My oldest daughter Elizabeth asked me what kind of computer games I used to play when I was a boy. I said, “Well, we didn’t have a computer back then.” And she asked, “Were you poor?”
Turning 41 — even more than turning 40 — has made me retrospective and gotten me to think about how much life has changed. Here is a work-in-progress glossary of some outdated stuff that once mattered to people of my generation. If you want an over-the-top list of Pop Culture stuff, you can check out my friend David Mansour’s book From Abba to Zoom. This is a more personal list about stuff that is gone forever. I’m sure you’ll help the list grow:
8 Track Tapes (or Stereo 8 Cartridges): People may scoff now, but these were marvels of technology in the 1970s. They were the first portable music format. And while today, when you see one in a museum or a flea market, they seem to be roughly the size of college dorm-sized refrigerators, they were a lot smaller than vinyl albums, and you could play them in your car. By the time I came of age, the 8 Track was already dying because of cassettes (see “cassette,”), but my first music player was an 8 Track, and my first 8 Track was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack (because that was the law back then) and I like millions of others was amazed by the technology that allowed me to skip to one of the four quadrants of music.
According to Wikipedia, the generally accepted last 8 Track was Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest hits, which is just. You can go your own way. Go your own away.
Cassette (or Compact Cassette): You have to respect the cassette … it’s still hanging in there, sort of. Many cars still have cassette players in there. You can still go into Best Buy and buy blank cassettes for recording. But I can remember a a short period of time there in the 1980s when some of us were not sure if the CD or the cassette would win out in the battle of music history. The cassette already had all you needed — you could fast forward it, you could rewind it, I mean, seriously, what else could you need?
That’s the beauty of technology, really. People will invent stuff that you honestly did not know you needed. Looking back, yeah, cassettes were total pains in the neck. It took forever to find the song you wanted to hear, they would surprisingly often snap on one end or, worse, explode so that you had 394 miles of tape unraveled everywhere and your only recourse was to sit there with a pencil and painstakingly twist the tape back into the cartridge (it makes me sort of sad, really, to think that kids today will never know that singular pleasure of twisting all that tape back in, and then putting it into the tape deck and having it actually play — I wonder if our ancestors felt sad for their kids because they would never have the singular pleasure of going to the bathroom in an outhouse).
Point is looking back, yeah, we could see that 8 Tracks and cassettes were flawed — but we didn’t know that AT THE TIME. Or at least I didn’t. You will hear people all the time say stuff like, “Wow, how did we live without cell phones?” or “I have no idea what I did before email.” You know what? We survived.
Electric football: It has become something of an iconic presence from the 1960s and ‘70s — the vibrating metal green field, the little players, the tiny plastic football — but the nostalgia tends to obscure the most important trait of electric football, which is that it just sucked royally. I imagine that 87% of boys growing up in America in that time were permanently scarred by the colossal disappointment of playing Electric Football — it looked SO COOL on TV.
I remember the day when electric football lost its magic for me. It was when I was told by a friend that when his game finally broke — the life expectancy of Electric Football was approximately three days — they could get exactly the same precision by placing it on top of the dryer.
Electric typewriter: Maybe more than anything else, I get depressed thinking that if you are, say, 10 years old, you will have absolutely NO IDEA why typewriters existed.
Electronic football: Now, see, this was a different thing. Electric football — sucked. Mattel ElecTRONic football — ruled. See, it was the TRON part that mattered (Tron, by the way, was a great game). Yep, we played handheld football with tiny blips of light and an unrealistic numbers of players and we liked it. No, it wasn’t all that realistic. But it was awesome. We didn’t need these Wiis with your Rock Bands and your witches and warlocks and whatever else you kids have, no sir, we didn’t need X Boxes and John Madden telling us how we did, no sir. Little blips of light, that’s all we needed.
Hong Kong Phooey: No. 1 Superguy.
In Living Color: It makes me sad to think I’m old enough that I remember when NBC would spread out the peacock’s features and BRAG that the show you were about to see was in living color. But there you have it. I can also remember when gas was like 45 cents per gallon and when the first number on the car in the Price is Right was ALWAYS a 3. As in 3,000 dollars.
Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot: I hardly ever find anyone who used to watch this show. It was great Japanese theater — much better than Ultraman. Sorry, I just included this as a cry for help.
