In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 195: Friday the 13th Turns 45, Transformers, Useless Early Internet Features(5-14-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 195

Share episode

Send us a text

The anniversary of a horror movie classic. 1980s boys' obsession with Transformers. Some of the most pointless features from 1990s internet.

Episode 195 brings the buffet when it comes to Gen-X nostalgia.

It kicks off with a look back 45 years to the debut of the slasher movie staple Friday the 13th. Dubbed the scariest movie ever before a script was even written this classic spawned countless sequels and eventually one of horror's most enduring villains, Jason Voorhees. 

We go way back in the day to a favorite of mine and countless other 1980s boys, Transformers. Robots in disguise these toys were a massive success and led to tv shows, movies, and a spot in the zeitgeist of several generations.

The internet changed the world as we know it. For all of the good that it has brought there has also been some downright pointless. This week's Top 5 will look back to some of the most useless internet features from the 1990s.

There is as always a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the ill-fated westward journey of the Donner Party.

For more great content become a subscriber on Patreon!

Helpful Links from this Episode

Listen to Episode 194 here

Support the show

Speaker 02:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 195. We're diving into the deep end of the weird and wacky world of Gen X nostalgia. We're going to kick it off with a look back 45 years at the debut of the Friday the 13th original movie and the legacy of that franchise. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some of the toys and characters that helped define my childhood in the 80s, and that was the Transformers. There's going to be a brand new top five. These are the top five... useless early internet features. Did you have these on your gateway computer? And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule looking back at the ill-fated Donner Party and their attempts to move out west. All of that is coming up right now on episode 195 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? Eagle-Eyed listeners will notice the rundown for this episode does not match up with what I had said was going to be on the show at the end of last week's podcast. I was going to talk about 1985, the year in movies, number one movies, what it was like to go to the movies back then. And then this morning, on the day that I'm recording the podcast, I had a memory pop up on my Facebook page where I said I was going to be watching the original Friday the 13th movie to celebrate its anniversary. So I was like, oh, wait a minute. Is that today? And yes, the day that I'm recording the podcast, the Friday before, May 9th, 1980, was the debut of the original Friday the 13th. So I decided it was too good to pass up a chance to talk about Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees, horror movies. So we're going to do that this week. Next week I will have 1985's number one movies. For those of you that were really looking forward to it, I do apologize. I feel bad a bait and switch like that, but this will be a really good segment. I can't wait. Of course, we all know I can't start this episode off without thanking my Patreon subscribers. Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Mike. Thank you all so much for being my biggest supporters, my biggest backers. I hope you have gone in and started voting on the polls for episode 200. For those of you that aren't aware, episode 200 is going to be listener's choice. All of the polls, as far as picking what you want to hear on that show, they're up on Patreon. I'm layering them in. They're for all members, so free or paying members can vote in the polls, but you do have to be a member. And if you want to be a paying member, $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, It gets you access to the remastered Without a Map livestreams. And also up there on the free tier is my long-form audio podcast. It's about 26 minutes long, where I discuss my race from last week that I promised I would talk about this week, so I can. The race, the Dennis Chamber 5K race, was so much better than I anticipated. My expectations were very low for myself, for my time. I thought I had a chance to beat my time, which I wanted, which was 35 minutes, which is not a really fast time. I thought I might be able to beat that by a minute. Little did I know I would beat that time by six and a half minutes, which meant not only did I surpass my expectations, I actually beat my time from my previous race from last year. I beat that time by 45 seconds, and that might not sound like much, but considering that on New Year's Day this year, I was the heaviest I'd ever been in my life, and I'm in my late 40s, so it's hard enough getting into shape or back into shape when you're in your 20s and 30s. But when you're staring down 50, it's like you've got to work twice as hard to get half as far. And that leads to a lot of disappointment and giving up and resigning to the fact that I guess that's it. That part of my life's over. It was such a fun race. It really made me feel good about myself to the point that I've already signed up for a second race, which will be less than seven weeks now from when the podcast goes live. I'm in training for that. I'm quote-unquote serious training. We'll see if that leads to failure. As I said, though, the Long Form Podcast is up on the free tier on Patreon. So if you go become a free member, you can listen to the in-depth story. And if you need a teaser or a reason to go listen to it, I'll just say I got a unique sunburn. I'm going to leave