In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 141: Who Was The Winnebago Man?; Classic 1980s Board Games; Forgotten 1970s Cartoons(4-24-2024)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 141

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Was the Winnebago Man truly the Angriest Man In America? Were any of these board games on your family fun nights in the 1980s? How about some of the forgotten 1970s cartoons?
Episode 141 of the podcast is unique in a few ways. It includes a first, that being a review of a full documentary, The Winnebago Man. Jack Rebney became a viral sensation in the early days of YouTube thanks to his profanity-laden outtakes from a Winnebago commercial shoot in 1989. However, did he deserve the moniker 'the angriest man in America?'
Game nights still exist today. In the 1980s though, before the Internet and the prevalence of video games, a lot of entertainment came from playing board games. We go way Back In the Day to look at a few of the memorable and beloved board games that were released in the 1980s. 
Not every cartoon that makes it to television can be a huge success. Some of these come and go and are lost to history. This week's Top 5 looks at forgotten 1970s cartoons. Did you watch any of these?
A new This Week In History and Time Capsule will focus on the wild Paul McCartney death urban legend.
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Speaker 01:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 141. We're here at the end of April. Hopefully all these showers we've gotten on Cape Cod will bring the May flowers, but I'm going to bring something fun and different to the podcast, an actual movie review, but it's going to be worth it, and you'll see why as I review the Winnebago Man documentary from 2010. We're going to go way, way back in the day and reminisce about fun times, fun evenings with friends and family as we look at some of the classic board games that came out in the 1980s. We're really going to be turning over every stone possible for this week's top five as I uncover and share with you some of the forgotten cartoons of the 1970s. And of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the world-famous urban legend of Paul McCartney's death in 1969. All of that and more coming up right now on episode 141 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Welcome in, everybody. I hope wherever you are, it's warm and sunny and more spring-like. On the day I'm recording this on Cape Cod, it is heavy rain, it's wind, it's just gloomy. Days like this, you gotta get the energy going, so I'm sucking down an energy drink as I record this, so we'll see how crazy I get as the show goes on. First off, I want to thank all of my Patreon subscribers. Thank you so much to Leo, Laurie, Mary Lou, and Ashley. If you want to become a subscriber, $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes. The newest one will be going up next week, May 1st. They are centered around my old initial impressions blog that I used to do close to 14, 13 years ago, but I resurrected back in February because I enjoyed sharing the random foolishness of my daily life, which I'm sure most people have in their life too. I'm just the only one that's crazy enough to chronicle it. You also get early access to the main podcast, early access to YouTube videos that I do. Another thing that now you're getting access to are the video podcasts. that are going along with the new Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. So I'm turning them into this short-form podcast, the webcam weekly wrap-up podcast. The main reason why they're available on Patreon exclusively, at least to start, is I'm ironing out the kinks with it. So I'd much rather have a smaller, loyal audience telling me what they like about it. But don't worry, once I'm comfortable with how they are, because I've never done a video form podcast, but once I'm comfortable with those, I will put them all up on YouTube, even the old ones. Also, before we get started, I wanted to thank everyone that came out to my Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book event at the Dennis Public Library. That just happened this past Saturday from when this podcast goes live. If you couldn't make it to that one, but you want to come to an event for the Searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, the next one is May the 24th, that's a Friday, at 1pm at the West Dennis Library. I'll get more into all of this housekeeping type stuff at the end of the show, but I really want to dive into this first segment. It's going to be a first. A, it is the first full-length documentary movie review that I've ever done on the podcast. And also, this segment here is going to be the reason why this podcast episode is the first one I ever have to mark not safe for work. It is going to be well worth it, though. So get ready now. Get the children away from the radio or the TV if you're listening on YouTube. And join me, won't you please, as we dive into the profanity-laced Winnebago Man documentary. I'll give you the whole story behind it coming up right now. It's amazing to think that YouTube, the channel, the video channel, has been around for almost 20 years now. In those nearly 20 years, there's been billions of videos uploaded. I would say the vast majority of them don't do very well. They get very few views. Believe me, I know. If I look back, I started posting videos on YouTube in 2009. And to be perfectly transparent, my most viewed video ever on YouTube isn't even a video that I did. It's Frank Durant's Lady of the Dunes documentary. I work hard, I work really hard to make videos, especially currently, that are a lot more in-depth with animations and such, trying to find something that sticks with the audience. In my mind, I think that I would kill to have a video go viral and get that kind of notoriety. That is until I watched the Winnebago Man documentary. I'm sure a lot of you listening know exactly what I'm talking about when I say Winnebago Man. You know what it's talking about. But for those that have no idea of what the Winnebago Man refers to, it is one of the very first viral videos ever on YouTube. The video itself is a compilation of outtakes from a Winnebago RV video shoot in 1989 in Iowa. The man who's the talking head, the narrator of this video, is a man named Jack Rebney. R-E-B-N-E-Y. And this was during the summer in Iowa. So it was hot, humid, miserable. And he was having not the best day doing this video. So all of the outtakes were kept. And these outtakes consist of Jack Redney yelling, swearing, throwing things, yelling at flies, swearing at them. And it becomes this look at the descent into madness of this man. Now I warned you, not safe for work. So here, let me play you some clips from that Winnebago Man viral video.

