This Nostalgic Life #18
Past & FUture
Welcome to this edition of This Nostalgic Life! In this edition, we’re sharing stories about things from the past, as well as things that seemed so futuristic. Stories of Taco Bell nostalgia, Commodore 64 glory, music hits of the 80s and 90s, and a pile of recommended reading links. Enjoy!
Taco Bell Nostalgia
by Mick Lee
It’s been all over the news recently that Taco Bell is about to roll out a nostalgia menu for a limited time, where they will be bringing back menu favorites…one “favorite” from each decade. The list includes:
The Tostada representing the 1960s
The Green Burrito from the 1970s
The Meximelt of the 1980s
The Beef Gordita Supreme representing the 1990s
The Caramel Apple Empanada of the 2000s
While this is a pretty good list and a pretty neat concept, it’s missing a lot of my personal favorites. I really wish they would bring back pricing that is more closely aligned with the old days as well. And even though they are bringing back some old menu items, the part that is extremely hard to recapture is the feeling one used to get from the whole Taco Bell experience. Well, at least for me it is.
In my rural area, we didn’t get our first Taco Bell until the late 1980s. I grew up loving Old El Paso taco nights at home, so when the local Taco Bell opened, my mom and I were very excited and went to try it the first week. We made several trips over the next several weeks and sampled much of their menu. We enjoyed everything and it became a regular stop for us when we were out shopping on Saturday afternoons.
Fast forward a little bit to when I started driving, and Taco Bell became even more of a staple for me. It was the fast food place that was deemed the “coolest” by my everyone at school, and if you were hanging out, odds are you would probably find yourself at Taco Bell at some point during that outing. The other reason, we frequented it so much was the cheap prices. With just a little cash in your pocket, you knew you could go to Taco Bell and fill up easier than you could at other chains.
Taco Bell was also the place I knew I couldn’t go wrong with on date night. If it was a first date, and I wasn’t sure what she did or didn’t like to eat, going to Taco Bell was the safest bet. It was also a great late-night stop after going to the movies, or bowling, cruising town, or a Friday night football game. Hell, even a quick trip out to town almost always resulted in a quick trip to the drive-thru to get a quick snack whether I was hungry or not just because everything tasted so good.
It’s hard to describe the atmosphere of the place though. In the ’90s, it had its vibrant purple, pinkish, and teal color scheme that we loved so much, and the tables outside to sit out while we dined and talked about the important events of the day like the newest albums coming out, the latest turns in the Monday Night War, or the big upcoming game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys. It probably wasn’t the atmosphere of the place as much as it was the company of the people I was with and the times we were having that I miss.
But back to the nostalgic menu…I’m certainly ready to have a Meximelt again, as I’ve been craving one since they pulled them from the menu several years ago. And I was almost to the point of riot until they finally brought back the Mexican Pizza recently. It was always my favorite item on the menu, and I no longer take it for granted and pick one up every other week or so just in case it gets pulled again.
I’ll indulge in another Tostado while the nostalgia menu is in place too just for the memories, as well as a Beef Gordita Supreme. But there are several other old Taco Bell favorites I’d like to see make a comeback at some point as well. Let me start off by mentioning The Chilito…or Chili Cheese Burrito.
What was not to love about The Chilito with its chili sauce they had partnered with shredded cheddar cheese and wrapped securely in a warm flour tortilla? That’s a rhetorical question by the way. My friends and I capped numerous of our evenings off by downing bags of these things, regardless of the consequences we were sure to face the next morning because of it.
The Double Decker Taco is another old favorite that I’d gladly welcome back to the menu. Just look at that image, and gaze upon the beauty that was created by melding two different tacos together with some beans. Other than the Mexican Pizza, the Double Decker Taco may have been Taco Bell’s most perfect creation.
No longer did you have to decide between hard or soft tacos…you could have both. And of all the items they’ve removed from their menu over the last several years, this one confuses me the most. They keep all of the ingredients needed to make this on hand, so why not just keep it on the menu? Curious.
The Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito was a short-term offering from the mid-90s and was my obsession until I completely burned myself out on them.
The thing was loaded with beef, lettuce, tomatoes, bacon, and a cheese sauce. It was wonderful.
I ate so many of those things when they were available, I burned myself out on them by the time they were gone. Even though I got burned out on them way back then, I find myself craving them now, and would probably burn myself out on them again if given the opportunity.
And I’ll stop my list with this one…The Texas Taco Sandwich. The Texas Taco Sandwich hit the market in 1995 with a fun commercial starring Jack Palance. Palance was coming off a resurgence thanks to the movies City Slickers and City Slickers II, so he lent credibility to Taco Bell’s latest offering with a Texas flair. I was driving by the time this came out, so as soon as I saw the first commercials, I was making my run for the border to try one.
The Texas Taco Sandwich was a change from the norm due to its thicker and breadier shell. We know now that this was just the forerunner to the Gordita that was to come in 1998, but at the time it was a unique item that captured my attention, as well as my taste buds while it was on the menu. I do seem to remember it being larger than the later Gordita, but it probably had to be since it was marketed as being associated with Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas I hear.