it at that. So you're going to have to go and listen to the podcast to find out what the hell kind of cryptic comment that is. Oh, but now it's birthday time. It's anniversary time. I get to talk about one of my favorite movie franchises. I couldn't pass up that chance. So let's start the podcast off as we look back 45 years to the original Friday the 13th. Let's kick it off in style. Ooh, it didn't spill. That's a good sign for the rest of this show. I love horror movies. As a kid in the 1980s, I grew up on horror movies. You might say I saw these horror movies when I was too young, but I didn't grow up and become a serial killer, so I think everything's good. Many were the times that I would walk the half mile or so to the corner store near where I lived. It was a little strip mall. There was a restaurant and pub. There were actually two different convenience stores. And there was a video store. I would walk to the video store. That's a very 80s, 90s thing to say. But I'd go and rent horror movies when I was 10, 11, 12 years old. It's like I don't appreciate how different of a time it was back then until I say that sentence out loud. Being 10 or 11, walking to the store and renting R-rated horror movies like it was no big deal. I was a big fan of all the classic franchises. Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween. I was terrified by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But honestly, for me, the franchise, the movie, villain... that stood out to me most was Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees. When it popped up in my Facebook memories about the anniversary of the original Friday the 13th, I had to talk about it. Fun fact, the original Friday the 13th was not the first movie in the series that I watched, so I, like probably a lot of you who grew up at the time or even to this day, thought that Jason Voorhees was the killer from minute one in the series, but it's not true. But I'm spoiling things. Let's go back to the beginning. The idea for the original Friday the 13th was conceived by producer and director Sean S. Cunningham. He had previously worked with horror master Wes Craven on The Last House on the Left, which came out in 1972. That is a movie that if you are disturbed by psychological horror and such, you might not want to watch it. But it's also a movie I saw when I was probably 12, and I turned out okay. Cunningham was also inspired by the runaway success of John Carpenter's Halloween, which came out in 1978. Cunningham set out to create a similar low-budget slasher film that could tap into the same teenage market. Interestingly, the title Friday the 13th came first, so he had the title because he thought the name sounded ominous and marketable. In fact, before there was even a script written or completed, Sean Cunningham took out an ad in Variety magazine boasting that Friday the 13th was the most terrifying film ever made, and he hadn't even finished the script yet. I mean, that's a lot of pressure. I couldn't imagine writing a book or something and putting an ad out when I was 10% through the first draft and sending an ad out and saying this is the greatest book ever. It's like there's a lot of pressure there. But it did generate interest and help to secure financing. The screenplay for Friday the 13th was written by a man named Victor Miller, and he drew inspiration from classic whodunit mysteries and infused the story with elements of teenage rebellion and campfire horror. Unlike the later films in the series, the original Friday the 13th was more about suspense and the iconic twist ending than a supernatural killer. Oh, don't get me wrong, it's very bloody still, but it's far different from what you would see in parts 3, 4, 5, and forward. The plot outlined the bottom line for it. It's a group of young counselors who are murdered one by one while preparing a summer camp for reopening. Cunningham cast mostly unknown actors to keep the budget low, which was roughly $550,000. Or about $2.1 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So not a big budget. The only established name at the time was Betsy Palmer, who would play the film's surprise killer, Pamela Voorhees. Despite getting her to work on the film, she was a former television actress. She has said she only accepted the role because she needed money to buy a new car, and famously dismissed the script as a piece of junk. Yes, the movie did have Kevin Bacon in it, but he was still pretty unknown. Filming for Friday the 13th took place in the town of Blairstown, New Jersey, primarily at the Camp Nobibosco, which was a real Boy Scouts camp, and it's still open to this day. The shoot lasted about a month during the summer of 1979, with the tight schedule and budget meaning that production relied on practical effects and creativity rather than complex setups. And when you talk about Practical effects in the late 70s, early 80s. The biggest name that comes to mind is Tom Savini. He was and is a special effects wizard, known for his work on Dawn of the Dead. Savini brought grisly realism to the kills, creating unforgettable moments like the famed arrow through the throat scene with Kevin Bacon. Which, if you go back and watch it, fun fact, when the blood is just squirting out of his neck, it wasn't supposed to be like that, but Tom Savini was under the bed, and he was supposed to pump the blood out kind of slow, and I guess it was stuck, so he had to blow through the hose, which caused the blood to come spurting out. Sorry for those of you eating lunch. Can you visualize bloody neck instead of everywhere? I'm sorry. Also, if you haven't seen this movie, there's obviously spoilers all through this. And it's been out for 45 years, so I don't feel like I'm spoiling something that came out last week.