Speaker 00:

These guys, everything they can get to me. That's it. Fuck it. I don't even know what the fuck I'm saying. Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Oh, fuck. Shit. Tony, do me a favor. Will you please? Will you? Will you do me a kindness? Leave. Yeah. What the fuck was that? We got flies all over the fucking place. Son of a bitch. Get out of here, you fucking flies. There's a fly over the headlight, Tony. We got flies coming for us.

Speaker 01:

Man, and that's just a little bit of it. So the definitive Winnebago Man outtakes video, I'll link to it in the description of the podcast. It's about seven and a half minutes of that. There are a couple of these Winnebago Man outtake videos on YouTube. Several of them have multiple, multiple millions of views. And in the early days of YouTube, Jack Rebney, the Winnebago Man, became one of the first viral sensations of YouTube. Winnebago Man the documentary came out in 2010, so over 20 years after Jack Rebney's original videos of him going nuts. The producer of the documentary is a man named Ben Steinbauer. And he starts talking about how this Winnebago Man compilation was a favorite of tape traders long before there was YouTube. I know of tape trading mostly through my love of professional wrestling back when I was younger, where if you didn't live in an area that you could see some of the lesser known promotions, you could find either through message boards or magazines or such people that you could buy these bootlegged VHS tapes from. So that's kind of the idea of the Winnebago man. This documentary, though, it takes a very different look at Jack Rebney through the lens of what it's like to become a viral sensation, the good and the bad with it. Steinbauer's fascination with Jack Rebney, the man behind the Winnebago Man outtakes, leads him to try to find him. Having worked with Frank Durant somewhat on the Lady of the Dunes documentary, a little bit with that, but way more with the book, I grew to appreciate the work he had to put in to find the people that were relevant to the case. And that's kind of what Steinbauer has to do to find Jack Rebney. He's not just in the phone book. It comes out that Rebney got fired after that shoot and there was really no paper trail of him. And we see different viral videos from those old days of YouTube. Especially ones where the people that were in the videos got harassed and bullied in horrible ways. The most famous other viral video they show is the Star Wars lightsaber kid. If you're familiar with it, it's got tens of millions of views on YouTube. The kid is named Jizlin Raza. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. but the video went viral in the early days of YouTube and he got all of this publicity and most of it was negative. And it's definitely things like that that give me pause as far as creating videos for YouTube. As much as I'd love to get a video that has millions of views, the more people that see it, the higher you go up the tree, the more likely you're gonna be in the light. Even my videos that get several thousand views, end up with negative comments from douchebags that just want to be negative because there's no accountability for them. I'm not saying you all have to love my videos, but you know the people that are negative just to do that, to make you feel bad, knowing that there's no repercussions for them, except getting banned from my channel. So Steinbauer uses a private investigator and he finds Jack Rebney. And it turns out he lives in this remote wilderness mountain area in Northern California. After seeing the Winnebago Man video, or if you have heard it earlier in this segment, Steinbauer actually went out there to meet Jack Rebney. And he's got this preconceived notion of who he's going to meet, this foul-mouthed old man that's going to yell and swear. But the weird reality is when Steinbauer meets him, he's very calm and friendly, almost zen-like. He says he had no idea about his viral video, that he just enjoys being off the grid in this mountain area. And although they have this great meeting and it's a fun interaction, Steinbauer ultimately leaves there disappointed. He thought he was going to get the man that was in the video from 1989, and instead he got this Zen, Buddha-like almost man on the mountain. Which is ironic, his dog's even named Buddha. So Steinbauer thinks his documentary is going to be a bust because Jack Rebney is happy and at peace. And then a few days later, the phone calls start. And it turns out that Jack Rebney was putting on an act for the documentary and that in reality, he is that same man. And he's not happy about the publicity he got from those outtakes and that he lives in that mountain area to get away from that viral publicity of the video. It turns out that Jack Rebney doesn't want to be remembered for that viral moment of him, the outbursts. That he was a well-respected newsman for decades before, working for CBS studios in different cities. And despite those contributions, he feels all he's going to be remembered for is yelling and swearing on this Winnebago Man video. So they agree to meet again with Rebney being way more honest. And in the documentary, before