Hi I’m John Green, welcome to my salon.
This is Mental Floss on YouTube and did you know that Clara Peller, who said the “Where’s
the Beef?” line in Wendy’s ads, got fired from Wendy’s when she did a commercial for
Prego spaghetti sauce in which she said, “I found it.” According to Wendy’s, that
implied “that Clara found the beef at somewhere other than Wendy's restaurants.” And we
all know, there is only one location for the beef. Anyway, that’s the first of 80 facts about
the 1980's I’m going to share with you today in this video presented by our friends at
Geico. The 1982 song “Mickey” may now be a high
school cheerleader anthem, but Toni Basil was 38-years-old when she recorded it. Hacky sack has been around since about 3000
BCE when Chinese Emperor Hwang Ti used to kick around a leather ball filled with hair. Sony named the Walkman after the Pressman
audio recorder and Superman. And speaking of things you don't hear much
about since the 80's, Michael Dukakis is famous for losing to George H. W. Bush in the 1988
presidential election. But people forget about his larger contributions to history, like
for instance he declared April 24, 1989 “New Kids on the Block Day” in Massachusetts. In 1987, 25% of all mattress sales were waterbeds.
That is disturbing. The crimping iron was invented after a hairstylist
who spent hours braiding and unbraiding Barbra Streisand’s hair for a photoshoot. Here is a disturbing fact: Casey Kasem did
voicework for the Transformers cartoon, but he quit when he read a racist script containing
an Arab character named Abdul, King of Carbombya. Roald Dahl struggled to write Matilda because
he was genuinely afraid that books were becoming unpopular. I'm glad to know that's not a new
thing. In 2012, Teddy Ruxpin creator Ken Forsse announced
that he hated the way teddy bears were portrayed in the Seth MacFarlane movie Ted. I just hope he’s okay with how teddy bears
are portrayed on our wall. By the way, Cellophane, Mark's actual childhood teddy bear - born
in the 1980's. Before the Karate Kid movie, The Karate Kid
was a completely unrelated DC Comics superhero. DC Comics actually appears in the Thank Yous
of the movie’s credits because they let Columbia Pictures use the name. According to songwriter Steve Kipner, the
Olivia Newton-John song “Physical” was originally written for “a macho male rock
figure like Rod Stewart.” Meredith, that can't be correct. Is that correct? It was a strange time, the '80's. Anyway, speaking of Olivia Newton-John, after
John J. B. Wilson watched a double feature of Can’t Stop the Music and Xanadu, he was
inspired to start the Golden Raspberry Awards a.k.a The Razzies. According to boombox expert Fred Brathwaite,
“These boxes were so heavy that some cats...would develop massive forearms.” In the eighties, Christian Bale starred in
a commercial for Pac-Man Cereal. Thus giving us the name of his inevitable autobiography:
From Pac-Man to Batman. By the way, when Ms. Pac Man was introduced
in 1982, her tagline was: “The femme fatale of the game world.” In 1981, Rick Springfield accepted a role
on General Hospital after recording his album. The show got around 14 million viewers daily,
which may be why “Jessie’s Girl” hit number one that year. Also, by the way, I thought the central lyric
to that song was "I wish that I was Jesse's girl" until about last year. 1986 was the first time Halley’s Comet was
observed via spacecraft, but Chinese astronomers first noticed it in 239 BCE. And speaking of things you can see from space,
Simon Le Bon showed up for his Duran Duran audition in pink leopard-print pants. Nick
Rhodes said, “Anyone who looks that stupid is positively the one.” It cost over half a million dollars to make
Eddie Murphy’s album How Could It Be featuring the infamously bad single “Party All the
Time.” The 1988 song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”
still has some fans, including Hillary Clinton who received a teddy bear that sings the song,
from former Secretary of State George Shultz. Her memoir claims, “I kept it in my office,
first as a joke, but every so often it really did help to squeeze the bear and hear that
song." In 2002, Aqua Net Hairspray had an unlikely
comeback when the musical Hairspray started on Broadway. Because nothing says fashion
like a musical that takes place in 1960s Baltimore. And speaking of hairspray, let's discuss Jon
