Amazing!

There is nothing funnier than a conversation with friends about your favourite tv shows and toys when you were little. Out come all of the memories-- Care Bears, Thundercats, Ninja Turtles, Pound Puppies. People start singing theme songs, remembering old McDonald’s commercials with Grimace and Birdie, talking about iconic figures like Fido Dido, and suddenly you are taken back to a time where summers were spent building forts in the field by your house and when you ate way too many watermelon Jolly Ranchers.

Everything is going good, sharing the same childhood experience, until you mention that one show or that one toy that no one seems to know anything about. With your mouth falling open in surprise, you can’t believe that no one remembers Samurai Pizza Cats or Pogo Balls.

For years I have been trying to tell people all about one of my favourite shows, in the hopes that someone else would remember it, but sadly they never do. Only a segment on a show that my older brother recently remembered was Vid Kid, was Computer Man. The rest of the show was kinda lame, in fact Computer Man was lame too, but we loved to watch it. Computer Man would answer all of your questions. The host of the show would ask, “Do you have a question for Computer Man?” while flailing his arms around like a robot. Kids from the audience would ask questions of Computer Man, while pretending to be robots themselves. (I don’t really know why a robot would have to ask Computer Man questions.) Computer Man would then act out the answer to the question.

I am pretty sure that the only reasons that my brother and I remember this show at all is because we always thought the questions the kids asked were so lame. “Computer Man, how do you spell cat?” “Computer Man, do you like ice cream?” My brother and I would shake our heads in the disgust at the simple questions they were asking a computer. We would come up with elaborate math problems and wrack our 4 and 6-year-old brains to come up with a difficult question to ask Computer Man.

In reality, if we were ever actually on the show, we would probably not be able to come up with a good question for Computer Man. And as all of you who knew me in the 1980s would guess, I would probably just end up throwing up if given a chance to talk to Computer Man.

I have been searching for years for any mention on the internet of Computer Man. But of course always came up empty handed…that is until now!

A big thank you to my brother who found Computer Man for us! And now you too can share in the enjoyment that is awesome 1980s technology! “AMAZING!”