If you didn't know that tidbit of back story, would you get the sense it was set in the 80s?
Decades/eras have specific looks. You can glance at most things from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s and tell the difference. It's in clothes. It's in furniture. It's in music. It's in the look and feel. To do that though, the era has to be baked into the design from the very beginning. If the only way you know the time period is a throwaway line, then it was never designed to be during that period or it's just a poorly designed piece of art.
Point being- the 80s aspect was something that just kinda happened that A&D and Marketing decided to lean into. It wasn't a "theme." This year definitely won't have a theme tied to an era .