the Civil War, then yeah: Best. Toy. Ever.
And sometimes, yes, there is a deeper sociological message in the items in “Pudding Pops.” Look at how television has changed over the last 30 years. Certainly a nation that only had five channels to watch had a more shared television experience than one with 500.
Gael likes to describe the process of writing our book as “redecorating the rooms of our childhood.” We can remember the big pieces, but it takes some hard focusing and sometimes research to remember exactly what book sat on that shelf (Free to Be ... You and Me) and what shows we eagerly awaited on Saturday mornings (Krofft Super Show). We hope this book will help readers do just that.
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