Johnson, Ya Doesn’t Have To Call Me: When trying to explain a 1970s childhood, there’s one thing I’ve never been able to convey — the overwhelming popularity of the “You doesn’t have to call me Johnson,” guy. It was (I guess) a routine by a comedian named Bill Saluga (who played the usher on Seinfeld’s “The Opera” episode). Someone would call him Mr. Johnson, and he would get all huffy and say, “Oh you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny …” on and on, until finally he says, big punch line, “But ya doesn’t have to call me Johnson.”
That was it. That was the whole routine. I know. But it was HUGE. I mean, enormous. Guy did commercials. He released a disco song. Bob Dylan included him in a song. He was on like every other sit-com, and writers would come up with crazy and convoluted ways to have the main characters call this guy Johnson, just so he could go into the routine. I suppose it was like some of the more recent crazes — like the “Wazzup!” guys or the “Dude” guy or whatever. But it was MUCH bigger, at lesat in memory. And I think even then, if you had asked people, “Why is this funny?” nobody would have been able to give you a reasonable answer.
Member’s Only Jackets: So cool. So hip. Loved the completely unnecessary straps on the shoulders.
Rotary phones: I’m not exactly sure why they sat on the pushbutton technology for as long as they did, but for way too long we had those phones you actually had to DIAL the phone … if someone had a number like (909) 987-0988, it could take 10 minutes just to get through that.
LANGUAGE ASIDE: For you kids out there — Minda, you listening? — that’s why people will sometimes still call it “dialing the phone” when, in fact, you are not dialing anything, you are just pushing buttons. Interesting how technology changes but language remains — as pointed out here, we still call pitchers, you know, PITCHERS, even though they haven’t actually pitched baseballs in more than 100 years.
Smoking patios: Yeah, I graduated high school in 1984, and we actually had a place set out for high school students (and teachers) to smoke during lunch and free period and whatever. One thing kids today will never understand is the lax attitude America had about smoking in those days. You will hear smokers complain about how they are being persecuted — and probably they have their points. But in those days there was no such thing as a NON smoking section, at least as far as I knew. And this comes from a kid who grew up with two smoking parents, an old Chevy Nova and Cleveland winters, meaning that cracking the window even a little bit could lead very quickly to frostbite. A drive to the mall was like a scene out of Cheech and Chong. Then again, we had no idea what children’s car seats were, so it’s pretty much a miracle that any of us even survived childhood.
Super Toe: Damn, our toys really did suck, didn’t they?
Travalena, Fred: He was an impersonator who, briefly, had his own show. Sort of the Frank Caliendo of his time, though he did not do anything nearly as good as Caliendo’s Madden impression. Also, I guess he’s still performing. So I guess it should read he IS an impersonator who briefly had his own show.
UHF Channels: Yeah, so, it worked like this — you had your VHF channels, which you controlled with the top dial. And then you had your harder to get UHF Channels, which you controlled with a dial below that. And to clearly see a UHF channel, you had to have the touch of a safecracker. You had to make sure the dial was on PRECISELY the right number, and you could spend many hours moving that dial .000000000003 millimeters to either side to get the best possible reception. And, of course, no matter what you did, the picture was still filled with static, and if the wind blew in the wrong direction, you would get nothing but snow, and yeah … watching Cleveland Indians games on Channel 43 was just a sheer joy.
Vic 20 (by Commodore): It was our first computer with 5 KB of memory. That’s FIVE KB. My keys have more computer memory than that now. And by the way, while the computer HAD 5 KB of memory, the user only got to use 3.5 KB of that. Seriously, there was one thing and one thing alone that you could do on the Vic 20. See if this program rings a bell:
10 Print “Hello World!”
20 Goto 10
RUN
Zoom: Hated the show, but I do remember how that one girl could do that really cool little fluttery thing with her arms. That was cool. None of it was as cool as Electric Company anyway. You kids have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about now.
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75 Comments, Comment or Ping
ursus arctos
Our electric football “footballs” were made out of felt, and resembled nothing so much as felt cockroach larvae.
But that was the 60s, they must have upgraded by the 70s.
Jan 15th, 2008
Brian
Joe ~ I’m like a decade behind you, but I can play this game too. I once came up with a list of rivalries that meant more to me as a kid than it does now. Below are some of my examples. I’m sure there’s more, but it’s a start.