Speaker 01:

Friday the 13th. You may only see it once, but that will be enough. Friday the 13th.

Speaker 02:

The film follows a group of teens reopening Camp Crystal Lake, which is a camp haunted by the memory of a boy named Jason Voorhees who drowned due to counselor negligence years earlier. In fact, the movie begins with those counselors that Jason's mother perceives as the ones that allowed her son to drown. It starts off with them getting killed. All the counselors are introduced and one by one they are picked off. You never see the killer. So it's that classic whodunit. Although I'm sure some of you that have seen it, did you think that Crazy Ralph was the killer? I don't know. When I first saw it, that's who I thought it was. But he was too interested in preserving the memory of the murders that happened there. But no, it is not Crazy Ralph. It was not Jason Voorhees. It was Jason's vengeful mother, Pamela Voorhees. That final girl scene with Alice, who was played by Adrienne King, and Pamela Voorhees is excellent. The chase all through the dark camp, and it ends with Alice decapitating Mrs. Voorhees with a machete. Even if you've never seen the original Friday the 13th, I think you know the twist ending, the shock that comes at the end where Alice is in the canoe, this beautiful music playing, the scenery of the calm and still Crystal Lake. And the cops have arrived and she seems to be saved. And then here comes Jason jumping out of the lake to pull her out of the canoe. What's interesting is that scene wasn't going to be in the film. The film was going to just be over. It was a last-minute addition suggested by Cunningham to add one more final scare, kind of like the end of Carrie, but also leave the door open for a sequel. And boy, were there sequels. The movie, when it was released on May 9th, 1980, had lukewarm critical reviews, with many of these critics dismissing it as derivative and extremely violent. But despite that, Friday the 13th grossed nearly $60 million worldwide on that budget of $550,000. The $60 million is equal to about $233 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So it was, it was a monster hit. The original Friday the 13th proved that there was profitability in horror films, especially slashers. It was perfect for teenage date nights. And obviously later on in the 1980s, loads of kids rented these movies from the video store or watched them on cable TV, HBO, Showtime. The film became kind of a blueprint for the countless imitators of slasher films throughout the 80s. The formula, sex, drugs, an isolated setting, inventive kills. It also cemented the final girl trope which went on to define horror cinema for decades. The biggest irony of the Friday the 13th franchise was that Jason Voorhees, who the character that's most associated with the series, wasn't the killer in the original. And that scene of him jumping out, like I said a minute ago, that was only added in at the last minute. There is a real chance in an alternate timeline that Jason never becomes the pop culture icon that he did. Oh, but he did, though. Part 2, Jason returns as the killer. He takes care of Alice, who was the survivor of Part 1. This is the movie where he was wearing the sack on his head with an eye hole. And he sure seemed like he was smaller than what Jason would be. Like, Final Girl Ginny in Part 2 beats the hell out of him a few times. It was Part 3, which came out in 1982, which was in 3D. That is where Jason got the iconic hockey mask. That solidified his place as a horror icon. To this date, there are a total of 12 films, including the Freddy vs. Jason crossover from 2003 and the 2009 reboot, which, it's not awful, but it combines the first three Friday the 13th films kind of stuffed into one movie. Over the course of the series, Jason Voorhees evolved from... A silent, vengeful woodsman in his flannel shirt to a nearly indestructible supernatural force. He's like Zombie Jason. He's got tons of merchandise, comic books. He's been in video games. Some really good, like the more recent PC Friday the 13th game. Some terrible, like the 1980s Nintendo one where he's purple and green. Friday the 13th was a series, one of the horror series, that proved that horror movies could thrive without A-list stars or massive budgets. Yes, it has been often criticized for glorifying violence, where the MPAA, they famously cracked down on the Friday the 13th sequels for their graphic content. If you go online, you can find a lot of the outtakes from the film series showing the unedited kills. With me, I'm one of those. It's like, if you don't like Friday the 13th, don't watch it. If you don't want your kids to watch it, don't let them watch it. But it's like, don't take them away from everyone because you don't like them. Try as they might, some of these holier-than-thou groups. Friday the 13th today is regarded as a seminal film in horror history. 