Episode 196: 1970s Cutting Edge Tech, 1985 Year In Movies, Animated TV Show Fails, Mount St. Helens(5-21-2025)

What was the cutting-edge technology of the 1970s? What was it like to go to the movies in 1985? What are some of the biggest animated television show fails?

Episode 196 answers all of these questions.

🛸 What Was High-Tech in the 1970s?
Think the '70s were all shag carpets and disco? Think again. We're digging into the cutting-edge innovations of the decade—from futuristic toys and game-changing electronics to major breakthroughs in medicine and transportation.

🎬 Going to the Movies in 1985
What was it really like to hit the theaters 40 years ago? We’re throwing it back to sticky floors, giant soda cups, and a year of unforgettable (and sometimes baffling) #1 box office hits. Blockbusters, bombs, and everything in between—get ready for a cinematic time warp.

📺 Top 5 Animated TV Show Fails
Not every cartoon can be a classic. This week’s Top 5 counts down the biggest animated misfires to ever hit the airwaves. These short-lived flops might make you say, “Wait… that was real?”

🌋 This Week in History & Time Capsule – We revisit the explosive 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, one of the most powerful natural disasters in U.S. history.

📢 Listener’s Choice is Coming!
Episode 200 is around the corner! Don’t forget to cast your vote in our Listener’s Choice poll—open to all Patreon members, free or paid.

