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“ALFa Consumer” – An Account of the 80’s and Trend Setting By: PoisonRamune, the Apathetic Lizardman As far as I can remember I’ve been an alpha consumer. Maybe this had to do with my parents be very young when they had me, but I would seemingly get into: toys, games, TV shows, and movies way before their popularity would soar. Recently I started watching ALF again, since Lionsgate Television has been offering full streaming episodes on youtube.com. After going through the first season of ALF, I was reminded of an event that happened during my childhood which solidified the fact that I was an alpha consumer.
It was late 1986; a young PoisonRamune was rocking out to the energetic teachings of Sesame Street in the morning and cooling down with episodes of He-Man in the afternoon. Being on the brink of my 5th birthday I was allowed to watch prime time TV by my parents with the condition that I was not allowed to repeat any joke I heard (whether offensive or not). After about a week of watching “adult” television I had realized that there was a reason my parents wanted me in bed during the prime time hours, the television shows all really sucked. However, my entire world changed one fateful Monday in September. I had seen a commercial during my afternoon cartoons for a new show about a family housing a little brown alien, I was instantly intrigued by the furry brown creature as it was like a really ugly stuffed animal that moved around.
After watching the first episode of ALF I was hooked. The show was seriously doing something right in that it worked on so many levels. It was one of those shows my dad would watch with me just to make sure I wasn’t watching “visual trash” and he’d actually end up enjoying every episode as much as or if not more than I did. Though the show was pretty formulaic and focused on either ALF getting in trouble due to not fully understanding human interactions and American culture or ALF almost getting caught by a neighbor or other private citizen and being turned into the authorities; it was always intriguing to watch how ALF and the Tanner family (his hosts on Earth) would get out of each and every situation (since most everything worked out in a bizarre and unexpected way for them).
It’s strange; I can barely remember my kindergarten teacher’s name or any of the stupid kids that were in my class. However, I remembered a lot of the episodes from ALF pretty vividly despite not having seen them in over 20 years. ALF had a strange impact on me as a child and after rewatching them I can now see why, the show was like the father to my 2 favorite television shows. Most of ALF’s NBC production staff went on to produce and direct Saved by the Bell and most if not all of the writing staff for the show ended up writing for the early seasons of Simpsons. This merging of genius led to a show that was not only very funny on a social observation level, but also produced a show that could tell an easy to understand tale of morals that wraps itself up in 25 minutes (sometimes 50 minutes like the Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the episode where ALF catches the burglar). After several weeks of watching ALF my position as an alpha consumer was confirmed. My dad was called in for an emergency shift at the poster company he was working for one weekend and was forced to bring me along. To keep myself occupied I brought the 2 things I got from my parents during Christmas, my red rider fire engine and my ALF plush. While pushing ALF on the fire truck down the hall for the 30th time, my dad’s boss came up to me and asked “What was that weird looking doll from.” After spending about an hour or so talking to him about the new show my dad and I watched together, my father’s boss thought this might be a worthwhile franchise to get licensing for posters and other print works.
I have a credo that I believe with all my heart, “the world would be a lot better if everyone would just shut up and take my advice” (you may call it conceited, but you know it’s true; especially if you’ve been camping or on some road trip with me that ends up in near disaster). I think I came up with this after talking to my dad’s boss, since ALF suddenly became amazingly popular in its second season. The company my dad worked for went from near bankrupt to one of the biggest poster printers in the country. I even ended up getting an NES in early-mid 1987 from my dad (which furthered my alpha consumer status as all my other friends got a Nintendo in 1988-1989 or later) for “being so smart and convincing his boss to get the ALF license” (even though I still don’t understand what I really did). While I never realized what an alpha consumer was until mid-high school, I’ve seemingly been doing stuff like that quite a bit. Further examples include the time I decided to shave my entire head aside from the bangs in junior high which ended up being a pretty big trend with Asian youth in Southern California. And watching the hell out of Avatar the Last Airbender back in 2005 when all my friends called that show juvenile only to find they started loving it towards the end of the series run. Perhaps this is the reason I still run this site and do reviews because deep down I know you’d probably lost without my guidance. Just admit it, you would be... Or at least lie to make me feel good.
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