Trapper Keeper vs. Keepin’ Tabs
Kool Aid vs. Wyler’s
Girbaud vs. Z. Cavaricci
Kent vs. Huffy
ColecoVision vs. Atari
Sunny D vs. Purple Stuff
JanSport vs. Eastpak
Apple vs. Adam
Christine vs. Alasdair
Ferrari vs. Porsche
Zaxxon vs. Galaxian
Pro-Wings vs. XJ-900
Classic Concentration vs. Price is Right
Frosted Flakes vs. Raisin Bran
Topps vs. Fleer
Quayle vs. Bentsen
The Obstacle Course vs. Bozo Buckets
U.S. vs. Iraq (wait, never mind)
Wrangler vs. Rustler
Nintendo vs. Sega
Jan 15th, 2008
will
Your daughters comments reminds me of the time a friend a six pack of Schlitz in the fridge and he was asked “What happened, did you lose your job”.
I’m 33 so you’ve got a few years on me but I remember most of the things you mentioned. I owned a Vic 20 and loved electronic football. I also remember Michael Jackson before he was touching kids on the wenis and watching He-Man and not realizing he was gay. It was a simpler time.
Jan 15th, 2008
Mark
You and I are roughly contemporaries, so my list would look pretty familiar to you, I think: http://rndmaccess.blogspot.com/2006/03/quantum-leap.html
Your blog is kinda what my blog wants to be when it grows up.
The thing you forget about the cassette/CD deathmatch is that in the ‘early years’ you could record your own cassettes — from that other thing called a ‘record album’, or even off the radio. CDs at that point were not a DIY technology. That’s why I’m still catching up, and why as soon as I do it’ll be all about the mp3.
I liked electric football and actually got literally minutes of fun & excitement out of playing it.
Remember when they added the key to the electric typewriter that would backspace and correct the previous character? Man, I thought that was space-age technology.
And I was literally just thinking yesterday — with the rise of YouTube you can probably get all the Bill Saluga (or Fred Travalena, for that matter) you could ever ask for. Maybe more. However, I wasn’t actually motivated enough to check.
Jan 15th, 2008
McKingford
Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot
Oh yeah! I grew up across the river from Detroit, and UHF Channel 20 played Johnny Socko at 4, Ultraman at 4:30. Absolutely hilarious. (The thing was, it was funny in an ironic way even when I was 12!).
But sadly, I now live in Toronto, and whenever I try to make a cultural witticism involving Johnny Socko, all I get is blank stares. I’ll be like, “you know - it was kinda like Ultraman…it was on just before Ultraman”. I start to plead…still nothing (although occasionally a “Ultra - who?”). Evidently nobody in Canada who grew up outside the Metro Detroit viewing area knows wtf I’m talking about.
Jan 15th, 2008
Bob
I would add a toy I remember called, I believe, “Wood Burning”. This consisted mainly of a tool with a sharp, very hot end (sort of like a soldering iron) that you used to burn designs into wood. Why? I don’t know, but the burning wood smelled good. It fell into a category of toys that were very hot, like Creepy Crawlers, etc. If these toys still exist, they have generally been modified to reduce the amount of heat involved, which I suppose is sensible.
Not too long ago, my sister sent me an e-mail containing a list of all of the things we managed to survive as kids that today seem so dangerous, or are at least regulated, like riding our bikes without a helmet, riding in the “way back” in a station wagon, etc. While reading the list, it occurred to me that, even though people of my generation (I’m turning 50 this year) often think about these things with a certain amount of nostalgia about the good old days before there were so many rules and regulations, we are the ones who made these rules and regulations. We did these things, then made it so that our kids could not do them. I’m not sure what this means. Maybe we just came to our senses, because some of those changes (seat belts, etc.) are for the better, but some seem like overkill.
Jan 15th, 2008
McKingford
Re: Commodore computer
In the last couple years at my primary school, we had a couple Commodore PET computers. You could book them home for the weekend. They loaded programs with a cassette player. There were only programs of any use (both games): Load Runner, and something called Space Fighter. On the weekends we booked them home, we would put the game in the cassette player to load, have dinner…wash up…wait a little bit longer…and then the computer was finally ready to be used.
Jan 15th, 2008
Old Man Duggan
My family had at least one rotary phone until the mid-90’s. My girlfriend says her family did, too, and theirs wasn’t one of those 1970’s ones. It was a wall-mounted one with two bells on top as the ringers.
Also, there is something so much more fun about writing on a typewriter. If I had the space, that’s the only way I’d write. Alas, I live in a smallish apartment.
