Parents and students stopped by the Old Snack Bar on Saturday for a 1980s-themed event featuring vintage video games and custom cassette tapes. 

The Student Activities Board–hosted event gave participants a chance to revel in ’80s nostalgia.

“I thought the event was such an awesome idea, since I think young people today kind of yearn for the ’80s,” sophomore Lenora Schupbach said. “It was also super cool because a lot of parents were there since it was parents’ weekend, and it was cute to see them reminiscing and showing off their ’80s knowledge since they lived it.”

Attendees ate pizza, played vintage board games, and competed in top ’80s music hits trivia.

“I was super pumped about it,” sophomore Ross Phelps said. “I do have some sort of affinity for older things and am kind of a nostalgic person for the ’80s, even though I didn’t live it.” 

Phelps headed the planning for the event and said he wanted the night to be as vintage as possible. 

“I was really thrilled that we were able to make most things from the ’80s, and I think the parents really enjoyed that too,” Phelps said. “There were lots of parents who came over there, like, ‘I had that when I was a kid,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s exactly what I want to hear.’”

Junior Gabe Beckwith helped organize the event and attended with his dad. 

“My dad didn’t hesitate to play ‘Super Mario Bros’ on the Nintendo, which was funny,” Beckwith said. “Also, my dad kind of jumped up in between rounds on the Nintendo because he recognized the music video for one of his favorite bands, Scorpions. They were singing ‘Wind of Change,’ and so he thought that was awesome. I think he sent a photo to my mom.”

Phelps said he owns a variety of music equipment, cameras, and games from the ’80s that he used to decorate the event, including a vintage record player and several records that he set up at the entrance. 

“The first shift for setup was just five people coming to my room and taking all the things out, so it was handy that we had it all in one place,” Phelps said.

Phelps also found an old Nintendo Entertainment System on Facebook Marketplace. 

“I don’t know the exact year, but it was from the early ’80s,”  Phelps said. “You could play games like ‘Super Mario Bros’ or ‘The Legend of Zelda’ on it, and it was basically the first home console. My dad played on it when he was young, and my mom would go over to her friend’s house and play the games that we had at the event.”

On another table, Phelps set up a cassette player, some blank cassettes, and the materials to create J cards, which are similar to an album cover, for the cassettes. Parents and students could design the J card and take the cassette home as a memento.

“My friend and I decorated personalized tapes for each other. We’re each going to put songs that make us think of each other onto them and then exchange them,” Schupbach said. “It will probably be something I treasure my whole life.”

Phelps said one of the moms at the event made a J-card picturing the DeLorean time machine from “Back to the Future.”

“I own two recording devices, but I told people, if they really wanted to, they could write a list of songs, and then I could take their cassette and record it for them,” Phelps said.

SAB chose the Old Snack Bar as the event’s venue because of its age, according to Phelps.

 “A lot of the parents lived in the ’80s and are alumni who grew up going to Hillsdale when the snack bar was actually a snack bar with a kitchen, all that kind of stuff,” Phelps said. “I knew from the moment that we would that we settled on the idea of the ’80s night that we wanted to do it in the snack bar.”

The SAB creative team painted a geometric neon backdrop and set up lighting for pictures. 

“I also had a Polaroid camera that is from the ’80s,” Phelps said. “It was maybe ’86 I think, and it was refurbished, so it works really well, but we shot a lot of Polaroid film there, too.”

SAB organized ’80s music trivia for the last half of the event, according to Phelps. 

“We would play the first four or five seconds of a song, and people were trying to guess the artist and the title of the song, which ended up being really fun,” Phelps said. “Everyone who was there at that time participated.”

The winner received a vintage “Back to the Future” movie poster.

“My dad and some of the other dads were either naming songs or singing along to them,” Beckwith said. 

Planning the event went smoothly, according to Phelps. 

Roughly 60 parents and students showed up to enjoy the ’80s nostalgia throughout the night.

“This was our proof of concept for doing a decade themed event. And I think it has a lot of potential in the future,” Beckwith said. “I feel like we brought the Old Snack Bar back to life.”