I don’t know what’s better about this: the 80s hair, or the fact that Aqua Net kept its label design into the 80s. For that matter, this may be the most perfect 80s commercial ever. The synths – including the obligatory post-Kim-Carnes claps – the angular lines from a Nagel painting, the alluring sunglasses, the unconvincing rap, the dizzying rapid cuts! It’s as modern as things have ever been or could possibly be:
Every era makes fun of the previous decade’s hair styles; as we all know, to sum up the deep insights of the YouTube comment Generation, people in the past were stupid and had no taste LOL. But I like 80s hair. Even the one modeled after some sort of Heron Brick wired to your skull.
The 80s are certainly looking innocent and happy from a distance, eh? Remember: the beginning of the decade was miserable, everyone thought we were going to be nuked because Reagan wanted DEATH AND WAR, then we all thought we were going to get HERPES, which turned out to be practice for fearing we were all going to DIE OF AIDS. But I still love the 80s.
Pass it along, if you wish
29 Responses to Evening Commercial Break: 80s Aqua Net
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Elementary school was like a neverending contest to see who could get the highest bangs. Some girls held onto that style way too long.
I saw the movie “Working Girl” and thought the fright-wig hair was a joke. Then all of the women in the movie had “big hair” for lack of a better term.
I was in Germany in the 80′s. Watching the American news networks on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service it seemed as if the moment we stepped off the airplane when we got back to the States that we would be instantly gunned down. My shock at how much the US had improved during the time I was gone was based on the mis-information of the CBSNBCABC glob. The reality of prosperity and real hope as opposed to the false hope of now was fascinating as Mr Spock would say.
I just watched a Mr. Ray’s Hair Weave commercial from the 1980s a couple of months ago on Youtube (you might have seen it when you lived in DC) but can’t find that one now.
But here’s one from the 1970s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGcab884xFU
Night of the Comet
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087799/
Made in 1984. Apocalypse, zombies, and cute chicks with 80′s hair!
The other morning I woke up after sleeping HARD. SO hard that I was exhausted. Looked in the mirror to be greeted by this http://tinyurl.com/aw4d2f
Which is also eerily similar to this http://tinyurl.com/af9l7e
Which is strange because my hair is pretty short right now.
Terry
February 14th, 2009 | 10:02 pm
Night of the Comet
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087799/
Made in 1984. Apocalypse, zombies, and cute chicks with 80’s hair!
My wife and I met in 83, and I have many photos of her with hair just like that. And of course saw that movie in the theater because at the time I drove a Mercury Comet!
Terry
February 14th, 2009 | 10:02 pm
Night of the Comet
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087799/
And that movie has a Star Trek connection. Can anyone name it?
Out here we have a City Councilwoman named Aquanetta. I keep wondering if when she was born, her mother was gazing around the house looking for her favorite things, and landed upon her favorite hairspray…
I am trying to not look at IMDB to get the Star Trek connection. I think it might be one of the bad guys, a character actor with a plain face, middle-aged (in 1984) who looks kind of like he might be Harrison Ford’s half-brothers.
No wait! I bet it was the cholo! Later the leader of the Maqui! No fair using Trek other than STOS without warning.
The dude who played Chacote (or however the name is spelled) Capt. Janeway’s 2nd in command from Voyager. I remember the movie was pretty cool back in the day.
How long will it be before we start reminiscing the 1990′s, I got my mullet hair photo ready to go!!
I’m sorting through a box of my daughter’s school and art work and it is funny to see that all her preschool and elementary school pictures of me have “big” hair. She was born in ’84. I had forgotten!
Since about 1970, popular culture has been something that happens to other people, not me. There’s both good and bad in such detachment, I suppose; I miss a lot of “Jeopardy” questions because of it.
I wonder what it is about 80s hair that Mr. Lileks likes? I have tried to look at it objectively, but it’s really just a lot of air and lacquer.
