Molly BMy husband has been rewatching #Babylon5. Today at lunch he texted me a blurry screenshot: apparently my favorite beverage from the 1990s has a resurgence in the 2250s! #futureRetro
Marc Criley@mjibrower I remember when that made its first appearance on B5. rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 completely blew up! 😂
@MarcC In a good way or a bad way? (btw, I read that to him as rec dot arts dot sf dot tv dot babylon5 and barely got through it because we were both laughing so hard by the end)
@mjibrower It was like, "OMG Zima????" with much incredulity and laughter. JMS, who was active on the forum, basically said, "Hey, they paid for product placement."
Yes, that is *exactly* how it was pronounced, or if you were in a hurry, rastb5.
@MarcC That is interesting--see the reply from @q_aurelius. :-) Isn't it wild how we remember these things? I remember threads from STREK-L and recipes from rec.arts.cooking. Please don't ask me where I put my keys two hours ago, though.
T.C. HarrisWelp, now I'm going to have to see if I can look this up.
(to be clear, because it could go either way. memory is weird, not so I can try to prove someone wrong lol)
That was easier than I thought lol
From: [email protected]
Date: 21 May 1994 18:32:42 -0400
Babylon 5 (the show) got not a dime for sticking in the Zima sign.
We just thought...well, it'd be funny.
...
Actually, the idea of Zima lasting even into 1995 is hysterical. I
keep fighting the urge to have some guy show up on B5, "Zo then I zays to
him, nize ztation"...and five Narns just jump on him and beat the shit
out of him
Kevin Gamin@mjibrower By coincidence, I happen to be ripping my B5 Season 5 DVDs to my Plex media server.
And, according to JMS, they just happened to have that ZIMA sign lying around, so they threw it onto the bar set. 😜
@kevingamin That is AWESOME.
A. P. Howell@mjibrower The Zima thing was delightfully bizarre. Dating itself as we watched.
@aphowell Clearly we thought Zima would be around FOREVER! (It lives on in my heart, anyway.)
John BurnsI've thought about doing a rewatch of B5 myself... but I have so many others I want to do first...
Too much content. So little time.
@JohnJBurnsIII I didn't watch it the first time around, but he and his friend Bob did (iirc, that was when I did my library school homework). So I don't have any particular nostalgia around it... unless it involves hearing it in the background while I was working on Advanced Cataloging assignments. :-)
It was different than the other Sci-fi at the time.
The closest show that I would say it came to was: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine...
They both ran at similar times - so likely some writer blocks were solved by...
@JohnJBurnsIII I did watch DS9 at that time. It was on Sunday nights here.
Eric McCorkle@mjibrower Holy fuck! I have remembered that being in there for like, three decades, and never been certain I wasn't misremembering it!
Was that the beverage that did the commercials where opening it - caused everything to ICE up...
@JohnJBurnsIII I think that was one that was actually called ICE. Smirnoff, maybe?
I remember when this aired, the people in the forums were SO ANGRY about "selling out" and "product placement" and the explanation from JMS was essentially "wouldn't it be funny if, of all things, Zima were still around in 2258?"
@q_aurelius @andraste That's AMAZING.
Paul "Princejvstin" Weimer@mjibrower oh yes, it was funny at the time.