45 years ago this week, it debuted and changed horror. Interestingly, and some of you who are fans of the series might know this, but there has been a battle for years between Sean Cunningham and Victor Miller over the rights to Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees. That's a big reason why there hasn't been any sort of film. There hasn't been a new Friday the 13th in now 16 years. Then again, though, at the end in Jason X, they had him in space, so maybe they needed some time off to get some better ideas. Are you fans of the original Friday the 13th or the series in general? Have you seen the original? What's your favorite in the series? Mine is part three. I think I've mentioned it on this podcast before. I'm pretty sure that was the first one in the series that I watched. I can tell you for sure on my itinerary for tonight is to watch the original Friday the 13th and celebrate its 45th anniversary. This week in history, we are going back 179 years to May 12th, 1846, and the beginning of the journey for the infamous Donner Party. In the spring of 1846, a group of nearly 90 people, primarily from Illinois, set out for California in search of a better life. Like thousands of others, they were lured by tales of fertile farmland, sunshine, and opportunity. Among the leaders of this group was a man named George Donner, who was a prosperous farmer, and also James F. Reed, who was a businessman with ambitions of finding a new life on the West Coast. The group followed the well-traveled California Trail, a route that wound through the Great Plains, across the Rocky Mountains, and into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. However, in Wyoming, they made a fateful decision to take an untested route called the Hastings Cut-Off, promoted by Lansford Hastings, the adventurer who claimed it would shave weeks off of the journey. Instead, the Cut-Off proved disastrous. It took the party through the unforgiving Wasatch Mountains and across the Great Salt Lake Desert in modern-day Utah. The terrain was rugged, water was scarce... and the path was barely passable. That shortcut ended up adding nearly a month of grueling travel and depleted the group's supplies and livestock. By late 1846, the Donner Party reached the eastern edge of the Sierra Nevada, perilously late in the season. A sudden early blizzard near Truckee Lake, which is now called Donner Lake, trapped them in the mountains under heavy snow. Unable to proceed and ill-equipped for the high-altitude winter, they built makeshift shelters and tried to survive on dwindling food supplies. Weeks turned into months and starvation set in. They slaughtered their remaining oxen, ate dogs and hides, boiled bones for soup, and eventually some of them resorted to cannibalism. There is a debate among historians whether the people in the Donner Party only ate those who had actually died, or if they actually killed people to eat them. In early 1847, multiple rescue parties were mounted, with the first relief team reaching the starving survivors in February. Over the next two months, rescuers managed to bring out 45 of the original 87 members of the group. The rest perished, some from starvation, others from exposure and illness. The last survivor was rescued in April 1847, nearly a year after the party had set out. The horror of what had transpired in the Sierra Nevada mountains shocked the nation. Newspapers covered the gruesome details with a mixture of sympathy and sensationalism. It seared the Donner name into the American psyche. The tragedy of the Donner Party had several lasting effects on westward migration, including root choices becoming more conservative, no more random cutoffs and shortcuts, a greater emphasis on timing and preparation, and governmental and private support expanding. The Donner Party's ordeal became a symbol of both the perils and the spirit of American expansion. Their name is attached to geographic landmarks Donner Lake, Donner Pass, and Donner Memorial State Park, which is located in Truckee, California. They've been the subject of literature and pop culture, documentaries, films, books, focusing on the psychological and moral challenges of their survival. And to this day, historians and anthropologists continue to debate the finer points. Were all the acts of cannibalism committed only after death? Could the tragedy have been averted with better leadership or timing? And was the real villain Lansford Hastings with his ill-advised shortcut? That's all still up for debate, but one thing that can't be debated is that the Donner Party started its journey west 179 years ago this week in history. One thing I can tell you, you won't have to travel very far or eat any of your family members to enjoy this new time capsule. We're going back 48 years ago to May 12th, 1977. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was When I Need You by Leo Sayre. This was off of his album Endless Flight. And the song went to number one for only one week, this one we're talking about. It was also Leo Sayre's second consecutive number one song, as his song You Make Me Feel Like Dancing also went to number one. That song, You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, actually won Leo Sayre the Grammy for Best R&B Song, which is interesting. The number one movie was The Car. And you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $2.23. This is a horror movie about a black, unmanned, self-driving car that goes on a murderous rampage, running down people in a small town. The film is 30% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and it got a lot of terrible reviews. But like I said earlier about Friday the 13th, if you say a horror movie is bad, that usually will lead to a lot of teens wanting to go watch it. And I think that's why The Car went to number one. In 2019, there was a spinoff sequel called The Car Road to Revenge. It also got terrible reviews. The number one TV show was actually a movie, High Plains Drifter. This was a western that came out in 1973 and starred Clint Eastwood. It's 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so way more successful than The Car. It is interesting when I choose these time capsules and I end up finding a movie being the number one TV show. It's such a rare