"1983 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade" Talkback

Dsneybuf

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Felix the Cat also came back during the 90th parade, if that sounds any less unexpected.
 

twilicorn

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Few things:
1. All opinions you may have about the "High Hopes" segment, it wasn't as egregious as Stevie Wonder's performance in 1993. He did a new song called "Take the Time Out", the ENTIRE song, lasting well over 3 minutes, and when his float was leaving the spot and the announcer was rattling off sponsors to lead into a commercial break, you could STILL faintly hear the song! It didn't help that most of his time consisted of repeating the chorus over and over.
2. That tap-dancing kid on the comics float? That's freaking Alfonso Ribero. (Lara Jill Miller is still active primarily as a voice actress; she currently plays Fink on OK K.O.)
3. Just getting through this year's show and it seems they've ditched lipsynching for most of the acts? Granted a lot of them don't sound terrible but it's kind of glaring.
4. One of the We Got It Made stars was Stefanie Rider (forgive me if I'm misnaming here), who just a few years later would star on "Hunter" and in her capacity as star of that show, she'd cohost the parade with Pat Sajak.
5. I mentioned in the Jennifer Slept Here talkback that this was NBC's absolute worst year for new shows. Literally all the new shows they debuted that year failed to last a full season, such as Manimal.
6. You failed to mention that the Fraggle Rock float barely even showed the main characters, instead focusing on random other Fraggles on the float, one of which was an animatronic that was limply sitting on a swing as if it was dead.
7. I nearly forgot this would be the Thanksgiving right after Will Byers was successfully rescued from the Upside-Down. I'd imagine the kiddos would be watching the parade that morning and making wisecracks at its stupider elements.
8. I think they did make a Woody Woodpecker movie this past year, but it was only released in Brazil despite being in English or something. I clearly remember reading a Wiki article on the subject, unless it was another "Wikiality" thing.

P.S. Is your copy of the 1986 parade any better in quality than the poorly degraded copy I own?
 
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mimitchi33

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I liked seeing all the old cartoon floats. That Hello Kitty ad was cute, too! Was that line the first line of Hello Kitty merch in the USA?
 

pacman000

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True. Tho it is an easy mistake to make. Would you believe they made the same mistake this year? Last year too if memory serves.

I'm happy to see an Atari commercial. Were there any more? I don't find it hard to believe there was a commercial for an unreleased game. Atari was in major trouble in '83; they lost over $500 million that year. Not $500 million inflation adjusted; $500 million in '83 dollars.Warner Communication, their parent company, was at risk of being taken over. To avoid that Warner sold Atari's home computer and video game division to Jack Tramiel, former head of Commodore in '84. A lot of interesting sounding products were cancelled. Jack was able to turn the company into a fairly successful computer manufacturer, till the early 90's when PC clones took over.

Here's a couple of fairly good contemporary articles about Atari: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/271786-what-went-wrong-at-atari/

I'm a bit sad most RadioShack's are gone. I always found it funny to go in and ask them if they had any Tandy computers. From what I've read in Retro Gaming Times Monthly Tandy kinda put the TRS-80 series on the back burner when they started making PC clones in the mid-80's. You might've simply got the Coco too late. Of course the earlier versions had some weird limits on their color modes, and as far as I know Tandy never had any major licenses for arcade games, only clones.

The TRS-80 Mode 100 Portable Computer wasn't a bad machine. At the very least it has an actual menu from which you can select the programs or documents you want to use. Of course Tandy didn't design it; it was a private labeled version of a Japanese computer. It was slow tho, you'd have to stop typing for a a second or so to let it catch up.

Tapatalk runs about as slowly as a TRS-80 Model 100 Portable Computer. >:-(
 

twilicorn

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Sarah Purcell also hosted the elusive 1982 parade. Speaking of which, someone on Youtube claims to have it and I hear tell she was going to convert it and release it into the wild herself. No one knows if she ever got around to doing so. In the meantime, maybe your dad recorded it and it's in the doldrums of his recording collection.
 
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twilicorn

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I think they did make a Woody Woodpecker movie this past year, but it was only released in Brazil despite being in English or something. I clearly remember reading a Wiki article on the subject, unless it was another "Wikiality" thing.
Turns out the movie was 100% real, it was theatrically released in Brazil I think, but went direct to video everywhere else. I keep seeing it at Walmart. (And someone told me they made a Tinder joke in it, which may tell you everything you need to know.)
 

Peter Paltridge

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Turns out the movie was 100% real, it was theatrically released in Brazil I think, but went direct to video everywhere else. I keep seeing it at Walmart. (And someone told me they made a Tinder joke in it, which may tell you everything you need to know.)
You keep seeing it at Wal-Mart because no one is buying it!

I saw a review online...it's really bad. It's a shame this is all Universal can think of doing with what was once its biggest bread-winner.
 

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