The prop and costume departments were inept

Why can't they ever get things right for movies set in the past, especially when it was only a few decades ago?

I've lived in Central Maine all my life, and I was 14 years old in 1989, so I know how things were back then for Maine kids that were the age of the characters in this movie. Here are some things that were highly unlikely or impossible:

- The 1980 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am. That car was in perfect cosmetic condition; no rust, good paint, high-end tires (BF Goodrich Radial T/As). That was about a $5,000 or $6,000 car in 1989. High-school hicks didn't have cars like that. They typically had $500 to $1,000 cars. Shitty late '70s or early '80s compacts and subcompacts were common, such as Ford Escorts, Chevrolet Chevettes, Ford Fiestas, Dodge Omnis, K-cars, etc. Cheap, rear-wheel-drive American cars from the '70s were particularly common among hicks, such as Chevrolet Novas and Dodge/Plymouth Aspens/Volares. They were usually the 6-cylinder versions or the smallest V8 option (e.g., 305 or 318), and they usually had "plans" to install a bigger engine. Also, cars in Maine rust like it's their job. Rusty cars were conspicuous by their absence in this movie.

- Kids didn't ride ancient bikes. They rode contemporary BMXs (especially the "Freestyle" variants, which were all the rage at the time), 10-speeds, and "mountain bikes", which were just starting to become popular at the time. Also, the vast majority of bikes that kids in Maine had were cheap department store bikes. Unless the family was well off, most parents didn't want to spend $200 or more on a big-name bike from a real bike shop when "just as good" bikes could be had from a department store for $100 or less. At least one of those BMXs in the movie was at least from the mid 1990s, and high-end.

- Kids didn't wear glasses with thick, black plastic BCG-like frames. Most glasses back then were metal-framed, and the plastic ones had thin frames that were usually clear/clearish plastic.

- No kid wore cowboy boots unless they wanted to be the laughing stock of the school.

- Kids didn't wear button-up shirts made of woven dress-shirt material in the summer, and generally, not at all, unless it was school pictures day or something. Also, ringer T-shirts and 3/4-sleeve baseball shirts mostly went out of style in the early 1980s.

- The term "mullet" as a name for a type of hairstyle didn't exist in 1989. I first heard that term used in the early 2000s on the internet. Also, even if the term did exist back then (it didn't), it wouldn't make sense to use it as an insult, since it was a very popular hairstyle at the time. It didn't have a name. To get a "mullet" you just went to the barber or hairdresser and told them to cut the top and sides, but don't touch the back. That one's the fault of the script writer of course.

- The Freese's department store T-shirt. Though it was cool to see a reference to Freese's, which was a department store in Bangor that hadn't crossed my mind in about 30 years, I doubt that T-shirts with their name printed on them ever existed. I've certainly never seen one before.

- IMDb lists Bangor as one of the filming locations, yet they couldn't manage to film the real Paul Bunyan statue? And barring that, the prop department couldn't make one that at least looked like the real one?

- Street Fighter was a shitty game that was so obscure that most people wondered what game Street Fighter II was supposed to be a sequel to when it became a huge hit in the early '90s.

- The Sony Trinitron stereo TV was high-end and very expensive. It was very much out of place in the house of a woman who drove a 10-year-old AMC Pacer.

One good thing about this movie is that the actors didn't try to fake a Maine accent, because no actor that I've ever seen has ever done an even remotely believable job of it. A neutral American accent is perfectly valid for Maine anyway. I have a neutral accent and probably half of all Mainers do as well. In my immediate family, my brother, younger sister, and I all have neutral accents, while my father, mother, and older sister have prominent Maine accents.