Flashback: November 2, 1985

Aisles of Choice

It’s November 2, 1985, and America is picking up speed. MTV is shaping our playlists, malls are our weekend meccas, and microwaves are the new must-have appliance.

The space race has gone commercial, shoulder pads are growing wider by the week, and the word “network” still means television, not Wi-Fi.

Reagan’s America was running on optimism and caffeine. Gas was cheap, music videos were currency, and the future glowed with neon confidence.

Somewhere between the fast food drive thru and the new Blockbuster down the street, GenX learned what convenience really looked like…and how addictive it could be.

So cue up your VHS, grab a drive-thru burger, and get ready to rewind to the moment America went full speed into the age of easy living.

This Mixtape Memory Lane is sponsored by 50 Ways to Keep Your Lover.

Mixtape Memory Lane 

🎧 “Part-Time Lover” – Stevie Wonder

At the top of the charts, Stevie Wonder proved he could still dominate pop radio two decades into his career. The song’s infectious groove and scandalous lyrics about secret lovers kept everyone guessing and humming all fall.

🎧 “Saving All My Love for You” – Whitney Houston

Whitney’s first number-one single cemented her as a superstar in the making. Her voice was flawless, her confidence magnetic, and by November, she was already the one everyone else would have to keep up with.

🎧 “Head Over Heels” – Tears for Fears

Tears for Fears delivered more than synth and style with this one. They gave us a soundtrack for emotional overload.

🎧 “Take on Me” – A-ha

By late ’85, this Norwegian trio’s hit was everywhere…thanks to a music video that blended live action and hand-drawn animation in a way no one had seen before. It wasn’t just a song; it was a preview of how music and technology would keep merging to define the decade.

🎧 “We Built This City” – Starship

Love it or hate it, Starship’s anthem to arena-rock resilience captured the flashy optimism of the era. It was loud, defiant, and impossible to ignore…a fitting soundtrack to a decade obsessed with reinvention.

👆 Watch the full throwback video playlist on YouTube Music.

Screen Time Rewind 

November 1985 theaters were still riding the summer blockbuster wave. Back to the Future had become a pop-culture juggernaut, turning DeLoreans into icons and Huey Lewis’s “Power of Love” into a kind of pop philosophy for the decade. It had opened July 3rd, 1985, and it was still pulling audiences seventeen weeks later, on its way to becoming the highest-grossing film of 1985.

St. Elmo’s Fire captured post-college angst with shoulder pads and sax solos, and Rocky IV was about to pit American grit against Cold War muscle just in time for Thanksgiving.

Comedy ruled too. Pee-wee’s Big Adventure turned eccentricity into art, and Spies Like Us gave us Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd proving that incompetence could, in fact, save the world.

Meanwhile, horror fans were quoting Freddy Krueger’s one-liners as A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 crept into theaters.

On television, the fall 1985 season was hitting its stride. The Golden Girls had premiered September 14, 1985, introducing America to four fierce women in Miami proving that life, friendship, and cheesecake don't stop at 50.

The Cosby Show and Family Ties kept Thursday nights wholesome (at least on screen), while Moonlighting made clever banter a form of foreplay.

Cheers was deep into its run, teaching us that everyone really did want to go where everybody knows your name, and Growing Pains was giving new life to the suburban sitcom. It was a year when everything on screen, big or small, was glossy, high-energy, and unmistakably ’80s.

This Life Reboot is sponsored by La’Merde Designs apparel.

Life Reboot: Body

Fast Food Nation: The Rise of Convenience Eating

November 1985 existed at the height of fast food's golden age. “Grab and go” had officially replaced “sit and savor.” McDonald's had over 9,000 locations worldwide. Wendy's had just hit 3,000 stores, riding high on the "Where's the Beef?" campaign that made Clara Peller a household name and burger sizes a national conversation.

Fast food wasn’t new, but the culture around it was. Dual-income households and longer commutes made quick meals the default, not the exception. We weren't thinking about sodium levels, trans fats, or portion sizes spiraling into "supersize" territory (that came in 1987). We were thinking about the convenience of not cooking, not cleaning, not planning. Just pull up, order, pay, go!

By 1985, the microwave had become the ultimate symbol of modern convenience. Nearly half of American households owned one, and manufacturers were racing to make them smaller, cheaper, and faster. Frozen dinners, instant popcorn, and microwaveable everything promised to save time for families who suddenly had less of it to spare. But that speed came with a tradeoff. Meals became something you “zapped” instead of prepared, and flavor, freshness, and family conversation were often the casualties.

Fast forward to now, and we're living in the world that 1985 built…except it's worse. Fast food isn't just burgers anymore. It's DoorDash delivering Chipotle to our couch. It's meal kits pretending to be cooking. It's protein bars replacing breakfast and energy drinks replacing sleep. We've outsourced not just meal preparation but the entire concept of nourishing ourselves intentionally.

This week’s challenge:

• Cook one real meal per week. Not a meal kit. An actual recipe with actual ingredients you have to chop, season, and cook yourself. The point isn't gourmet perfection. It's reconnecting with the physical act of feeding yourself, remembering that food comes from more than a drive-thru window or an app.

• Make fast food inconvenient again. Delete the delivery apps. If you want fast food, you have to physically go get it, which means you'll actually think about whether you want it enough to leave the house.

• Audit your convenience eating. Track every meal for one week, not to count calories, but to see how often you're eating food someone else made. You don't have to change anything yet. Just see the pattern. Awareness is always step one.

For GenX, this was the start of our complicated relationship with convenience…the moment we learned that speed could feel like control, even when it wasn’t good for us. The bright wrappers, cartoon mascots, and jingles promised happiness in 90 seconds or less. Looking back, we weren’t just buying burgers; we were buying time.

Visual Feature:  Throwback Commercials

Blockbuster Video Grand Opening

In November 1985, America was discovering a new way to watch movies…on demand, but on tape. Just two weeks earlier, Blockbuster Video opened its first store offering over 8,000 titles, a computerized checkout system, and aisles lined with possibility.

What started as a single Texas storefront soon became a cultural landmark, changing how we watched, shared, and remembered stories together.

Life Reboot is sponsored by La’Merde Designs.

Mixtape Memory Lane is sponsored by 50 Ways to Keep Your Lover.

The Price of Plenty

So here we are, forty years after November 1985, when Whitney Houston was climbing toward superstardom, Blockbuster Video was revolutionizing Friday nights, and the drive-thru was redefining how we ate.

We watched Marty McFly race through time, memorized MacGyver’s improbable solutions, and pulled up to speaker boxes for dinner without asking if convenience had a cost.

Looking back, maybe that was the moment when speed overtook substance, when convenience became more valuable than connection, when we started eating in our cars instead of at our tables. The drive-thru promised efficiency but delivered isolation. Fast food promised freedom but built dependency.

Maybe that’s what November 1985 keeps trying to remind us: convenience isn’t the enemy. It’s the appetite that comes with it. As the Stones once put it, sometimes we get what we need…just not what we want.

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.”