Sunday, November 20, 2011

Max Headroom An Icon in 1988


Max Headroom was huge between 1986-1988.
I've been working on a freelance project involving cable television installation. The entire topic is completely foreign to me as I've only written copy for ad agencies, teen magazines, kid's books, city guides and pharmaceutical websites. The other day, I came across the word, "max headroom" and of course my mind began to wander back to the '80s. You know me, it only takes a word to bring me back to the good ole days ...  Sadly the other freelancers are much younger than me and can't really share my love of the '80s.

My question to you dear readers is, remember Max Headroom? We first met Max Headroom, voiced by Canadian actor Matt Frewer, in about 1986. Max was a sarcastic, futuristic, yet retro looking animated handsome character. Max Headroom's voice was sometimes distorted and he often stuttered. He was featured in the Art of Noise video for "Paranoimia" and was the spokesperson for New Coke during their "Catch the Wave" commercials. 

There was a short-lived Max Headroom TV series and he appeared on MTV, the 1988 Winter Olympics and more. Max truly became an icon between 1986-1988, landing on the cover of magazines such as Mad, Newsweek and People.





3 comments:

Ms. A said...

Ally, your posts are a lot like talking to my youngest son. He tends to force my brain to remember things I hadn't thought about in years, too!

LL Cool Joe said...

Ahh yes I remember him well!

Thomas said...

Oh yeah - Annabel Jankel & Rocky Morton (they both have Wikipedia pages) came up with the original Max Headroom concept - the original 'virtual' talk show host, living in a TV, interviewing famous people. They developed a back story for the character (classic dystopian sci-fi), shot a 2-hr pilot for british TV, the series was picked up by ABC and ran for 2 years. That original 2-hr british pilot is must-see TV, definitely light years ahead of its time, we're just catching up tech-wise.

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