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Submitted by R Burgan

From Wikipedia:

Denver, the Last Dinosaur is a US-French cartoon for children originally released in 1988 by World Events Productions (the same company responsible for Voltron). It was syndicated nationally throughout the US in 1988.

With lessons on conservation, ecology and friendship, Denver, the Last Dinosaur was a big hit with parents and educators. The kids at home liked it, too, making the show a hit during its initial run. Its theme song has attained a cult following (“Denver, the last Dinosaur, he’s my friend and a whole lot more”).

However, Denver didn’t last for long. The dinosaur boom that had followed The Land Before Time soon fizzled out, and Denver, the Last Dinosaur went into reruns after only one season.

The series itself educated the young audience to protect the environment and it also showed the value of friendship. It got a recommendation from the United States National Education Union.

Submitted by H Blanchard

From Wikipedia:

Kiss (also typeset as KISS) is an American rock band formed in New York City in December 1972. Easily identified by its members’ trademark face paint and stage outfits, the group rose to prominence in the mid and late-1970s on the basis of their elaborate live performances, which featured fire breathing, blood spitting, smoking guitars, and pyrotechnics. Kiss has been awarded 24 gold albums to date. The group’s worldwide sales exceed 85 million albums.

The original lineup of Paul Stanley (vocals and rhythm guitar), Gene Simmons (vocals and bass guitar), Ace Frehley (lead guitar and vocals), and Peter Criss (drums, percussion and vocals) is the most successful and identifiable. With their makeup and costumes, they took on the personae of comic book-style characters: The Demon (Simmons), Starchild (Stanley), Spaceman (Frehley), and Catman (Criss). The band explains that the fans were the ones who ultimately chose their makeup designs. The “Demon” makeup reflected Gene’s cynicism and dark elements, as well as his love for comic books. Paul Stanley became the “Starchild” due to his tendency to be referred to as the “starry-eyed lover” and “hopeless romantic.” Ace Frehley’s “Spaceman” makeup was a reflection of him wanting to go for a ride in a space ship and supposedly being from another planet. Peter Criss’ “Catman” makeup was in accordance with the belief that Peter had nine lives due to his rough childhood in Brooklyn. Due to creative differences, both Criss and Frehley were out of the group by 1982. The band’s commercial fortunes had also waned considerably by that point.

Submitted by katsak

Submitted by J Rock

From Wikipedia:

Madballs were a series of toy rubber balls with strange and disgusting faces created by AmToy, a subsidiary company of American Greetings in the mid-1980s. The toys incorporated gross-out humor in the vein of Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. Each ball had a character synopsis and a strange name.

The toyline was later turned into a short-lived animated television series, a series of comics and a video game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64.

Submitted by A Trammel

From Wikipedia:

The Fall Guy is an American television program produced for ABC and originally broadcast from 1981 to 1986. It stars Lee Majors, Heather Thomas, and Douglas Barr.

Lee Majors plays Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stunt man who moonlights as a bounty hunter. He uses his physical skills and knowledge of stunt effects (especially stunts involving cars or his large GMC pickup truck) to capture fugitives and criminals. He is accompanied by his cousin and stuntman-in-training Howie Munson, and occasionally by fellow stunt performer Jody Banks (played by Heather Thomas).

Typically, an episode starts with Seavers’ crew performing a stunt for a film or TV series. They are then assigned to finding, for example, a man who has skipped bail. His case turns out to be more complicated than it first seemed. In the course of dealing with the villains, Seavers performs a stunt similar to the one shown at the beginning of the show.

The series is known for its frequent cameos by Hollywood celebrities and the occasional in-joke referring to Majors’ previous series, The Six Million Dollar Man.

Submitted by katsak

From Wikipedia:

Bosom Buddies is an American sitcom starring Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari created by Robert L. Boyett, Thomas L. Miller and Chris Thompson. It ran from 1980 to 1982 on ABC and in reruns in the summer of 1984 on NBC.