Steinbauer can go back to meet him, there's news that comes out that Jack Rebney has gone missing in the woods around his house. He ends up being found and he's safe. But when Steinbauer goes to meet him the second time, it turns out that there's an issue with Rebney's eyesight and he has now lost his eyesight. And it's at this point that this documentary goes way off into a different area rather than finding an old viral internet sensation. Because here's Jack Rebney, who by this point is in his mid-70s, living alone in the woods on a mountain, and now he's blind. He has a best friend named Keith, but he doesn't live nearby. Jack Rebney lives alone in the woods. And Steinbauer talks with Rebny. They take a walk around the property. He's now got poles and rope so he can kind of guide his way around. And he's now more like how he is in the Winnebago Man videos. Very opinionated, swearing. He wants to share more of his opinions and views and stories with So Steinbauer says, yeah, let's do things like that. If you don't want to be remembered as the world's angriest man, then share some new stuff that I'll put in the documentary. One of the best scenes in the documentary is when Steinbauer takes Rebney to a Walmart and he does this kind of talk about corporate America, this manifesto and there's Walmart in the background and you see a security guard coming over to throw them out. Everything comes to a head when Steinbauer and Rebney's friend Keith convince him to go to the Found Footage Festival in San Francisco. The people who started this Found Footage Festival admit that Jack Rebney is like their white whale, a huge celebrity that they would love to have at the festival. And Rebney thinks it's a joke. He doesn't want to go and be made fun of. And Steinbauer and Keith let him know that he is seen almost like a cult hero by these people. He has genuine fans. And Rebney's kind of like, what kind of idiots would like my video of me yelling and swearing? Eventually, they convince him to go. And they show footage of this area, of this film festival. And there are people lined up around the block to get in, not just to watch the Winnebago Man footage, but to meet Jack Rebney, the man behind it. So they show the footage and the people are laughing and they're cheering. And when the hosts of the festival announce Jack Rebney, he gets this big standing ovation from hundreds of people. And he does a Q&A and it's very colorful and profane and the people love it. The hosts of the festival give him this fly swatter to kill the flies that he hated during the Winnebago Man video. And afterwards, Rebney is out in the lobby and you've got People, fans coming up to him, letting him know how much they like the video, but not just because it's funny, but they use it on when they're having a bad day. His stuff makes them feel better. And he has shown respect and appreciation, which afterwards, when they're leaving the festival, driving away, you can see that he's actually changed his mind, how he feels about being this viral sensation. Now granted, he doesn't end up moving back to the big city and being hugely in the public eye. He's just more at peace with his past. The documentary won all kinds of awards at film festivals. There's pictures of Ben Steinbauer and Jack Rebney at some of these premieres. The documentary does a great job of, I guess, humanizing Jack Rebney, showing the man behind a viral video. Because I think with some of these viral videos in the past up to now, it's hard to see the actual person behind them. Which I think makes it easier for trolls to just insult them and make them feel bad. Because they're almost seen as not human. Because you can just insult them, shut off the video, and you don't have to worry about their life. I highly recommend this documentary. It's a lot of fun. There's a lot of swearing. But there's a lot of real genuine emotion getting to know Jack Rebney and why he is where he is. It's 90% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes if you need that to convince you to watch it. You can also watch it free. You don't have to rent it. So the link that I'll share for the documentary, it's free. Click it and watch it. Jack Rebney died almost a year ago, May of 2023 at the age of 93. And of course, in his obituary, the write-ups that he got in all the newspapers and online, they wouldn't have Jack Rebney in there without Winnebago Man, the documentary, and the viral video. There is actually a Winnebago Man 10 years later video I'm going to have to watch now. One great thing I took from this is the fact that Ben Steinbauer remained close friends with Jack Rebney all the way through up until his death. So that really reflects well on Steinbauer just as a human, that he didn't just invade Jack Rebney's life, get what he needed from him, and then walked away and left him. So it ended up being a story of friendship as well as yelling and swearing. And that's the Winnebago Man, but I can't leave it without some words of wisdom from Jack Rebney.

Speaker 00:

I gotta read it again because my mind is just a piece of shit this morning. God, I can't fucking make my mind work. Get out of here, you goddamn jackass!