Hit play and let the nostalgia take over! 🚀

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

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 196. We got a highway full of nostalgia to drive down. I will try my best not to speed and get pulled over. The fun kicks off with a look back at what was considered cutting-edge technology in the 1970s. We're gonna go way, way back in the day, and like I promised a few weeks ago, we're gonna look at 1985's number one movies and a little bit about what it was like going to the movie theater 40 years ago. This week's brand new top five is going to look at the top five animated TV show fails, cartoons that came and went in a flash and with almost no praise. And there'll be a brand new this week in History and Time Capsule looking back at the eruption of Mount St. Helens. All of that is coming up right now on episode 196 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So, what are we gonna talk about this week on this fireside chat of a podcast? I would say it's like that, but the weather currently on Cape Cod is extremely muggy. Ugh. Terrible. That means we've gotta start it off with something refreshing. Ooh, there you go. Energy drink to see how crazy I get by the end of the show. I had to buy one that specifically is fizz-free because I don't trust myself to not spill everywhere. The last thing I need is to short out my microphone or worse, my laptop, because I have to do a funny bit on the show. Well, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whatever you might be drinking, what the weather is, I hope you're having the best time. Thank you so much for tuning in to me as we're staring down 200 episodes in a few weeks. Remember to go to Patreon, become a member, a free member, and vote in the polls to let me know what's going to be talked about on episode 200. Listener's Choice Part 2. All the segments are up for grabs if you go there. There's two choices, because I did not want to have it where I give you four or more choices and then I get like one vote for each, and I'm like, oh man, come on. Episode 200 drops on June 18th, so these polls will be up until like the week before. And I'll keep putting out reminders for people to go over there and just become a free member, lend your input on what we're gonna do on that show. Speaking of Patreon, if you want to become a subscriber, support me, support my content, you can for $5 a month. You get access to bonus exclusive subscriber podcast episodes, access to the remastered without a map live streams, one of which just went up on Patreon a few days ago. And you know I can't start off any podcast episode without thanking my Patreon subscribers, Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, Matt. Thank you all so much for being my biggest backers. Content creation can be a lot of work, so getting that kind of support to help me keep going, it's really appreciated. Patreon and this sort of supporting artists, creators, that's a brand new type of technology that really has changed the world as far as being your own boss or an entrepreneur. And what we're gonna do right now on episode 196 is look at some other cutting edge technology as we go back to the 1970s, my decade when I was born. So let's look at that cutting edge technology starting now. Ah, yes, younger listeners, let me take you back to the bygone era of the 1970s, the decade when I was born, disco, bell bottoms, the dawn of the summer blockbuster, Bet Rocks. Those of you a little older than me, you know all of what I'm talking about here. Back in episode 179, I did a segment on cutting edge technology of the 1960s, things that were new and revolutionary for the time. So that's what we're gonna do here is we're gonna look at cutting edge tech of the 1970s. A lot of this stuff that was new on the market became a lot more popular in the 1980s, so a lot of these speak to me in my childhood, and then I look back and realize so much of this is obsolete now, so it's a double-edged sword. I feel great, and then I also feel super sad. What I'm gonna do here for this segment is I've got the cutting-edge tech broken down into categories to kind of make it easier for me to follow, so I don't just wander off in the woods as I start talking. Let's begin, shall we? So let's start off with computers and electronics. That was really a burgeoning market in the 1970s. First and foremost was the home computer. And I know a lot of you out there are like, wait, that doesn't sound right that there were home computers in the 70s, but it's true. It's sort of like the internet in the mid-1990s, where it was there, but not a lot of people had access to it. It's sort of like that with home computers. The Apple One came out in 1976. In July 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak put the Apple One on the market for $666.66 because they like the repeating numbers. All the 666s, it probably made the older people think that it was sent by the devil. Obviously, the vast majority of you that are listening to this show, your smartphones have way more power than the Apple One had. So if I sat you down to use one of those computers, you'd be like, God, this is terrible. But back then in 1976, the microprocessor, the dynamic RAM, it showed that there was potential in home computers. Even though the Apple One is probably what you would think of as far as the dawning of home computers, one year before the Altair 8800 came out. This computer was from a company called MITS, Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems. This one sold for as little as $297, and they're the ones that coined the term personal computer. If you go back to my Oregon Trail episode 153, you'll know that my first experience was the Apple II in 1985. The big blocky computer with a greenish screen. Despite the relatively large size of personal computers back then, it was nothing like it was in the years before. And that's due to microprocessors. The Intel 4004 came out in 1971, and the Intel 8080 in 1974. Not to get too tech specific, because I don't want to make it sound like I know all about how computers work. But the Intel 4004 was a 4-bit CPU that was originally used for calculators. If you're curious, the 4004 could address four kilobytes of memory and 640 bytes of RAM. I just think of that as the vast majority of my photos on my laptop are maybe one to two hundred times the size, meaning that if I had a 4004 microprocessor, I couldn't even look at one photo. When it came to electronics, though, the biggest development as far as kids of the next decade was the video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, which came out in 1972. That I'm going to do a deep dive on in a future episode, so I won't go too much into that. That's the original video game console. The first one that broke through, you're probably more familiar with. That was the Atari 2600 in 1977. This is the first video game console that I ever remember playing. I was probably five years old. Sitting there playing pitfall. This is one of those, it comes down to what I said a few minutes ago, where I remember all this stuff and it makes me happy to have these memories. But then I think about what kids today would think if they had one of those Apple I computers or a small TV with the Atari 2600 hooked up. They'd be so sad and unimpressed, and I'd be standing there like, but wait, it was good when I was a kid. If you had a video game console in the late 70s, you needed something to watch it on, play it on. Color TVs, they hadn't been invented in the 70s, but they became more of the norm in the 1970s. By the 1966-67 TV season, most TV shows were shown in color. Even though they kept selling black and white TVs into the early 90s, those would be the ones you'd get one of those cheapo small black and white TVs, have it in your kitchen or dining room. I know my Nina and Grandpa had one of those smaller ones. Another piece of cutting-edge tech that would go along with your new color TV was the VCR, video cassette recorder. Again, these would be more prevalent in the 1980s, but in the late 70s, the video rental stores started to come around, which tapped into a large market. It was like if you couldn't go to the theater and watch the film, you had to hope that it would be on TV. With the advent of the