Awesome Retro

Well before Power Rangers or TNMT, Ultraman was a live-action TV series, establishing a new type of sci-fi adventure, kitschy kaiju characters, salarymen superheroes, and sparkly special effects. Rarely broadcast in America, it’s now streaming on Pluto TV with select titles on-demand on Shout! Factory TV.

Jeremy Messersmith’s heartfelt folk tune looks back fondly on his childhood days playing video games. The track is accompanied by a wonderful papercut animation by Eric Power that includes imagery from classic games like Joust, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Tetris, and Asteroids. From the album Mixtape for the Milky Way.

Before cell phones, phone booths were the best way to get in touch when out and about. Enclosed for privacy, the confined glass spaces served as a useful prop for scenes of secrecy, suspense, revelation, and wonder in movies and TV. Little White Lies pays homage to the once-ubiquitous street fixture in this great video essay.

Celebrate your love for Namco’s classic arcade game with this series of premium wearables from Brava Fabrics. The collection includes a mix of cotton shirts and wool sweaters embellished with pixel art characters. Our favorites are the printed long-sleeve shirt and the less subtle, holiday-friendly Jacquard sweater.

The members of Epic Symphonic Rock shared footage from one of their concerts, in which they performed a enveloping, larger-than-life orchestral medley of tunes from the Mario Bros. game franchise. Mega Man fans, they’ve got you covered too.

Most of you probably weren’t born when these cartoons and commercials originally aired. Still, whether you’re here for nostalgia or to see what your parents watched when they were kids, this compilation is packed with great retro goodies, from Fat Albert to Jonny Quest to the “hanker for a hunk of cheese” guy.

Retro software experts Squirrel Monkey look back a series of fictitious programs from the late 1980s that were designed to help people talk to the dead and predict the future. Early PC software was apparently way creepier than we remember it. And yes, we know the World Wide Web didn’t actually start until 1989.

We already know what Siri might have been like back in the 1980s, now Squirrel Monkey imagines another virtual assistant existed during a time when voice synthesis and voice recognition were in their infancy. We love how it uses a cassette recorder to download songs from Amazon Music.

Back in the 1970s, actor and voiceover artist Morgan Freeman starred on the PBS kids’ show The Electric Company. SPGOALS TV dug up this classic bit, in which the normally stoic Mr. Freeman plays a vampire with a taste for something other than blood. We wonder how Vincent would do with an Impossible Burger.

McLaren’s MSO customization division has created the ultimate motorsport look for its incredible Elva supercar. This very special version of the 804 hp lightweight racer looks incredible in the classic blue and orange Gulf livery that was an icon of 1960 and 1970s McLaren racing.

From Chiquita to Count Chocula, from the Geico Gecko to the Jolly Green Giant, mascots have long been a staple of the advertising industry. Author Warren Dotz’s two-volume series is filled with characters from the iconic to the obscure, from the lovable to the downright weird.

The CGI in TRON seems primitive by today’s standards, but back in 1982 it was not only groundbreaking, it pushed the limits of available technology. Using modern tech, the guys at Corridor Crew decided to see if they could accurately replicate the famous light cycle scene in less than a day.

Go back to the ’80s with this retro-style speaker that looks like an old-school Walkman. Instead of popping a cassette in, stash your smartphone inside of it, then clip it onto your belt loop for full effect. It has working control buttons and a 3.5mm aux in jack. Why not go all-in and use it with that Bluetooth cassette player?

Back in 2000, Tiger Electronics released HitClips – a tiny audio player designed to get tweens to buy digital music. Techmoan looks back at this ridiculous cash grab for kids’ money and its significant limitations. Along the way, he debunks some misinformation and myths about the toys.

Editor Matthew Highton likes to recreate the openings of classic TV shows using only stock footage. He recently remade the title sequence from the 1970s hit Happy Days, and the result is pretty great. Matthew did a respectable job capturing the feel of the original and made some pretty amusing selections for the cast images.

Super Impulse makes teensy replicas of classic arcade games. New for Fall 2020 are versions of BurgerTime, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mappy, and a special Hello Kitty Pac-Man. They’ve also got a tiny Pop-A-Shot if you’re into boardwalk basketball. Keep an eye on Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Target for these latest releases.