Side note, since I’m going tangential about Menards riffs that possibly haven’t aged well:
I see that there’s ANOTHER film from The Giant Spider Invasion and Monster A Go-Go mastermind Bill Rebane, The Alpha Incident.
Apparently, it features Menards pitchman Ray Szmanda as “The Official”. If MST3K ever covers this, I hold out the fragilest of hopes for a barrage of Menards riffs.
Thing is: almost everyone in the U.S. would be familiar with some big box chain store, even if not this one in particular. Where I’m from, it would’ve been Two Guys, Mays, Martin Paints, etc. So if you hear a joke like the one from Spider you likely have enough context to fill in the blanks for yourself.
Oh, and this windows rap is gold. The guys over at Found Footage Film Festival introduced it to me. <3
As far as riffs that I wonder how long they’ll be recognized it’s mostly references to the style of voiceover, dialogue, music cues, etc. that happened in old TV shows, such as the recurring “my boss, always [doing something]” (Max from Hart to Hart), “What’s this?!?” (narration from the '60s Batman), the “dah-dunt-dah-dunt” whenever they reference Mannix, etc.
I feel like the unfortunate amount of transphobic jokes will probably get brought up a lot in this thread. From a nonbinary person: I hear ‘em and I hate ‘em. I get that it was a different time, but it just feels too mean.
Other than that, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die is one of my favorites, but the one crack about Kurt Cobain when a needle is shown… yikes. And he died only a few months after the episode aired, which just makes it worse.
Werewolf has a few of those ‘wouldnt be allowed today’ moments too. From bodyshaming to references to the Indian workers ( as opposed to native Americans ) to the kind of crass comments about the leading lady etc. It was ok at the time and I can see both sides of the argument, but I’m more for the side that says ‘yeah it happened and you couldn’t make it the same way today, but it should stand on its own merits’
What came to mind is a sketch. I don’t remember which film it was even featured in, but either one of the Gamera or Godzilla movies, and it involves Joel wearing novelty glasses that are something along these lines of the photo in this blog post. Oh dear.
I haven’t lived in the Midwest since the 80’s but I love the Menards references.
I’m more or less the same age as the original hosts, and even I think some of the references in the old eps are too dated. I remember remarking to a younger friend while the show was still in first run that no one under a certain age would get half the jokes (all those old commercial references, oy!)
But I guess that falls under ‘the right people will get it’, maybe.
But I’m happy to see newer eps, not just because it’s more MST for me, but because I want there to be jokes that only people younger than I am will get.
As far as the mean-spirited jokes, gotta say that it went way up when Joel left. Mike just has an edgier/meaner sense of humor than Joel does. Not that there weren’t mean jokes in the Joel era, there were, there were just more after he left.
Yeah-- I watched an episode recently (don’t recall which) in which Joel says something along the lines of “ah sooo…” when an Asian character is on screen and I think I physically grimaced. Yikes. No.
In Space Mutiny when the guy who tries to blow the whistle on the mutiny phones someone and the riff is “I’m calling to check on my gender” – that’s one that when I was a callow youth of 20ish I thought was hilarious but now that I know things, I wish I could excise it from the episode. In fact, I sometimes wish for a magic button I could press to remove specific jokes from several episodes.
If any of you have an LBGTQ young person in your life, you may know what I mean – there are things I’d like to share with them while they’re young but I don’t want MST3K to bring any more judgment into their life. I could use it as a teaching moment I suppose, but I don’t want to. It’s not Reading Rainbow. I just want them to love it as much as I do.
Nowadays (or at least as of a few years ago), they aired ads with a jingle that goes, “Save big money at Menard’s!”
I’d love to see MST3K work that jingle in one way or another, but heh, but then again, I’m a sucker for a good running joke. 
Yet… if you watch a sketch like the kids’ show one where G. Gordon Liddy guest stars, it’s very easy to get what you’d need to know about him from the sketch itself.
They do have some timeless moments, too. The interfaith Seder sketch makes me howl every time. There’s an element of truth to it, and yet if I and my sibs and cousins had misbehaved that much as young IRL attendees our folks would’ve skinned us alive! 
I recall reading an interview with Joel where he explained his original vision was that MST3K would be like SNL, in that it was to be generational and each generation would have it’s host (something not fully realized until recently). I think these “outdated” jokes and riffs follow that and were for that audience at that time. To be sure, some riffs may be offensive by today’s standards and I’m not ignoring that.
In time, some of the riffs made by Jonah and/or Emily and the bots will seem outdated.
I personally find a lot of charm in the old references, but I’m an old soul so I get most of them. YMMV
The “you die, Joe!” running gag strikes me as offensive too.
Indeed. I’m not much of a fan of Seasons 11 & 12, and I recognize at least part of it has to be not getting a lot of references or even the attributes of modern comedy.
There is a riff from one of the Season 11 episodes, I can’t remember which one, that refers to Game of Thrones. That somehow feels incredibly dated, even more so than some of the riffs from the original run.
Watching The Space Children was kind of disappointing for this reason. It was the first time I remember thinking I could write better jokes. That’s the worst feeling, like something that you love is not being given the attention it deserves. Pretty heady (or heart-y) for MST3K, but you really want the jokes to work.
The one vague joke I actually understood was in Phantom Planet. A flamboyantly dressed priest is finishing a conversation with someone and Mike says, “And that’s why I look like Quentin Crisp.” I just happened to know who he was. Not on purpose.
A huge proportion of cultural artefacts from the past contain something that can be objected to by someone. Movies, books, songs, TV shows, plays, operas, articles, essays, whatever.
The original MST3K was made by young people in an earlier era. If you can’t think of anything you said or did in the past that doesn’t make you cringe, you need to seek medical help for that amnesia.
If they were doing similar gags today, well, that’s a different and properly serious issue.
Was it Time Travelers when Jonah says the landscape is like Game of Thrones but just the Dothraki parts?