occurrence. But then again, I'll take it over me complaining about All in the Family being the number one show again in the 70s, or Cosby Show again in the 80s, or ER again in the 90s, etc. And if you were around back then, May 12th, 1977, maybe you just went to see The Car, and then you're getting into your car, and you realize your stereo's crap, you need a better stereo. Well, if I got some deals for you this week at Leechmere, there's two different stereos. One's got a cassette player. One has an 8-track player. Your choice, $79.88. That's about $421 when adjusted for inflation to 2025. Or if you really want your car to scream 70s, you can get a stereo complete with a 23-channel CB radio attached to it. That's really 70s. That one's on sale for $99.88. And if you're curious about why cars in the 70s had CB radios, go back and check out episode 161 of the podcast where I did a segment about passing fads of the 1970s. But that wraps up this week in history. It wraps up another time capsule. If you think CB radios and cars were useless, well, get ready for some early internet features that are totally useless in a brand new top five. Oh boy, 1990s internet filled with magic and dial-up wonder. It was such a promising new wide world that when looking back was filled with a lot of really stupid things. So what we're going to do in this brand new top five is look at the most useless early internet features. These are the bells and whistles that no one needed but everyone used back then because it was brand new. Those of you that grew up in the 90s, a lot of these you'll remember. Maybe some of them you still use, I doubt it, but maybe some of them you will look back on fondly. Others you'll be like, I don't even remember that. Oh, but they were real, I promise. So let's boot up Netscape and dive into the new top five. As with most of these top five lists, they are in no particular order. And of course, I've got some honorable mentions. All right, are you ready for the honorable mentions and some laughs and head shaking? Honorable mentions for most useless early internet features include the under construction gifs. This was usually every website had a stick figure digging or a caution sign and it just stayed there forever because the page never got finished. Another honorable mention. is WebRings. It's a bunch of related sites linked in a never-ending loop. It's supposed to help you find your community, but did it really? I don't know. Another honorable mention was Splash Pages, because nothing says welcome to my website like an extra page that makes you click enter before you see anything. And you got bonus credibility if it had flash animation and took forever to load. But I guess most things took forever to load in the late 90s. Another honorable mention was Embedded MIDI Music. MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. This is where the websites would have some kind of music playing and you couldn't find the tab that was playing it. There was no mute button. You were just stuck with weird piano covers of 90 songs. And the last honorable mention for useless features of early internet was visitor counters. Because you just had to show off that 12 people had come to your page. And I mean, come on, be real. 10 of those 12 were probably just you refreshing the page. I wish I had built websites back in the late 90s. That would have been my way to get my visitor count up. Just sit there on the gateway computer and refresh it for hours until it looks like my content has a large audience. So there's the honorable mentions. Do you remember any of those features from the internet back when you first started? It's like, cut us some slack. It was all brand new and exciting. Let's get into the actual top five. We're going to start it off with number one, guest books. Boy, this was like the original comment section under any video on YouTube or blog. You'd want people to come to your site and tell you where they were from or, I don't know, heap praise on you. Wow, your website's amazing. I can't believe you had the flying toasters with the wings and the dancing baby. But usually it would end up being either People giving you praise and linking to their site that was probably equally as terrible. Or it would be like how it is today. Lots of spam and bots where you'd click on the comment. Ooh, where's this person from? And it's instant blue screen for your computer. Trojan virus everywhere. I get that in the years before social media was a thing, people were looking to connect through the web. The guestbook just didn't work. It probably was filled with cobwebs after a few months. Number two is mouse trailing effects. This is one of those that seemed cool and interesting for about five seconds. This was where you could set up effects so that when you were moving your mouse, your cursor, so the little white arrow on the screen or whatever, it would leave trails of stars or sparkles that would follow the mouse around. I never was into anything like this. It sounds like it would be something that teenage girls would have used in the late 90s. Or it might have been something that teenage boys would have put on the computer if you shared it with the rest of the family. So then if your parents were scrolling a news site or something, there was just snowflakes or glitter following the mouse around so they'd get frustrated and not know what to do about it. If you're someone who's longing for the days of having things follow your mouse around the screen, or if you're younger, wondering what in the world I'm talking about, I found a website