Hi I’m John Green, welcome to my salon. This is Mental Floss on YouTube and did you
know that Clara Peller, who said the “Where’s the Beef?” line in Wendy’s ads, got fired
from Wendy’s when she did a commercial for Prego spaghetti sauce in which she said, “I
found it.” According to Wendy’s, that implied “that Clara found the beef at somewhere
other than Wendy's restaurants.” And we all know, there is only one location for the beef.
Anyway, that’s the first of 80 facts about the 1980's I’m going to share with you today
in this video presented by our friends at Geico.
The 1982 song “Mickey” may now be a high school cheerleader anthem, but Toni Basil
was 38-years-old when she recorded it.
Hacky sack has been around since about 3000 BCE when Chinese Emperor Hwang Ti used to
kick around a leather ball filled with hair.
Sony named the Walkman after the Pressman audio recorder and Superman.
And speaking of things you don't hear much about since the 80's, Michael Dukakis is famous
for losing to George H. W. Bush in the 1988 presidential election. But people forget about
his larger contributions to history, like for instance he declared April 24, 1989 “New
Kids on the Block Day” in Massachusetts.
In 1987, 25% of all mattress sales were waterbeds. That is disturbing.
The crimping iron was invented after a hairstylist who spent hours braiding and unbraiding Barbra
Streisand’s hair for a photoshoot.
Here is a disturbing fact: Casey Kasem did voicework for the Transformers cartoon, but
he quit when he read a racist script containing an Arab character named Abdul, King of Carbombya.
Roald Dahl struggled to write Matilda because he was genuinely afraid that books were becoming
unpopular. I'm glad to know that's not a new thing.
In 2012, Teddy Ruxpin creator Ken Forsse announced that he hated the way teddy bears were portrayed
in the Seth MacFarlane movie Ted.
I just hope he’s okay with how teddy bears are portrayed on our wall. By the way, Cellophane,
Mark's actual childhood teddy bear - born in the 1980's.
Before the Karate Kid movie, The Karate Kid was a completely unrelated DC Comics superhero.
DC Comics actually appears in the Thank Yous of the movie’s credits because they let
Columbia Pictures use the name.
According to songwriter Steve Kipner, the Olivia Newton-John song “Physical” was
originally written for “a macho male rock figure like Rod Stewart.”
Meredith, that can't be correct. Is that correct? It was a strange time, the '80's.
Anyway, speaking of Olivia Newton-John, after John J. B. Wilson watched a double feature
of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu, he was inspired to start the Golden Raspberry Awards
a.k.a The Razzies.
According to boombox expert Fred Brathwaite, “These boxes were so heavy that some cats...would
develop massive forearms.”
In the eighties, Christian Bale starred in a commercial for Pac-Man Cereal. Thus giving
us the name of his inevitable autobiography: From Pac-Man to Batman.
By the way, when Ms. Pac Man was introduced in 1982, her tagline was: “The femme fatale
of the game world.”
In 1981, Rick Springfield accepted a role on General Hospital after recording his album.
The show got around 14 million viewers daily, which may be why “Jessie’s Girl” hit
number one that year.
Also, by the way, I thought the central lyric to that song was "I wish that I was Jesse's
girl" until about last year.
1986 was the first time Halley’s Comet was observed via spacecraft, but Chinese astronomers
first noticed it in 239 BCE.
And speaking of things you can see from space, Simon Le Bon showed up for his Duran Duran
audition in pink leopard-print pants. Nick Rhodes said, “Anyone who looks that stupid
is positively the one.”
It cost over half a million dollars to make Eddie Murphy’s album How Could It Be featuring
the infamously bad single “Party All the Time.”
The 1988 song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” still has some fans, including Hillary Clinton
who received a teddy bear that sings the song, from former Secretary of State George Shultz.
Her memoir claims, “I kept it in my office, first as a joke, but every so often it really
did help to squeeze the bear and hear that song."
In 2002, Aqua Net Hairspray had an unlikely comeback when the musical Hairspray started
on Broadway. Because nothing says fashion like a musical that takes place in 1960s Baltimore.
And speaking of hairspray, let's discuss Jon Bon Jovi. He didn’t like the song “Livin’
on a Prayer” at first. The band included it as a hidden track on an album because he
didn’t deem it worthy to be a regular track.
When he turned 18, Laurence Tureaud legally changed his name to Mr. T because he wanted
people to call him “Mister,” which he considered a sign of respect.
When American Greetings was developing Care Bears, they were top secret and only called
“Project II.” “Project I” by the way, was none other than Strawberry Shortcake.