The series was originally conceived by Miller and Boyett as both a takeoff on the movie Some Like It Hot and a male counterpart to their hit farce show Laverne & Shirley. After the cast had been chosen, Miller and Boyett asked Chris Thompson, one of the writer-producers of Laverne and Shirley, to write the pilot and be the series showrunner. Thompson (who would go on to executive-produce such shows as The Larry Sanders Show), said later that he took the job purely for the money, but unexpectedly found it to be “my completely favorite experience in show business,” because the network left him and his young cast free to experiment. “We were left alone,” he recalled. “Nobody was paying attention to us. We were all really young, but it was like we had daddy’s Porsche. We had $500,000 to play with every week.” The show became known for its quirky humor and its frequent use of improvisation, especially between stars Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari. Though the show started out with good ratings, it failed to hold the public’s interest and was canceled after two seasons.

Submitted by B Pearson

From Wikipedia:

The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) are a fictional group of small sky blue creatures who live in Smurf Village somewhere in the woods. The Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced Smurfs to the world in a series of comic strips, making their first appearance in the Belgian comics magazine Le Journal de Spirou on October 23, 1958. The English-speaking world perhaps knows them best through the popular 1980s animated television series from Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Smurfs.

Submitted by C Waldron

From Wikipedia:

Star Bird is a plastic-bodied, electronic handheld toy that was produced by MB Electronics from 1979.

The Star Bird manual describes it as “THE AMAZING SPACESHIP with realistic engine sounds and flashing laser blasts”. The toy is only used in three configurations: the Star Bird which consists of all available pieces, the Star Bird Fighter which is mostly only the front hull, and the Star Bird Orbiter which is the main body without the front hull. When turned on the Star Bird mimics an engine sound. If the toy is pointed upwards the sound would automatically be altered to imply acceleration or taking-off, while a nose down orientation gives the sound of decelerating engines. A button activates the LEDs at the front of the toy, along with a blast noise, to simulate the firing of its lasers. A simple, detachable drone-like “Interceptor” is provided at the end of each wing. It also had a rotating laser turret which doubled as an escape-pod/orbiter-type ship.

Follow-up toys to the Star Bird, called the Star Bird Space Avenger and the Star Bird Command Base, arrived on the market in 1979.

This toy was developed by Bing McCoy who designed a number of successful toys in the late 70’s including Electronic Battleship and ROM the Spaceknight.

Submitted by B Nordine

From Wikipedia:

Spuds MacKenzie (real name Honey Tree Evil Eye, c. 1983 – May 31, 1993) was a fictional dog created for use in an advertising campaign marketing Bud Light beer in the late 1980s. The dog first showed up in a Bud Light Super Bowl ad. By the end of the game, Spuds was a marketing success. During the height of his popularity, large amounts of Spuds merchandise was available, such as plush toys and t-shirts.

The dog, a Bull Terrier, existed not without his share of controversy. Shortly after Spuds’ rise to fame it was learned that “he” was actually female. The “controversy” was spread through the media.

Because of the popularity of the ads, they were the subject of attacks and calls for censorship by temperance-oriented groups. In 1992, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, along with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, charged that Anheuser-Busch was pitching the too-cool-for-monogamy-and-sobriety dog to children. Although the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found no evidence to support that allegation, the ads were dropped.

Spuds died of kidney failure on May 31, 1993 in North Riverside, Illinois at age 10.

Submitted by R Yurack

From Wikipedia:

Nick in the Afternoon was a programming block on Nickelodeon that was aired from 1995 to 1998 on weekday afternoons during the summer, hosted by Stick Stickly, a talking popsicle stick. The 1998 stint ran from the summer until December.

During its first summer, the programming consisted of normal Nickelodeon shows that would have aired regardless, but come its second summer, Nick in the Afternoon made some key changes, instead showing preselected Nicktoons with added segments such as “U-Pick” (viewers pick what show and episode they want to see) and U-Dip (viewers pick which substance Stick Stickly is dipped in or any substance at all using their bare feet). Viewers occasionally chose a program that hadn’t been aired on Nick in many years, for example You Can’t Do That on Television. The preselected segments were indicated by a dial using Stickly as the spinner, so as to keep the cartoons a surprise.