Speaking of vacuosness, I note that Mr. Lileks’ current hairstyle is what I call “The Limbaugh”.
I’m fairly certain that commercial doubled as a Robert Palmer video.
This is sort of a commercial – if you agree that news promos are selling the news program.
NEWSBUSTERS! from Channel 4 in St. Louis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRHw0XyyZnk
Not from the serious end of the news spectrum.
The first guy I was thinking of for the Star Trek connection (other than the cholo) was Geoffrey Lewis: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0507212/
Turns out that he was a minor character in just about every mid-list television series made in the last thirty years. Except Star Trek. He avoided that in all its incarnations.
When you look at his IMDB entry it’s difficult to see how he could have been in so many Hollywood features, TV series and TV miniseries without ever appearing in any of the five Star trek Series or the ten(?) Star Trek films.
Pertinent info on Mr. Lewis: He is Juliette Lewis’ father, and “is a firearms enthusiast who reloads his own ammunition and owns a custom-built Terry Tussey 1911 .45.”
_@_v – funny you should mention ‘aqua net’. back in the 80s my friend’s social studies teacher used the term ‘aquanetters’ as a self explanitary derisive term for that type of girl… almost wish i could go back to then… with enuff money to buy all the cool 80s toys i would.
I can’t believe I forgot all about mousse. I don’t know how we manage to style our hair anymore without it.
I have heard that big hair is supposed to be coming back.
I like big hair.
I miss 80s hair! I graduated high school in 1990 and just when I mastered my Aqua Net skills, grunge happened and hair’s been boring ever since. Say what you want about the 80s, but at least we didn’t go to school and the mall looking like we just rolled out of bed – pajama pants and all.
Having gone through my share of unfortunate 80s fashion (day-glo pink tie dye anyone?) I probably shouldn’t be casting any stones here, but YIPE. And what’s with those disappearing shades?
I like “Aquanetters,” but my term for the 80s girls was “Mall Poodles.”
Thank you–I’ll be here all week!
I like the hair in that commercial. I miss the 80s. They were so much better than what we’ve had since, television quality notwithstanding.
Hey, the Eighties had some real good music. I keep recommending the GTA: Vice City soundtracks to Gen-Yers as representative samplers of Eighties music.
And it remains the only time in my life I was free of money worries.
The women in the commercial look like they might be *mean* to you – you know what I mean – but you would LIKE IT.
I know what our host mean: after the dreadful, phony “natural” looks and (their polar opposites) the blow-dried local newscaster/televangelist “hair helmets”, those of us who were dragged into the ’80s by the punk/New Wave styles applauded the return of groomed hair for men, a la the New Frontier era. And I know whereof I speak: out of sheer contrariness, I looked like a potrait of Charles II in ’79, before I cut mt hair(to play a WWII naval officer, as it happens). Sure, there were excesses, but they were fun or just funny–often intentionally so. I still prefer the look of a second-hand-chic late 50′s-early 60′s jacket & tie myself…
I know what our host means: after the dreadful, phony “natural” looks and (their polar opposites) the blow-dried local newscaster/televangelist “hair helmets”, those of us who were dragged into the ’80s by the punk/New Wave styles applauded the return of groomed hair for men, a la the New Frontier era. And I know whereof I speak: out of sheer contrariness, I looked like a potrait of Charles II in ’79, before I cut my hair(to play a WWII naval officer, as it happens). Sure, there were excesses, but they were fun or just funny–often intentionally so. I still prefer the look of a second-hand-chic late 50′s-early 60′s jacket & tie myself…
[...] With the Seventies! Aqua-Net Mouse ad defines 1980s visual zeitgeist in 30 seconds. And it’s not just for the distaff demographic [...]
I think I just had a seizure.
I graduated high school in ’85, and have had some form of big hair since then. (I got one o’ them round faces, and small hair makes me look like a hirsute onion.) If it’s coming back, this is my first chance to be fashionable in 24 years. Thank you, God.
And they still make mousse.