Incidentally, Strawberry Shortcake has her own annual convention in Cleveland that has
been going on since 2003.
The Cheers premiere in 1982 was ranked almost last in ratings. Its finale, eleven years
later, brought in 80.4 million viewers.
And speaking of sitcoms, Alf was very popular in Germany. The country actually has a city
NAMED Alf and people kept stealing the sign due to the show’s popularity.
John Hughes wrote Sixteen Candles after an agent sent him a stack of actresses headshots,
including Molly Ringwald’s. He put her picture over his desk and wrote the bulk of the film
in one weekend.
But Hughes often wrote pretty quickly. In fact, the script for Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off took him just six days.
Russell Simmons actually came up with the name Run DMC, which the rest of the group
hated. They wanted to be the Devastating Two or the Dynamic Two MCs.
There’s a Rainbow Brite Museum in North Carolina, made up of 1,500 items of memorabilia
from one woman’s Rainbow Brite collection.
The “I’ll be back” line from The Terminator was written in the movie’s novelization
as “I’ll come back.”
In 1984, if you wanted a phone shaped like lips, like the one that DJ had in Full House,
it would cost you $70. Nowadays, no one even knows the price of a landline phone. And that's
sad, because my cellphone can do a lot of things, but one thing it can't do is be a
hamburger phone, or a banana phone, or a Mickey Mouse phone, or one of those transparent phones
where you could see all the wires inside.
Stickers for your car that said Baby on Board were very popular in the eighties, but according
to a 2012 study, one in twenty drivers blame such stickers for obscuring vision and causing
accidents.
Another brand that did well for itself in the 80s: Members Only. Thanks to the famous
jackets, the company brought in $100 million annually.
Jane Fonda gets some of the credit, or arguable blame, for making leg warmers trendy. She
wore them in her very first workout video and encouraged people to wear them to feel
like athletes. Which is easy to make fun of, but then again, that's why I'm wearing tennis
shoes right now.
Another reason for the leg warmer crazy: the movie Flashdance, which also gave us the collarless
sweatshirt. Actress Jennifer Beals once shrunk a sweatshirt in the dryer, then cut around
the collar so it could fit. She wore it to her audition and the style made it into the
movie.
The clapper is notorious thanks to its commercial jingle, but the exact same song was actually
used earlier in the 80s in a commercial for Sine-Off cold medicine.
Both Dave Coulier and Howie Mandel voiced Animal on the show Muppet Babies. What a great
program.
And speaking of Muppets, Fraggle Rock was HBO’s first original series. It was a lot
like the content that HBO makes now, but there was less violence than there is in Game of
Thrones, less nudity than there is in Girls, less drinking than there is in Boardwalk Empire,
far less Jeff Daniels than we have in The Newsroom... alright, times were so different
then.
In the 80s Van Halen famously requested M&Ms with all the brown candies removed backstage
at their shows. They did this not to be jerks, but instead they snuck it into their contract
to make sure that the people running the venue actually read the entire rider. If they saw
brown M&Ms, they knew there might be some technical errors in the show.
When MTV premiered in the eighties, they wanted to use footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon
landing. But Armstrong refused, so they went with Apollo 11.
The opening act for Madonna’s first ever tour was The Beastie Boys who often got booed
for screaming obscenities.
The Beastie Boys, by the way, wrote “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)”
as a parody of rock songs. It was a joke. They refuse to play it live and in fact haven’t
played it live since 1987.
In 1985, in order to convince stores in New York City to carry the new Nintendo Entertainment
System, a Nintendo exec promised them that they could send back the ones they didn’t
sell, free of charge. But they ended up selling 50,000 that holiday season.
Most popular plumber ever! Oh, it's awkward because Luigi heard be say that.
The lasts names of Jem and the Holograms were the names of real scientists who worked on
hologram technology.
Gelly Roll pens were invented in the eighties, but it took a while to come up with the perfect
ink formula. After trying things like grated yam and egg whites, a member of the team saw
an ad for the food-additive xanthan gum, which turned out to be the missing ingredient.
Thanks to Dynasty and Working Girl, shoulder pads in women’s clothing were popular during
the 80s, but designer Elsa Schiaparelli actually invented the style in the thirties.
Also, people have been perming their hair since 1872.
In the movie Juno, she yells, “ThunderCats are go!” But, this wasn’t the catchphrase
of the eighties cartoon. Juno probably meant to say “ThunderBIRDS are go,” like the
show from the sixties.