Jan 15th, 2008
grh
Unfortunately, ZOOM is still on. My kids love our Electric Company DVDs. That’s some of the best work Morgan Freeman ever did. I was telling my coworkers about using pliers to change the channel on our black and white TV, and using tinfoil to increase reception, and I don’t think they believed me.
Jan 15th, 2008
Brad Haas
Minda and I have played electric football at our grandmother’s house. It’s always good for seconds upon seconds of thrilling action. Then all the guys kinda cluster around on one sideline, except the goofy kicker, who spins crazily until he falls over.
Jan 15th, 2008
Tim
Great list Joe. I’ll throw in a few more:
LIGHT BULB FOOTBALL GAME: Can’t remember the name but I had a football game when I was a kid that was a cardboard box with a lightbulb inside and a translucent top and a flat piece that slid back and forth to uncover the translucent top. One player had a stack of offensive plays and one player had a stack of defensive formations that were like overlays for a overhead projector. You would each pick one and place them under the sliding piece (careful! don’t let your opponent see yours) and then slide back the piece of cardboard and you’d see a line (the ballcarrier) going forward. If the line ran into a black circle you were tackled. God, we played that for hours. ‘Course there were only two channels on my local TV then.
WHEN TELEPHONE PREFIXES MEANT SOMETHING: The 3-number telephone prefix in the town I grew up in (Boonville, Mo.) is now 882. When I was a kid (and long before then) the prefixes stood for words that differentiated all the telephone exchanges. The 88 stood for TU which was TUXEDO. So if you were calling long-distance, you’d dial up the operator (had to, no direct dial) and say “I’d like to place a call to Tuxedo 2-5555.” My grandparents number was GArden 6-XXXX which later became 426-XXXX
JOHNNY QUEST: Couldn’t miss Johnny Quest. What a show. Single father who was a world-famous scientist taking his son and his son’s best friend around the world on adventures! They looked to be about the same age I was and they didn’t have to go to school!
Bad guys! Robots! Aliens!! And your own bodyguard named Race Bannon!!!
Jan 15th, 2008
Howell
Joe, I think your forgot about remote controls. No longer were kids forced to change the channels for their fathers who could not be bothered to walk the 5 or 10 feet to the tv.
Jan 15th, 2008
Keith K.
I am pleased that your blog (1) apparently has a target audience of persons born between 1965 and 1972 and (2) I am squarely within that range. Thank goodness that my exit from the 18-32 demographic so desired by Madison Avenue has not left me without companionship.
That being said, Joe, as much as some of us may enjoy this type of VH1-style reminiscing, it may send the Gen Y and Z crowd running for the exits. Oh well, they weren’t going to buy your book anyway.
In regard to phones, my daughter recently asked me what the term “dial tone” meant, as she had never seen a phone with a dial. However, I occasionally do hear, on corporate recorded messages, a reference to callers using a rotary phone, so I guess they are still out there.
Also, we were recently in a low-end rental car which had windows operated via a manual crank. My kids had never seen one of these either, and we might as well have been in a Model T for as outdated as they thought this car was.
Jan 15th, 2008
DWS
Every year, Beloit College (Wis.) does a “Mindset List,” which shows what 18-year-olds entering college have or haven’t experienced, compared to their parents.
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/mindset/
For example, from this year’s list (the Class of 2011):
Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.
1. What Berlin Wall?
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
33. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
Jan 15th, 2008
Greg Grant
I remember watching Johnny Socko and Ultraman on Channel 43 in Cleveland every afternoon. Or maybe is was on Channel 61. Heck, I’m only 43, I should be able to remember such things.
The first time I saw the guy who was Superhost doing the news I about did a spit take.
While we’re at it, a game company is bringing back some of those great table games of the 70s. My wife, who is 9 years younger than me, did not understand my joy upon seeing Gnip Gnop and Paddle Pool for $6.95 at Marc’s the other day.
Jan 15th, 2008
Paul White
My wife and I mystified our kids with our ability to not only recite but SING the preamble to the Constitution in unison. Ah, the wonders of the long-lost Schoolhouse Rock.
And Joe, you gave an excellent description of the difference between VHF and UHF, but you did so by mentioning dials on the television without listing the dials themselves as being outdated. There hasn’t been a TV manufactured with dials in about 25 years.