Speaker 01:

This Week in History, we are going back 55 years ago to April 24th, 1969, and Paul McCartney's statement that there is no truth to the rumor that he is dead. In doing my research for This Week in History's segment, I've seen many different days where this story first came to the forefront. They all say 1969, so the date may be off, but the story is still incredible. In the annals of pop culture, there are few urban legends that have captivated the public imagination, like this persistent rumor that Paul McCartney, who was one of the Beatles, had died. The story began in a Drake University student newspaper with an article with the question, is Beatle Paul McCartney dead? The basis of this, it was this rumor that centered around a car crash in November 1966 where McCartney was driving away from Apple Studios working on the Sgt. Pepper album. And because of how big the Beatles were, that his death needed to be covered up. So they found a lookalike, a doppelganger, to replace McCartney and the Beatles to keep the band's image and popularity going. And this wasn't just some rando college article. They had actual supposed facts to back it up. Two of the biggest examples, one was the cover of Abbey Road, where it's supposed to look like a funeral procession with McCartney not being in step with the others and being barefoot like he was a corpse. The other big examples were the playing songs backwards to hear hidden messages that were supposedly telling you that Paul McCartney was dead. One of the most famous examples is the Revolution 9 song from the White Album, where when it's played in reverse, people that believe in this conspiracy theory say you can hear phrases like, turn me on, dead man, and Paul is dead, miss him, miss him. And the rumors got so big and so loud that Paul McCartney had to come out in an interview in Life magazine and say, no, I'm not dead and hold up a sign that said I'm alive. Incredibly, despite McCartney appearing and saying, I'm not dead, people still didn't believe it. It was more, yeah, that's what they want you to believe. The doppelganger is just there as a smokescreen. It was people overanalyzing everything, what he said, how he moved, hand gestures he made that supposedly told you it wasn't really him. In the years since the rumor began in 1966 with the car crash and with the article in the newspaper and even McCartney saying he's still alive, there are still people that have this belief that it's all this urban legend is real. It's supposedly bolstered by sightings of clues and there's Over the years, there's been books and documentaries and websites about this legend. They all offer their own interpretation with supposed evidence. But in those decades since this rumor first started, McCartney's only thrived. Think about it. This rumor began when the Beatles were still together, still kind of at their peak. And then McCartney had all the success in the 70s, 80s with Wings. And he's gone on to be one of the most well-known and well-respected musicians ever to walk the earth. But yet, 55 years ago, the rumor that Paul McCartney was dead was at a fevered pitch. And what we're going to do now is a brand new time capsule. And we're going to stick to April 24th, 1969, where Paul McCartney had to say he wasn't dead. Let's see what was going on in the world of pop culture when that revelation was going on. The number one song was The Age of Aquarius slash Let the Sunshine In by The Fifth Dimension. The song was written for the 1967 musical Hair and was off of The Fifth Dimension's album The Age of Aquarius. The song spent a total of six weeks at number one in the spring of 1969 and helped the album get a gold certification with sales of almost a million copies. The number one movie was If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $1.42. This is a romantic comedy starring Suzanne Plachette and Ian McShane, who you might know from the 2000s TV show Deadwood. The movie's seen as a minor hit, making $6 million in its initial run. There was even a remake made in 1987. Starring people like Courtney Cox, Claude Akins, Richard Maul, who was Bull on Night Court, Peter Graves, and others. The number one TV show was Gunsmoke. Because pretty much every time I do a time capsule from the 60s, Gunsmoke is the number one TV show. Gunsmoke is a western television drama that was on the air for 20 years from 1955 to 1975. It was the number one TV show overall every season from 1957 to 1961. And after its 12th season, when they were about to cancel it, there was such a panic about canceling Gunsmoke. Even in Congress, they mentioned it. So it stayed on the air for another eight years. And if you were around back then, April 24th, 1969, the weather's nice and warm, you got kids, you want them... outside doing something fun but safe. You could go to Sears and get their gym set kind of mini playground swing set. This, I've got a picture of it. It looks like the same thing that we had when I was growing up. The same idea. There's a slide on one end. It looks like a pair of benches attached at the bottom so you could sit on the bench and swing. There's a couple of regular swings. There's this other swinging two-seated kind of platform that every time I see it, all I think of is those speeders that they ride on in Return of the Jedi. Those of you that grew up in the 90s and back through the 60s, you'll know what I mean. Anyway, you can get this Sears gym set for $49.95, but you will not get the slide. If you want the slide, you're going to have to pay $64.95 total for this gym set. Did any of you have that kind of a little playground mini thing for your family in your backyard growing up? As soon as I saw it, I had flashbacks. But that'll wrap up another time capsule, another This Week in History. We just did 1969. Let's go forward a year and look at the decade of the 70s as we look at the top five forgotten 1970s cartoons right now. By being born in 1977 and being just over two years old when the 70s ended, I really don't have any memories of that decade specifically. Luckily, though, I have plenty of memories starting in the early 80s, and that's what makes this top five a lot of fun, is that even though these cartoons that we're going to talk about, forgotten from the 70s, even though they weren't new when I saw them, they were all still in syndication. during my youth. People that grew up back then, you know the most well-known 70s cartoons like Scooby-Doo, or Fat Albert, or Schoolhouse Rock. I'm talking ones that were created in the 70s, because ones like Looney Tunes, they've been played every year for the last almost hundred years. Naturally though, not all cartoons can be successful. Some come and go pretty quick, just like any other product. And this is going to be a lot of fun to dig into these forgotten 70s cartoons. I think there'll be a few that you will remember if you're from that generation. But even me, who I consider myself a bit of a professional when it comes to nostalgia, there were a few of these I had no ideas of, including one that I can't believe I'd never heard of. With most of these top fives, they are in no particular order. And there's going to be some honorable mentions to kind of get your mind going on what might be in the top five. So let's see how many of these you remember from Saturday mornings in the 70s. Honorable mentions include I Am The Greatest, The Adventures of Muhammad Ali, a cartoon about the famous world champion where he voiced himself. Just in case you thought Mike Tyson Mysteries was the first ever cartoon about a boxer. There was The New Adventures of Gilligan, which was what it sounds like, a cartoon based on the Gilligan's Island TV show, with the majority of the cast performing their voices. There was Hong Kong Phooey, a kung fu fighting dog. Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla monster had his own 70s cartoon. And finally, for honorable mentions, there was Inch High Private Eye. which is pretty much what the title says. A private eye that was one inch tall and would use his lack of height to help solve mysteries. So there's the honorable mentions. Do you remember any of those? The only one I remember is Hong Kong Fooey because Hanna-Barbera cartoons were everywhere and you'll see them coming up. But let's get into the actual top five, starting with number one, The Pebbles and Bam Bam Show.