VCR, you could go and rent the movie and watch it whenever you felt like it. Well, do I remember how freeing and liberating it was to be able to record your favorite TV show and watch it later? Or if you felt like being a jerk to your siblings, using a tape that they had recorded a favorite show on to tape over with something you liked. Not saying I did that often. I've been pleasantly surprised with how durable VHS tapes are. I've got tapes, you've heard me talk about it a bunch on the podcast. I had a camcorder, I bought it in 1994, I filmed a 65 hours of home movies in high school. Those tapes still work. I've been digitizing a lot of that stuff. These tapes, I didn't exactly store them in a cool, dry place. So I've been pleasantly surprised that they still have held up well after 30 plus years. Of course, now I say that I'm gonna go and try to digitize something and the tape will just explode. Another piece of cutting edge tech that was really booming, especially in the late 70s, was portable music. You had eight-track players in your car, cassette players in your car. You had portable stereos, not quite the giant boom boxes you would see in the mid-1980s, but still you could load up your portable cassette player with a bunch of D batteries and play like three songs before the batteries died. The prices of batteries and how short a lifespan they had in these portable cassette players, they didn't matter to me when I was a kid, and they were just readily available to me for free. It's funny how when you get older and you have to be your own support system that all the stuff that your parents did as a kid, it resonates a lot more. The king of portable music was the Sony Walkman, and it actually came out in 1979. Obviously, it became the big thing to have in the mid-1980s. I remember getting my first one probably 1987 with the cheapo headphones that had kind of the foam over the ears. Being able to get a cassette tape, put it in your Walkman, and then go outside, even if you're just sitting in the front yard, but to have your music to yourself, it changed the world. Because before then it was play the music in your car or have the portable cassette player and play it out loud, hope that people don't hate the music you're playing. An underrated piece of cutting-edge tech from the 70s was the touchtone telephone, replacing the rotary phone, where it would take you forever to dial people that had nines and zeros in their numbers. The touchstone phone itself was available in the 1960s. It had been experimented with decades earlier, but the problem was telephone exchange offices and such, they were used to the rotary dial, knowing how long it would take to dial each number. Like if you dialed a one, they could kind of figure that out. The touchtone, you had to figure out what the sound of each number meant. I know this seems like super antiquated worries, but it wasn't until the early to mid-1970s that technology was put into place so that touchtone phones could be more readily available in homes. Because otherwise, if you dialed a number in the operator, I guess, if they didn't know what the number was, they couldn't connect you. It's like I'm talking about the differences between the beeps of the touchtone phone and the sound of each number with the rotary phone, and it's got its like old man problems. I just think of that. Kids listening that are twenty and under, wondering, like, what's a rotary telephone? Oh man. Of course, also in the 70s, we had the huge craze of average everyday drivers having CB radios in their car. I've talked about that a couple times. Fax machines became a thing. They were rare and expensive, but it was the ability to transmit a document over phone lines that was seen as magic. And yes, fax machines are still around. My day job working in a chiropractic office, we every now and then get stuff faxed over to us. And I always laugh, like, oh, they still make you? A big piece of cutting edge tech came in travel. One was the Apollo space missions, which allowed humans to travel into space, but then for the rest of us, well at least some of us, there was the Concorde, the supersonic passenger jet that came out in 1976. This meant that it was possible to travel from New York City to London in under four hours. Think about the stories. The people that were old in the late 1970s, people that were in their 70s, 80s, some of them likely had parents that had migrated west with wagons, telling them about how it took months to get from Missouri to California. And here they were, the kids of those people in their later years, finding out you could fly from New York to London in less than four hours. I find that fascinating. What people see in their lifespan. All of my grandparents were born in the 1920s. They were children during the Great Depression, where there was no television, and there were still people that didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing. And yet in their 60s and 70s, I remember my Nana playing Super Mario Bros. on Nintendo, thinking about where she came from, like when she was growing up. It's the same as me. As I get closer to 50, those of you my age, think about when we were kids. We didn't have internet or smartphones or streaming. And what's gonna be around in 20, 30 years. In the medical field, in the late 1970s, you had the first laser eye experiments paving the way for the LASIK surgery. There was MRI research. And I'll end the segment on more everyday technology. For example, microwave ovens. Yes, they were around in the 50s and 60s, but they were super expensive. And obviously, as technology gets developed, the things that were expensive become more affordable. And it was in the 70s that microwaves were way more affordable. I mean, today you can get a decent microwave for $50. In the mid-1970s, an average microwave was anywhere from $450 to $500. And that was considered affordable at the time. You had the donning of digital watches or watches with the calculators on 'em, LED or L C D displays. These look like things that should have been on Star Trek, but you could have them on your wrist in the classroom. Especially in the eighties, calculator watches, they were a major craze. And one of the big symbols of the 70s that I'll finish the segment on was the Polaroid instant camera. Take a picture and literally watch it develop in your hands. That white border with the larger white border on the bottom where you could write down the description of whatever it is you took a picture of. In order to reduce clutter, my mother gave all of us kids a box of old photos, and there are so many Polaroid pictures of me as a kid. What's amazing is that these Polaroid Instant cameras are making a comeback. They're a novelty now. It's I told you, nostalgia is so powerful. I don't see much more of the cutting edge 70s tech making a comeback. No Atari 2600 or touch tone phones. But then again, I didn't think Polaroid Instant cameras would be for sale in the mid-2020s, so what do I know? This week in history, we are going back 45 years to May 18th, 1980, and the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Mount St. Helens is a part of the Cascade Range in southwestern Washington State. This eruption marked one of the most significant and destructive volcanic events in United States history. Known to Native American tribes as Luala Clue, I hope I said that right. The volcano had a history of explosive activity dating back thousands of years, but by the 20th century, the mountain had been dormant since a series of small eruptions in the mid-1800s. This changed dramatically on March 20th, 1980, when a magnitude 4.2 earthquake struck beneath the volcano, which was the first indication that Mount St. Helens was waking up. Over the next several weeks, hundreds of small quakes followed. On March 27th, the volcano had its first phreatic, which is steam-driven, eruption in over a century, blasting a crater through the summit ice cap and sending ash clouds over the region. As geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey monitored the mountain, they noticed a large and growing bulge on the north flank of the volcano. And this was due to the magma intruding into the volcano, causing the mountain to inflate. Between April and May, that bulge expanded at an average rate