As the song says: “Ah, yes! I remember it well!” Thanks for calling them to my mind, John.
Seems like I read somewhere that SDI was less about building Star Wars-style lasers, than it was about bankrupting the Soviet Union. Who knows if that’s even a little true, but I imagine all that spending did help speed the fall of the Communist Russkie regime.
By the way, when my brother and I wanted something and my single dad said we couldn’t have it, he would often add: “If you don’t like it, ‘Tough shisky,’ as the Russkies say.” I spelled it without the “t” here because that’s how I heard it as a 7 year old. In retrospect, I’m guessing that “t” was in there.🤔😂
(Note: And I’m sure you know that “Russkies” was also the name of an 80s movie starring Whip Hubley, Joaquin (AKA “Leaf”) Phoenix, and Peter Billingsley of A Christmas Story fame.)
Over in Europe, we all thought that Reagan's Star Wars idea was loco (file next to annexing Canada and Greenland). But what scared the living bejeezus out of us was Reagan's talk of "winnable nuclear war in Europe". Combine that with Thatcher allowing the US to base nuclear tipped cruise missiles in the UK, so we'd be a first target in the event of war.
I didn't live that far from Greenham Common where the cruise missiles and their mobile launchers were based. We were once woken up in the middle of the night by a launcher parked on the road near our house. Never knew if it was armed or not; the crew were not exactly talkative.
Wow, I imagine that was scary. I'm not sure I'd want to live near anything like that if I could help it. People think we are living in crazy times, but the 80s was also pretty interesting times!
Well, I’m not Gen-X, but #5 reminds me of something that really did happen in the 70’s. A local grocery store in a college town ran a promotion that if the “blue bar” appeared on your cash register print-out (signifying the end of the paper roll), then you got your purchases for free. So, what did some college students do. Waited for the roll to be changed and ran the new roll down to nothing with cart after cart of items. Again, I don’t think they got away with it, but got probably a lot of free food out of the scheme!
Now that's pretty damn clever! lol Leave it to college kids to try and game the system. I suppose there was a time I would have tried that being a broke college kid
I'm going to have to step in here as a party pooper. This is all wacky stuff for sure. However if you turn on the TV today you can watch the latest generation of the SDI projects technology swatting ballistic missiles out of the air. When we started using Patriot missiles on Saddam's SCUDs in 91/92? Y'all remember that? SDI first/second gen stuff. Ronnie Ray Gun may have passed but Star Wars lives on.
I had that exact Barbie hot tub. You had to push this button to make the “jets” work. I’d just put in a little shampoo and the Barbies are having a bubble bath!
The Barbies that used that thing would eventually get downgraded to “bath Barbies” as they would mildew.
As the song says: “Ah, yes! I remember it well!” Thanks for calling them to my mind, John.
Seems like I read somewhere that SDI was less about building Star Wars-style lasers, than it was about bankrupting the Soviet Union. Who knows if that’s even a little true, but I imagine all that spending did help speed the fall of the Communist Russkie regime.
By the way, when my brother and I wanted something and my single dad said we couldn’t have it, he would often add: “If you don’t like it, ‘Tough shisky,’ as the Russkies say.” I spelled it without the “t” here because that’s how I heard it as a 7 year old. In retrospect, I’m guessing that “t” was in there.🤔😂
(Note: And I’m sure you know that “Russkies” was also the name of an 80s movie starring Whip Hubley, Joaquin (AKA “Leaf”) Phoenix, and Peter Billingsley of A Christmas Story fame.)
😆 I need to use that line with my kids!
Yes, I certainly do remember Russkies… I have it on VHS, it’s been a while since I’ve rescreened it, might have to pop it in soon!
Fun times!
Over in Europe, we all thought that Reagan's Star Wars idea was loco (file next to annexing Canada and Greenland). But what scared the living bejeezus out of us was Reagan's talk of "winnable nuclear war in Europe". Combine that with Thatcher allowing the US to base nuclear tipped cruise missiles in the UK, so we'd be a first target in the event of war.
I didn't live that far from Greenham Common where the cruise missiles and their mobile launchers were based. We were once woken up in the middle of the night by a launcher parked on the road near our house. Never knew if it was armed or not; the crew were not exactly talkative.
Now that was scary stuff.
Wow, I imagine that was scary. I'm not sure I'd want to live near anything like that if I could help it. People think we are living in crazy times, but the 80s was also pretty interesting times!
Well, I’m not Gen-X, but #5 reminds me of something that really did happen in the 70’s. A local grocery store in a college town ran a promotion that if the “blue bar” appeared on your cash register print-out (signifying the end of the paper roll), then you got your purchases for free. So, what did some college students do. Waited for the roll to be changed and ran the new roll down to nothing with cart after cart of items. Again, I don’t think they got away with it, but got probably a lot of free food out of the scheme!
Now that's pretty damn clever! lol Leave it to college kids to try and game the system. I suppose there was a time I would have tried that being a broke college kid
I'm going to have to step in here as a party pooper. This is all wacky stuff for sure. However if you turn on the TV today you can watch the latest generation of the SDI projects technology swatting ballistic missiles out of the air. When we started using Patriot missiles on Saddam's SCUDs in 91/92? Y'all remember that? SDI first/second gen stuff. Ronnie Ray Gun may have passed but Star Wars lives on.
Absolutely. While SDI never fully materialized as envisioned, it laid the conceptual groundwork for the missile defense systems we have today.
I had that exact Barbie hot tub. You had to push this button to make the “jets” work. I’d just put in a little shampoo and the Barbies are having a bubble bath!
The Barbies that used that thing would eventually get downgraded to “bath Barbies” as they would mildew.