All the cool eighties kids had a Polaroid 660. The brand itself started in 1944 by Edwin
H. Land because his 3-year-old daughter didn’t understand why she couldn’t see a picture
right after it was taken. So, he fixed that problem for her. And then became a billionaire.
Doc Brown had a chimpanzee in early drafts of Back to the Future, but the head of Universal
said, “No movie with a chimpanzee ever made any money." Which is just completely unfair,
I mean, granted "MVP: Most Valuable Primate" hadn't been made yet, but surely that exec
was familiar with the Ronald Reagan movie "Bedtime For Bonzo."
By the way, in early outlines for The Empire Strikes Back, Yoda was named Buffy.
While Jay McInerney was working on his novel Bright Lights, Big City, his publisher said
that no great American novels took place in New York. To which Jay McInerney probably
said, have you read Gatsby?
Famous guitarist Slash auditioned for Poison but realized he wasn't right for the job when
they asked him if he'd wear makeup.
Similarly, Richard Page, the lead singer of Mr. Mister, turned down the lead singer job
in two other bands: Toto and Chicago. Because, you know, he was waiting for Mr. Mister to
come along.
Believe it or not, America lived in ignorance of McDonalds Chicken McNuggets until the eighties.
Supposedly, by the way, they come in four shapes: the Boot, the Ball, the Bow-Tie, and
the Bell.
It cost $20,000 to create the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man suit for Ghostbusters. The crew had to
make three of them, which were all destroyed during filming.
Sonny Crockett’s car on Miami Vice was originally a Corvette that the crew made to look like
a Ferrari. But eventually, Ferrari gave the show a Testarossa.
Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote and produced Dirty Dancing, was friends with Dr. Ruth - whom
you will remember was a sniper in the Israeli army before she was a sex expert! Anyway,
Bergstein wanted to cast her friend as Mrs. Schumacher, but Dr. Ruth declined when she
realized the character was a thief.
In the 1980s, the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche spent 55 weeks on the New York Times
Best Seller list. According to the book, here are a few things that “real men” don’t
do: “have meaningful dialogues,” “catch rays,” drink light beer" or “wear gold
chains...or anything with more than three zippers.” I don't know, Captain Jack Sparrow
both catches rays and wears gold chains, and for the record, I think I'm a real man and
I love quiche!
Okay let’s speed up!
Lisa Frank has her own patented proprietary ink formula. It’s a mixture that makes colors
brighter.
Cyndi Lauper sang the theme song for Pee-wee’s Playhouse.
Eddie Van Halen did the guitar solo in Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.”
Fred Astaire almost cameoed in Michael Jackson’s music video for “Thriller”. He even attended
a rehearsal.
Pat Benatar’s "Love is a Battlefield" music video was the first to ever feature to feature
spoken dialogue.
And Paula Abdul choreographed ZZ Top’s “Velcro Fly” video. And people say she's not talented.
Jolt Soda used the same slogan, “All the sugar and twice the caffeine,” for 24 years.
“Spandex” is an anagram of “expands.”
And hair mousse is named after the French word for “foam.”
It took Erno Rubik one month to solve his own invention, the Rubik’s Cube.
The Babysitters Club author Ann M. Martin ghostwrote the first Sweet Valley Twins book,
Best Friends.
Daniel Waters wrote the movie Heathers hoping that Stanley Kubrick would make it as a three-hour-long
dark comedy.
Drummer Rick Allen joined Def Leppard when he was just 15-years-old. His mom responded
to the band’s ad for him.
“Manic Monday” by The Bangles was written by Prince under the pseudonym “Christopher.”
That was before his pseudonym was a symbol.
People at the actual Topgun school receive a $5 fine every time they quote the movie
Top Gun.
And speaking of which, after Top Gun was released, sales of Ray Ban aviator subglasses increased
by 40%.
But if you think THAT’S impressive, after E.T. came out, Reese’s Pieces sales increased
by 65%.
And finally, I return to my salon to tell you that the recording for the star-packed
song “We Are The World” lasted until 3am because Stevie Wonder wanted to record a verse
in Swahili and was waiting for a phone call about correct pronunciations. He should have
taken a lesson from me - it doesn't matter if you pronounce things correctly.
Anyway, when the call finally came, Ray Charles said, “S***, man, it's three o'clock in
the morning. I can't even sing in English.” And Wonder responded, “Just relax, we’ll
do it in one take, and then I’ll drive you home.”
Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube, which is made with the help of all of these
nice people and made possible by our friends at Geico. Thanks again for watching, don't
forget to subscribe and as we say in my hometown, don’t forget to be awesome.