Stuff the youngsters will scratch their heads over...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
221

Evatone (Flexitone) records, printed on floppy plastic and bound into magazines. Mostly ads, but Mad Magazine had one.

Record-your-voice booths at penny arcades, which gave you 3 minutes and spit out a 10" 78-rpm record.

Penny arcades that:

  • cost a penny
  • had baseball games with steel balls that rolled down a ramp, at which you swung a mechanical bat by yanking on a lever
  • pinball games without flippers
  • pinball games with mechanical flippers
  • “What the Butler Saw” peep shows with a giant roll of still photographs that flipped out one at a time, like riffling a pack of cards, as you cranked a handle – what he saw was the lady taking off her dress, revealing a full-body set of thick underwear.
  • boxing games where each person controlled a fighter by mechanical handles – the end of each fist had an electric contact, and the fighter’s chin had another – when you connected, there was a big spark and the hit fighter tipped over backward.

TV with a wired remote controlling a little motor that rotated the channel knob.

TV with a round screen, with the rectangular picture appearing in it.

TV with the tube facing up, reflected in a mirror when you raised the lid.

The 2-piece TV, with the picture tube mounted on a rotating gimbal and the electronics in a separate container below, shaped like a pizza box.

The neighbor with the first TV in town, who let you stand outside his window and watch it for the best Halloween treat ever.

The first color TV system with a whirling disk in front of the screen, carrying 4 translucent colored plastic panels, with the picture flashing a color-separated set of 4 black and white images as each panel passed by.

Wire recorders.

Indian motorcycles - monsters with car-type gear shift levers.

Car tires so thick that when they wore down, you could have the treads re-cut deeper. Then you put on 2 or 3 recaps.

Car starters operated by a long stalk on the floor to the right of the gas pedal. And of course a manual choke. And a high-beam switch on the floor to the upper left of the clutch.

Car ventilator that rotated up outside the center of the windshield, operated by a lever under the dashboard.

Car rear windows that went all the way down, with separate, openable vent windows behind them.

Wool mohair car upholstry - the scratchiest fabric ever invented.

Buicks - birds-nest holes in the fenders - jail-bar grilles, “Dagmar” bumper attachments (named for the actress Dagmar, who had a gigantic chest jutting straight out, halfway between breasts and bullets – and a Dagmar sticking straight out of the steering wheel hub, designed specifically to pierce your chest in an accident.

The Isetta; the Messerschmidt; the Crosley (the worst car ever made - Yugo and Trabant don’t even come close); the Renault Dauphine (the second-worst car ever made); the King Midget.

Radio shows:

  • Big John and Sparky, 'Cause There’s No School Today, with their own serial movie, General Comet of the Universe Patrol - hero, Captain Jupiter; villains, Montmorency Clutchrider and Ivan Cruisingspeed; space menace, the Green Gooey Globules and the Purple Gooey Globules. This was directly followed by:

  • Space Patrol, with Commander Corey and Cadet Happy. “That’s my cadet!”

The original Frisbee, called a Pluto Platter, with molded-in windows and other flying saucer markings. Worth $100 today in any condition, and thousands mint in the wrapper.

At the end of the “Duck and Cover” movie, after the song with the same title, you were told “If you see a bright flash, take cover immediately.” Even in the second grade, we know that what it really meant was “Lean WAY over and kiss your ass goodbye.”

222

I’m 31 as well; some memories triggered:

