She represented, what with her "berry berry this" and "berry berry that".

Oh, wait. That was Strawberry Shortcake. My bad.

Actually, I do remember Rainbow Brite some. My sister had this book about her. I wasn't all into her, but I thought Indigo was a hotty.

Incidentally, what was up with all of those color-themed cartoons of the 80s? We had Rainbow Brite, Strawberry Shortcake (colors/flavors -- same idea), Care Bears, My Little Pony. All targeted at young girls, all featured a cast of characters roughly identical but of different colors.

My guess? Toy makers behind the shows were all like, "Get this. We can use the same mold, all we have to do is change the colors. We'll save a fortune!"

Contrast this with He-Man, where every character was completely different [angelfire.com]. And did they have a "Battle Armor" [yimg.com] version of Rainbow Brite?

I rest my case.

All right everyone, time to get nostalgic about 80s cartoon shows.

I just have to say that I've ever seen a phrase which says quite as much as: "She had a voice like owls drowning in molten lead." I'm not sure my life will ever be quite the same after having read that.

80's cartoon shows?

Kids these days.

Everyone knows that 80s [foundonline.com] cartoon [geocities.com] shows weren't as good as 70's [akdreamer.com] TV shows.

But give me Marine Boy [absoluteanime.com] any day for that sweet sweet nostalgia.

And thanks ever so much to both Jon and Grimicus for bringing up "Rainbow Brite" again.

In Response to zamphir (#10455):

Ummmm, Sorry I just can't bite my lip on this one.

Cartoons Started going downhil in 1985 (when the Care Bears burst on the scene.) But the early 80's are clearly the golden age of cartoons.

1984: Voltron, Thundercats, and the Transformers (they are more than meets the eye) came out.

1983: GI Joe and He-man (and as an also ran, Inspector Gadget)

and in 1981, the undisputed king of saturday morning made its first appearance, thats right, THE SMURFS.

Nostalgia-smolgia these cartoons are part of our cultural fabric.

In Response to Lonely Goatherd (#10477):

Oh, look.

Lonely Goatherd had an urgent need to talk about his favorite topic.

Poop!

Registration is free, and fun! And people won't make fun of you for things you haven't done. Just the things you have!

What, did you turn 6 in 1985, so you started to actually understand what you saw?

In Response to zamphir (#10478):

The 80s.. oh so many colorful toys. You know.. i do think the toy companies were up to something evil, or at the very least subliminal. im not sure what is was. maybe no one will ever know. maybe we'd all be a part of a peace loving society if it wasnt for the brightly colored dolls and ponies that little girls everywhere had to have all 50 versions of the same molded little figure. they instilled war. lol. hm. i dont know. but i do remember driving my mom crazy with watching the carebears videos over and over again. carebears and the last unicorn (but thats a good movie.. lol).. and snorkles. my gawd. does anyone remember those? ack! nastalgia!! its biting at my ankles! how i wish to be 5 again.. sitting in front of the tv watching newkids on the block in their very own animated series.. lol. alright. so maybe not. i think i like being in college a bit better. although.. i did get so much more sleep then. ahh. 8 o'clock bedtime.. i hated you then.. but i do miss you now.. :) oh.. but i digressed completely on my theory. the toys and there bright colors. the way that they took us away from having world peace: all of those movies kids watched over and over again.. they slowly gave our parents a sort of subtle version of hypertension that sort of just took over there brains.. especially those brains of politicians and media figures that were parents.. :) well that came out a bit longer than i planned.. *laugh* ~delight~

Here are my thoughts about the color-themed and cutesy round animal-themed and smurfish cartoons. Last year, i read "Fast Food Nation [fsbassociates.com]" by Eric Schlosser, and he discussed some of the marketing tactics that are specifically designed to target small children, particularly those who haven't fully developed verbal and literary skills.

It seems that many millions of dollars have been spent by marketing researchers to figure out what excites these little kids, and a lot of the focus has been on what details of their dreams are most vivid. Apparently, very young children often dream about brightly-colored creatures-- some are cute animals, like ponies and teddy bears and kittens, and some are pure fantasy, like purple dinosaurs and giant yellow birds and talking mice. This seems to be true even if the little kids were not raised in an environment saturated with Disney, Sesame Street, Smurfs, nor Care Bears.

So these unscrupulous marketing experts have found that the best way to appeal to small children (and thus the best way to entice them to hunger for their insipid products, regardless of the ethics) is to formulate cartoon characters and advertisement iconography which utilize these kinds of archetypes.

