Saw a Dragon Ball Z ad on YouTube today and suddenly I’m eight years old again, racing home from school to catch the latest episode, arguing with friends about whether Goku could beat Superman, and spending my little bits of pocket money saved up, on action figures I’d pose in epic battles across my bedroom floor.
Move aside The Undertaker. Goku is here.
It’s weird though. One thirty second ad unlocked an entire vault of vivid memories I didn’t even know I still had.
The anticipation of waiting a week to see if Frieza would finally be defeated.
The pure joy of watching someone power up for five episodes straight. The joke was always “How many Saiyans would it take to change a light bulb?”
“One, but it would take 15 episodes to get done…”
The way DBZ made everything feel possible and epic and larger than life seems to be the super power we’re lacking nowadays.
It’s crazy that for a moment, you’re not just remembering being young.
You ARE young again, feeling all those emotions with the same intensity.
We need to learn to bake some sort of nostalgia into our work.
Look at how Stranger Things doesn’t just set itself in the 80s, it makes you feel like you’re experiencing the 80s for the first time, especially the first bit of Dungeons & Dragons in their basement…
Or the way certain video games use pixel art not because it’s cheaper, but because it triggers that specific emotional response from childhood gaming.
I know we can reference nostalgic things.
But more importantly, we need to reference nostalgic feelings.
The anticipation of Saturday morning cartoons. The taste of birthday cake at eight years old. The way Christmas morning felt when you still believed in magic.
Yeah yeah, Nostalgia is a blast from the past but do you remember the emotions?
That’s what we need to tap into
If we manage that. We’ll have people hooked before they even understand why.
And if for a moment we can make them feel eight years old again, we’ve won.
Stephen Walker.