This ignores a very important factor in decades that are defined by new technology: money
Doesn't matter what the latest gizmo is, if you grew up in a household that was strapped for cash, your childhood will have more in common with the previous generation than with your peers.
This was definitely my experience. I was born in '95, but we were still buying VHS tapes (from Goodwill) well into the late aughts. I still had a small collection of them up until I moved out, but I didn't bring them with me
Thankful was used to pirate HBO in my house, somehow the old analogue signal came in without us having to pay. ofc the cable company had no clue so it owned. Saw so many movies as a kid and shit I shouldn't have seen like Real Sex and Taxi Cab Confessions
My dad had a descrambler box in the early 80s. Skin-a-max wouldn't come along until much later with their one of a kind late night programming, but holy shit did I watch a lot of HBO in 1981. For a while, I think HBO had Star Wars on a constant loop. That and Chariots of Fire, which theme is burned into my memories like a cattle brand.
I couldn't watch the scene where they drain the little elf guy for his life force. Or the scene where lady takes her eye out and looks at them in a cage.
Dino-Riders taught me that evil people were ugly mutants while good people were beautiful hippies, and it was okay to weaponize animals as long as you asked nicely for permission beforehand.
Also, I still do the Rikki Tikki Tavi swooshing noise in my head when sneaking around the house getting a midnight snack.
I remember having a VHS with like, a cartoon on it, from what I remember it was in an anime style? maybe. and it was about a talking car, and all I really remember about it is that at one point he's rushing a pregnant woman to the hospital and going really fast. I have never been able to identify this cartoon from my past and it haunts my very being.
My understanding is that it was part of a tax bill that allows a company to write off depreciation immediately by reducing the usable life of a product instead of taking a percentage of a loss over multiple years.
When I looked into it, there are a lot of “well ackshually” articles about how destroying Batgirl was not tax advantageous
I'm still mad at that show for exactly one episode. The actress who played the Red Beetleborg gets replaced in episode 39. I'm not mad at her getting replaced, just the contrivance of the plot. She gets hit by some kind of space beam that makes her look slightly different (because it's a different actress now). And the episode's plot is about trying to make her look normal again. But all they manage to do is make her look normal to most people, but the audience and main characters will still see her altered appearance.
Just replace the character, holy shit. Make a new red beetleborg how hard is it
I remember having an elaborate network of people who'd mail VHS tapes to me as a kid. It's what you did before simply downloading a video file was feasible piracy. I'd go on a BBS and knew a guy who knew a guy who was copying anime off Japanese broadcasts. Anyone remember those ugly yellow subtitles? They were ubiquitous.
I remember being a lot more passionate back then about it. Like I was literally 12 years old helping coordinate this international piracy ring. After limewire became a thing my contacts fizzled away. I wonder what happened to them.
Oh, and also my parents were very confused by my hobby. My mother one time saw an anime in the $2 bargain bin at Dollar General. I don't know how or why they had it, but the one she grabbed was Bible Black, which is a hentai about girls being possessed by demons and growing dicks. She innocently gave it to me thinking it was just any other anime. Was funny.
I had Secret Adventures where a babysitters imagination takes her charges into some cartoon adventure once an episode, it was nominally Christian but I think they only added that at the last second so they could dump it direct to vhs after no one bought the series lol. You can watch it all on youtube, but what kid is gonna do that when they can watch a tiktok of someone breaking milk jugs in public with half the screen covered by scooping rainbow colored sand.