Speaker 00:

This

Speaker 01:

cartoon actually made sense because Pebbles and Bam Bam were little babies in the Flintstones in the 1960s. So naturally, if they aged, they would be late teens when this cartoon came out. The show premiered in 1971, and there was a total of 16 episodes. An interesting note is that Sally Struthers, actress from All in the Family who played Gloria, she was the voice of Pebbles Flintstone. The show had a very similar vibe to Josie and the Pussycats, using contemporary music to try to draw in young viewers. And it centers around teenage Pebbles and Bam Bam growing up in bedrock and all their problems. The show was not a success. And it was revamped the following year as the Flintstones Comedy Hour. So they had more of all the other characters from the Flintstones. That was also not a success. It was canceled after 18 episodes. Number two is Jabberjaw.

Speaker 00:

this

Speaker 01:

is one I remember quite well it is so much a 70s fever dream for those of you that have never heard of Jabberjaw it's very similar to again Josie and the Pussycats Also very similar to Scooby-Doo, but instead of it being a dog, it's a 30-foot-tall great white shark. But wait, the shark also plays drums in a band. But wait, the shark also sounds and acts like Curly from the Three Stooges. This show originally aired in 1976 with only 16 original episodes, which is weird because I remember this cartoon as a kid and it seemed like there were more than 16 episodes, but I guess not. Jabberjaw was voiced by Frank Welker, who is one of the most prolific voice actors ever. Interestingly about Welker, in 2011, he was the third highest grossing actor ever. A voice actor. But he couldn't make Jabberjaw work. Number three is Grape Ape.

Speaker 00:

Here's

Speaker 01:

another one that I remember as a kid. Another Hanna-Barbera. Which it's like they were just everywhere in the 70s. It's like every cartoon was made by them. Grape Ape is a giant purple gorilla. This cartoon came out in 1975. And again, it was another one with only 16 episodes. All Grape Ape would do was say his name, Grape Ape, all the time. It makes me think of Groot from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As we're going on with these and all the Hanna-Barberas, any of you out there that grew up around this time, did it seem like there were more episodes of these cartoons than I'm letting you know? Well, here. Now we're going to get into number four, and this is one I can't believe I had never heard of. It's called Robonic Stooges. Built from the world's

Speaker 00:

finest electronic parts. Designed to be the world's most perfect electronic robots. The Robotic Stooges!

