American cultural references you heard as a kid...

[Glebe]

Ah, the Harlem Globetrotters. I think I was an adult before I found out they weren't a real basketball team. (Not real as in, they exist and perform in real life, but they don't play in the NBA, it's scripted 'sports entertainment'.)

Didn't know they weren't a real team. I think they're prolly known over this side of the big pond they call the Atlantic Ocean because of the Saturday morning cartoon? Always thought Meadowlark was a cool name.

NEW PAGE TWAT.

[sutin]

Having heard it referenced so many times it's odd that I still haven't seen a single second of footage or, i think, even a still image. Is it in black & white or colour? Filmed on location or on a bad set? Are they puppets? I don't know. And this has been going on so long that I refuse to find out.

Until half an hour ago I was the same as you. It seems to be a sitcom, in colour, set on an island.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

going to the mall
twinkies
spiro agnew
the kkk

american military references were always baffling to me as a kid. the uk had a pretty well defined idea of soldiering as a profession, the american's cultural vocabulary of veterans turning into bums, military academies, rich sons become officers, draft dodging, b&w comedians always seeming to be in and out of the navy, mega star generals as tv celebrities, secret technological projects, smoldering hostility to allied nations, secret asian wives, etc. all utterly incomprehensible to me. as is how many of these things found themselves into pop culture compared to the squeaky clean way the UK presents its military on the teevee

[Bingo Fury]

Cooties. Oft cited, never explained, just one of those things you're supposed to know.

Guest stars on Scooby Doo. "Hey, look, it's Don Knotts!"

[Brundle-Fly]

Cooties. Oft cited, never explained, just one of those things you're supposed to know.

Guest stars on Scooby Doo. "Hey, look, it's Don Knotts!"

Naa, every self respecting British kid in the 1970s had seen him in Herbie Goes To Monte Carlo (1977). He was in loads of Boxing Day afternoon type movies.

[Glebe]

Hostess Twinkies.

twinkies

[Fambo Number Mive]

I tried watching a bit of Gilligan's Island on Youtube once. Absolute shite.

[A Hat Like That]

Ah, the Harlem Globetrotters. I think I was an adult before I found out they weren't a real basketball team. (Not real as in, they exist and perform in real life, but they don't play in the NBA, it's scripted 'sports entertainment'.)

The Generals are due a win ... !

[Catalogue Trousers]

Guest stars on Scooby Doo. "Hey, look, it's Don Knotts!"

"Oh boy, Sandy Duncan!" Good call.

Also, the whole idea of sleepaway/summer camp. I knew that the Scouts and Guides did something a bit like that, but the idea that you'd effectively be sent off by your Mum and Dad for most of the Summer holiday to a load of tents in the middle of nowhere with a whole bunch of strange kids and overbearing adults? Stuff like Camp Runamuck used to confuse the hell out of me. Of course, the steady drip via American pop culture to our own of later decades, whether American Pie ("this one time, at band camp") or the marvellous Home Movies ("Rabbit Troop sucks!") nowadays means that probably every British kid has a working knowledge of the buggers.

[confettiinmyhair]

In the 90s I remember a lot of references to Urkel and Gumby. I used to think that Urkel was a standalone TV show character like Blossom or for comedy fans Frasier. But he was on a TV show called Family Matters, which to my knowledge was never shown on UK TV. I presume the context was that he was a geek? Maybe this was referenced on a lot of African-American shows I used to watch like Sister Sister, Moesha and Smart Guy.

I think Screech from Saved by the Bell dresses up as Gumby in an episode but I don't know who or what Gumby was.

I also think that the pop culture TV shows you were exposed to in the 90s tended to depend on what power you had in the family over the remote. My Dad liked War programmes and Westerns so I saw lots of Sgt Bilko, Mash, Little House on the Prairie and a ton of classic western films. When me and my sister were growing up we had cable and a window of time to watch TV either Saturday mornings or between 5pm and 7pm, so I saw a lot of Home Improvement, USA High, Hang Time, Saved by the Bell, Sabrina the teenage witch, California Dreams. You'd also see some good stuff, I really liked The Adventures of Pete and Pete, X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[kalowski]

Urkel, yep, like Soapy Sales or Colonel Klink. Names that made it to other sitcoms but meant nothing to me.

[Glebe]

Guest stars on Scooby Doo. "Hey, look, it's Don Knotts!"

Three's Company! The weirdest thing is US sitcoms remade/inspired by UK ones. Three's Company was based on Man About the House with spin-off George & Mildred having The Ropers as it's American equivalent.

And of course All in the Family was inspired by Till Death Do Us Part, while Steptoe and Son became Sanford and Son.

[QDRPHNC]

My mind is completely blown by this.

The team is still going, but of course with different players now. Took the boy to seem them once. Technically they're amazing but yes all scripted. They play against this team all in black called the Baddies or something, and triumph completely. Which is why Krusty shouldn't have bet against them.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

speaking of egon and his twinkie

as a kid i remember the harlem globetrotters coming up several times in the ghostbusters comic

you could be forgiven for thinking they were a team who died tragically or had some sort of spooky connection

[Shaxberd]

I feel a lot better about not knowing the Harlem Globetrotters were performers now.

I think the relative obscurity of basketball here helps, plus actual basketball players like Michael Jordan were pop culture figures, so the idea of a basketball team having a Saturday morning cartoon doesn't necessarily mean they aren't a real team.


I had similar sports confusion about the Mighty Ducks being a real ice hockey team with human beings on it, and not cartoon ducks.
But there is a good reason for this - the original movie was about a children's ice hockey team, but there was a 90s cartoon about hockey-playing talking ducks in space, and at some point the Anaheim Ducks became a real life NHL team (who use the cartoon duck hockey mask design as their logo).