of five feet per day, which was an ominous sign that pressure was building to catastrophic levels. At 8 32 AM on Sunday, May 18, 1980, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck beneath the volcano. This tremor triggered a massive landslide, the largest in recorded history, as the entire north face of the mountain collapsed. This landslide uncorked the pressure inside the mountain, leading to a violent lateral blast. So, unlike typical volcanic eruptions that go vertical, Mount St. Helens ejected its pyroclassic fury sideways. It traveled at speeds up to 670 miles per hour and flattened everything in its path within a 230 square mile zone. Trees were vaporized or knocked down in a radial pattern. Temperatures within the blast zone exceeded 660 degrees Fahrenheit. Ash from the eruption reached as far as the central United States within days and circled the globe in two weeks. In some parts of eastern Washington, daylight turned to darkness and several inches of ash blanketed towns and farmland. The eruption of Mount St. Helens killed fifty-seven people, including scientists, loggers, and curious onlookers. Among the most famous people to perish was a man named Harry R. Truman, who was an 83-year-old lodge owner who refused to evacuate his home at Spirit Lake and perished in the blast. Thousands of animals were killed, forests were destroyed, the blast zone extended 19 miles from the crater. The landslide and mud flows caused by the eruption devastated river valleys, destroyed hundreds of homes, forty-seven bridges, fifteen miles of railways, and nearly 200 miles of highways. Economic losses were estimated at over a billion dollars at the time. This eruption, it revolutionized volcanic science in the US, as for the first time scientists had extensive monitoring data leading up to a major eruption, which allowed for more accurate hazard modeling and better public communication. Since that eruption, Mount St. Helens did not go dormant. The volcano had a series of smaller eruptions between 1980 and 1986, and again between 2004 and 2008. Today the mountain is nearly 1,300 feet shorter than it was before the eruption, with a large horseshoe-shaped crater on its northern side. The eruption of Mount St. Helens served as a dramatic reminder of the power of nature and the necessity of scientific preparedness. And that eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State occurred 45 years ago, this week in history. Now we've got an explosion of liquid hot nostalgia in the new time capsule. What we're gonna do is we're gonna stick to the same day. Mount St. Helens is erupting. It's May 18th, 1980. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was Call Me by Blondie. This became Blondie's biggest hit song, their second number one song. They would eventually have four total number one songs, including Heart of Glass, The Tide is High, and Rapture. Call Me was the theme from the movie American Gigolo, written from the perspective of a male prostitute. So now if you listen to it, the lyrics make more sense. And of course, Blondie was fronted by Debbie Harry, the crush of a lot of 70s and 80s kids. By the time I was old enough to have crushes in the late 80s, Blondie was on its way out, so I missed the Debbie Harry craze. The number one movie was The Long Riders, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing two dollars and sixty-nine cents. This is a Western, kind of a biographical pick about the James Younger gang fronted by Jesse James. It stars Dennis Quaid, pretty much everyone from the Carradine family, David Carradine, Robert Carradine, and Keith Carradine. It's 80% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and was a modest success, making about $16 million on a budget of $8 million. The number one TV show was the Miss USA Pageant. This was held at the Gulf Coast Convention Center in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was won by Sean Weatherly of South Carolina. She was 20 years old when she won the pageant and parlayed that victory into also winning the Miss Universe pageant in 1980, which I don't understand because why aren't there any entrants from other planets? Sean Weatherly was also briefly an actress. She was in Police Academy 3 and the first season of Baywatch. And if you were around back then, May 18th, 1980, like I was, I mean I was two and a half, but you know, I was there. Maybe you enjoy Pop Tarts. I know I do. Well, at least I did then. I can't eat them now because I'll gain a hundred pounds, but whatever. Well, if you like Pop Tarts, I've got a deal for you. You can get your own Milton the Toaster piggy bank with two proofs of purchase and one dollar. Milton the Toaster was the Pop Tarts mascot, especially in the 70s. I didn't know he was still around in the 80s. I had no memories of him. But you can get yourself a Milton the Toaster bank, so then you can save your change so you can go buy more Pop Tarts. Of course, back then in 1980, they didn't have all kinds of flavors of Pop Tarts. It was basically strawberry, blueberry, and frosted or unfrosted, so boring compared to what's out there now. That wraps up another time capsule, another This Week in History. Not every show can be the Flintstones, The Simpsons, South Park Family Guy. There are some animated shows that bomb out, and uh, we're gonna go through them in the brand new top five. So let's look at some animated TV show fails coming up now. Ah yes, like I said, not every show can be The Simpsons or Family Guy or South Park or the Flintstones or Jetsons. Cartoons don't necessarily equal success. I went scouring the history books of television to find some of the biggest animated TV show fails. These are a combination of shows that had really bad reviews, had a lot of episodes that went unaired, or didn't have a lot of episodes in general. So in my research, when I was going through finding some of these animated shows, I think in my top five, including five honorable mentions, I think I knew of three of these shows. A few of these I had no idea they were even made. We'll see how many of these you watched or even remember. But yes, as with most of these top fives, there are some honorable mentions, and the top five itself is in no particular order. Let's dive in and have some laughs, pretty much at the expense of all of these cartoons. We'll kick it off with the honorable mentions, which I'll kind of gloss over a little. If you want to learn more about them, be my guest. I don't envy you. Honorable mentions for animated TV show fails include Alan Gregory. This is from 2011, seven total episodes starring Jonah Hill as a seven-year-old that acts like a middle-aged snob. Wonder why that failed. Another honorable mention is Father of the Pride. This is from 2004, 14 total episodes. CGI about Siegfried and Roy's lions, meant to be for kids with a lot of adult jokes, so it just didn't mix. Another honorable mention is Capital Critters. This is from 1992. Only six episodes aired. It's about mice and other vermin living in the White House, and it's meant to be political satire through animation. Wicked fail. Another honorable mention is Ed Grimley. This is from 1988. The Ed Grimley show had 13 total episodes based on Martin Short's character from Saturday Night Live. Too weird for kids, too juvenile for adults, capital F for fail, and any other F you want to throw in there. And the final honorable mention is the Brady Kids. This is from 1972-73. An animated show about the adventures of the Brady kids with magic and time travel. It was a fail, but it lasted longer and did better than the Brady Button. Variety Hour that came out a few years later. Those are the honorable mentions. Do you remember any of those shows? I don't want to speak for any of you out there, but when we get done, there's ten total shows. I'd be shocked if you knew more than half of them. That's meant to be a compliment. I don't think you'll watch garbage animated shows. But we'll see. Sorry, I had to pause for a second there. I don't know if you heard it, but I had a cardinal at my window flipping out, peeping. I don't know if it was looking for food, but when I went to the window and said what? It flew away. Just thought I'd share that. Alright, let's get this countdown started. Starting with number one, the brothers grunt.