Speaker 01:

So not robotic. Robonic with an N. And it's about robot versions of the Three Stooges? This is yet another Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And another fever dream. I don't know what these guys were on when they came up with ideas, but man... The show was out in 1977-78, a total of 16 episodes. Because all of the Three Stooges, at least the originals, had been dead for a few years, Moe died in 1975. So they had to get new people to voice them. And in a full circle moment, Frank Welker, who I just said voiced Jabberjaw and made him sound like Curly, he voiced Curly on the Robonic Stooges. In 1965, they had actually done a real cartoon, The New Adventures of the Three Stooges, with Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. You can find a lot of those on public domain, DVD, VHS of the Stooges. But wait, there's one more. So, forgotten cartoons of the 1970s, let's finish it off with number five, Baggy Pants and the Nitwits.

Speaker 00:

This

Speaker 01:

sounds like the name of a cartoon I would have come up with when I was like 11 years old. This cartoon was out in 1977. 13 episodes... I'm actually surprised it didn't do better because Frizz Freeling and Robert McKimson, who were two very big producers of the Looney Tunes cartoons, were associated with it. Baggy Pants was a cat that was similar to Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp character. And then The Nitwits is the other segment of the cartoons, and it's about an elderly superhero that's brought back out to fight crime again. That one, it was voiced by Artie Johnson and Ruth Buzzy from Laugh-In. So I guess it's a takeoff of a skit they used to do, but they had to tone it down a lot to make it family friendly. Baggy Pants and the Nitwits. I saw that. I said, it can't be real. Oh, but it was. That wraps up the top five. Do you remember any of those? I mean, Pebbles and Bam Bam, Jabberjaw, Grape Ape. I remember all of those. I would think that if I really had the desire to watch Robonic Stooges or Baggy Pants and the Nitwits, I might need some kind of edible first, because these things seem like they came out of a session of just smoking up. But we'll go now from the fever dream of these rando 70s forgotten cartoons to fun with friends and family as we go way, way back in the day and look at some classic 1980s board games. So let's get ready for a fun night in. I think that game nights, I think there's still a thing now. People get together, friends, family, and play board games. But way back before internet, before video games were so readily available and just so popular, board games were way more of destination entertainment, socializing, fun and safe ways to meet with friends. Obviously, I'm not saying there were never fights when playing board games. I think I used to get in fights a lot, playing Monopoly and just getting hosed by my family, stealing all my hotels and properties. But in some respects, the board games, it's kind of a relic of a bygone era. And what I want to do now is go way, way back in the day to the 80s and look at some of the popular board games that came out then. When doing research for this segment and looking at popular 1980s board games, there are so many that were around for decades before. Monopoly, Life, Sorry. What I wanted to do was come up with the games that came out in that time. There'll be plenty of other segments for popular board games, forgotten board games, all that good stuff. I've got a handful of games here that we're going to go over. I'm happy to say a few of these were ones that were heavy in my rotation as a kid, especially at my Nana's house. We seem to play board games a lot more over there. My favorites, though, like Chutes and Ladders and Candyland and Connect Four, they all came out before the 80s, so I can't use them as much as I wanted to cheat and use them. I got to stick to my own format I put together. The very first one I'm going to talk about is probably the most well-known and most popular still to this day, I would assume, and that's Trivial Pursuit. This was the most adult game that I remember. You had to answer a certain amount of trivia questions, pop culture questions, in different categories, and get different colored slices of pie to fill up your little pie that you had. I remember always being frustrated by this game when I played it as a kid because I didn't know most of the stuff. Maybe occasionally a sports question or if something that came up with a cartoon was in there. But for the most part, it was me getting schooled by my relatives. That's one of those things. I didn't like Trivial Pursuit. really as a kid because I wanted my board games to be really mindless fun and entertainment, not like an offshoot of school where you're basically getting quizzed. The game was first released in 1981 through Parker Brothers. Now I guess it's owned by Hasbro. So Trivial Pursuit is very much quintessential 80s. Came out in the early 80s and was popular all the way through. And it keeps... evolving and adapting they've made Trivial Pursuit games that are more for kids so the kids don't get mad about it there's specialized editions Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Saturday Night Live versions of the game They've tried a couple of times to make Trivial Pursuit into an actual television game show with not really great results. One in the 90s lasted for like two years. Another in the late 2000s lasted for a year or two. What shocked me when researching this topic is that there was an arcade game version of this in 1984. I don't know how that would work. It sounds like something that you would get suckered into using so many quarters when you would keep getting questions wrong. One game that was majorly in my rotation at my nana's