In a earlier thread..."
Older than Dirt", I posted some stuff that's appropriate here...
From the "where did they go department"...
Pillsbury Space Food Sticks
Gaines Burger Dog Food (looked like a hamburger hocky puck you broke up in your dog's bowl)
SALVO Laundry Soap Tablets
...which came with towels, dishes, or glassware stuffed in each box. I remember Dolly Parton pitching these on the Porter Wagoner Show.
Does A&W Root Beer still have drive-ins where you bring your 1 gallon Root Beer Jug to get refills?
Gas Wars... 35¢ 25¢ 20¢ 15¢ 10¢ a gallon...how low could you go. More gas station memories...remember the bubbling glass bowl with the floating, colored balls swirling inside on top of Sinclair Gas Pumps? It was supposed to show how pure the gas was. Or the revolving colored wagonwheels on the blue & yellow Sunoco pumps. How 'bout the stick-on pair of orange horseshoes you could get for the back of your car at Gulf Oil Stations to show you have the added "kick" of horsepower from Gulf Gasoline. Or the commemorative Indy 500 glassware you got with a full tank at Marathon Gas stations in Indiana, during the month of May. (My Mom had the complete set)
Cigarette Commercials on TV...Taryton..."I'd rather fight than switch" Kools...."come to where the FLAVOR is...come up to Kool Country"...Benson & Hedges..."A silly mllimeter longer"...you can still hear the jungles. And of course, "The Marlboro Man". I remember sitting at the kitchen table, helping my mom count up the "Old Gold" coupons, (until my Dad quit smoking in '69), and lick S&H Green Stamps and paste them into books. I got my first "real" pair of Brown Oxford dress shoes to wear to church with 3 books of S&H green stamps. (Oxfords, wide ties, wide lapels, baggy cuffed trousers,...the '20's look of "The Sting".)
I remember getting "The Wish Book" in the mail in October, and after memorizing the toy section page for page, I'd sneak a peek at the womans undergarment section... oh my!
Where were you in '67? If you were a guy on the prowl you wore a little "Hi-Karate" Cologne & After Shave and had to fight off the chicks. My older brother wore that, later I inherited the stinkin' stuff when I became aware of girls. ...never had to fight off the girls though....certanly not like the guy on TV. Maybe it was because I was wearing hand me down clothes and outdated "smell'em" stuff.
One of my favorite childhood toys was the "Creepy Crawlers" set with a hot plate cooker you could cook a egg with, where you heated up your mold of toxic rubber goop making bugs, worms, and rubber teeth...my dragonfly wings always stuck to the mold. Another was my "Johnny Lightning" totally realistic M-16 machine gun and .45 pistol that shot 12 plastic bullets. Both realisitc down to the screw heads and checkered grips, made by the Marx Toy Company, designers and manufacturers of the fibersteel plactic stock of the real M-16.
My best friend had the "Man from U.N.C.L.E" Napoleon Solo pistol with silencer, extended clip, shoulder stock, and nite-owl scope, in the BRIEFCASE! (I was SO jealous!) We both had our secret "U.N.C.L.E" triangle badges that showed our ID number only under a special red film filter, and I had the official U.N.C.L.E. ballpoint pen crystal radio. It was a RELIGION, and the altar was the TV, when the show came on Tuesday nights, 7:30 on ABC. We replayed the episode in our backyard all week...Marty was Illia Kuriackin, I was Napoleon Solo, Laura (the neighbor girl) played the girl in distress. (If we HAD to let her play!)
While "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" was cool, Lost in Space was not...except for the robot, the family land rover, the saucer when it flew, the big giant one-eyed ape monster that threw rocks, & Angela Cartwright in that silver spacesuit. And forget about "Land of the Giants", it was just stupid. "Time Tunnel" was OK...but only when Rick & Tony were floating through time, landing in the middle of a bunch of Nazis or on the deck of the Titanic...stuff like that.
The rich kid down the street had the GI Joe Astronaut WITH the Mercury Space Capsule! (We HATED the rich kid) Our GI Joes looked like the Terminator after a BAD day...you would too after being set on fire, blown up with firecrackers, and shot with BB guns. And they wern't REAL GI Joes either, just big green plastic army men.
Our neighborhood gang played flashlight tag at night, dug forts, & played "shoot to kill". We thought we'd all be going off to fight in Vietnam after high school, just like our older brothers did...(we almost did). Imagine being a 9 year old boy knowing what a draft number was.
Speaking of hot-plate toys...how 'bout the "Little Suzy Homemaker" Oven set that could bake a cake. It was eather those toys or running with the scissors for childhood fun.
ConwayBob
Our first colour TV had a remote control the size of a small brick with one button, when you pushed it a motor on the channel dial ( remember those?) would turn to the next channel as if by magic ! and we only had two channels, now that was surfing!
Linear Mode