Speaker: 31:22

Cold martinis and melted cheese. The story of the brothers grunt. Ooh. They're always now on the hut. Out of their minds.

Speaker 1: 31:34

Boom. This was from MTV 1994-95, so it was in my wheelhouse. I do remember this show. It was almost universally hated. It took the Beavis and Butthead concept and just made it 20 times more gross without it being funny. It was about five humanoids in search of their lost brother. It actually had a plot. They were just weird, rubbery, twitchy, pale, big eyes. The show aired for 35 episodes and then was canceled, leaving seven episodes unaired. It was considered a quick cancellation because of the poor ratings and backlash. 35 episodes is still a lot. I would think after the first 10 to 12, you'd realize the show was crap and just take it off the air to put on some other variation of the real world, which is what they ended up doing mostly in the 90s. But yes, I remember that show. I hated that show. That was one of the first that made the list. Number two is Fish Police.

Speaker: 32:45

If New York is the melting pot, then Fish City can only be described as the booya base. Trust me, being a good cop in a bad town can be murdered.

Speaker 1: 33:00

Sounds like something my friends and I would have come up with to do with my camcorder. But no, this was on CBS in 1992. It was a detective cartoon about an anthropomorphic fish. It was based on a cult classic comic book, but the problem came with not knowing who their audience was, or the audience not knowing what the show was for. It tried to be adult, but it was on CBS. It's animated, but it's not for kids. So the result was three episodes aired. It was canceled with three left unaired. What's crazy is this show should have been a success. It was made by Hannah Barbera. They made millions of great cartoons. And the voice actors in it was John Ritter, Ed Asner, Tim Curry, Frank Welker, who was the biggest voice actor there was. But yeah, it just bombed out pretty quickly. Number three is the Barclays. I don't know. This is from 1972. It aired on NBC with 13 episodes, and it was meant to be a spoof of All in the Family featuring talking dogs. The big problem was it's an animated show, and you're trying to spoof All in the Family, which was very cutting-edge, taboo, controversial with what it tackled as far as social issues went. And on the Barclays, they had to water all that down. The show didn't have any famous people in it as voice actors, except for Frank Welker, who he seems to be in everything that Hanna Barbera did. I guess the only other claim to fame by the Barclays was that it was one of the final projects created by Friz Freeling, who did a lot of work on Looney Tunes. But I mean that's about it. It's pretty forgettable. We're gonna end with two of these that I had no idea they even existed. They are both animated versions of TV shows that were really popular. So we're gonna start with number four, Gilligan's Planet.

Speaker: 35:33

What riddles do we face? What mysteries now haunt us in a strange enchanting place.

