![]() All she had to work with were the dolls for two all-girl bands and a boyfriend named Rio, a toy classic convertible known as the Rockin’ Roadster, and a doll for Synergy, a female-identified supercomputer endowed with artificial intelligence. Joe” writer Christy Marx to flesh out the story and characters for the new fashion dolls. She is a working girl, a woman of the ’80s.” Her world is not about shopping and dating. So when toy designer Bill Sanders came up with a prototype set of 12.5-inch-tall rocker dolls designed to appeal to a new generation dazzled by the Day-Glo world of MTV, Hasbro turned to the creators of its previous cartoon hits, Marvel Productions and the New York advertising agency Griffin-Bacal, which had a TV production arm called Sunbow. Joe-the 22-year-old action figure that was the company’s first answer to Barbie-and the Transformers, a newcomer in the American market. ![]() In the early ’80s, Hasbro had succeeded in creating animated TV shows to slyly market two toy lines, G.I. Because what the 10-year-old version of myself didn’t know was that the toy company conceived Jem as a hipper, more modern challenger to Mattel’s 26-year-old Barbie, the reigning champion of the fashion-doll market. (Via )Īt the time, Hasbro was banking on exactly that. From left, Kimber on keyboards, Raya on drums, Jem on vocals, Aja on guitar, and Shana on bass. Jem and Holograms play a song in their namesake animated series. She had money, a career, a dreamboat boyfriend, a secret identity, and a band, but still devoted a good deal of her time and energy to helping orphaned girls. She had wild hair and makeup, but in girly shades of fuchsia, purple, pale pink, and powder blue. Jem had it all: She embraced rock-’n’-roll rebellion, but she was still a conventionally pretty, blond “good girl,” who would fit in anywhere. The “Jem and the Holograms” cartoon, which had its first run between 19, told the story of Jerrica Benton, a wealthy young philanthropist and businesswoman who moonlighted as a glamorous rock star, Jem-with the help of cutting-edge hologram technology, naturally. But who is Jem and where exactly did she come from? And can the new movie hold a candle to the original series? Perhaps it’s the perfect time for Jem, the “truly outrageous” one, to descend from her star-shaped platform in the sky. After all, untamed, feisty pop starlets-Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Pink, Kesha, Nicki Minaj, and Iggy Azalea-have conquered the Billboard charts. “With the advent of MTV, Nickelodeon, and ‘Miami Vice,’ a rock ’n’ roll feeling has permeated the youth market.”Įven though “rock” has lost its cachet with the youth, Jem does have a shot at wooing Millennials. And in case you doubt it’s meant to tug on the nostalgic hearts (and pocketbooks) of us Gen Xers, ’80s superstars Molly Ringwald and Juliette Lewis have been given yet-to-be-named roles in the film. Now, almost 30 years later, Jem and the Holograms are staging a comeback, via a new live-action movie, announced this March and set to premiere in 2016. ![]() I was all about it, as were most tweens in the MTV Generation. When I was 10 in October 1985, “Jem and the Holograms,” an animated half-hour program about an all-girl band, made its debut. With all these cartoon-like “rock” stars, it seemed inevitable that the next lady rocker would be an actual cartoon. (Via ) Below: Jem-inspiration Cyndi Lauper on the cover of 1983’s “She’s So Unusual,” the album that spawned the girl-power mega-hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Top: 1980s cartoon rock superstar Jem performs in a music video. I even tried to tie measuring tape into a hair band. ![]() I practiced these starlets’ dance moves and adorned myself with twist beads and a chunky plastic charm necklaces. The same month, Madonna turned heads with videos for “Lucky Star” and “Holiday,” synth-laden sassy-in-love songs, while making this punk-lite look even more kid-friendly, with floppy hair bows, cropped T-shirts, mesh gloves, and leggings. In September 1983, Cyndi Lauper declared “Girls just wanna have fun!” According to the music video, fun entailed the wildest game of dress-up imaginable, with piles of petticoats and flamenco skirts, beads, bangles, and glitter for days. ![]() Why would an 8-year-old girl play with “babyish” toys when this colorful and rebellious world danced before her, beckoning from the screen? Pretty much every kid I knew had it on in the background all the time. We got cable TV in the 1983, the same year I discovered what I called “rock” music, thanks to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” Since the “Thriller” video gave me nightmares, I wasn’t supposed to watch MTV, the all music-video channel that launched in 1981, but I did. ![]()
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