Solid Gold

Can somebody explain this Golden Girls thing to me?

I was around when the Golden Girls was on TV, and it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't M*A*S*H or The Cosby Show or Seinfeld or Friends or Happy Days or even Gilligan's Island. It was a middling sitcom in an age when sitcoms were the dominant form of TV show, so there were tons of them...in fact, there were even tonnes of them...that's right, I spelled it the Canadian way for emphasis.

Yet, here we are years later, and every one of those old shows has diminished to a level of appreciation that is far below what the Golden Girls gets now. What the hell is going on?

I think it's got to do with Millennials. They seem to be the ones that are driving this phenomena, but, then again, I could be wrong about that. Why is there so much talk about a show that went off the air 30 years ago and was never really all that popular when it was around?

They've made action figures of them, both crappy throwback style ReAction figures:

And fancy, highly detailed Neca figures with actual soft goods cloths:

They've made bobbleheads of them:

The guy who did BoJack Horseman did a version of one of the episodes where he set the show in 3033, and did a cartoon with the actual sound from an old Golden Girls episode.

And it just keeps coming. The other day at work, I had to edit a kicker story about how a Golden Girls themed pop-up restaurant has opened in Beverly Hills, themed to look like the kitchen from the show.

And that stuff in no means makes an exhaustive list of the love for this show that has poured out over the last five years or so. Is it just because Betty White lived so long and kept making appearances despite her advanced age? And if that is why, then why has it continued so long after her death? 

Or is it just the ironic thing that Millennials foisted upon the world? Is it an ironic thing that they started way back when, acting like they loved the Golden Girls even though they knew it was a show about women living in a retirement home from the eighties and kids in their twenties shouldn't ever for a second think it was cool, but then it grew out of control, and now everybody doesn't know it's just supposed to be ironic anymore?

Yesterday, I was walking through the store, and I found the ultimate expression of this Golden Girls craziness.

That's right, those are Fisher Price Little People versions of the Golden Girls. Yes, those are toys that are meant for children under five. They're big around and chunky like that so that kids can't choke on them, because the kids who play with them are still young enough that they might stuff them down their throat and choke on them.

Little People started branching out into branded figures a while back, making characters of things that the children who played with their toys were likely to know about like Superman and Disney Princesses. But who are these for? Kids under five DO NOT KNOW THE GOLDEN GIRLS! Even if they did, they wouldn't understand them at all. It's the kind of show you put on to get the child under five to want to leave the room, not one that they want their own toys of to play with.

Somebody please explain this Golden Girls craze to me. I just don't understand.