“I Love the 80s”

Tonight, 9 p.m. on VH1

stars

WHAT do the following people, places and things have in common? Teddy Ruxpin, “The Love Boat,” MTV, Jordache jeans. Boy George, Joan Jett, “Airplane,” Caddy Shack,” “Blue Lagoon.” Pac Man, Darth Vader, Martha Quinn and “Miami Vice.”

If you guessed movies, games, books, video tapes, and cassettes that you left in the bottom drawer of your dresser at your parent’s house when you finally moved out and which may still be there molding around a bag of Gummy Bears, then you are exactly the person VH1 is looking for.

Tonight’s the debut of their very funny and very clever 10-hour/10-night show, “I Love the 80s,” a series of clips and stuff from the ’80s that you hopefully have forgotten.

To keep it from just being an assault of images, the produces have all kinds of rockers, (new and not so new, but still cool or they, too, would be in the clips instead, and being made fun of), comedians, and commentators talking about the awful trends of those particular years.

Unfortunately, in the first one, “I Love 1980,” half the rockers and stars they have reminiscing look 22 years old – so what can they say? “I remember hearing that John Lennon was shot when I was still in utero?”

As we progress on in years – the show runs for 10 nights straight and it’s an hour a night – the 20-something commentators begin to have somewhat more credibility.

There are some very funny comments about movies like “Blue Lagoon,” which drove boys of all ages and sexual persuasions straight into their rooms.

The series begins tonight with “I Love 1980,” which brought us two of the funniest movies ever, “Airplane” and “Caddy Shack.” And no, I still don’t know who shot JR.

It was also the year the U.S. hockey team beat the USSR – and you won’t believe how every single hard-edged rocker interviewed gets all teary-eyed remembering it. In fact, most of them can recite line and verse of the commentary. It is that etched into the consciousness of the times.

What was one of my most vivid memories that I’d forgotten until it was dragged out again by this series? The horrible Teddy Ruxpin doll – the talking, mouth-moving teddy bear with the cassette player in its stomach.

I never understood how parents could buy the damned thing other than to think it relieved them of the pressure of reading bedtime stories because you could put the story cassettes into Teddy’s cassette-player tummy and it would read to your child with its horrible, scary, moving mouth. Terrifying.

There wasn’t a kid alive who didn’t think they thing would come to life at night and kill them like Chuckie.

Yes. It definitely was the most terrifying thing about the ’80s well, that is if you don’t count the mullet, Jordache jeans, “The Love Boat,” Member’s Only jackets, and those horrible, horrible perms.