Art of the Title

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The Wonder Years (1988)

The Wonder Years
Nineteen-sixty-eight... I was twelve years old. A lot happened that year.
—Kevin Arnold
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A Super 8 home movie montage and the gravelly, soulful voice of Joe Cocker transport us to the summer of '68 – into a day in the life of the all-American Arnold family.

For those who lived through the 1960s, the song "With a Little Help from My Friends" is many things. To some, it's Ringo Starr's charmingly out of tune lone track on The Beatles' experimental album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band; to others, it's Cocker's bluesy, generation-defining rearrangement made famous by Woodstock.

But for many, because of a show called The Wonders Years, the song became something else. It became an entry point into that vibrant and tumultous time in world history for those of us who grew up after it. Sure, the Arnold family wasn't our family, but the home movies made the scene seem familiar, made it feel comfortable. They offered many of us a grainy window into the lives that our parents and grandparents may have lived, a reassuring picture of an uncertain time that, thanks to young Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and his future self (Daniel Stern), suddenly didn't seem so different from our own.

  • Credits

Title Designer: uncredited

Music:
"With a Little Help from My Friends"
by John Lennon and Paul McCartney (Sung by Joe Cocker)

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Title sequence

  • Category

    TV
  • Styles

    1980s, 2D, live action, main title, montage, nostalgic, type over scene
The Wonder Years
  • Creators

    Neal Marlens
    Carol Black
  • Release Date

    January 31, 1988
  • Aspect Ratio

    1.33:1
  • Network

    ABC
  • Country

    USA
  • Language

    English
  • IMDb has full details

Article

  • Writer

    Will Perkins
  • Editor

    Lola Landekic
  • Published

    December 23, 2014

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