Bored Panda got in touch with Tom, the creator and administrator of the group and he was kind enough to answer our questions. Firstly, we wanted to know the story behind why he created the account. “The story behind the page is that I would remember or come across a picture of something from my childhood, toys I grew up with, foods that have been discontinued, stores I used to shop at that were no longer around, and then the content to family and friends.”
“Eventually, I decided to post them on social media so others who grew up in the 80s and 90s could see them too, and then it just kind of grew organically. I had no idea I'd one day have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media,” he shared.
We also wanted to know what he thought attracted people to the page and this sort of content in general. “I think the main appeal is the combination of humor and nostalgia, not everything I post has humor, but I do try to add humor to my content when possible.”
I believe nostalgia-based content is popular online because it's sort of a mental time travel that reconnects us to who we are and our past, it was a simpler time in our lives and brings back a lot of happy memories, like a favorite toy you had when you were a kid, or a movie or TV show that you used to love but totally forgot about. It doesn't matter what walk of life you came from; we were all watching the same commercials, and TV shows, and looking forward to finding the prize at the bottom of a cereal box.”
Undoubtedly, the ‘80s and ‘90s were a very unique time, so we wanted to know why he focused on them in particular. “That's what I knew and was passionate about since I was born in the early 1980s. I have fond memories of growing up in both the 80s and 90s. I had no idea the page was going to do as well as it had done when I first started it. I feel blessed to have had the page to have grown the way it has and I'm very grateful to all the fans who have followed and supported the page over the years,” he shared with Bored Panda.
“In a way, my page and other nostalgia pages like mine are time machines, followers get to see toys they played with when they were kids and have long forgotten about until they see it on the page, they see fashion they grew up wearing, stores that are no longer around, movies and TV shows they used to watch but haven't seen in years. It's like comfort food for the soul because it brings back a lot of happy memories of a simpler, less stressful time in their lives.”
“I think it's natural for the younger generation to find the two or three decades before they were born appealing, I remember watching 'Dazed and Confused' in the nineties and thinking how cool it would have been to grow up in the 1970s, I loved the music and fashion, and I think the same is true for a lot the younger generation today, they like the music and fashion, and have watched shows like 'Stranger Things' and 'The Goldbergs', so they have a romanticized view of the past.”
“And while the 80s and 90s were overwhelmingly positive for me, it definitely had some drawbacks like no internet in the 80s, a very slow internet in the late 90s in comparison to how fast it is today. If you took a trip you had to use a map, whereas now you can enter where you want to go into your phone and it will tell you exactly how to get there every step of the way.”
