We all do!  But what can you do, you’re an uneducated slob with a horrible streak of agoraphobia!  Well, luckily, so is Sally Struthers, and she has used her massive star power to bring you the ICS, or International Correspondence School!  Jealous of all your friends who went to Harvard?  Feel intimidated by their fancy degrees in medicine and philosophy?  Well, there are a million doctors, but never a man with an Air Conditioner Repair/Florist degree around when you need em!  Parents telling you to stop jerking off and go back to school?  Well, now you can shut them up by majoring in High School with a minor in Gun Repair, while still playing Nintendo all morning!  And if they still give you lip, well, good luck to them when their guns break and they can’t shoot criminals.   Enjoy these classic Sally Struthers commercials from 1991 of all years, and yes phone number still works!  (Its a sex line now!)

Wendy’s rules.  When it comes to fast food, I always opt for Wendy’s if I can.  The square hamburgers, the fresh buns, the crispy nuggets, the hot chili on a cold winter day…nothing beats Wendy’s.  The real question is, how?   How is Wendy’s so good and fresh tasting when all other fast food places taste artificial and bland?  I always thought it was Wendy herself, tirelessly experimenting with flavors and secret grilling methods…it turns out the REAL answer is Wendy’s excellent training videos that transforms regular employees into rock stars!  Little known fact, Wendy’s co founder Dave Thomas wrote and produced all of these songs, and that’s no lie Jack!

VIDEO # 1, Hot Drinks, where we learn the serious difference between brewing regular and de-caf coffee…

VIDEO #2- Cold Drinks, a groundbreaking rap song exploring the difficulties of controlling foam in the auto soft drink machines.

VIDEO # 3- Got to Serve the Drinks, ok, people, you’re just not getting it!  I thought the first two videos taught you everything about serving drinks, but I was wrong, and for the LOVE OF GOD, DON’T FORGET THE CHILI BOWLS!

VIDEO # 4, Chili can be served with cheese, frostys come in four sizes, don’t serve expired milk, and cookies should never be broken!

I can’t think of 3 things form the 90s more iconic than the dazzling, 16-bit glory of the SNES, the exciting, alternative taste of Pepsi, and the bone crushing power of ultra athlete, Bo Jackson. The question is, what would happen if you put all three together? Would aliens come down to Earth?  Would the city of Atlantis rise from the watery depths?  Would Cindy Crawford’s mole fall off?  Scientists have speculated for years, but don’t you know it, a meeting DID occur between these three titans of 90s iconography, and it went a little bit like this…

I wonder if its just me, but video game commercials from the 1980s still sell me the future better then any modern video game advertisement.  Take a look at these ads for the classic Sega Master System.  There was something so amazingly other-worldly and awe inspiring about these things.  I love the glowing graph paper style motif going on in the whole thing.

My parents never bought me any video game systems, but when I was six or seven years old, my family had these friends we’d visit on Long Island somewhere, and they had a Sega Master System with all the accessories, and like 100 games.  I had never seen anything like it.  Whenever we went over, it was like stepping into one of these commercials, especially because I only had access to that stuff for an hour or two.

I love this last ad, here we learn about the Master System’s amazing features like scrolling backgrounds, 64 colors (not bits), and digital sounds!  And what’s that?  Holy shit, 3d video games???  This ad is so awesome that I want all this stuff right now…in 2010!!!

It’s easy to forgot how amazing Nickelodeon actually was until you rediscover the details that colored it in. Do you remember these 15 second bumpers? I probably saw these- oh, I don’t know- at least once during EVERY commercial break throughout the history of me watching Nickelodeon.

As I watched these again, I thought, it’s amazing how strongly these things were encoded into my kid-memory bank. I wonder how many times my little Ken brain actually absorbed these things. 150 times each? Easily. 300 might also be a good guesstimate. 500 perhaps?  Who knows. But even though 15+ years have passed, I can still remember each of these with the clairvoyance of a psychic. Watch, and see how well you can remember them.

1. THE LOCKERS

This one has a cool, simple direction. As the camera pans across a school hallway filled with kids, we slowly see the Nick logo painted on a wall of lockers. But wait- here comes one last, little pip-squeak to slam his locker shut, and the logo lights up brilliant Nick orange. Sweet. Nickelodeon did an exceptional job of branding in those days.

2. THE GYMNIST

The intensity. The grace. The drama. When you saw this bumper, you wondered what the hell you were watching. But then she sticks the landing and leaves a magical orange footprint on the mat. Now it makes sense- Nickelodeon rules.

3. STREET THEATER

Get ready to get funky fresh with this one. I know I did the 400 times I saw it growing up. I almost signed up for a dance class one time, but my Dad stopped me. Check the comments section on the YouTube page- the composer of the song actually left a message!

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