Today, for literally no reason, I found myself humming the “Wah Ne Oh Lah Hivvel Hup NICK!” bumper from mid-80s Nickelodeon programming. I remember it in between episodes of ‘Dangermouse’ and ‘You Can’t Do That On Television’, but probably remember it better than any of the episodes of those shows or indeed much of my youthful TV indulgences. (That doesn’t count ‘The Twilight Zone’, mostly because I have watched he hell out of that as recently as last week.) Stephen’s theory that things you experience between the ages of 8-12 become indelible memories and barometers of your future enjoyment has some serious truth behind it, in my experience, leading to today’s vintage query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) can also still quote a couple of years of ‘Saturday Night Live’ word-for-word, especially the really terrible year with Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall, asking: What do you remember most clearly as part of your youthful TV?
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I will not include shows like Miami Vice, which I have a DVD box of, or Knight Rider & MacGyver, because those are still constantly on at some channel and I catch glimpses of them every now and then to refresh my memory. I will name two, which I actually have not seen since late 80’s but at least imagine to remember well: He-Man and The Masters of the Universe and Pikku Kakkonen (means “tiny two” because it was on channel two), a kid’s variety show with live actors, short cartoons (mostly east European ones, Disney was sacred and was never part of any other show) and such.
It was hard to think of something I haven’t either revisited out of nostalgia or that doesn’t still air on one channel or another, but the only thing I could really think of that still sticks in my head is this bizarre live action series from the early 90’s called “Space Precinct”. It was aired here just after midnight on weekends, so very few of my friends or classmates had even heard of the show, let alone seen it. It wasn’t a masterpiece or anything, but I can clearly remember certain aspects of it and the mannerisms of some characters even though I haven’t seen anything more than screenshots of the show in over 20 years.