In Honour of the One Day A Year This Changes

December 24, 2014 7:16 PM

Only one day a year does this suggest anything but negativity... and in recognition of the change, I'd like to throw up one of my favourite retrospectives BetaMaxmas! Every year the posters and paneling changes, every year the programming advances a year, and every year I come back to vaguely remembered commercials and specials.
posted by LD Feral (10 comments total)

...and the first thing to pop up for me on the BetaMaxmas was the "Fat Albert Christmas Special"... where's my video cassette sledge hammer?
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:44 PM on December 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is simultaneously awesome and terrifying. I never want to see it again YET I CANNOT STOP WATCHING.
posted by Mike Mongo at 8:24 PM on December 24, 2014 [2 favorites]

I like the BetaMaxmas, but it is no WPIX Yule Log.
posted by 724A at 8:42 PM on December 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

724A: "I like the BetaMaxmas, but it is no WPIX Yule Log. "

OK, if we're going in this direction, I feel we need to remind everyone of Bub the cat.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:29 PM on December 24, 2014 [1 favorite]

I kept watching until I saw some sort of fairy explaining Newton's laws of motion to Teddy Ruxpin. I'm going to go check myself into a mental hospital now because I'm pretty sure that wasn't a real thing.
posted by mmoncur at 9:34 PM on December 24, 2014 [5 favorites]

What the hell do the flags have to do with Christmas?
posted by maryr at 9:58 PM on December 24, 2014

As someone who actually went through a bunch of Betamax tapes this weekend, including the 1980s animated film "The Snowman", I find this amusing.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:48 PM on December 24, 2014

This site is an essential visit every December. A great idea, always well-executed.

(This year they've made some changes. Usually there's a TV Guide you can click that lists everything that's on, and you have to click the rabbit ears on the TV to adjust the picture. I miss the TV Guide, but the rabbit ears were a cute idea that could be a little frustrating in practice.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:26 PM on December 24, 2014

This is more grist in the mill for my contention that the eighties just flat-out sucked, which, of course, they did.

Of course, I enjoy a nice morning of grist.
posted by sonascope at 5:45 AM on December 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Poor baby. Somehow you got through the 1980s without ever hearing about SCTV, Blue Velvet, new wave, REM, Pee-Wee Herman, the oeuvre of Robert Zemeckis, Thriller, Ashes to Ashes, Beetlejuice, Laurie Anderson or any of the other gazillions of things that were great in the 1980s. I weep for thee.

(Seriously, if you're going to dismiss any decade with a sneer, any single year of the early 1990s was crammed with more crud than the entire 1980s. Just thinking about 1991 makes me want to murder my hometown.)
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:28 AM on December 26, 2014 [2 favorites]