called Tholman.com, T-H-O-L-M-A-N. And they have a series of these cursor effects that as you mouse down the page, it will show you. It's got rainbows, clocks, fairy dust, all that. I'll link to it in the description of the podcast if you really want to check that out. It'll be just like it was in the 90s. Five seconds of fun and then just like, what am I thinking? Number three is floating or scrolling text marquees. These were kind of like digital bumper stickers, scroll across the screen messages that were supposed to look futuristic. These were things, they were super annoying. Typically these HTML scrolls would have some kind of breaking news maybe, not like a news ticker at the bottom of any news network or ESPN, but just pointless stuff. I'm no web designer. I know a little bit about HTML, which is why if you ever visit my blog, I'm pretty good at embedding things, especially links to the podcast in there. So I could see where creating these scrolling text marquees would be something that when you learned it in the mid to late 90s, you'd want to put it everywhere. but it didn't really make the pages stand out. It just made it look like a continually flowing ransom note made by someone who just discovered HTML and caffeine. Number four is Frames. This allowed for the division of the browser window into multiple sections. It was created by Netscape Navigator in the early 90s. It was usually centered around navigation with the menu in one frame and then the rest of the page in another frame. But there was a huge problem because they would never be sized right. They would break the bookmarking and would confuse everyone that got to the page. A lot of those frames on amateur-created websites, they looked more like scrapbooks or photo albums on a computer screen. And finally, number five on the list of useless early internet features is flash intro animations. This is where you'd go to a website you wanted to visit and you'd be accosted by a 30 second animation video with swooshing text and swooshing sounds and swooshing everywhere. It's like you just wanted to go to some store website and check their hours, but nope, you've got to sit through this weirdly put together video trailer for the store that doesn't include anything about the store. It was kind of like movie trailers before YouTube, except you couldn't skip them. You just had to deal with it. How badly do you want the info that you want? I would typically disable Adobe Flash so I wouldn't have to see these things. They wouldn't start. But then that would impact like every other website I went to where they'd say you need to have Flash running. So then I'd have to start it again and I'd get suckered into these videos. But there you have it. useless internet features from back in the day, back in the 90s. Are you guilty of using any of these on any page you made? Which one annoyed you the most? I mean, I have to go to the Adobe Flash intros because that's the only one that made me change my computer settings just to get rid of it. It makes me wish, though, that on my homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com, I wish I had installed a guest book or a visitor counter. Because I've had that site since 2008. Maybe I'd be up to a few hundred signatures and visitors. I don't know. I think it would be hard for me to overstate how big of a part of my childhood Transformers were. It's like getting one of the Transformers toys was the reward for everything good I did. Good report card, get yourself a Transformer, hit the game-winning home run in Little League, get a Transformer. But then it was also the way to soothe me after bad things. I got stabbed in the eye once with a pencil by my sister, Lindsay. She was a baby. This was not on purpose. She always feels bad when I bring it up. There are so many pictures of me with this eye patch. It didn't blind me, so I don't want to make it sound like it was so malicious. I do remember the picture I have of me with my eye patch. I was probably nine years old, and I'm holding my snarl patch. Transformer Dinobot, he was the Stegosaurus. This is one of those topics, you remember a few weeks ago on the show I talked about Garfield, and how big Garfield was in my childhood, and how I was shocked that I got this far into the podcast without talking about Garfield. It's the same for Transformers. Boys who grew up in the 1980s had no shortage of amazing toys, action figures... Besides Transformers, there was G.I. Joe, there was He-Man, there was all the LJN WWF wrestling figures. I can only speak for me, though, because Transformers were head and shoulders above everything. I loved the WWF action figures just as much, but Transformers was everything. I would always play with them. As much as they're associated with growing up in the United States in the 1980s, at least for young boys... Transformers began in Japan. It was a combination of two Japanese toy lines, Diaclone and Microchange, both produced by the Japanese company Takara, now Takara Tomy. These toys were exactly what Transformers are. Robots that could transform into vehicles, weapons, everyday objects. That immediately is what makes Transformers stand out. It's like you're getting two toys in one. In 1983, American toy company Hasbro was looking for new properties to bring to Western audiences. They discovered Takara's transforming robots at the Tokyo Toy Fair. Hasbro licensed the toy molds, rebranded them, and launched the Transformers toy line in the United States in 1984. In order to create a coherent backstory and market the toys more effectively... Hasbro enlisted