When did the 80s peak?

I don’t think it’s one year it’s anytime between late 1983 to mid 1987. late 83 to mid 86 almost had everything but then was missing a few integral core 80s things. You can’t really ditch mid 1986 to mid 1987, that’s when things like freestyle music, hip hop, Nintendo started to spike in popularity, and typical 80s fashion and critical childhood cartoons and fads were in a better and richer state. You make the argument that mid 1981 to mid 1983 was a build up towards the mid 80s and that late 1987 to mid 1989 was a transition towards the early 90s, despite core holdovers or continuations.

I just think you can’t leave out mid 1986- mid 1987 that was the juiciest part of core and mid 80s pop culture . 1984 and mid 1986 to mid 1987 are equally important you can’t really sum it up all up in one year imo because there is always something integral missing for the 80s at least.

I would say it’s more like 75 percent mid 80s and 25 percent late 80s 

1984 hands down. EVERYTHING about that year screamed 80s. Hall & Oates "Out of Touch", Ghostbusters, Footloose, Sixteen Candles, Beverly Hills Cop, Rockwell "Somebody's Watching Me", and Billy Ocean "Caribbean Queen" (song gives me Vice City Stories vibes, probably because of ZacCoxTV) all came out that year. George Orwell even made a book called 1984. That's how big the year was (although Orwell was not exactly talking about the year 1984). 1985 is a close second, and 1986 was pretty 80s. All of the mid 80s were peak 80s (1983 was the building blocks of the 80s but not where EVERYTHING felt like the 80s compared to those years after, as it debatably had minor 70s influence).

70s/80s = Late 1978 - Mid 1983

Core 80s = Late 1983 - Mid 1988

80s/90s = Late 1988 - Mid 1993

Cultural early 80s = 1981 - Late 1983/Early 1984

Cultural mid 80s = Early/Mid 1984 - Mid 1987

Cultural late 80s = Late 1987 - Mid 1990

Politically speaking, the 80s probably lasted from Late 1980 - Mid 1992 (Reagan's election but before Clinton's election), or 1981 - 1991 (Reagan's inauguration to the USSR collapse), and probably peaked around 1984 once again with Morning in America.

I would say 1984. By then you had hair metal streaming into popularity with bands like Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, and Bon Jovi coming into the scene also movies that featured members of the Brat Pack like Sixteen Candles with Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. Not only that but many iconic cartoons that helped define the 80s like Transformers was also released. MTV was big, movies were awesome, and the music might’ve been cheesy at some times but it’s still better than todays. 1984 is the best year of the 80s for me. 

I used to think 1984 was the peak of 80s culture as well, however now I don’t think this all that much, since too many aspects of 80s culture had not been established yet. For a start, many of the iconic movies people associate with the decade, Back to the Future, Top Gun, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Field of Dreams, Platoon etc. were not yet released. Various 80s celebrities and musical acts such as Madonna, Charlie Sheen, Michael J. Fox, Huey Lewis, Janet Jackson etc. were not yet at their prime, yuppie culture was not yet as big as it would be in late 1985 - mid 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev was not yet the premier of the Soviet Union, and the style of music with gated reverb, drum machines and the over-the-top production that everyone associates with 80s music was not yet a thing.