Thursday, September 07, 2006

Remembrance of Videos Past #14: Fonz and the Happy Days Gang Theme

Of all the kids' theme songs I have found on YouTube, none are more obscure than this one. I have not seen that time wheel at the beginning and that knight on the horse at 0:44 since 1984.

This isn't really a theme song. It has generic fifties music while Wolfman Jack explains the premise: Fonz and his cronies get stuck in a time machine and want to get back to 1957 Milwaukee. This is of course conveniently coincidental to America's love affair with the Eisenhower era in the '80's. Sure there was a sixties retro craze as well. But between Nancy Reagan appearing on "Diff'rent Strokes" with her hysterical "Just Say No" campaign and Stand By Me (starring future blogger Will Wheaton), most children gravitated towards the fifties retro craze. Many of the Saturday morning commercial jingles were retreads of doo-wop and rockabilly, the most memorable being the Teddy Grahams jingle, a rewrite of Elvis's "Teddy Bear."

This show got cancelled quickly because the gang wasn't stuck in the fifties. Sure no kid would sit there and say "Hey, where are the roller skating waitresses?" But we did watch "Happy Days" and this was waaaaaay too different.

But there's no time: we must enter the time machine.



(courtesy of generic001)

BONUS: Ahh, it's great to be back in 1957 Milwaukee.



(courtesy of Chupathang117)

2 comments:

Chief Scientist said...

Happy Days holds up pretty well ... the early ones anyway, before Potsie decided he had to have 1970s hair. "American Graffiti" I can barely watch though. Maybe that friggin' "Howard The Duck" ruined George Lucas movies for me.

Mo Diggs said...

"Howard the Duck" is funnier than "Snakes on a Plane" which ruined irony for me