the help of Marvel Comics to develop names, personalities, and a narrative universe, much like they had done recently with G.I. Joe. So you combine the storytelling ability of Marvel Comics with these transforming robots, two toys in one, it's a runaway, it's a juggernaut of success. It wasn't just the toy line, though. Transformers also in 1984 debuted as an animated television series. This is probably where I first was acquainted with Transformers, the battle between the noble Autobots led by the heroic Optimus Prime, who was a semi-truck 18-wheeler, and the evil Decepticons, who were under the command of the ruthless Megatron, who was a jet. The show's sci-fi action was complemented by the memorable voice acting. Peter Cullen was the man who was the voice of Optimus Prime, Frank Welker was the voice of Megatron. Peter Cullen has been the voice of Optimus Prime basically from the start. He's the voice of Optimus Prime in all the movies that have been out recently. And Frank Welker, he's one of the most prolific and profitable voice actors ever. As someone who's thinking about doing some voice acting or voiceover work in the near future, I'd kill to have 1% of the financial success that Frank Welker had. The Transformers animated series was on from 1984 to 1987 with 98 total episodes. There was also an accompanying Marvel comic book series that was also launched in 1984 that was initially planned as a four-issue limited run. And it became so popular that it ran for 80 issues continuing until 1991. Seriously, Transformers was a cash cow for Hasbro. I never read the comic books, but I don't think I was missing much considering that I watched all the TV shows. I watched the animated movie from 1986. It was meant to be the bridge between season two and three of the television show set in the far off time of 2005. That'll never be a year. But that was the one that scarred a lot of us kids in the 80s where they killed off Optimus Prime in the first act. That's something you would never see in animated shows. A main character being killed. Just think about that if you would watch the Flintstones in the 60s and Fred Flintstone was hit in a car accident. Or if they killed Bart Simpson or Peter Griffin on Family Guy. I mean, they did kill Kenny on South Park hundreds of times, but that's the exception, not the rule. The reasoning behind killing off Optimus Prime was actually designed to introduce a new line of toys. And it's also known for having Orson Welles in his final film role voicing Unicron, who was a Transformer so big he could transform into a planet. I just remember that after Optimus Prime was killed, they brought in this Rodimus Prime that's not supposed to be related to him, but it was, to me as a kid at the time, it was like replacing Bo and Luke Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard with their cousins Koi and Vance. That's a very 80s reference there. Transformers toys were some of the best-selling toys of the 1980s. I had so many of them. Autobots, Decepticons, Dinobots. I love the Dinobots. I was a big fan of dinosaurs, so dinosaur robots, you couldn't go wrong with that. Grimlock, the T-Rex leader. Like I said, I had Snarl, the Stegosaurus after my sister gouged my eye out with a pencil. Fun fact, I actually had my eye wrecked twice, including a few years later, so my sister stabbed me with a pencil, and then it was almost like she didn't finish the job, so she threw a Godzilla toy at me a few years later. At least I think it was the same sister. I don't know. This is what Transformers brings up. It was the first thing I thought of when I was putting this segment together, was the picture of me with my eye patch with my Dinobot there. And just the story behind how we got to that point. Anyway, enough attempted murder from family members. By the early 90s, interest in Transformers started to wane. Hasbro retired the original Generation 1 line. They attempted several reboots, including Generation 2 in 1993, Beast Wars Transformers in 1996. The Generation 2 Transformers sold well, but it was the Beast Wars ones. They were entirely new characters that transformed robots into animals instead of vehicles. The Beast Wars Transformers were the ones that introduced computer-generated animation, complex storytelling. This appealed to older fans as well as a new generation of kids. And this period of the late 90s laid the groundwork for the Transformers franchise long-term viability that could reinvent itself while honoring its roots. By the early 90s, my tastes had changed. I was no longer collecting action figures. I was into the grunge culture. So I never got into the Beast Wars Transformers. But as I've said numerous times on this show, nostalgia is very powerful. And so when the Transformers movie came out in 2007, I was in line at the theater to get to see it. This was a live-action film with CGI Transformers produced by Steven Spielberg, directed by Michael Bay. It was a way to reintroduce Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Megatron, It had explosive action sequences. It was critically mixed, but I couldn't have cared less what critics thought. It was a big-budget movie based on the Transformers that influenced my childhood so much, so I couldn't have cared less. The only way they could have gotten me to not go see Transformers is if they said the theater blew up at the end of the movie, and even then I might try to go and escape before it happened. The movie ended up making about $130 million at the box office, which unfortunately, because the budget was so high for this movie, it actually