Speaker 1: 35:49

Oh yeah. Obviously, it's a takeoff of Gilligan's Island. This was on CBS in 1982, where the castaways are no longer castaways on an island, but now on another planet. This was seen as a blatant cash grab. It actually alienated some of the fans of the original show. Even though with the animated one, it was all the same cast providing the voices. Bob Denver as Gilligan, Alan Hale as the skipper, Jim Backus as Thurston Howell III, Don Wells, it's interesting. She was not only was she Marianne, but she also voiced Ginger. So I guess Tina Louise did not reprise her role for Gilligan's Planet. I guess you can't blame them for trying. I mean, they had Gilligan's Island where the Harlem Globetrotters showed up, so it wasn't the weirdest thing they could have come up with. Speaking of weird animated cash grabs of popular TV shows, that leads us to number five, Laverne and Shirley in the army. Laverne, let's join the army! Watch her! Where do I sign up? I'm with you. This one seems like they took it out of mad libs. Come up with a 1970s show, come up with an occupation, and just run with it. This show was on ABC in 1981, and this was while Laverne and Shirley was still on the air, the real TV show. And it's like at least with Gilligan's Planet, they waited for over ten years after the show was canceled. This one was also made by Hannah Barbera. It's like all the ones that are on here that were fails by them, and I was saying, oh, they did great cartoons. Well, I have just proven myself wrong. Obviously, the plot of this is Laverne and Shirley in the army. There you go. Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams voice themselves. Henry Winkler was in it. And, stop me if you've heard this one, Frank Welker was in it. Any animated show in the 70s and 80s he was in. There were 21 total episodes of this show, but the ratings bombed. People probably realized if I want to watch Laverne and Shirley, I can watch the real people on their actual successful TV show. It's funny, to wrap this up, when doing my research and looking up biggest animated TV show fails, there were some that were on people's lists that were ones that I liked. Ren and Stimpy, Hulk Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling. I'm like, I'm not putting those on there. I like them. So maybe some of you are listening saying, I liked Gilligan's Planet or Fish Police, so I apologize. What I will not apologize for is being a huge fan of nostalgia. And what better way to share that with you than going back 40 years to what it was like to be in the movie theater, and we're gonna go over all the number one movies from 1985. So grab your popcorn for $25 and let's get going. Close your eyes. Well, not if you're driving. Think back 40 years to 1985. Sticky floors, smell of cigarettes in the air, no stadium seating, so God help you if someone taller than you sat in front of you. Clicks and pops and scratches with the 35mm film. Yes, we are going to the movie theater in 1985. For me on Cape Cod, it was probably the airport cinemas in Hyenis, maybe Cinema 28 in West Yarmouth. I might have gone to the theater with my Nina, my Uncle John. Every now and then my father might have actually tried and brought me to a movie. It was exciting. Go in there, it'd be the same smell of buttered popcorn just like there is today, but the rest of the menu at the theater was way smaller. There was no chicken wings, no gourmet menu, popcorn, soda, some kind of candy bar. Maybe if you were in one of the high class theaters of the time, you might have nachos with the neon orange cheese on them. You'd get a few trailers for upcoming movies, but there weren't any commercials. There definitely there were no cell phones. You were there for the movie, not to take a picture of it and put it up on social media or scroll through social media while you're waiting for the movie. You were there for the movie. The movie theater in 1985, it was a hangout social scene. On the weekends, you'd have a whole bunch of kids there. Some might hang out in the lobby or just outside the theater. Back then there were still drive-in theaters, not as many as there were in the 50s and 60s, but they were still around. I know on Cape Cod we still had the Yarmouth drive-in. I think it was closed within 1985. Hyennis drive-in, same thing. I think it closed in 86. And of course the Wellfleet drive-in that's still going strong now in 2025. There's a bit of the overview, the vibe of 1985 movie theaters. So you show up, the average ticket price for a movie in 1985 was $3.55. That translates to about $10.55 when adjusted for inflation to 2025. And in case you're wondering, according to thenumbers.com, the average ticket price for a movie in 2025 is $11.31. So a little more than it should cost, but not as bad as I thought. Although they say that some theaters can get as high as $20 to $25 for a movie. That's gotta be IMAX and such. I freely admit, I haven't been to a movie theater since before COVID. Although with Kevin Smith's Dogma making its return to theaters next month, my sister Ashley and I are likely going to be venturing into a theater for the first time in years. So you get your ticket, now you gotta go to the concession stand. On average, a small popcorn was about a dollar to a dollar fifty. Large popcorn was about two dollars to two dollars and fifty cents. Sodas for a dollar to a dollar twenty-five for a small, a large was two to two dollars and fifty cents. Today, large popcorn is around seven dollars and a large soda can be around five dollars. That's where you get pants with big pockets and you smuggle the food in and hope they don't search you. So now you're inside the theater, sitting down, probably way in the back, like I would do with my friends when I used to go, especially in the early to mid-90s. What were the popular movies? Well, let's start from the beginning of 1985, and you're gonna get all the number ones, and oh boy, these run the gamut from all-time classics to I can't believe that was number one. The first nine weeks of 1985 saw Beverly Hills Cop at number one. This is the action comedy with Eddie Murphy as Axel Foley going to Beverly Hills after his friend is murdered in Detroit. In total, Beverly Hills cop would make $316 million at the box office. That translates to about $940 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. In total, Beverly Hills cop would spend 14 non-consecutive weeks at number one, including getting knocked out of number one by the next movie I'm gonna talk about, only to come back and take number one back one week later. For the week of March 10th, the number one movie was Witness. This was a neo noir crime thriller starring Harrison Ford. Obviously, Harrison Ford is no stranger