The best TV shows and movies were made in the Eighties

Perhaps that’s a bit of an overstatement, but I hope I can be forgiven for suffering from nostalgia. You see, much of my childhood took place in the Eighties and I grew up watching Ghostbusters, The A-Team, The Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider, among others. Last year I built the A-Team van, but in the last few months, instead of building new stuff, I have mainly been updating my existing LEGO models. About a month ago, however, seeing Ghostbusters for the umpteenth time inspired me to build something brand-new: Ecto-1. The great response and many suggestions I got from members of the flickr community as well as car models by builders such as Alex Jones (Orion Pax) and Stephan Sander have lead to something of a new theme for me. In the last two weeks I have added K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider and The General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard to my collection of cars from Eighties movies and TV shows.

Cars from the eighties

Ghostbusters is still brilliant, but I’m not too nostalgic to realise that much of the acting in the TV shows was a bit rubbish and that their plots were instantly forgettable. The cars used in the shows were definitely memorable, however, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of fun building some more.

8 comments on “The best TV shows and movies were made in the Eighties

  1. Ralph Post author

    ^I had to google that. I am not sure that was ever on TV in the Netherlands, because I don’t remember seeing it before. The ones I’ve got in mind at the moment are the Bluesmobile and Airwolf. The latter isn’t a car obviously, but I rather like building helicopters.

  2. Barman76

    Great. Looking forward seeing the Bluesmobile and Airwolf. If you’re building Airwolf, I also recomment building Bluethunder. The movie and serie were great. I liked it better than Airwolf.

  3. alldarker

    …And if you’re into motorbikes, you should probably not forget to do Street Hawk and CHiPs (wow, only now do I find out that only 13 episodes of Street Hawk were ever made).

  4. Ralph Post author

    ^^I agree that in many respects Blue Thunder was more interesting. As a child, I even used to have a model kit of the helicopter. Unfortunately, however, it was dark blue, which is an awkward colour to work with.

    ^Thanks for the suggestions. I’m not familiar with Street Hawk, but CHiPs has definitely crossed my mind.

  5. proudlove

    I’d love to see your take on the GMC from, “The Fall Guy,” as well. I’ve always loved your pick-up trucks the most.

  6. x_Speed

    Hey Ralph, really nice! I’m everytime really impressed how you make it to make doors to be opened!

    I really should update my homepage more often… The GMC Pickup is still not online :(
    http://x-brick.de

  7. Ralph Post author

    ^^Thanks buddy. I wasn’t a big fan of that particular show, but the truck would make for a nice model. Not easy though. I think the crease in the side panels will be tricky.

    ^Thanks for replying. I don’t think I could do a better job on the looks than you do. I’m always very impressed by your attention to detail and the clever way you use parts to get the shapes right. If anything sets my models apart (besides me not hiding studs, obviously) it is that I always try to have opening doors and whatnot. In fact, doing those bits is probably what I enjoy most about these builds.

    You should update your website. It’s not quite right that another website has better pictures of them than you do!

    Flickr has taken a bit of a beating over its recent updates, but in addition to your website, I’d recommend you get yourself a flickr account. It is easy to update, many more people will see your models and they’ll give you feedback -which I expect to be generally raving. It would also makes it easy for me to blog your stuff ;-)

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