1984-1986: Transformers
1986-1990: Nintendo Entertainment System
1987-1990: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
1989-1994: Sega Genesis
1993-2000: The X-Files
1995-2000: Nine Inch Nails
1999-2002: Sega Dreamcast
2000-2005: The King of Fighters
2001-2005: The Lord of the Rings
2004-present: Doctor Who
nine inch nails is a pop obsession now?
shoot me.
It’s certainly pop culture!
I’m just observing that over the course of my life I seem to fixate roughly on one subject after another. When I feel like I’ve milked one about as far as it’ll go, I move on to another focus. Yet each subject remains in arm’s reach, even long after I stop using it as my basis of comparison for everything.
A few biggies — Uncle Scrooge, Tintin — aren’t accounted for, as there’s no solid start or endpoint. They’re just sort of always there.
I don’t know what engaged me for the first six years of my life. Before 1984, I just get flashes.
mine would certainly have radiohead in there then. now i’m all tempted to make one. but there’d probably be a lot more overlap and embarrassment.
Prior to age 15 or so, I was not as good at keeping things in reach when I moved on; things grew forgotten or hidden in some corner of my mind. (However, my brother, being 6 years younger, often provided a useful ‘echo’ as a reminder.)
I could list years, but it would require more cross-referencing of things like catalogues than I willing to do at the moment.
Briefly, more or less in order: Brio, Duplo, Transformers, Space Lego, Star Trek, Technic Lego, Simpsons (on and off and on and off), Star Wars, TIE Fighter (the game), X-Files (on and off and on and meh), film scores (principally John Williams), Futurama, … and other things I’m surely forgetting …
that brings me more or less to the end of high school, from which point my ability to get passionate (or obsessive) faded and not many topics could continuously excite me for long enough to be worth repeating here.
I could have put NES, SNES, N64 on there but really I was only ever obsessed with a small handful of games on each, and each for only a few months at a time (but recurring); not the breadth of the system.
Trying to come up with this list has put me in a really weird headspace and I think I should stop trying to pry open the locks on too many memories at once.
Oh, hey! Yes, I perfectly well remember my Lego obsession up through the mid-’80s…
I don’t think it was until I hit college that I started to really go back through and reassemble my past obsessions.
Starting around age 17, I can remember certain points when I refreshed my knowledge of past (pre-teenage) obsessions. Not usually to the degree of “reassembling” (certainly not in the case of Lego, tempting though it is), but various things stick in my present mind more with each refreshing.