I had those, also “Incredible Edibles” which was a similar concept but nasty tasting gummi candy stuff instead of plastic.
Funny story–when we lived in Japan my dad saw an enormous (like 6-8 inches long) centipede outside my door. Bright red head, brown body and bright yellow legs and he thought it was one of my creepy crawlies that I’d left on the floor. So he bent down to pick it up and it scrambled away, whereupon he stomped that sucker flat (and why in hell did he have his shoes on in our Japanese house? We’d have gotten a spanking for that!) and left the entire mess right outside my door–about five million wriggling yellow legs that didn’t stop wriggling for a long time and a smooshed body all set off against the deep purple carpet. Of course dad left it for the housekeeper to clean up and I had an awful time getting out of my room since the door was inset into the hallway by about three feet and there wasn’t an inch of carpet not covered in bug yuck. I ended up leaping over it just to get out of my damned room. In fact, I jumped over that spot for about six months straight, I just could NOT put my foot down for fear there might be a couple wiggly legs left behind. Guh!
Grandpa Goes to Washington … a sitcom in which Jack Albertson gets elected to Congress. Larry Linville late of MASH is his dopey son. Eleven episodes. Never syndicated. Never released on video. I loved the theme song.
Tenspeed and Brownshoe … Ben Vereen and Jeff Goldblum are an odd couple private eye duo … 14 episodes. I was 10 and I thought they were hilarious. I’ve been a Jeff Goldblum fan ever since.
There must be a saying about this in the style of “every generation thinks that they invented sex.”–“Every older generation thinks that their childhood toys have been forgotten?”
One more to add to the list of “neither gone nor forgotten” is Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. Still as far as I know sold on the party supplies aisle of big box stores and sometimes the toy section of shelf in grocery stores. If not there, online.
Ok, I was just going to ask the Teeming Millions, but my google of “interactive tv series toy” nailed what I was thinking of in the first hit:
Captain Power
Anyone remember this? 1987/8. There was some sci-fi Saturday morning TV series that I completely forget the plot of, but you can buy these toy spaceships that were interactive with the series, such that you could “play along” with the action sequences and score points using some light-gun type interface to shoot at the screen at appropriate times.
Three of us. I liked that show and what an amazing cast.
I also liked Free Spirit, it was Bewitched meets the Nanny and the Professor. Starred Corinne Bohrer and a teen Alyson Hanniganbut not as a witch this time. Speaking of the Nanny and the Professor that was a nice little sitcom from 1970 that is largely forgotten but available on Hulu at least.
Mattel’s Strange Change Machine: you would take the plastic colored block, toss it in the (hot plate) chamber and it would expand into a dinosaur or a mummy or an I-don’t-remember-what-else. Fun’s done, you put the creature back in the chamber until it got soft then stuffed it into the press and crank it down back into its block shape (while screaming your head off for the poor creature going through such Poe-ish torture). Fun for twenty minutes, tops.
I still have a set of those from the 1970s. Never broke. Also used to have a plastic Jacob’s Ladder from the 1970s, though I don’t know if it was a fad item. Unfortunately that one did break.
You can still get snakes, especially around the 4th of July. I remember them being purchased as a small black pellet that looked like charcoal, and when ignited, it would look like it was growing out of the ground. More than one parent told me that their small children were terrified of them.
The plastic that came in a tube was called “Super Elastic Bubble Plastic” and my brother and I both played with it. And then our parents would find stinky booger-like things all over the house after the resulting balloons dried up and deflated. ETA: That smell was probably acetone; I’ve never been a big nail polish fan, but yeah, if that’s what it was, it would have taken it right off.
Don’t remember Fizzies, but I do remember candy cigarettes, and you can still get those at specialty candy stores, especially the kind that cater to adults.
And were responsible for at least one greenstick fracture of the arm as well as a couple broken teeth. I was scared shitless of those things after seeing what they could do to a kid.
Stickers are still a big thing, although nowadays, they’re marketed at scrapbookers of all ages.
Anyone remember Wacky Packages? Man, did our teachers and my parents hate those things! (Maybe they’ve been mentioned; I haven’t read the entire thread.)
