Ah, nostalgia! Be it that old cartoon, a favorite toy or a comic book from days gone by, isn’t it great, when out of the blue, the memories come flooding back, and you’ve no choice but to exclaim “Holy Crap! Remember…?”

Call me a grumpy old man, but I’ll go ahead and say it - some things nowadays just aren’t as good as they used to be. Take cartoons, for example. In my day, we had several animated shows to choose from, many of them shown on all the major networks every Saturday morning. Nowadays, it seems there are just a few cartoons still on the air, and even the really good ones like The Spectacular Spider-Man don’t seem to last too long. During the eighties and early nineties, however, kid-centric properties were numerous and unavoidable, both on television and in the comic book racks. Much of the latter was due to the prevalance of STAR Comics, a line of  books from Marvel that devoted itself to giving kids of the eighties their favorite characters in four-color form.

STAR launched in 1984 with a handful of titles based on popular cartoons of the day, from the portly feline troublemaker Heathcliff to the sadly never-to-be-on-DVD Muppet Babies. There were also several titles based on popular toy lines, such as Strawberry Shortcake and The Care Bears. Many of STAR’s initial line of titles were more or less original creations, such as Planet Terry, Wally the Wizard, and Royal Roy, many of whom were written and drawn in the vein of Harvey Comics characters like Richie Rich. Some may argue that these characters were blatant copies, but many of these original titles did not prove popular enough to stick around, thereby saving Marvel from any potential lawsuits. One of the most popular non-cartoon or toy spinoffs from STAR was Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham, which featured anthropomorphic animal versions of the entire Marvel Universe.

Later years brought many more popular properties, from Masters of the Universe and Thundercats to The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Alf. STAR seemed to jump on every cartoon or toy line that came out during the mid-eighties, which led to a lot of titles being quickly dropped by the line when the shows and toy lines failed. With more and more properties fading away, STAR Comics eventually folded in 1988. Some of its more popular titles were then absorbed by Marvel and continued to be published, just without the STAR banner.

While there are still kids’ comics on the stands today, they aren’t nearly as prevalent or available as they were during the heydey of STAR. My four-year old daughter has recently discovered the joy of reading, and thanks to a visit to a local comic shop during Free Comic Book Day, she has become interested in comic books, so I am always on the lookout for age-appropriate comics to give her. Luckily, most if not all the STAR back issues are available online or at most comic shops at very affordable prices. Not everything that they put out was great, but there’s enough 80’s nostalgia offered by STAR’s back catalog to please all young parents wanting to share a bit of their childhood with their own impressionable offspring.