I remember the “Monty Haul” columns, but at the time I read them I had no idea they what other cultural phenom they were referencing. I assumed that “Monty” referred to Monty Python.
I also remember a few cartoons that used to run in the back of the “Dragon” – Fineous Fingers, Wormy, and Phil & Dixie. I loved those.
Things that (it seems) only I remember:
Simon (electronic game that was a huge rage for about a year in the early 80s)
Night Flight (TV show that aired all the videos that MTV refused to air- for either being too edgy, too metal, not new wave enough, etc.)
And no love for The Banana Splits* or H.R. Pufnstuf or The Bearcats?
Years ago the department I was working in would do a monthly newsletter and one of the features would highlight a member of the department. When they did me, I answered that the one thing no one knew about me was that I was a finalist for the role of Fleegle. I’m sure it will come as no surprise that no one ever called bull on that, as that would imply someone actually read the newsletter.
Apologies for the double post. I meant to fix a link that I realized a little too late was broken. Mods, if you eliminate one of my posts, please remove the first one. Thanks.
We LOVED Superballs*. We could indeed bounce them over houses, and up on the roof of our 3-story school. But those of us who couldn’t afford the 99¢ discovered that “India Rubber Balls” sold at the pet shop bounced just as well for 39¢.
With the added bonus that the beige rubber took ballpoint pen well, and soon ours looked like monster heads (google Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth’s monsters).
**"The most amazing ball ever produced… *by science!" – I have GOT to work that into daily conversation.
Before The Lone Ranger, before The Adventures of Superman, before Whirlybirds, before Combat!, before Batman, before Time Tunnel, my favorite TV show was Sea Hunt. Because of the invention of the aqualung during WWII, scuba diving was a big thing in the '50s.
When I was five or six, I had a kid-sized “aqualung” that was actually a fancy snorkel in the form of a yellow plastic tank equipped with a “regulator” and a hose with a mouthpiece. You had to unscrew the bottom of the tank and fill it with sand to act as ballast, neutralizing your bouyancy somewhat. The “regulator” had a little ball inside that would block off your air supply if water got into the system. With this thing strapped to your back, all you needed was a mask and a pair of flippers to stay underwater (just below the surface) for as long as you wanted.
Anybody else have one of these? They made you the envy of every other kid on the beach!
Well, not quite yet in the official “not many who remember, only a handful still survive” category*, but for those of us then young’un NY Tristaters who didn’t have cable in the mid-'80s, there for a brief shining period was U68 music television with the Power Hour, Uncle Floyd & Oogie, and all…
Intro clips and various reminiscing posts still exist in near obscure forums if you search, but it’s not quite the lore of MTV. And yeah, U68 did eventually play ‘Money For Nothing’ (previously banned due to the ‘I Want My MTV’ refrains), but soon after that the shopping channel aspect conquered all.
*42 years after the destruction of Manhattan of course
I had the original Flubber. I think I was literally allergic to it. We had to throw it out.
I saw the Flubber movies, in glorious black and white, at our local downtown cinema, gone these 48 years.
I remember Dobie Gillis, too – both the original animate opening and the later “Dobie” version. I always liked the idea of shooting Dobie’s inner monologues with Dwayne Hickman standing in front of a giant copy of Rodin’s The Thinker.
I didn’t realize until recently that the ORIGINAL Colorforms were a set of colored vinyl plastic pieces in simple shapes – circles, squares, triangles – that stuck onto a plain black background. It was an award-winning toy because it supposedly freed your creative impulses with such a simple (and hard-to-lose) set of “building blocks”.
It wasn’t until later that the “made in the shapes of licensed cartoon characters” came around, but when they did, they completely eclipsed the original simple toy. I didn’t even see an Original Colorforms set until I was an adult
Hah!
Before there were Creepy Crawlers or Incredible Edibles there was the Vac-U-Form, which used the same heating element as the slightly later two things. It heated a roughly 3" x 4" square of plastic until soft, then you flipped it over onto a pad that held shapes . You then pumped like mad and the softened plastic sheet would be sucked into the shape of the shapes. (If you watch the Syfy show Face Off, you’ve seen them use an industrial Vacuform machine)
His name was Spooky, the Tuff Little Ghost, and he was Casper’s friend, not Hot Stuff’s.
He had a girlfriend, Poil. But since Spooky had a thick Brooklyn accent, her name was probably really “Pearl”.
Casper also had a ghost horse friend, Nightmare.
And, of course, there was Wendy, the Good Little Witch
Vac-u-forms were great for customizing model airplanes (and, I assume, other kinds of models as well). Just carve the part you want out of balsa (or use a part from another kit) and you could make as many duplicate parts as you wanted. ***Scale ******Modeler ***magazine did this to customize a stock 1/72 Ju-88 into a tankbuster used on the Eastern Front (“die Dicke Bertha”).
