Pity the fool who thought Mr. T was history.

The muscle-bound, mohawk-coiffed star of the explosive '80s TV show "The A-Team'' has blasted back onto TV screens. Recently, the actor born Lawrence Tureaud has appeared on national shows including "Late Night With Conan O'Brien'' and "The Howard Stern Show.''

He has been spotted doing plugs for 1-800-COLLECT phone service, Lipton foods and the TV Land cable network. Last week, people were peddling nearly 200 Mr. T memorabilia items on eBay -- from bobbing-head dolls to board games to air fresheners.

But just in case you've missed him: Yes, he still has a mohawk. Yes, he still wears a vault's worth of gold chains around his neck. And yes, fool, he still has no patience for jibber-jabber.

You might think it would hurt him not to change his look to fit the times. But Mr. T's frozen '80s image apparently makes him a prime candidate for a comeback.

"The general things we identify as Mr. T are still there. It looks like the guy never left,'' said Robert Thompson, professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University. "You can have your nostalgia but not feel older.''

Nostalgia, which generally runs in 20-year-cycles, has swung into the '80s. And Mr. T is one of that decade's most powerful figures, Thompson said.

When "The A-Team'' made its run from 1983 to 1987, most action heroes were pretty boys, such as Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck in "Magnum, P.I.'') and Michael Knight (David Hasselhoff in "Knight Rider''). With his gruff one-liners -- "Shut up fool'!'' for instance -- Mr. T stood out. In fact, when "The A-Team'' came out, recalls Thompson, its advertisements showed Mr. T calling all the other action heroes on TV wimps.

"Right off the bat this guy was the modern prototype of the WWF (World Wrestling Federation),'' Thompson said.

"He was the tough guy, he was cool,'' said Katie Jensen, 21, who was a fan of "The A-Team'' in elementary school. The University of Wisconsin at Madison senior and her younger sister even collected Mr. T stickers. "He was an icon of the '80s.''

In the millennium, the man whose A-Team character hated to fly is taking off in cyberspace. Mr. T has become a cybercult hero, in large part thanks to young adult fans who grew up with "The A-Team.'' Hundreds of Webmasters have created mock story lines that pit Mr. T against everyone from Elmo to the Klingon Empire.

The sites typically depict Mr. T saving the world, or at least the local youth center, from some other pop culture figure. The creators use blurry clips from A-Team shows with inserted dialogue bubbles that draw heavily on phrases like "Pity the fool'' and "Don't jibber-jabber.'' For instance, Mr. T says to Austin Powers, "Dat '60s fool is going down.'' To Eminem: "Dat fool done bust his last rhyme. Now I bust him.'' To anime character Sailor Moon: "You ain't nothin' but a wuessy girl scout fool!''

Three years ago Jensen compiled links to the dozen Mr. T sites that existed, such as Mr. T vs. Superman. By last year, she had found 100 links to put on her site, Mr. T vs. Everything. Now there are more than 300 such sites.

"I honestly can't believe it,'' said Jensen, who now gets a dozen e-mails a day from people who want her to include a link to their Mr. T sites. "They just keep coming.''

The creators of the Mr. T Web sites are mostly college students or recent graduates, Jensen said. "I think it's because we're the ones who remember the show more than anyone.''

But even those who were too young to have watched the A-Team remember Mr. T.

Five years ago, Eve Habat, 16, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, saw a wax replica of the cult hero at a museum and took a photo she still has today.

"I knew who it was, and it looked so real,'' she said. Eve wouldn't have dared try to get a picture of the real Mr. T, though. "He seems like if you met him he'd be like, "What do you want?'''

Nothing could be further from the truth, though, said Larry Jones, executive vice president and general manager of TV Land, a 24-hour cable network that is running an A-Team marathon April 28 and 29.

The man who played the A-Team character B.A. -- short for Bad Attitude -- is such a popular spokesman for them because he's a softy for his fans. At a Los Angeles event for TV Land, Mr. T insisted that no fan be turned away, even if it meant spending four hours signing autographs, Jones said. And he does it despite having T-cell lymphoma, which he was diagnosed with in 1995.

TV Land trusts Mr. T's charisma so much it regularly sends him to dinners to charm its clients, Jones said. In the fall he represented the network at a black-tie event for the Congressional Black Caucus.

"Across the board, he has his appeal,'' Jones said. "The only people who don't like Mr. T are the bad guys.''

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