When I think about the 1980s, a surprising number of my memories involve the font Cooper Black. Bubbly, buoyant, cartoony and huggable, Cooper Black embodies the candy-colored 1980s better than any other font.

Cooper Black first came to national attention in the 1960s and 1970s as "the rock star font." It was used on the record cover for the Beach Boys album "Pet Sounds," as well as for the cover art for "LA Woman" by the Doors, and later for the cover of the David Bowie album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."

Oh how far a font has fallen. Once counter-cultural and cutting edge, Cooper Black found itself known as "the Garfield font" in the 1980s. Non-threatening; cuddly, even. Suitable for use on both candy wrappers and tepid sitcoms. One might even say that Cooper Black's cultural softening and decline mirrors that of the Baby Boomers themselves.

Cooper Black's most iconic 1980s usage was as "the Garfield font." It is the font that the comic's title is set in, and is emblazoned across the covers of the Garfield books which proliferated in the 1980s. In this sense, Cooper Black is somewhat similar to today's font scourge, Comic Sans.

From Garfield, Cooper Black spread to Top Ramen and Tootsie Rolls, both also iconic 80s products themselves. In a mild yellow shade, it served as the end credits font for a number of shows, most notably "Cheers" and "M.A.S.H."

In a less formal sense, Cooper Black was also the traditional font of choice for shopping mall t-shirt shops. It's difficult to explain these shops to youngsters today. You kind of had to be there. These shops were sort of like a real-world version of Café Press, except that you could get shirts in any color, and they had sparkle effects, too. Also, these t-shirt shops had a characteristic smell of slightly scorched cotton mingled with overheated plastic from the iron-on transfers. Just thinking about it makes me nostalgic.

In a process similar to that of choosing a tattoo, you would walk into the shop and start flipping through a gigantic three-ring binder full of art. Once you picked your artwork (I had one with a sparkly unicorn's head surrounded with flowers), you could choose any wording you wanted to have on the shirt, as well. Perhaps your name, or a funny 1980s slogan like "Hang in there, kid!" or "Wax On, Wax Off." Then you picked your shirt size and color, and waited while they ironed it up for you.

In hindsight, "iron-on transfer stores" were probably one of the stranger cottage industries of the 1980s. But oh, they were popular. An echo of this practice can be seen in Napoleon Dynamite, with the "Vote for Pedro" shirts.

Cooper Black has seen a minor resurgence in recent years for its use in image macros like LOLcats. However, by this point Arial Black has pretty much settled in as the default image macro font.