Now on the one hand, a small part of me thinks that there is potentially something good, something pleasant for the sake of making children excited and happy and playful, encouraging their dreams and imagination. So cartoons about Rainbow Brite and Care Bears and Smurfs could be a nice idea... if they were purely for entertainment, education, and benign purposes.

But mostly, in my usual disgusted cynical way, i find the whole notion of using these tactics purely for the sake of increasing revenue is really unethical and disturbing. So this is why i make a point of doing my best to avoid supporting companies like Disney, McDonald's, etc., when i was getting gifts for my four-year-old nephew or when i was taking him to a restaurant for entertainment. I want him to have fun, to be excited and stimulated and interested in things that appeal to his instincts; but i can't stand the thought of turning him into another zombified consumer.

Perhaps this is a futile stance, however. Maybe if one were to succeed in preventing some little children from being indoctrinated thusly, it would only result in their marginalization as adults, which they might resent.

This all reminds me of a comic (parody) by Tom The Dancing Bug, in which the cast of Sesame Street tells their young viewers, "Hey, kids! Make sure you watch lots of shows like this, so you can have your attention-spans and cultural sensibilities synchronized with those of your peers! Avoid becoming active and independent thinkers, otherwise you'll be freakish outsiders for life!"

I have a copy of this hilarious little comic, and would be happy to share it here, but i don't know how to upload an image to this forum. Could someone please explain how? Does the image have to reside on a web-server somewhere already? Or can i upload it to a Goats server? If i upload it to my personal homepage space on Mac.com, and then put an "img" link here, will the traffic in this forum cause the image to be viewed so much that it would overload my Mac.com account? My Wizard Hamster avatar [on the left] actually resides on my Mac.com account space, and i haven't had any problems with that... but that is a tiny 1.7kb GIF, whereas the Very Special Sesame Street comic would be more like 36kb. Do these forums get too many thousands of hits for me to risk this?

In Response to delight (#10483):

Actually, in all seriousness, I think the whole 80s girlie merchandise is to be blamed for the apparent reversal of sexual equality [ninemsn.com.au].

It's GI Joe and Transformers that can be blamed for the war and stuff.

In Response to Teledildonix (#10486):

Wha? Oh, I'm sorry. I kind of phased out before getting to the end.

Seriously, is this how you hope to pick up chicks?

In Response to unFalln (#10499):

Actually, in all seriousness, I can completely agree with you on the over abundance of "girlie" merchandise causing girls to squirm their way into a tightly fitted gender role. That's an interesting article, by the way. A little dissapointing, but interesting. I don't know about GI Joe and Transformers being the blame for war so much.. They're more the cause for the lack of male vegetarians. Seriously. GIJoe screams "Go eat some flesh!".. And transformers... don't even get me started on those. :O) Nah. Actually. I've got nothin on the tranformers. They could be the root of War. And. Well. While we're at it. GIJoe, too, since he is actually a soldier and all.. That minor part of his persona might have a little something to do with fun lovin' warmongering sensibilities in our society today. lol.
Or.. it could all just be money and power that's got everyone up in arms.. Yeah. I'll go for that one.
~Delight~

In Response to deerboy (#10500):

As a chick, and one who was accually had a guy she knew ask if she would have sex with him, mea37's way would be quite successful.

or maybe I'm just drunk ;)

In Response to deerboy (#10500):

I'm sorry if my opinions bore you. I don't mean to be long-winded, it's just hard sometimes to make my statements more concise.

Perhaps i've bored you so much this year that you've actually not read any of my other comments posted in dozens of other threads. If you had, you would have been aware that i'm not interested in picking up "chicks", kittens, bunnies, vixens, nor any other diminutive female animals. In fact, i'm... umm... polarized in a completely different direction. How about you?

In Response to delight (#10502):

GIJoe screams "Go eat some flesh!"..

Why would you think that would affect someone's food preference?

In Response to michele9993 (#10503):

mea37's way of picking up women seems to consist of stealing their monkeys for mad science.

You're saying that works?

Damnit. If I'd only known 10 years ago. Then I wouldn't have had to learn how to make pancakes.

In Response to Teledildonix (#10504):

Ive just imagined that deerboy goatee cartoon guy with the homer-style "AHH!" scream.

They didn't look exactly alike; different ethnicities, hairstyles, looks, sizes, sexual preferences.

But there was one episode where they looked completely different than each other; like the cloud guy convinced them about fashion or something, but my memory is very very fuzzy.

p.s. in the movie, rainbow brite was a total slut.

In Response to Teledildonix (#10486):

Assuming you're a member (IIRC inline image-posting is a members-only feature; but I could be mistaken...), then a regular <img> tag works, but you do have to have somewhere to host it.

