Punch Buggy
starsky and hutch and chips being popular tv shows for decades …
Oh. Yes indeed.
I listened to all sorts of radio stations over the west half of the US when I was a kid. Coyle and Sharp, Crane at the Hungry Eye on KGO in SF. Some Canadian stations (including CHAT in Medicine Hat) as well as the long gone Mexican Border Blasters. XTRA! Listening to Blackhawk games from 2000 miles away. Etc.
But standard consumer radios just stopped being capable of getting far off stations. Cheap little transistor things.
“Real radios keep you warm at night.”
My sister and I used to fight over who would had to up off the couch to change the TV channel
Er… the first paragraph was more of a rhetorical question, although thanks for the responses.
What I was trying to point out: A younger person might not understand is that these things were seen as advertising opportunities. And cigarette advertising. This would be an especially good advertisement since it would be an opportune time (while at the checkout) for the customer to turn around and grab a packet of cigarettes off of the rack of "last-minute items.
So another item on topic would be packets of cigarettes on the “grabit” racks at checkouts.
If this practice had continued, the spacer bars would now be advertising candy bars and tabloids.
My sister and I, who fought about everything, did not fight about that. Early on, it just meant that the person who got up got to control what channel we watched, and we didn’t always want the same thing. A little later, my father became an early adopter (early 60’s I think) of a Zenith remote control TV. It had four keys, each controlling a different function through the sound generated when the metal rod associated with it was vibrated by pressing (“clicking”) the manual key. We could cycle through the channels in either direction, but since there were only 5 at the time in our market, it didn’t take long.
I remember turning on the radio in the middle of the night just so I could hear the voice of a live human being who was awake in the same town as me.
We still have spacer bars, and they still have advertisements on them. I couldn’t tell you what they’re advertising. Maybe realtors?
Around here either realtors or trying to sell people on the effectiveness of advertising on spacer bars.
We were lucky. We had 7 channels, and then we got two UHF channels … in the late sixties? early seventies?
We had two local channels. One VHF and one UHF. We got three or four Pittsburgh channels, depending on the weather.
Used to play with a toy called Clackers. Made of glass. Were known to cause migraines in adults and were also known to shatter and put your eye out although I never lost an eye.
Actually made of hard plastic but still too easily shattered and hazardous. The section on the Wikipedia article on a revival in Egypt and its politics is interesting. “Quick, arrest those toy sellers for undermining the government!”
Clackers, I remember them fondly!
Sure, I was one of the unfortunate ones who lost an eye to Clackers, but that didn’t deter me.
Later, I lost my other eye to Clackers, but that didn’t deter me either.
Later, I lost my testicles to Clackers (warning: don’t clack in the nude)…that kinda deterred me.
I remember those! They took them off the market after a few of them broke their strings and the hard plastic balls flew off at random and hit people on the head.
I’m not sure, but this might be the longest case name ever:
The glass ones were more dangerous. Shattering and injuring people. I had a couple glass ones shatter but at least it did not put my eye out.
My initial search on clacker balls indicated that the original ones were made of hard acrylic plastic. Which when shattered some might mistake for glass. But another, deeper search suggests that perhaps the very earliest ones were indeed made from glass before switching to acrylic which was the prototypical type.
Glass? That’s some mighty fine toy design there, Lou.
Still, not nearly a Bad Idea as lawn darts.
We used to drink and play yard darts with defense allowed once the other team was five points away from winning. No serious injuries, but it was ridiculous.
I’m wondering how many people have ever used the “choke” to help start the car?