It is just a sheet of liquid crystal like the screen you may be reading this on right now (unless it is OLED.) You may not be able to buy it in the same size/shape as the original toy, but there are plenty of sources of sheets.
*Son of Zorn *was a “fish out of water” show in a world where expies for characters from the 1980s cartoon *He-Man *are an actual ethnic group living on some island nation. The characters from that nation were all drawn in 80s animation style while the rest of the actors were all live-action. The character Zorn is He-Man, come to America to connect with his son from his ex-wife. The series was about Zorn learning to fit into a non-magical barbarian world and his interactions with his extended family and co-workers at his office job. It isn’t remotely a show about “liberal bashing” but DKW has a weird obsession (brought up in at least three threads now) with thinking so.
During the space race there was a huge boom in space toys. I had a previously-mentioned Major Matt Mason, who had a cool backpack with a string you could use to make him ‘fly’.
But the more obscure of the space toys I had was Billy Blastoff. He was pretty cool,in that you put batteries in his backpack, and then if you put him in one of his vehicles a small gear at the bottom of the backpack would engage with the gears in the vehicle so it would move. That way, you only needed one set of motors, switches, etc in the backpack, making the set simpler and cheaper. I loved it.
Isn’t this part of the Scientology “Super Powers” training?
Batfink.
And his massive (but not very smart) gi-clad sidekick, Karate.
I live outside of Chicago-land, so nobody knows from Gigglesnort Hotel.
I had Sizzlers as a kid.
Way-cooler than mere Hotwheels, these were a total blast to play with. As a bonus, our cat used to love them!
We had Sheriff John and Engineer Bill.
Was that with Garfield Goose?
There were the Kenner SSP Racers. These cars went really fast with a plastic rip cord.
1972 Commercial: - YouTube
And Seattle had Stan Boreson on King’s Klubhouse on KING-TV. I never saw the show, but I had the great pleasure and honor of knowing Stan in his later years. Still wicked smart and a killer accordionist.
Does anyone remember the Girder and Panel sets for making buildings? I had a skyscraper and an airport version as a kid. Lots of fun and you could make it work with Matchbox cars and Hotwheels. I even built some buildings for my HO train set to run into.
I had one of those sets. I think it came with a hand-cranked crane mounted on top of a tower. I remember playing with it on Saturday mornings while The Jetsons was on. I guess I was building futuristic high-rises like the ones on the show.
I had a couple of those. Probably my all-time favorite toy.
The Lite Brite we got our kids was a pale imitation of the one I had as a kid. The newer ones (OK, 20 some years ago) had a lot fewer larger pegs, didn’t use the paper patterns behind the board, and used a weak-ass flashlight bulb instead of the 60W 120V bulb. Lame.
But not as disappointing as the Spirograph I bought the kids. The set I had when I was young had way more disks each of which had more pen holes, but more importantly used push pins to hold the rings to a cardboard backer. The newer ones used some snap mechanism which was always coming apart when you tried to use it.
How about Teletypes and acoustic coupler modems? My dad had one at home for a few years in the early 70s. Allowed him to come home from work at dinner time, then get some more work done after us kids went to bed. An early telecommuter.
And of course the phones (rotary and then touch-tone) that were wired into the wall and that you leased from Ma Bell.
Yes, pre Legos. I had those and Lincoln logs and some castle stone things to build my Edith Nesbit Magic City.
There was also some brick things which used a early lego-like way of linking, but not as secure.
Used to air in South Carolina when I was a kid.
One I’ve thought of seems to be genuinely obscure (I’ve tried googling for it before with no results): a Darth Vader ripoff toy called Dark Invader. Was a similar size (and sold in the same time-frame, in the same shelf space at my local Sky City) as ROM: Space Knight.
I remember the Fun Factory game show with Bobby Van…
A couple of things still referenced in comic strips - the Star Wars Holiday Special makes an appearance every year in Sally Forth, and Slip 'n Slides appear every now and then in Drabble.
No, but I remember Marty Ingels.
The last reference I heard about Fridays: I can’t remember where, but somebody said, “Did you know Larry David was in the cast of Fridays?”
All of the machines at the “Pinball Hall of Fame” in Las Vegas - there’s a thread about it in Game Room - take quarters.
Not only do I own a Duckman 3-D poster autographed by Everett Peck (apparently, there was only one store in the world that sold them - the old Viacom store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago; it closed in early 1999), but I literally waited years for Klasky-Csupo to get around to releasing the series on video. It finally did, but it took so long that there aren’t really any “extras” to speak of as they were probably all lost or destroyed by the time the DVDs came out.
I’m a little surprised Jason Alexander didn’t get a voiceover Emmy for the role. I like to joke that this happened at the 1996 Creative Arts Emmys: “And the Emmy for Voiceover Performance goes to (looks at the name) Excuse me? After the Susan incident? (i.e. the whole George/Susan storyline on Seinfeld) I don’t think so (rips up the envelope) Ladies and Gentlemen, there is no winner this year, yeah, that’s it, no winner.” Seriously, because of the way the category worked back then, there was no winner in that category in 1996.
I saw Son of Zorn, but I think too many people were turned off by the real life-animation mix, especially with the son with the human top half but the animated legs. And you would think someone like that would be banned from sports (he was the kicker on the football team, but learned that length and accuracy are two entirely different things), as otherwise he’s going to break every track & field world record. (And did you know every episode had a credit for Zorn’s placeholder (“Zorn IRL (In Real Life)”)?)
I thought about that book. I read it when it came out, and had totally forgotten who wrote it.