I don't know the bandwidth considerations for your mac.com account, but I would worry about posting it inline on the forums because, although caching should reduce the load some, you basically have to figure that every time someone views this discussion they'll pull the image down. Issues of your bandwidth aside, I would suggest that in-lining a large image would be poor etiquette toward those viewing over dial-up.

As an alternative, I would suggest posting a link to the image. That'll keep the number of hits on the image down, and it means each user can choose to spend the bandwidth on the image or not.

In Response to michele9993 (#10503):

Eh? In the immortal words of Andre the Giant: "Oh, good. My way . . . Which was my way?"

So maybe I missed something... but much as I'd like to leave that alone, I feel obligated to point out that while I post a lot of long-winded rambling, not all long-winded rambling is mine :)

The particular long-winded post to which deerboy was replying belongs to Tele. (However, it is my understanding that Tele does not attempt to pick up chicks.)

Hmm... on the other hand, I suppose I could drag this post on for a page or two :)

In Response to Teledildonix (#10504):

Sorry, all joke people.

In context, kind of funny, no?

Had a feeling that could go the wrong way. Oh well.

And sorry, I am a flaming heterosexual. But thanks, anyway.

In Response to mea37 (#10513):

Thanks for the info-- i had a feeling this was the case. Fortunately, i managed to find the comic already archived at Salon.com, which can apparently handle the traffic: Comic [salon.com].

If you like Ruben Bolling's work, you can find a complete archive here: Tom The Dancing Bug - Complete Archive [aaronsw.com]

In Response to deerboy (#10515):

And sorry, I am a flaming heterosexual.

Please don't apologize :-) "Infinite diversity through infinite permutation."-- i think that's the Vulcan proverb.

But thanks, anyway.

You're very welcome. Thanks for having a sense of humor. I wish to express my appreciation for the fact that you-- and apparently just about all of the other folks who hang out in these forums-- seem to be tolerant, open-minded, fair, and less bigoted than most of the people one could typically encounter online. I must say, since i took an interest in this community, i have been continuously pleased by the way in which people here usually conduct themselves with civility and kindness. This has been a far superior experience than many of the other virtual realms that i've explored.

At first, i had assumed that this was a result of extensive moderation and oversight on the part of the owners/administrators. But soon i realized that their influence was only part of the picture: all of the friendly people here seem to be acting in a cooperative fashion, arguably even democratic.

Sometimes there is a bit of ill-tempered arguing and bitching, sometimes people get slapped and poked (e.g., poor Kornz really took some heavy haranguing at first [arguably deservedly] but i'm glad to see that he was thick-skinned and stuck around) but usually the tone of conduct here is quite amiable. I really wish this was how people would behave in other places i visit, such as Yahoo Groups (formerly eGroups). Maybe eventually.

In Response to zamphir (#10505):

*laugh* I don't think it has anything to do with food preference. It was a joke.
But besides that. I thought a lot about the whole thing with toys and such last night and today.. and I don't know if they necessarily put girls more into their lovely little stereotype as much as males. Because really. For all of the females I know now who used to play with Rainbow Bright, My Little Ponies, Ect, they also played with Matchbox Cars and Ninja Turtles and the like. And quite of few females that I've met through out my life, just didnt go for the playing with dolls deal at all. There was more of a choice for girls as to what they wanted to play with. If they wanted to steal their older brother's Transformers to play with them: it was more accepted and still is, than a boy playing with My Little Ponies or Barbies. I mean. I used to play with the boys a lot when I was little. But the one time that I forced my neighbor to play with My Little Ponies, he got ish for it the rest of 2nd grade. lol. So. I don't know. In some ways stereotypes are harsher on males in the whole light of gender issues. Both sexes have a way to go before they are anywhere near equal. I mean. Really, saying that one side of an equation is "less equal" to the other side is incorrect. There is balancing that needs to happen on both sides..

~Delight~

In Response to Teledildonix (#10518):

Yeah, we're all about the civility here. You better believe it. Or we'll beat your punk ass down.

In Response to zamphir (#10506):

Then I wouldn't have had to learn how to make pancakes.

Actually, making good pancakes is a great way to pick up women.

Just bring a stack of them to a bar, and start handing them out. As the girl is savoring their exquisite pancakery flavor, lean over to her ear and whisper, "These taste even better when I've just whipped up a fresh batch in the morning."

Works every time.

In Response to Deathalicious (#10542):

Yeah, I'd totally go for that..

Pancakes in bar. Do it, and you'll have no troubles with the ladies.. We *heart* pancakes.

lol. uhmmmm. right. :O)

~Delight~

In Response to Deathalicious (#10542):

But.. it *is* compelling as the point counter suggests.. (and funny as well).
~Delight~