in the 80s and into the 90s was Guess Who? The game originally was released by Milton Bradley, and now it's owned by Hasbro, much like Trivial Pursuit. The game was first released overseas in 1979, but it didn't come to the United States until 1982. In this game, you've got a board with these flip-up cards with a bunch of different animated faces on it, and you have to pick one of them to be your it. So then the other person, they ask you simple yes or no questions to try to eliminate each one, and then guess who is the one that your opponent has selected. There's interesting scientific data about this game that the binary questions, the yes or no questions, that you can theoretically, within four questions, have the choices narrowed down to three. I don't ever remember it being quite that easy when I was playing, usually against my sister Kate. I also don't remember if we ever cheated, where we'd change during the game who we were having as our it. I don't remember if that was possible. But it was fun to have all the different little faces. Some of them were skinny or fat, no hair, gray hair, hat or glasses or beard or big nose or any of these features. This was way more of the type of game I liked because it was simple, but you still had to use your brain rather than Trivial Pursuit where I would get routinely embarrassed. Also, I saw an article that claimed in 2021 there were talks to make a live-action Guess Who television game show. I don't know how that would work. It would be pretty boring to watch, I would think. One game that was very much of its times for coming out in the 80s was Mall Madness. This game first came out in 1988 and it was originally released by Milton Bradley, but again, it's owned by Hasbro. I don't know what came up there if Hasbro bought all the major board games of the 80s. They seem to own a lot of them now. The setting of this board game is a two-story mall and malls in the 80s were a big deal. You could have two to four players and each person would get $150 from the banker. And much like most board games, you have to move a certain number of spaces that corresponds to the computer button you have to press. If you end up in front of a store, you could go in there and buy something. And it was all the typical mall stores just with funny names. Camera store, clothing store, sporting goods, books, all that stuff. And you have lists of items that And once you complete everything on your list, get everything on your list, then you win. And they updated the game through the years, made it a talking version a year later in 89. But it's very much a sign of the times. Could you imagine coming out now today with a mall game? One game that I don't remember playing really when I was a kid was Taboo. This seemed to be a little bit more of an older kids or young adults word guessing party game. It first came out in 1989. And basically you try to get people to guess whatever the word is with certain clues. So you can't be like the dinner party episode on The Office where they play that game Celebrity. And you're supposed to guess the celebrity without naming them. And Michael ends up basically rhyming all the celebrities' names. I don't think you could do that with Taboo. The idea of Taboo is that with the word that you're trying to get people to guess, like if it was wedding, there would be certain words that were Taboo. You couldn't use them to help people guess. Interestingly, there's more than two dozen variations of this Taboo game. And they also tried to make it into a TV game show, which failed spectacularly in 2003. Do you remember the game Mousetrap? Boy, that was one part super fun for little kids, but one part annoying to kind of put together. This game's a little bit of a cheat because the version of the game came out in the 60s, but it was revised and... revamped as the years went on into the version that I remember in the 1980s. The whole setup of the mousetrap reminds me of the old Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, where there would be these really over-complicated traps the coyote would set to catch the roadrunner. So in the game, your mice... And you're rolling and you're trying not to get caught in the trap. But there are also build spaces to try to be the other one to build the trap to then catch one of your opponent's mice. I always remember the commercial animated catching the mouse. As much fun as building a mouse trap was in a game, there was something fun about pressing a little bubble with different dice in it. And that was Double Trouble. So for those that are old enough, you'll remember that Double Trouble is basically a takeoff of the original Trouble game from the 60s. Double Trouble came out in 1987, and each person has their own little bubble that they press, and then the dice flips around, and you move a certain number of spaces, and you've got to remove both of your arrow pieces around the board to the finish space. So it's a race. But I can hear in my head that popping noise of the bubble when you pressed it. This is another one I go back to. It was very simple for kids. When this came out, I was 10 years old. So it's simple for a kid to play this rather than something like Trivial Pursuit where it points out your lack of knowledge. Yes, I'm bitter about Trivial Pursuit. I keep bringing it up. How bad it would make me feel. I wanted to finish off here. One more game. This is another one that reminds me of My Nana's House so much, and that was the original memory game. The original memory game was by Milton Bradley, and it was a match game. You had all these cards face down, and you had to flip one over and try to match it with the same shape. There were other versions of this game older, but I'm talking about the 1980 version. And like I said, there'd