Reviving the '80s

By ROGER G. SMITH
CITY HALL REPORTER
NTHONY KOBAK AND HIS wife, Julie Mika, were driving to Columbus one day in 1997 when a familiar song came over the radio.
The song was "We're Not Gonna Take It" by a quintessential 1980s hair band, Twisted Sister.
Mika remembered the odd video, in which a father asks his son what he's going to do with his life. The kid responds, "I wanna rock!" Rock 'n' Roll mayhem ensues.
Kobak remembered the video, too. From that, the couple -- both now 32 -- traded recollections of songs and videos from their teen years. They were playing the first version of a 1980s music video trivia game.
They just didn't know it.
Years later, those songs and accompanying over-the-top videos are the basis of a trivia game the Youngstown couple created that arrived recently on store shelves nationwide.
A national distributor and owner of 1,000 music stores around the country recently picked up the game, called Video Rewind.
The game now is stocked in 90 music stores in 30 states. Locally, the game retails for $19.99 and is available at CD Warehouse stores in Boardman and Niles.
The game's premise is simple. The 520 game cards have the names of bands or singers, their '80s videos and other information. One player has to describe the video while others guess the song title, artist and other facts. Correct answers win points, and the player with the most points wins.
Children of the '80s
How the couple ended up creating an '80s-focused game isn't hard to see.
They are children of the '80s, among those whose teen years coincided with big hair and skinny ties, video games and MTV. The music and videos, particularly, are burned into the memories of their demographic, they said.
"They were really bizarre and odd videos," Kobak said.
Almost as decade later, nostalgia for the '80s was just starting to creep into popular culture, he said.
The couple decided to get serious about the game two years after that car trip and challenging friends to guess artists and songs with descriptions like: "The music video shows her working out with a bunch of fat, sweaty guys." [Olivia Newton-John, "Physical"]
They created a prototype, which mostly involved making up the game cards. Mika came up with much of the material from memory.
"I thought, 'God, I must have watched a lot of TV,'" she said.
Costs and competition
The next step was tough, one that few of the many people with ideas for board games ever get past.
Having a board game produced costs tens of thousands of dollars. Kobak and Mika were saving to buy a house but instead decided to invest in their idea and paid to make 1,000 games.
Marketing the product was even harder. The fight for shelf space in national retailers is fierce.
"You're competing against Milton-Bradley and Parker Brothers," Kobak said.
The couple got their game into a few local stores and sold 150 of them at a large regional craft show in late 1999, which gave the pair hope. An Internet site, videorewind.net, brought sales trickling in.
"I think it validated all the time and money we put in," Kobak said.
Renewed efforts
In the meantime, real life interrupted.
In 2000, the couple moved from the Cleveland area to Youngstown, where Kobak is the city's chief planner. They bought a house. Mika, a speech therapist, decided to stay home when their two children, Josephine, 2, and Ella, 8 months, were born.
They renewed their marketing efforts this year, however, peppering game buyers with inquiries. Finally, a buyer from a national distributor became interested in Video Rewind.
Kobak has no idea why the game caught the buyer's attention this year while many others didn't.
Video Rewind arrived on shelves a few weeks ago and sales the first few weeks are encouraging enough, he said. Some stores already sold out of their first half-dozen copies; others haven't moved any.
In February, the couple goes to New York to display Video Rewind at the American International Toy Fair, the largest industry show in the country. There, they will try to persuade buyers to put the game into stores permeating the county.
Reliving the era
The couple thinks now is just the right time because the '80s are hot.
The VH1 network has not one but two series recalling the '80s. Background music in commercials feature '80s-era tunes. "The '80s Show" had a very brief run on the Fox network recently. Kids toys from the '80s, such as Strawberry Shortcake dolls, are making a comeback, Mika said. Clothes won't be far behind, she said.
Fondness for the '80s will wane eventually, but Mika and Kobak are confident that true nostalgia never dies, giving their game staying power.
"We really don't know how long it will last," Kobak said. "A segment of the population [always] is going to be from the '80s. It's part of who you are."
rgsmith@vindy.com