to number one films. I mean, just look at the Star Wars franchise, Indiana Jones. Like I said, Witness was number one for one week. It was knocked back out of number one by Beverly Hills Cop again. For the week of March 24th, unbelievably, the number one film was Friday the 13th, part five, a new beginning. This is the fake Jason one. I would have said it was easily the worst in the franchise, but then they made part eight, Jason Takes Manhattan, and Jason X in space. Friday the 13th, part five made just over eight million dollars in its first week of release and would end up making $21 million total. That movie only lasted one week at number one. It was bumped out by Police Academy 2, which would spend four weeks at number one, including having at the time the biggest March opening ever. It still had basically all the original cast, including Steve Gutenberg. It would make a hundred and fifteen million dollars during its run in the theater. Overall, the Police Academy franchise had seven movies and two spin-off movies. Once you get to part five, six, seven, god the ratings, the they were not good. Critical reception was not good. But the first few were good fun to watch. For the week of April 28th, Police Academy 2 was knocked out of number one for the movie Stick. A few weeks ago on the podcast, this was the number one movie in the time capsule segment, starring Burt Reynolds. This movie made three and a half million dollars during its first week in the box office, but would only end up with just over eight million total on a budget of 22 million. So it went to number one but was an epic fail. That's why it was only number one for one week. We move into May, though, now. Number one for three weeks, starting the week of May 5th, was Code of Silence, starring Chuck Norris. I probably don't even have to explain what the movie was about. If you hear Chuck Norris, you can picture pretty much what all his movies were. Action thriller. He fights a lot of people. There's a lot of roundhouse kicks and cheesy but threatening one-liners. This movie got generally positive reviews and made just over $20 million total on a budget of 7 million. As I said, it was number one for three weeks, and you knew it would have to take somebody just as tough as Chuck Norris to kick him out of number one, and that man was Sylvester Stallone. The next four weeks, including Memorial Day weekend, were dominated by Rambo First Blood Part 2. It made over $25 million at the box office over Memorial Day weekend. That would be just over $74 million when adjusted for inflation, and it actually broke the record for the highest opening weekend gross by an R-rated film that had just been set by Beverly Hills Cop. There are now five films in the Rambo series, including 2019's Rambo Last Blood. The franchise has earned almost $900 million at the box office, but First Blood Part 2 made $300 million on its own. Rambo, though, got knocked out of number one by a bunch of old people in Cocoon. For the week of June 23rd, Cocoon made almost $8 million. It's about a group of elderly people that are rejuvenated by aliens. Donna Michi, Wilfred Brimley, Jessica Tandy, and others. It made $85 million on a budget of about 17 million and won two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor for Donna Michi, and one for best visual effects. There was also a sequel, Cocoon 2, The Return, which came out in 1988. So Cocoon was number one for one week. For the week of June 30th, the number one film was Pale Rider, which was a Western starring Clint Eastwood. This was back when Clint Eastwood was doing all the Western films. It's like he played grizzled old men when he was young, and then when he became grizzled and old, he wouldn't play them anymore. So that movie I have no memory of. But the next one to go to number one, oh, I have all memories of. And that's Back to the Future. Not to spoil things, but coming up in a few weeks, Back to the Future turns 40, and I'm gonna be doing a whole segment on it. So if you don't get enough of Back to the Future here, just wait a few weeks. This time traveling classic, it's number one for three straight weeks to start, and it was the highest-grossing film of 1985. It made $389 million on a budget of 19 million. I mean, there's a major hit. It's equal to about $1.1 billion that it would have made at the box office when adjusted for inflation. For those of you that don't know what Back to the Future is, it's the time traveling tale of Marty McFly, Doc Brown. Marty goes back to 1955 and he has to make sure his parents actually get together because he ruins that first meeting. Like I said, we'll get really deep into that in a few weeks. Interestingly, for the week of July 28th, National Lampoon's European Vacation bumped back to the future out of number one. This is the sequel to the original vacation, Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, and then different actors to play Rusty and Audrey, their kids. That movie was a major hit, but it was immediately knocked out of number one by Back to the Future again. It would spend eight more weeks at number one, giving it a total of eleven non-consecutive weeks that that movie spent at number one. So what juggernaut movie, what incredible achievement of film prowess could come along to defeat Back to the Future? Invasion USA. It's Chuck Norris again. He just roundhouse kicks Doc Brown right out of the DeLorean. With Chuck Norris again, just close your eyes and picture what you think the movie's about, and you're right. Lots of people flying through glass windows, machine guns shooting everything. Probably several car chases with flipping cars and explosions. There you go. Much like Sylvester Stallone came along to knock Chuck Norris out of number one a few months ago in 1985. It was another behemoth of the action film genre, Arnold Schwarzenegger, that would come along and knock Chuck Norris down with his film Commando. This movie was number one for three weeks, starting the week of October 6th. Arnold is a former special forces colonel. His young daughter is kidnapped. She was played by Alyssa Milano at the height of her Who's the Boss fame? It made over $57 million on a budget of 10 million, and it was another in a string of hits for Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 80s. Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator, Running Man, Predator. For one week, the week of Halloween, the number one movie was Jagged Edge, a neo-noir legal thriller starring Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, about a lawyer reluctantly taking the case of a man accused of murdering his wife and not being sure if he really did it. It was a modest hit, making over forty million dollars at the box office, and Robert Logia was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. For two weeks, starting the week of November 3rd, the number one film was Deathwish 3, starring Charles Bronson. He stars as Vigilante Killer Paul Kersey. In this one, he battles New York City street punk gangs. In total, there are six movies in the Deathwish franchise, including a remake in 2018. For the week of November 17th, the number one movie, Just for That Week, was Just Bitten. Jim Carrey's first movie, I didn't know it went to number one. He's a high school nerd that gets seduced by a hot vampire. This is five years before he was on in Living Color, and that's when I thought Jim Carrey first burst on the scene. I guess I was wrong. Oh, we're getting near the end of 1985, though. For the week of November 24th, the number one film was King Solomon's Minds. It was an action-adventure movie kind of parodying the Indiana Jones franchise, even though it was based on a novel from the 1880s. And the last five weeks of 1985, the number one movie was Rocky IV. So we had Stallone with two number one movies in 1985, and Chuck Norris. This is the fourth in the Rocky Balboa story. This is where Apollo Creed gets killed and scarred me for life as a child. USA versus Russia, Rocky vs. Drago, the soundtrack that some of those songs are still on my workout playlist 40 years later. It made $300 million on a budget of 28 million. There were six films in the Rocky series, and have so far been three films in the spin-off series Creed. But there you go, all the number one movies in 1985, and a little bit about what it was like going to the theater back then. What was your favorite movie from that year? For me, it's an easy back to the future, followed closely behind by Beverly Hills Cop and Rocky IV. As I did this segment, I realized that it still went long, even though there were some movies that were number one for a long time. So I'm sure in the future I will do other years, number one movies. I'm just waiting to see if I pick a year where there were like 25 different number one movies, and then the segment's gonna be most of the podcast. But it was still fun. I had a lot of fun. Make sure to clean up after yourself in the theater, throw your popcorn away, and don't just spill it on the floor. And don't try to hide in the theater and get into another movie for free after. Not that I would know anything about that. But until next week, that's gonna wrap up episode 196 of the In My Footsteps podcast. We're getting closer to episode 200. Go vote in the polls on Patreon. What do you want to hear about on episode 200? I've gotten some votes. I was gonna say if I get no votes, it'll just be 50 minutes of silence, or me just like humming into the microphone. Well, that's scintillating audio for ya. Before then, though, next week is episode 197. We are going to do 1999, the year in pop culture. I chose this because next week is the birthday of my oldest niece Kaylee. So I figured there's a good present for her. The year in pop culture that she was born, movies, TV, music, funny stories, it's all gonna be there. If the idea of episodes being dedicated to specific years in pop culture appeals to you, I'll be sprinkling them in every now and then as we go forward with the show. The first one, ironically, was 1985, the year in pop culture, and that was episode 192. That'll be kind of the format for all of the years in pop culture. I'll keep them pretty similar, partially because it makes my research process easy. If you enjoy me and enjoy my content, my work, and you want to support me, you can become a subscriber on Patreon for five dollars a month on the paying tier. Or you can become a free member and you can still vote in the polls for episode two hundred. You can also buy me a coffee, that's always appreciated. The best way that you can support me and any content creator is by sharing what we do. And I've got a lot. I've got podcasts, a YouTube channel with hundreds of videos, I've got blogs that I update several times a week, I've got nine books that you can find at my website, Christopher Setterland.com. I'm looking to dip my toes into acting, voice acting. I'm either a renaissance man or a jack of all trades or a mix of both. I like to try different things in creative fields because you never know what you might be good at until you give it a try. The film that I did my first acting role for that should be coming out on streaming platforms likely next month in June. Obviously, I will keep you in the loop when it's coming out so you can go check it out and tell me how I'm the new big thing in acting. Also, shout out to my co-worker Heather. She got her first acting role as well. Where we work, there's three of us that work there, and two of us have movies we've filmed. It's like, what are the odds of that? We're not in LA or New York, we're in middle of nowhere Cape Cod. So now one of our running gags is we keep showing each other possible parts that you could audition for. I never would have thought that would have been part of my life, even six months ago. It just shows you to leave yourself open to possibilities. Like you never know what might be coming into your orbit. I kept my twenty twenty five intentionally sparse on my schedule, no book events, just to see what might come along. And yeah, I know, not everything that comes around, not every opportunity is one you should take. But who knows? Who knows what tomorrow brings. Well, we've had a lot of fun this week. I enjoyed talking about 1970s tech, 1985 and movies. I appreciate all of you listening, making it here to the end, my wrap-up speech I do each week. Heading towards 200 episodes of doing this show, it's amazing. Because I can still remember when this was the kernel of an idea. The whole content creation game or any sort of creative field to do it right and do it well, it takes time, it takes effort. I've said it a bunch. I usually spend fifteen to twenty hours a week doing some kind of content work. The irony is I wish I had more time because I have a lot of ideas that are just simmering on the back burner because I have a full-time job. I wish I could spend 35 hours a week doing this. I would have so much more content out there. But right now it's not feasible. But who knows? At some point I may have to just take that leap. Like my friend Patrick Hinds said when he jumped into podcasting for True Crime Obsessed, he said he had to finally know if he could do it. And boy, he succeeded. So he's kind of my inspiration. But we'll see. Every day's a new day. And 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. This has been the In My Footsteps Podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew them. And I'll talk to you all again soon.