Aired from 1985 to 1988, the show featured the singer Jem and her band The Holograms.
A popular Saturday-morning animated series supported the doll line. The Jem line of rock n' roll fashion dolls stood 12.5 inches high and, unlike Barbie, they had large feet and jointed bodies the better to display their very 80s outrageous, lame-laden outfits, wild hair colors and dos, and exotic make-up schemes. In an attempt to grab some of Barbie's market share, Hasbro introduced Jem and the Holograms in 1986. Don’t go in expecting much however and be prepared for some “so sweet” saccharine moments that are hard to stomach…and guess what Jem always wins.During the 1960s and the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, toy maker Hasbro fumed while Mattel's Barbie became more and more popular. I do think that the basic concepts would hold up for younger kids who haven’t seen the show and it is a nice show to return to if you haven’t seen it since you were little. The episodes are short and predictable and they quickly get repetitive, but most ’80s cartoons are like that (though the series does have some surprisingly long continuing storyline episodes). The lyrics are awful, the titles are awful, and the “videos” look like clichés of videos from the time…it is the best part of the show. The songs are great ’80s pop in the vein of Debbie Gibson or Tiffany. The show started out with three songs an episode, but often cut down to two by the end of the first season (with a replay at the end of the two songs). Yeah….a song by the kids from the Starlight kids…ughĮach episode highlights songs by Jem or by the Misfits. It is cheesy and often doesn’t make sense…Synergy seems to be able to do anything, but Jerrica and her friends “forget” to use her often, and it really could get them out of problems (like just have Synergy contact the police half the time…or as seen in the shipwrecked episode, they could have just let Synergy alert people that they are stranded on an island). The series is essentially presented as a “super hero” story with Jem having a secret identity (an idea later used in the Miley Cyrus series Hannah Montana).
Rewatching Jem shows that the series is a great reflection of what was popular in the ’80s and how corporates saw “pop music”. I didn’t watch Jem very often however (mostly because it didn’t air at a time when I could see it).
That being said, it didn’t mean that boys never watched the series…I watched She-Ra rather regularly due to my love of He-Man. Joe, Transformers, and He-Man were for boys and She-Ra, Jem, and My Little Pony were for girls…in the ’80s.
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