Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?
The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s & 80s
By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont
Perigree Books, 230 pages, 2011
Admittedly, there’s not a lot of straight-up fashion in the pages of Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops. But there is plenty about the things that were fashionable back in the 1970s and 1980s. As a lover of all things pop culture, a child of the ’70s and a teen of the ’80s a little book like this is always impossible for me to resist.
There’s no intellectual analysis here — which is not always a bad thing when it comes to the topic nostalgic kitsch — it’s all quite literally fun and games.
Arranged in alphabetical order like an encyclopedia, the authors have selected over 200 memorable products and trends of the era and given them each a short, one-page overview that generally speaking includes a bit of history and taste of why it was popular, enough to flash you right back and send you wistfully on your way down memory lane for a moment or two.
Because each topic is contained in a short section, it’s not a book that necessary to read cover-to-cover. I found myself skimming the sections that I didn’t remember or had no relevance to me (mostly the early/mid-’70s stuff I was too young to recall) and carefully reading the ’80s content. I was delighted to find three of my favourite ’80s things in the pages — Jem and the Holograms, Sweet Valley High and Fashion Plates — but found myself wanting more specifics about these and less about more general trends like Waterbeds and Unsafe Playground Equipment.
I’d love to see a more detailled, pop culture/fashion-oriented, ’80s-only book of this kind where I could still find Jem, SVH and Fashion Plates, but a whole lot more, too.
