Once Upon Another Decade of Trivia

Lean back. Shut your eyes. Think ‘80s.

Think Journey. Oliver North. Wham! Savings-and-loan scandal. Michael Milken. White House astrologers.

The glory days of excess, selfishness, greed.

Me!

Most of us can attest, as decades go, the ‘80s was a low point; a time of big hair, bad music and grasping materialism.

But, like a fine wine, given the mellowing influence of time, even the goofiest decade is ripe for nostalgia. At least that is what three sibling entrepreneurs, all in their 20s, were banking on when they came up with their idea for The 80’s Game.

True, Evan, 22, the youngest Siegert, was still in diapers in 1980. And Anne, 25, the middle one, was only in nursery school. Already in elementary school, Clay Siegert, 27, was the family’s pop culture trendsetter. But their youth hasn’t kept them from being nostalgic, nor from the desire to cash in on it.

The game is more difficult than its massively successful predecessor, Trivial Pursuit, and although Trivial Pursuit put out a version focusing on ‘80s trivia in the early ‘90s, The 80’s Game requires players not only to answer a question, but also to know the year it happened. It was launched on Oct. 29, costs $34.95, and will soon be stocked at about 140 stores nationwide.

The game features 3,000 questions about ‘80s pop culture, history, politics and products, such as:

* This person gets slimed in Ghostbusters. (Bill Murray, 1984)

* This singer moonwalks on national TV for the first time. (Michael Jackson, 1983)

* Preparing for a televised presidential debate, members of Ronald Reagan’s staff position stage lighting so this Democratic presidential nominee appears to have rings under his eyes. (Walter Mondale, 1984)

* “We Are the World” is released with this artist singing the lyrics, “We can’t go on pretending day by day.” (Kenny Rogers, 1985)

Clay, a feverishly ambitious young man percolating with ideas, was driving down Interstate 95 from Boston to New York two summers ago when he clicked on an all-night radio station somewhere near Hartford, Conn. Deejays were tossing out ‘80’s trivia questions and callers were jamming the lines. Raised on “Back to the Future” “Family Ties” and Def Leppard, he was in his zone.

He began researching the game industry to see if there was a place for his brainchild, an ‘80s trivia board game. He told his sister Anne about his idea, and his brother Evan, too. Evan said trivia questions are a family tradition for the Siegert clan. They all sit around tossing out factoid challenges at the dinner table in their summer home.

Clay quit his job at SmartEnergy, a Boston-based energy company in August 2000, to work on the game full time. The siblings began to immerse themselves in the decade. They bought piles of books, such as a two-volume set titled “Day by Day: The Eighties” (Facts on File Inc., 1995), “Totally Awesome 80s” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996) and “The Complete Cross-Referenced Guide to the Baby Buster Generation’s Collective Unconscious” (Boulevard Books, 1998) became their cultural bibles. The younger siblings scribbled down questions for Clay like homework assignments and e-mailed them to him in New York.

Clay became aware of dimensions to the decade he had not always grasped as a teen, and gained a new appreciation for the go-go ‘80s. “A lot of cool stuff went on,” Clay said. “I remember Oliver North on TV, seeing this guy in an Army outfit. But it never dawned on me what he did.”

Anne, who works in Houston at a paycheck services company, thinks the time is ripe for ‘80s nostalgia. Many radio stations now play “all-’80s” music formats. MTV and Nickelodeon are re-broadcasting 1980s programs, and ‘80s-themed movies like “Rock Star” and “Glitter” were recently released. Anne says in the last six months she has seen ‘80’s trivia leap out at her everywhere she looks: From the Oct. 22 People magazine cover that asks “Your Favorite TV Student Bodies from the 80s and 90s, Where Are They Now?” to the Sept. 17 issue of US Weekly that featured updates on Molly Ringwald, Pat Benatar and Lisa Bonet in a story called “Eighties Ladies. What’s Up With Them Now?”

“Every time I saw one of those magazines in the supermarket I thought, ‘Holy Cow. This is so perfect,’” Anne said.

Starting in the 1970s, nostalgia became big business in the entertainment industry, said Joe Austin, a professor in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University. The rock ‘n’ roll that started in the late ‘60’s with bands such as Shanana, and movies such as “American Graffiti” and “Grease,” took audiences back in a “nostalgic kind of a way,” Austin said.

“It became almost like a genre--nostalgia movies,” he said. “Then it became how fast can you make something nostalgic. I expect to see nostalgia for the ‘90’s any minute now. Nostalgia for the early ‘90s has probably already started.”

In this market-driven recycling of history, nostalgia consumers are sometimes consuming a path they never lived.

“There’s a common saying that nostalgia isn’t what is used to be,” Austin said. “It’s not even nostalgia for them. It’s sentimentalized history.”

That is at least partly true for Evan. Only 1 when the ‘80’s began, he nevertheless says he was a keen observer of his older brother and sister. “It might have been forced on me,” he says. “But it was a great decade.” (His all-time favorite song: “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey.)

A bar in Georgetown, where he went to college, had an ‘80s night that was always filled with people who barely remembered the decade, Evan said. “They know all the words to the ‘80’s songs,” he said. “The ‘80’s will live on forever.”

Pop culture scholar Austin said the objects we become nostalgic about date from the culture of our youth, up until about the age of 25. “That could dip into what you watched when you were 3 or 4 on TV,” he said.

Austin said eventually, every decade will have its day. Even the really lame ones. It’s probably just a matter of time before teeny-boppers are screaming for polyester leisure suits dotted with smiley faces.

“I’m not sure it won’t be smaller than a decade,” he predicted. “I could see people getting nostalgic for a smaller period. I’m expecting it will be something like the Iran-Contra crisis.”

So here’s one:

Question: Oliver North, John Poindexter and this National Security Council female secretary hold a “shredding party” to destroy Iran-Contra scandal evidence.

A: Fawn Hall, 1986

Proceed to the next circle, please!