On with the list of the 350 Most Nostalgic Things EVER!, and it looks like we'll have to insert a few coins into The Commodore BoglinTM to get the next five up on the screen...
340. Track & Field
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One-time state-of-the-art arcade game from one-time state-of-the-art arcade game makers Konami (or, if you will, 'Kjonami'), surfing the waves of Los Angeles Olympics Mania with decidedly unfit-looking computer graphic competitors putting themselves through the most unexciting gameplay-occasioning sporting pursuits imaginable, and posing something of a logic bomb for those furrowing their brows about how young people should stop playing 'computer console' and immerse themselves in fresh-faced sporting endeavour instead. Track & Field's real nostalgic currency, however, comes from its branding-obscured use as a hi-tech joystick-battering round in Debbie Greenwood-hosted Children's BBC quiz show First Class. Not a patch on Daley Thompson's Decathlon, mind.
339. Life Before Remote Controls
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While it's true to say that before the remote control became a standard living room fixture there was less opportunity to indulge in so called 'channel surfing' (something that was only ever practiced by Beavis, Butthead, and some imaginary people Charlie Brooker pretends to be annoyed about anyway), it's also true that there were only three channels - most households got a remote within a couple of years of Channel 4 launching - so there wasn't really that much point in zigzagging between them, so this is a bit of a misleading suggestion. And anyway, despite the 'you either watched one or the other' fallacy that's sprung up since, most youngsters would sit flipping between Tiswas and Swap Shop with a speed and dexterity that outstripped any remote control's capabilities.
338. Betamax
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One of the great mysteries of the home entertainment age is how Betamax, the better quality and sturdier-taped evolutionary offshoot of early home video, lost out in the so-called 'format war' to the cheaper and nastier - and indeed 'Nasty'-er - VHS. The BBC Micro-esque clean cut image of Betamax - favoured by schools and posh households, and with nary a low-budget Italian-made Alien rip-off in sight to trouble sensitive rental shelf browsers - probably had something to do with it though. Now a byword for all things technological and outmoded, of course, but would Ian Levine have been able to retain all of those off-airs without it?
337. Pretending To Be Drunk On 1% Shandy
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A fallacy that it suited both the offenders and the offence-takers to maintain, with the one-sip-of-anything-stronger-than-Panda-Pops-and-your-life-is-ruined parental concern brigade as happy with the arrangement as the youngsters relocating The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to a poorly-regulated off-licence somewhere in dreary commuter-belt suburbia. Wistful teenage imaginings suggested the fabled 'alcohol' to have some kind of mind-bending one-pill-makes-you-larger properties, rather than the grim reality that it just amps up the more annoying facets of your personality and makes you view girls in taxi queues as 'marriage material' whilst holding court on the big issues of the day as if you were some sort of cross between Oscar Wilde and Noam Chomsky whereas you probably come across more like a cross between Paddy McGuinness and someone reviewing albums for Bella. Erm, or so we hear.
336. Geometry Sets
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Of course, everyone knows that nowadays schoolkids don't need geometry sets, as they get given the answers and have all their work done for them by classroom assistants. It's true. David Mitchell said so in his column. And if that's the case, then sadly they'll never know the joys of trying to figure out why in the name of sanity that set they were given for Christmas by an unimaginative relative in lieu of a proper present had an exhausted-looking cartoon dog buckling under the weight of a monolithic set square on the cover. Fuck it, let's bring back the geometry set. And make a giant protractor to refract searing rays of unfiltered sunlight into Michael Gove's eyes. Hang on, you mean he's not Education Secretary any more? Well, that's one thing we won't be getting nostalgic about...
340. Track & Field
One-time state-of-the-art arcade game from one-time state-of-the-art arcade game makers Konami (or, if you will, 'Kjonami'), surfing the waves of Los Angeles Olympics Mania with decidedly unfit-looking computer graphic competitors putting themselves through the most unexciting gameplay-occasioning sporting pursuits imaginable, and posing something of a logic bomb for those furrowing their brows about how young people should stop playing 'computer console' and immerse themselves in fresh-faced sporting endeavour instead. Track & Field's real nostalgic currency, however, comes from its branding-obscured use as a hi-tech joystick-battering round in Debbie Greenwood-hosted Children's BBC quiz show First Class. Not a patch on Daley Thompson's Decathlon, mind.
339. Life Before Remote Controls
While it's true to say that before the remote control became a standard living room fixture there was less opportunity to indulge in so called 'channel surfing' (something that was only ever practiced by Beavis, Butthead, and some imaginary people Charlie Brooker pretends to be annoyed about anyway), it's also true that there were only three channels - most households got a remote within a couple of years of Channel 4 launching - so there wasn't really that much point in zigzagging between them, so this is a bit of a misleading suggestion. And anyway, despite the 'you either watched one or the other' fallacy that's sprung up since, most youngsters would sit flipping between Tiswas and Swap Shop with a speed and dexterity that outstripped any remote control's capabilities.
338. Betamax
One of the great mysteries of the home entertainment age is how Betamax, the better quality and sturdier-taped evolutionary offshoot of early home video, lost out in the so-called 'format war' to the cheaper and nastier - and indeed 'Nasty'-er - VHS. The BBC Micro-esque clean cut image of Betamax - favoured by schools and posh households, and with nary a low-budget Italian-made Alien rip-off in sight to trouble sensitive rental shelf browsers - probably had something to do with it though. Now a byword for all things technological and outmoded, of course, but would Ian Levine have been able to retain all of those off-airs without it?
337. Pretending To Be Drunk On 1% Shandy
A fallacy that it suited both the offenders and the offence-takers to maintain, with the one-sip-of-anything-stronger-than-Panda-Pops-and-your-life-is-ruined parental concern brigade as happy with the arrangement as the youngsters relocating The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to a poorly-regulated off-licence somewhere in dreary commuter-belt suburbia. Wistful teenage imaginings suggested the fabled 'alcohol' to have some kind of mind-bending one-pill-makes-you-larger properties, rather than the grim reality that it just amps up the more annoying facets of your personality and makes you view girls in taxi queues as 'marriage material' whilst holding court on the big issues of the day as if you were some sort of cross between Oscar Wilde and Noam Chomsky whereas you probably come across more like a cross between Paddy McGuinness and someone reviewing albums for Bella. Erm, or so we hear.
336. Geometry Sets
Of course, everyone knows that nowadays schoolkids don't need geometry sets, as they get given the answers and have all their work done for them by classroom assistants. It's true. David Mitchell said so in his column. And if that's the case, then sadly they'll never know the joys of trying to figure out why in the name of sanity that set they were given for Christmas by an unimaginative relative in lieu of a proper present had an exhausted-looking cartoon dog buckling under the weight of a monolithic set square on the cover. Fuck it, let's bring back the geometry set. And make a giant protractor to refract searing rays of unfiltered sunlight into Michael Gove's eyes. Hang on, you mean he's not Education Secretary any more? Well, that's one thing we won't be getting nostalgic about...