While all of my favorites aren’t returning as part of this nostalgia menu they are rolling out, I’m sure a lot of other people’s favorites are. But just the announcement of such a menu was enough to get me very nostalgic for Taco Bell, and I’m sure that’s the point of it all. So kudos to you Taco Bell for this, and I hope it does very well, as it could lead to more iterations of it in the future. Who knows, maybe the next time they roll this out I’ll find myself able to binge on Chilitos and Double Decker Tacos once again.
How The Commodore 64 Changed My Life
by Eric Vardeman
Last week, I was listening to the latest episode of The Everything 80’s podcast (available wherever you get podcasts) that featured the Commodore 64. Listening to the episode brought back so many memories that I hadn’t thought of in a long time. The more that came back to me the more I realized that the Commodore 64 has been payin’ my bills for a long time. It was ultimately responsible for my career choice and a career that has now spanned over thirty years.
I was twelve years old, in 1982, when my dad brought home a computer that his coworker had apparently given him. It was a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A (pictured above). It connected to the TV, came with a cassette tape drive, a voice synthesizer and one manual. It was the first time I had ever seen a computer, I didn’t really know what it was and certainly had no idea what to do with this one. It came with a cassette tape that had several programs on it. To use any of them, I had to fast forward to the right spot on the tape and load the program. It had a drawing program that didn’t do much, a voice synthesizer program that was actually pretty cool and useless programs like a budget program and recipe program. There were several games on the tape, as well, but I could never get them to load. The manual attempted to teach you a little of the proprietary programming language, TI BASIC, but you couldn’t do much more write a “Hello World” program. But my dad saw me trying.
Not too long after that, my parents bought me the Commodore 64 package (pictured in the image at the top) for Christmas. I’m not sure how they afforded it. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up and that package cost almost $600. It was only as I listened to the podcast episode that I realized what kind of investment my parents made in my future whether they realized it or not. The gaming capability of the C64 opened up a whole new world. So of my favorites were Ghostbusters, Bird v Magic, Raid on Bungeling Bay, and the Summer and Winter Games. My friend, Jeff, had a C64 as well and we shared games with each other constantly. The C64 also introduced us to the Zork Trilogy.
The same coworker that gave my dad the TI-99 computer, also had a subscription to a Commodore related magazine that covered a lot of coding and programming topics. He sent a stack of back issues home with dad and I immediately started teaching myself (the best I could) how to code on the C64. I wrote a very rudimentary music catalog program and Jeff and I even started writing our own text based game similar to Zork titled The Cave that, for two fourteen year old punks, wasn’t bad at all if I say so myself.
When I turned 15, I got really into music and learning how to play guitar and my computer era took a backseat for several years. When I was a senior in high school, my parents asked me what I was planning on doing after graduation. I didn’t have many plans but college sure was not one of them. My father had other plans for me. He took me to tour a junior college and picked out my degree plan for me. He must have seen into the future because he enrolled me in the Computer Programming degree program. My first CompSci class was a programming class for the language Fortran and, like riding a bicycle, I was hooked yet again. It didn’t take me long to fall back in love with writing code and programming. It’s a love I still have to this day…writing code and developing software. Over the span of my career, I’ve learned a dozen or so more languages (most recently, Python) and I have the Commodore 64 (and my dad) to thank for that. That and a long career.
If you have a chance you should check out the podcast episode I mentioned. It’s a great listen and can be found at the link above, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
In 1984: This week, Twisted Sister tops out at #21 with their only Top 40 single, “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, from their album Stay Hungry. I was fourteen when this video hit big on MTV. For reasons that are beyond explanation, I hadn’t seen the movie Animal House yet so the father character in this video and the video for their next single, “I Wanna Rock”, was brand new to me. I found him funny but had no idea he was based on Doug Neidermeyer.
In 1990: “Ice Ice Baby”, the debut single from Rob Van Winkle aka Vanilla Ice, debuts on the Top 40 chart at #23 with a bullet. Two weeks ago it debuted on the Hot 100 chart at #72, jumped to #53 last week and lands in the Top 40 this week. After jumping that far, that fast it’ll now make a slow, six week crawl to the #1 spot.
Playlist: This Week In 1984
Playlist: This Week In 1990
In every edition of This Nostalgic Life, we like to share a curated list of nostalgia-themed articles, stories, and posts that we’ve come across recently. It gives you a chance to discover great content and remember things from your past that you may have forgotten. With that in mind, here are some things we wanted to share with you this week. (All links will open in a new tab.)
16 Sights, Sounds, and Feels Only GenX and OG Millenial Kids Will Truly Appreciate (Nostalgia Nation)
Why Did Wendy’s Fire the “Where’s the Beef” Lady? (Retroist)
The 60th Anniversary of Jonny Quest (A Shroud of Thoughts)
30 Beautiful Photos That Show House Interiors in the Early 1970s (Vintage)
6 Gadgets From the ‘80s That Shaped Modern Tech (Slash Gear)
The Party is Over For Bankrupt Tupperware (Boing Boing)
The Wild and Crazy Days of ‘80s Hair Metal (TV Insider)
Thank you for joining us for another issue of This Nostalgic Life. Be sure to leave us a comment about anything in this issue that connected with you and we can discuss in the comments section. See you next week for another nostalgia-packed issue!
Loved this post! I survived off of Taco Bell for a great deal through the 90s especially. There was also one down the street from my university where my friends and I would go and slam down double decker burritos and chalupas!! My only regret is not saving a few of the sauce packets for nostalgia's sake!!