lost money. In total, there have been seven movies in the Transformers universe franchise, with the newest one being 2023's Rise of the Beasts. The franchise in general has made more than $5.3 billion at the box office, making it a huge success despite the original film being kind of a little bit of a money loser. It's incredible to think, for me as a child of the 80s, that there are so many kids today, the same age that I was back then, that have no idea about the original figures, the original animated show. but yet they're still gigantic Transformers fans based just on the movies. To this day, Transformers continues to thrive with toys, with Hasbro still producing them. There are still cartoons, still comics. There are extensive fan communities, conventions. At its core, Transformers is about identity, transformation, literally with the robots transforming to different things and metaphorically. and the eternal conflict between good and evil, Autobots, Decepticons. Think about all the generations now that can say they grew up on Transformers. I'm a Gen Xer that grew up with the first generation of Transformers and Optimus Prime. Millennial kids grew up with the Beast Wars. Gen Z has the live-action movies. There's even Generation Alpha kids today that are discovering the Earthspark animated shows. There's literally a version of Transformers for four different generations. And it all started with these repurposed Japanese robot toys in the early to mid-1980s. For me, I still associate Transformers with my childhood in the 80s. Like I said, rewards for good things in my life or things to soothe me after bad things in my life. Or just getting them on random days. Going shopping on a Sunday with my Nina and going to visit my grandpa at his donut shop and then going to tons of toys or Child World and picking out my favorite Transformer to bring home to fight the rest of the crew I had. Or maybe wrestle some of my LJN WWF figures. After... Over 40 years, though, one thing is clear. Transformers are not just robots in disguise. They're cultural icons that are here to stay. But until next week, I'm going to transform this podcast from in progress to done. So that wraps up episode 195. We're getting closer and closer to episode 200. If you haven't yet, Go to Patreon. All you got to do is become a free member. Vote in the polls for episode 200. Listener's choice. People on Patreon are going to get to vote for everything that's on the show. Except for me. I'm still the host. You can't put in a vote for me to have my buddy Steve host the show instead. Although that would be pretty funny. Guest host. That's when you know I've run out of content. When I start having other people host the show. That's like in the... 80s when Johnny Carson was getting ready to leave the Tonight Show and he would have guest hosts on there like Joan Rivers all the time. I am not Johnny Carson though, although my hair is getting kind of as white as his was. Not close, but it'll be there soon enough. Thank you all for tuning into the show, for making it this far. I hope I satisfied your craving for Gen X nostalgia. We'll do it all again next week with episode 196. That will be where we will talk about 1985 in movies, all the number one films, and some about what it was like to go to the movies in 1985. We'll also be talking about what was considered cutting-edge technology in the 1970s. Back in episode 179, I did a segment on cutting edge tech from the 1960s. So if you want to go check that out, that'll give you an idea of what's coming next week. I hope all of you moms who listen had a great Mother's Day. By the time this episode goes live, I will know if my mother liked the Mother's Day gift I got her, which was a butterfly bush for her yard. I'm figuring she liked it, but who knows? Maybe next week on the show, I'll be telling you that she dug it up and threw it in the trash as soon as I left. If you enjoy my content, if you enjoy what I do and want to support me, like I said, you can become a member on Patreon for $5 a month. You can always buy me a coffee. Those are as little as a dollar, which won't buy me a coffee, but it's the thought that counts. But the best way, if spending money is not feasible, the best way you can support me or any content creator is sharing our work, spreading the word. In a time where there's option overload with everything, it means a lot when people share the work of creators because it's a lot of work. It's hard work. I love doing all of this, podcasting, creating the videos for YouTube, blogging, and all my writing. It's all fun, but it takes time, especially with a full-time day job. I spend, you know, conservatively somewhere around 15 hours, usually more, per week doing work on my content. It's just me. I don't have any team. I haven't hired an intern to come in and do work for me. I think I enjoy being in control of my stuff too much to give it to someone else and trust them. Like, edit this podcast and do it right. I wouldn't trust they could do it. Happy birthday this week to my Uncle John. The only one who knows more about family history than me is my Uncle John. And I never expected to be a family historian. That was kind of just gifted to me. So I hope you have the best birthday possible. Hopefully this podcast made your birthday a little more fun. And before I overstay my welcome with this podcast going too long this week, I will wrap up by saying, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all again for tuning in to episode 195. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Christopher Setterlund

Host