Bon Jovi. He didn’t like the song “Livin’ on a Prayer” at first. The band included
it as a hidden track on an album because he didn’t deem it worthy to be a regular track. When he turned 18, Laurence Tureaud legally
changed his name to Mr. T because he wanted people to call him “Mister,” which he
considered a sign of respect. When American Greetings was developing Care
Bears, they were top secret and only called “Project II.” “Project I” by the way,
was none other than Strawberry Shortcake. Incidentally, Strawberry Shortcake has her
own annual convention in Cleveland that has been going on since 2003. The Cheers premiere in 1982 was ranked almost
last in ratings. Its finale, eleven years later, brought in 80.4 million viewers. And speaking of sitcoms, Alf was very popular
in Germany. The country actually has a city NAMED Alf and people kept stealing the sign
due to the show’s popularity. John Hughes wrote Sixteen Candles after an
agent sent him a stack of actresses headshots, including Molly Ringwald’s. He put her picture
over his desk and wrote the bulk of the film in one weekend. But Hughes often wrote pretty quickly. In
fact, the script for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took him just six days. Russell Simmons actually came up with the
name Run DMC, which the rest of the group hated. They wanted to be the Devastating Two
or the Dynamic Two MCs. There’s a Rainbow Brite Museum in North
Carolina, made up of 1,500 items of memorabilia from one woman’s Rainbow Brite collection. The “I’ll be back” line from The Terminator
was written in the movie’s novelization as “I’ll come back.” In 1984, if you wanted a phone shaped like
lips, like the one that DJ had in Full House, it would cost you $70. Nowadays, no one even
knows the price of a landline phone. And that's sad, because my cellphone can do a lot of
things, but one thing it can't do is be a hamburger phone, or a banana phone, or a Mickey
Mouse phone, or one of those transparent phones where you could see all the wires inside. Stickers for your car that said Baby on Board
were very popular in the eighties, but according to a 2012 study, one in twenty drivers blame
such stickers for obscuring vision and causing accidents. Another brand that did well for itself in
the 80s: Members Only. Thanks to the famous jackets, the company brought in $100 million
annually. Jane Fonda gets some of the credit, or arguable
blame, for making leg warmers trendy. She wore them in her very first workout video
and encouraged people to wear them to feel like athletes. Which is easy to make fun of,
but then again, that's why I'm wearing tennis shoes right now. Another reason for the leg warmer crazy: the
movie Flashdance, which also gave us the collarless sweatshirt. Actress Jennifer Beals once shrunk
a sweatshirt in the dryer, then cut around the collar so it could fit. She wore it to
her audition and the style made it into the movie. The clapper is notorious thanks to its commercial
jingle, but the exact same song was actually used earlier in the 80s in a commercial for
Sine-Off cold medicine. Both Dave Coulier and Howie Mandel voiced
Animal on the show Muppet Babies. What a great program. And speaking of Muppets, Fraggle Rock was
HBO’s first original series. It was a lot like the content that HBO makes now, but there
was less violence than there is in Game of Thrones, less nudity than there is in Girls,
less drinking than there is in Boardwalk Empire, far less Jeff Daniels than we have in The
Newsroom... alright, times were so different then. In the 80s Van Halen famously requested M&Ms
with all the brown candies removed backstage at their shows. They did this not to be jerks,
but instead they snuck it into their contract to make sure that the people running the venue
actually read the entire rider. If they saw brown M&Ms, they knew there might be some
technical errors in the show. When MTV premiered in the eighties, they wanted
to use footage of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. But Armstrong refused, so they went
with Apollo 11. The opening act for Madonna’s first ever
tour was The Beastie Boys who often got booed for screaming obscenities. The Beastie Boys, by the way, wrote “(You
Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” as a parody of rock songs. It was a joke.