Macrame. Everyone’s mom was doing it.
Our first car that had a tape deck in it. I remember how weird it felt to go through a tunnel and still hear music.
VW Karmann-Ghia. The Beetle’s (slightly) grown-up sibling, beautifully egg-shaped. The later models had little grilles that looked like whiskers.
Rubik’s Cube. Banned from my school when I was in 8th grade. Got detention one day when caught with one in class.
Farrell’s. Anybody else remember these? They were ice cream parlors on a vaguely 1890’s theme; every parent endured at least a few dozen sugar-drenched birthday parties there. I’m sure Chuck E. Cheese killed them off.
Quisp - is still made! The NY Times just had an article on obscure products that are still made for limited markets. This one still ships to Buffalo.
Portable typewriters. We owned one (a Smith-Corona, of course), which I remember playing with. I loved the red ink tapes. But never used one, because when I was 14 we bought–
An Osborne computer The world’s first portable (well, luggable) computer. My dad’s in computing so we were generally a first-on-our-block kind of family when it came to home computer equipment. Anyway, this sucker was the size, shape and (crucially) weight of an old Singer sewing machine. It had a 4" (yes, four inch) diagonal screen, which my Dad promptly supplemented with an ungodly-expensive 12" green display that sat atop it. The thing was designed to sit on its flat side, and the base flipped down for the keyboard. I promptly learned Wordstar in the Osborne edition (thank Microsoft for standardization), and became the first kid in my class to submit papers using a dot-matrix printer. It was ugly, but still so much better than my handwriting that my teachers thanked my parents at a PTA meeting.
Oh, and the last Automat closed in '91 or 92; I remember because I’d just moved to New York and it made the papers. Late last year we lost the last true Checker Cab; a few remain in limo fleets, but you can’t actually hail one.

When I was really little, we still had an old-fashioned candy store in our neighborhood in Seattle. I remember going to buy red licorice ropes.

Oh, and remember when every department store had a real candy counter, staffed with nice ladies (occasionally grandfatherly men) who were patient with kids? Not these pretentious godiva-things, just real candy.

The first purchase I remember making was of an Orange Push-up from the ice cream man. It was 1973 and it cost 15 cents. (What happened to the ** cent key on keyboards?**?

223

I don’t know the zookeeper’s name but another flashback hit me. A naval flight officer (back seater in a fighter) in my sqauadron was a big galoot that kind of looked like Shultz on Hogan’s Heroes. His official call sign was , I swear this on my sainted mother, “Chumley.” He hated it with a passion and you could see him absolutely seeth when an enlisted man called him that. He very nearly got me busted before I left that squaddron but I dodged that bullet. Our in joke among the techs was to call the primary radar screen, the detail data display or DDD, the 3DBB. Remember Mr. Whoopee’s three dimensional blackboard?

224

An old Wordstar and CP/M maven like yourself should know that it was replaced by the ^ symbol if you wanted to type control characters in text. ^A is the same as <Ctrl>A

I got my start on Apple IIs with Z80-CP/M cards and CP/M Kaypros and classic Wordstart 3.3 So what if the keyboard didn’t have cursor arrows, you used the control key in combination with letter keys to move the cursor on the screen. Damn, I’ve forgotten the Wordstar navigation diamond.

Osborne was also responsible for the now archaic term the Osborne effect. A company that announces a future product to the detriment of its current bread and butter. The next generation Osborne was announced then the company went broke because it couldn’t give away the models it did have.

225

Looks like a couple of you ARE old enough to have short term memory problems. CalMeacham and I covered Crusader Rabbit, et al on the first page of this thread.

sheesh!

226

I remember, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, before 500 channel satellites and cable tv I had something called “On TV”. It was a black box that sat on top of the tv that when you turned the nob to “ON”…bam… you got your one, technologically advanced, cable channel.

And I totally forgot about those analog tape deck computer drives. I remember thinking how cool that was back in the day.

227

No Gnu’s is good gnu’s with Gary Gnu

228

^Great Space Coaster. Cool. :wink:

Hell yes! Remember “The Zoo”? It was a huge vat of ice cream and animal crackers and whipped cream and hot fudge and and and and! Ugghh! Two guys would put the thing on a specially designed litter and race it all around the store until they got to your table. At the same time, someone would be cranking on one of those old, LOUD sirens! It was a hoot! I also remember they had monstrous lolipops and cool rock candy.

229

I kinda thought that’s what had happened. It’s just been so long since I saw an old keyboard that I wasn’t certain that it was on the “6” key!

BTW, I was never a CP/M maven :). My father certainly was; but I only learned what I absolutely had to know in order to get my papers done. My attitude was that a computer should be like a vacuum cleaner: I shouldn’t have to know how to fix one in order to be able to use it.

230

Yeah!!! “Giant Robot…LAUNCH!!!” I loved that show! UltraMan sorta gave me the creeps, though.

How about these:

Remember “Friday Night Videos”?? It would come on NBC after the Johnny Carson Show on Friday nights. That was of course right when MTV began and videos were actually shown more than 1 hour a day.

