A bumper crop of bumpers of the ’80s

See that small logo attached to this post? If you’re a child of the ’70s and ’80s, it probably looks pretty familiar. It’s amazing, though, what happens when you put it into full motion with the brief but simple animation and soundtrack. Memories of youth smack you in the brain as quickly as with familiar smells. No matter how many times you see them today, you shake your head and say aloud, “Holy ship, I remember this from when I was a kid!” Yes, I said “ship” — just ask my son, right after he finishes the cookie I gave him for telling my wife that.

After seeing the Rankin-Bass logo appear before one of the Christmas specials this past holiday season, I set out to find it and any other intro/promo from my youth that strikes those same kinds of memories. Let’s start with the first one that brought this on for me, Rankin-Bass…

Not only will you see the R-B logo appear during the bunch of Christmas specials they’re responsible for, but don’t forget The Hobbit or Return of the King (actually, go ahead and forget Return of the King). These little intros that last only a few seconds were like an amuse-bouche before the show. I’d have my bowl of popcorn and a tall glass of Coke at the ready, the R-B logo would appear and dammit, I didn’t care if it was the fifth time I was seeing it; this was an excuse to stay up late!

Speaking of staying up late, we can’t forget the [insert network here] nights at the movies. These bumpers were a little bit of foreplay before the movie began, which might be something cool you never got to see in a theater before because you were too young to see it.

Remember the one for ABC?

How about CBS?

Also related to late-night, though usually reserved for holiday specials and the like, was one of my all-time “holy ship” memories, the CBS Special Presentation. This one probably trumps most others posted here as the queen mother of all intro bumpers. As a kid, this always meant that you were in for a whole lot of awesome coming up. That, and a little longer until you had to hit the hay:

Remember the ABC Afterschool Specials? This short sequence was a tiny metaphor for what the Aftershool Specials were all about: like with a gumball machine, you never knew what you were going to get. And sometimes, y’know, it’s that crappy licorice-flavored one.

As I watched each one of these bumpers, a new one would come to mind that I just had to find. This one will only be familiar to people from the Boston area: Creature Feature, later to become Creature DOUBLE Feature, of WLVI channel 56.

When other kids were still watching cartoons on Saturday morning/afternoon, I was watching Godzilla rip apart some poor Japanese city, or the B-movie monster-of-the-week give me nightmare material to last me a decade. OK, decades.

And then the DOUBLE feature:

As for cartoons, I was a computer and gaming geek from early on, so bumpers like Saturday Supercade hold a place near and dear to my heart:

Speaking of mornings, I loved this ABC Weekend Specials bumper because it meant my favorite cartoons of the morning were finished, so it was time for Creature Feature!

I remember when my grandparents were the first people I knew to get cable TV. There were channels with just movies! R-rated movies! Just get to the movie, HBO, and stop with this never-ending intro for godsakes! Never-ending, but memorable:

Or how about “Yay! We’re going to see music videos!” We all remember those days, right? Here’s a bumper for early MTV:

Lastly, I cannot forget PBS. What person of my generation and beyond doesn’t remember the familiar PBS logo and techie-sound that came on between every program? If you grew up on Sesame Street, this should bring back some memories:

We often say “Thank God for YouTube,” but as far as the people who published these clips, I say thank God for people who keep stacks of old VHS (and Beta!) tapes in boxes in their garage, taking the time to transfer them to digital format for us all to enjoy. I’d say that I wish I could see them in better quality, but it’s those imperfections that allow us to relive those moments from our youth. After all, we didn’t have HD in the ’80s.

Clacked by Keith McDuffee
on Dec 26, 2008 @ 09:00 EST5EDT