They refuse to play it live and in fact haven’t played it live since 1987. In 1985, in order to convince stores in New
York City to carry the new Nintendo Entertainment System, a Nintendo exec promised them that
they could send back the ones they didn’t sell, free of charge. But they ended up selling
50,000 that holiday season. Most popular plumber ever! Oh, it's awkward
because Luigi heard be say that. The lasts names of Jem and the Holograms were
the names of real scientists who worked on hologram technology. Gelly Roll pens were invented in the eighties,
but it took a while to come up with the perfect ink formula. After trying things like grated
yam and egg whites, a member of the team saw an ad for the food-additive xanthan gum, which
turned out to be the missing ingredient. Thanks to Dynasty and Working Girl, shoulder
pads in women’s clothing were popular during the 80s, but designer Elsa Schiaparelli actually
invented the style in the thirties. Also, people have been perming their hair
since 1872. In the movie Juno, she yells, “ThunderCats
are go!” But, this wasn’t the catchphrase of the eighties cartoon. Juno probably meant
to say “ThunderBIRDS are go,” like the show from the sixties. All the cool eighties kids had a Polaroid
660. The brand itself started in 1944 by Edwin H. Land because his 3-year-old daughter didn’t
understand why she couldn’t see a picture right after it was taken. So, he fixed that
problem for her. And then became a billionaire. Doc Brown had a chimpanzee in early drafts
of Back to the Future, but the head of Universal said, “No movie with a chimpanzee ever made
any money." Which is just completely unfair, I mean, granted "MVP: Most Valuable Primate"
hadn't been made yet, but surely that exec was familiar with the Ronald Reagan movie
"Bedtime For Bonzo." By the way, in early outlines for The Empire
Strikes Back, Yoda was named Buffy. While Jay McInerney was working on his novel
Bright Lights, Big City, his publisher said that no great American novels took place in
New York. To which Jay McInerney probably said, have you read Gatsby? Famous guitarist Slash auditioned for Poison
but realized he wasn't right for the job when they asked him if he'd wear makeup. Similarly, Richard Page, the lead singer of
Mr. Mister, turned down the lead singer job in two other bands: Toto and Chicago. Because,
you know, he was waiting for Mr. Mister to come along. Believe it or not, America lived in ignorance
of McDonalds Chicken McNuggets until the eighties. Supposedly, by the way, they come in four
shapes: the Boot, the Ball, the Bow-Tie, and the Bell. It cost $20,000 to create the Stay-Puft Marshmallow
Man suit for Ghostbusters. The crew had to make three of them, which were all destroyed
during filming. Sonny Crockett’s car on Miami Vice was originally
a Corvette that the crew made to look like a Ferrari. But eventually, Ferrari gave the
show a Testarossa. Eleanor Bergstein, who wrote and produced
Dirty Dancing, was friends with Dr. Ruth - whom you will remember was a sniper in the Israeli
army before she was a sex expert! Anyway, Bergstein wanted to cast her friend as Mrs.
Schumacher, but Dr. Ruth declined when she realized the character was a thief. In the 1980s, the book Real Men Don’t Eat
Quiche spent 55 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. According to the book, here
are a few things that “real men” don’t do: “have meaningful dialogues,” “catch
rays,” drink light beer" or “wear gold chains...or anything with more than three
zippers.” I don't know, Captain Jack Sparrow both catches rays and wears gold chains, and
for the record, I think I'm a real man and I love quiche! Okay let’s speed up! Lisa Frank has her own patented proprietary
ink formula. It’s a mixture that makes colors brighter. Cyndi Lauper sang the theme song for Pee-wee’s
Playhouse. Eddie Van Halen did the guitar solo in Michael
Jackson’s “Beat It.” Fred Astaire almost cameoed in Michael Jackson’s
music video for “Thriller”. He even attended a rehearsal. Pat Benatar’s "Love is a Battlefield" music
video was the first to ever feature to feature spoken dialogue. And Paula Abdul choreographed ZZ Top’s “Velcro
Fly” video. And people say she's not talented. Jolt Soda used the same slogan, “All the
sugar and twice the caffeine,” for 24 years. “Spandex” is an anagram of “expands.” And hair mousse is named after the French
word for “foam.” It took Erno Rubik one month to solve his
own invention, the Rubik’s Cube. The Babysitters Club author Ann M. Martin
ghostwrote the first Sweet Valley Twins book, Best Friends. Daniel Waters wrote the movie Heathers hoping
that Stanley Kubrick would make it as a three-hour-long dark comedy. Drummer Rick Allen joined Def Leppard when
he was just 15-years-old. His mom responded to the band’s ad for him. “Manic Monday” by The Bangles was written
by Prince under the pseudonym “Christopher.” That was before his pseudonym was a symbol. People at the actual Topgun school receive
a $5 fine every time they quote the movie Top Gun. And speaking of which, after Top Gun was released,
sales of Ray Ban aviator subglasses increased by 40%. But if you think THAT’S impressive, after
E.T. came out, Reese’s Pieces sales increased by 65%. And finally, I return to my salon to tell
you that the recording for the star-packed song “We Are The World” lasted until 3am
because Stevie Wonder wanted to record a verse in Swahili and was waiting for a phone call
about correct pronunciations. He should have taken a lesson from me - it doesn't matter
if you pronounce things correctly. Anyway, when the call finally came, Ray Charles
said, “S***, man, it's three o'clock in the morning. I can't even sing in English.”
And Wonder responded, “Just relax, we’ll do it in one take, and then I’ll drive you
home.” Thanks for watching Mental Floss here on YouTube,
which is made with the help of all of these nice people and made possible by our friends
at Geico. Thanks again for watching, don't forget to subscribe and as we say in my hometown,
don’t forget to be awesome.