be shapes, there'd be animals... Things that you had to remember where they were. I believe the game had something like 72 cards, so 36 matching pairs. But for younger players, like I would have been a little, little kid when I first played this, you would pair it down to maybe 18 pairs that you had to match. And the rules are that you have however many number of players. You start with the youngest person and you have a turn where you flip over two cards. If you get the same, you take them. And if you get a match, you can go again. And you keep going until there's no cards left. I can still remember this. I guess it would be a cabinet that my Nana had right at the end of her hallway. It had this nice marble top on it. And she had pictures on it. But inside the cabinet doors was the stack of all these board games. And the doors would usually fall off. They needed to be rehinged. But we'd pull out memory cards. Or Guess Who. Or other ones. Chutes and Ladders. Candyland. And that was just another fun time on a Sunday or a weeknight at my Nana's. Did these board games bring back any memories for you of a certain age? Because I know with board games it's different. They just adapt them as the years go on. So these games are all still around. But I'm talking about the 80s versions. Like I said, as we go... I'll have more board game segments based around decades or lesser known games and such. And I promise I'll not talk as much about how much I hated Trivial Pursuit as a kid. But until next time, that will wrap up episode 141 of the podcast. Thank you so much to everyone who's tuning into the podcast. Those of you that share, those of you that leave reviews, ratings. That does so much to help get more eyes and ears on what I do. I have so much fun coming up with topics that I think will be fun for you to hear about. I think of people, you don't have to be Gen X, my age, a little older, because I think nostalgia, it just works. I mean, I was born in 1977. I like 50s and 60s nostalgia. I wasn't alive back then. If you enjoy my work, like I said, you can subscribe for $5 a month at patreon.com slash inmyfootstepspodcast. If that's not feasible, you can always do things like sharing the podcast, subscribing on YouTube, ratings and thumbs up on YouTube videos. It helps these things get seen by more people. You seem more legit if more people like your stuff. Next week is going to be a really fun episode, 142. The main talking point is going to be the 90th anniversary of the very first Three Stooges short, Woman Haters, that came out in May 1934. And yes, I know, Three Stooges nostalgia is 30s, 40s, 50s, but they were a huge part of me growing up. Like I said when I mentioned earlier the robotic Stooges cartoon, When I would go to my Nina and Grandpa's house, they had Three Stooges videocassettes with a few of the public domain Three Stooges shorts. It was usually the same four. Disorder in the Court, Sing a Song of Six Pants, Brideless Groom, and Malice in the Palace. I know them offhand because it's always those four. And then it would have some of the new Three Stooges cartoons. But that's going to be a big part of next week's episode 142. Find me all over social media. Check out the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. My weekly look back at just random things I think about. Sometimes they're actually meaningful. Other times they're just so random and foolish. But I like doing those for the Patreon members only videos. podcasts, which is also why then I decided to start trying a video version of the new blog. We'll see how that goes. As the weather keeps getting better now as we're heading towards May, I am going to try to do more travel videos, outdoor videos to put up on YouTube. So be on the lookout for those. Check out my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all nine of my books. That's kind of what I fall back on when I'm doing the podcast or YouTube videos to give me some kind of credibility. Nine-time published author. Otherwise, I'm just some random middle-aged dude just talking about random stuff. So visit that website. Visit theladyofthedoons.com. I built that site so it's very basic. But it covers the Lady of the Dunes murder case from Cape Cod that's now in its 50th year since it happened. You can watch Frank Durant's amazing documentary for free, which led into my searching for the Lady of the Dunes book, which you can buy your copy of. You can see all the videos I made surrounding the book and the documentary. And now that the weather's better, take this podcast with you outside. Go for a walk in the sun. I make them kind of a perfect length for a nice walk outside. 45 minutes to an hour. It falls in between there. That's enough time to get you three miles or so. But more than that, get out into the nice weather just for your own mental health. Get that vitamin D. You always feel better when you've been outside in the nice weather, walking on the beach barefoot, getting the good vibes. And stuff like that's free, usually. At least on Cape Cod, you can do it after 5 o'clock, starting in the summer when they charge you. Or if you get to the beach super early. I wonder how early they get there to man those booths to get your money. If you got to the beach at like 6 a.m., would they be still there waiting? Or could you make it out there? That's more of amusing for my initial impressions, podcast, blog, whatever. So thank you all for tuning in to episode 141. I'll be back next week with a new episode filled with nostalgia. But until then, remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life. because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thanks again, everyone. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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