Also, on HBO they had “Video Jukebox”, where they would play videos in between the movies when the movie ended at 15 min til the hour, etc. That’s all we watched HBO for back then!!

231

Oh thank god. I was beginning to think I’d hallucinated the whole experience. (Actually, it probably would’ve been a lot more enjoyable for the grownups if it were a hallucination). Of course I remember the enormous lollipops! They were verboten to me even when I was seven 'cause we knew I was headed for Massive Orthodontia. But do you remember the drums they’d hall out for the birthday kid? I remember being half-thrilled and half-mortified. What was always a little rough was if you had a small party (in other words, if you were me) and then there was another kid who had, say, 40 people there.

Now, I spent part of my childhood in Seattle and part in Maryland, outside DC, and there were Farrell’s in both. No one in New York knows what Farrell’s was, so I’m curious where else they were.

232

Sunshine, his name was “Stanley Livingston”
(I Recently saw some episode of Underdog w/ Tennessee) :wink:

233

Anyone remember “Showtime Shorts” the obscure (usually foreign) cartoons that were used as filler between movies?

How about “Aerobicize”? Another gap filler on HBO or Showtime. An exercise show which consisted of barefoot, bathing suit beauties (with perpetual “wedgies”) writhing on a giant turnable to a techno soundtrack. As a 16 yo American male at the time, I found no need for pornography with quality programming like this. :eek:

(They attempted to rehash it years later, with the best parts (the frequent crotch shots) tastelessly edited out. :rolleyes:

234

I’m a youngin, but I remember that in older cars, (and i’m told this was how it was b4 seatbelts) while riding with my grandmother, in the case that my safety was at risk, her arm would lash out and hold me back. :slight_smile:

Jenny*

235

Well, I can name one… Barney Rubble

236

No, the TI-99/4A had a regular key type keyboard. I believe you’re thinking about the Timex Sinclair with the acetate keyboard.

Anyway, both of those computers had to be hooked to your TV set to be used. And on my TI-99/4A the only way to save a program was acoustically on a cassette recorder. Sometimes it took five or six tries to load a large program…

Rico

237

I remember this! I grew up in Maryland and there was one in Golden Ring Mall. It was THE PLACE to have your birthday party, complete with the big bowl of about a zillion scoops of ice cream carried to your table.
I had no idea they had them in Seattle.

238

We had one in the North Riverside Park Mall in North Riverside, Illinois. I was in my high school’s theatre group in the early '80s, and it was the closest thing to a hangout we had, especially when you wanted to get together after performances. It was also a way cool place to have a birthday celebration for little kids.

239

Some more video-game related ones (a passion of mine):

Everyone knew that video games would instantly turn you into an obsessed, mindless zombie, as well as generate all kinds of unclean thoughts.

Atari, Nichibutsu, Taito, Technos, Tehkan, and Irem were industry giants. Meanwhile, Konami and SNK were young upstarts, Capcom had a smattering of shooting games, and Sega’s bestselling game featured a penguin.

Games with one or even no buttons were commonplace, as were trackballs.

Nintendo only had one home console.

Only a few games had any kind of timer, and NONE of them were shooting games.

Running over monsters to turn them into little tombstones was considered shockingly violent.

The first modern fighting game had three moves that did an obscene amount of damage, and nobody really cared much.

“Made in America” was actually a selling point.

“Nonviolent” was actually a selling point.

And yes, there was a very brief period where the music in video games actually sounded like “video game music”.

240

Anyone remember cars that you had to DOUBLE-CLUTCH?

(I owned a stickshift 1959 Edsel once. I kid you not, it was a genuine Edsel. In really crappy shape, too. It didn’t have synchromesh on 1st gear, so if you wanted to downshift from 2nd to 1st while the car was moving, you had to shift into neutral, engage the clutch, rev the engine, disengage the clutch, and push the shift lever from neutral to 1st at JUST the right instant so as not to grind the gears. These young whippersnappers today, I tell ya – double clutchin’ is gonna become a lost art!)

(Oh, and the stickshift was on the right side of the steering column, where the windshield-wiper control lever is on most cars made today. And it only had 3 gears, if you don’t count reverse.)