[sutin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harlem_Globetrotters_on_Gilligan%27s_Island

[JesusAndYourBush]

Gilligan's Island.
I'll echo what others have said. I've not seen a single second of it but have heard enough references to know there's a guy with a boat who I presume is Gilligan and weird things happen on the isand (oh wait there's also something called Love Boat, maybe that's the boat one) and there's a little guy called Tattoo who's something like Nick Nack from James Bond.  After Googling... there's no character called Tattoo in Gilligan's Island... oh wait... Fantasy Island, that's the one with Tattoo in it who is indeed played by Hervé Villechaize who also played Nick Nack.  Gah what a mess of references.  Still never seen any of them (except James Bond).

Freshman. I know that's someone who's in their first year of school/college/university/etc. A noob basically.
Sophomore always confuses me as my brain links it to Sorority so I then think it's a female version of a freshman, a freshwoman.  And then after googling: it's someone in their second year.  Just say second FFS!

Summer camp, and the whole thing of extra-curricular activities always seemed weird to me.  When school ended I always wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. It took up enough hours of the day that giving any more hours to (something) club would have meant I'd have had almost no time left to do anything else.  Maybe if you're going to a school far away from home (which might be more likely in America cos it's such a big country) and are living in some sort of campus you'd be glad of all those clubs to fill your time?

And a recent Australian cultural reference: After hearing Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect say she'd been "intimate with three of The Wiggles" I assumed for some reason it was some sort of Australian version of something like the Tetetubbies.  Then I googled it and was quite surprised to see that they're just people with a silly name.

[beanheadmcginty]

Kitchen sink plugholes somehow have the same abilities as a woodchipper.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

slight tangent but I hate music nerds using the term "sophomore slump". Just say shite second album or summat


needless to say it's far more egregious when it's an English person using it

[willbo]

In the 90s I remember a lot of references to Urkel and Gumby. I used to think that Urkel was a standalone TV show character like Blossom or for comedy fans Frasier. But he was on a TV show called Family Matters, which to my knowledge was never shown on UK TV. I presume the context was that he was a geek? Maybe this was referenced on a lot of African-American shows I used to watch like Sister Sister, Moesha and Smart Guy.

there was loads of jokes about Urkel in 90's Simpsons, spent over a decade wondering who or what he was.

when I was travelling with my parents in the 80s there was a US 60s show on in a few countries called Gentle Ben, I think it was kind of like Lassie or Skippy but with a bear. Dunno if that was ever on in the UK.

And a recent Australian cultural reference: After hearing Fat Amy in Pitch Perfect say she'd been "intimate with three of The Wiggles" I assumed for some reason it was some sort of Australian version of something like the Tetetubbies.  Then I googled it and was quite surprised to see that they're just people with a silly name.

it's actually pretty big here in the UK

[DrGreggles]

Anyone who has seen American stand ups in Edinburgh can confirm how many US-specific references are used.

"What does that mean?"
"I think you guys call it clingfilm"
"Call it that then"

[Terry Torpid]

Gilligan's Island is also known for prompting the quintessential "which one of the two women do you prefer" debate. Apparently that's a major blokey cultural touchstone in America (or at least it was at the time). I haven't seen a second of the show, but I know that one of the women always wins every fan vote hands down, so it's really not much of a debate at all.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Heard in the TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand:

"Harold, I don't think I'm ever gonna get these calluses off my fanny."

I like to think that in an alternate dimension it also appears in an episode of Steptoe & Son.

[Maureen Brontë]

The homecoming queen gave me a hickey and now I got mono.

[Brundle-Fly]

Jokes in Mad magazine about President Gerald Ford being ditsy and falling over a lot. Conveniently forgotten by Republicans who level the same derision towards Biden's pratfalls.

[Clatty McCutcheon]

"Gonna take a rain check..."

I used to think this metaphor meant you had looked out the window and it was raining so you weren't going to bother with the thing you'd been invited to.

Turns out a "rain check" is the ticket you'd get for a rearranged baseball match that had been rained off, so I got the metaphor completely wrong.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Ooh yes Brady Bunch is a good one.

Please allow me to be the obligatory pedantic nuisance who always crops up in threads of this nature: repeats of The Brady Bunch were an afternoon staple on ITV throughout the '80s.

[flotemysost]

More a linguistic thing than a cultural reference, but calling any sort of jumper/t-shirt/top a "shirt". Used to assume everyone in America just went round decked out in Saville Row tailoring.

"Gonna take a rain check..."

I used to think this metaphor meant you had looked out the window and it was raining so you weren't going to bother with the thing you'd been invited to.

Turns out a "rain check" is the ticket you'd get for a rearranged baseball match that had been rained off, so I got the metaphor completely wrong.

I've definitely misused this one in the past and I'm still not sure I'll ever identify the right context (does it just mean "let's reschedule" rather than "let's sack this off indefinitely"?).

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Please allow me to be the obligatory pedantic nuisance who always crops up in threads of this nature: repeats of The Brady Bunch were an afternoon staple on ITV throughout the '80s.

To be fair, the question wasn't "American tv shows that weren't on U.K. television"

I was born in 87 and I've never seen it to this day. My only memory of it as a kid was seeing the trailer for the 90s movie version and not really understanding why it existed or who it was for

[LordMorgan]

Kitchen sink plugholes somehow have the same abilities as a woodchipper.

Haha , yes this
The garbage/waste disposal

Wtf were they about