Happy Nostalgia Week!
Is that a real thing? Well, if Guinness can have Arthur’s Day, Culch can have Nostalgia Week and while you probably can’t get off work for it, for the next five days we invite you to be retro with us.
What does that involve exactly? Well, a certain announcement about 10 days ago made some of us (me) feel shockingly old. The Den…Dempsey’s Den, D’Arcy’s Den, Den TV or whatever it was to you…is no more. After 25 years it’s gone, cancelled, out with the old. If you remember The Den you are officially the holder of a memory of a thing past that will never be discovered by a new generation of kids…which is really very sad if you actually can’t remember a world before The Den.
How’s that worth celebrating and being retro? Well here’s the thing. I was an 80s and 90s child and despite the fact that it was supposed to be a terrible time of doom and gloom, all I can remember is watching cartoons, wearing terrible 80s clothes as picked out for me by my Mammy, eating penny sweets and never really being aware that things outside in the world were so awful.
A lot of things that seem like they’ve been on the Irish landscape forever have only come into existence in the past 25 years. Some are still around and some have gone, but this week we’ll be celebrating all of them, giving you prizes of some of them and inviting you to get your comment on and chat back to us about your 80s and 90s memories. The 80s and 90s gave us the Rubiks cube, the SodaStream, the Walkman, Abrakebabra, white socks with dark trousers, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Back to the Future, The Den, Britney Spears, Dirty Dancing, the beginning of comedy at The International Bar, The School Around the Corner and Live Aid. What should be brought back, what should be left for dead and what should have a few more nails added to its coffin just to be sure?
Look out for posts on the sweets you can’t buy anymore, the fashions you probably don’t want anymore, the soundtracks of decades past and the general memories of the not-old-just-older Culchie gang.
Each day we’ll be giving away a nostalgia prize pack crammed with goodies just to sweeten the deal. Make sure to enter and you could win a huge pile of awesome including Macaroon Bars from Wilton Candy, CDs and DVDs from EMI, double passes for Mish Mash and the Comedy Cellar at The International Bar, a Rubiks Cube, a gift voucher for Abrakebabra, Den goodie bags courtesy of RTÉ and double passes for the 90s season at Screen Cinema.
Like I said…happy nostalgia week 
Nostalgia Week Day Two, and the worst toys EVER.
Den goodie bags? Count me in!
You’re right, I was a late 80′s/90′s child, and I had the best childhood. I feel sorry for the modern kids. They’ll never know the joys of going to the sweet shop and asking “have ya got anything for 10p?” and them giving you a bag of flying saucers and white mice. I’ll take that over your Nintendo DS anyday.
I’m off for a tea out of my bosco easter egg mug.
Darren, get over to the Competition post if you haven’t already!
Mac, can we coax that bosco easter egg mug off you? Very jealous…
Ah the good old days of the Den, when Dustin the Turkey was a golf prize and “The Den” itself was “Dempseys Den”.
Sorry, no chance of me parting with the bosco mug. It was itself a replacement for a previous bosco easter egg mug that was viscously destroyed in a “diong the dishes” accident circa 1994. It’s still too raw to talk about really.
This is just so awesome. That is all.
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