Also, I remember the first time we got cable in our house and the system came with an A/B toggle switch because there weren’t enough channel numbers on most TVs to accommodate all of the cable options. They had to double up the available numbers by having one channel on 4A and another on 4B, etc.
Jan 15th, 2008
Ernie
Joe, Joe, Joe. The toy was SuperJock, and it rocked.
More bad news - it’s not gone! I got my son a Headbanger (as it’s now called) for Christmas, and we’re kicking field goals all over the house. Here’s a pic:
http://www.funrise.com/detail.aspx?id=74000
Jan 15th, 2008
Dave
Joe, gotta give some love to Battle of the Planets (G-force). 5 teens taking on the evil Zoltar from planet Spectra. How cool was it to have a super sonic jet called the Phoenix for transportation. It actually turned into a flaming bird (somehow without melting the gang) when they were truly in peril. I never understood the kid that just spoke in beeps and tongue trills. And if memory serves, in one episode it was discovered that Zoltar was a woman. I believe that this was the first transgendered supervillian of our time!
A few other nostalgic items:
Stretch Armstrong
Intelivision
Tough Skins (indestructable jeans)
Garanimals (Match up the color coordinated animals and even a 3 year old could dress his/herself)
Green Machine (so much better than a Big Wheel)
Thanks for the great blog site.
Jan 15th, 2008
Pokey Joe
Did you ever hear George Carlin’s (what an old guy, btw) bit on dialing the phone, giving your finger the free ride back to the beginning? Funny. My Mom still has a rotary phone hanging on her wall.
When I graduated from Ash Grove High School (class of ‘81), I was surprised to learn people in the rest of the world weren’t still wearing bell bottoms. Harsh reality.
Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots.
Scooby-Doo.
Some things are always in demand.
Jan 15th, 2008
Pokey Joe
Did you ever hear George Carlin’s (what an old guy, btw) bit on dialing the phone, giving your finger the free ride back to the beginning? Funny. My Mom still has a rotary phone hanging on her wall. And I still wiggle the rabbit ears on our television to try to get a UHF channel to show me something aside from snow. Although during the Chiefs’ season this probably saved me some grief…
When I graduated from Ash Grove (MO) High School (class of ‘81), I was surprised to learn people in the rest of the world weren’t still wearing bell bottoms. Harsh reality.
Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots.
Scooby-Doo.
Some things are always in demand.
Jan 15th, 2008
Pokey Joe
Sorry about le double post. Accidental typist…
Jan 15th, 2008
Lou
How about a good Saturday Night Live
Jan 15th, 2008
Steven
Tim, it was called Foto-Electric Football.
Jan 15th, 2008
Minda
Re: “dialing” the phone
To say “dial 1-800-BUY-CRAP” sounds slightly more elegant than “Push 1-800-BUY-CRAP,” does it not? Perhaps that is the reason for hanging on to the word ‘dial,’ even when it no longer describes what to do with a phone number.
And Joe, I’m not quite so young that I don’t know what a rotary phone is! But I never have owned one…
Jan 15th, 2008
Matt in Toledo
We didn’t really own a rotary phone, because phones used to be prohibitively expensive to buy so we had to rent ours. Yes, people used to rent their phones from Michigan Bell.
Actually, I worked for a telecom consulting firm for a bit and we did a few volunteer sessions where we’d help people save money on their phone bills. One older couple showed us their bill and they were still paying $15/month for their phone. At that point, we figured it had literally cost them hundreds of dollars for a phone they didn’t even own.
Another weird thing about phones. Our next door neighbors had a party line until the 80s, and since nobody else used them, it was pretty much like a normal phone line. Somebody else can explain what a party line was, and I’m not talking about the thing where you’d pay $2.99/min to talk to other people after dialing 1-900-SUCKER.
Jan 15th, 2008
Devin McCullen
I still have some cassette tapes I use. My little boom box (there’s another one for you) in my bedroom got some dust in it or something, so the CD player on it doesn’t work, but the tapes still do, so that’s what I listen to in there. Then again, I didn’t get a CD player until 1995, and I still don’t have any kind of mp3 player, so I’m just a late adapter.
Jan 15th, 2008
Craig Hooten
Joe,
Being 43, I have many of the same memories.
My first car (a 1977 Chevy Monza) had an 8-track player although all my music that I had collected was on LPs or cassettes. I bought one 8-track for it in high school (”Journey - Escape”). I remember teaching an old girlfriend to drive in the high school parking lot after school while listening to that 8-track. I was thrilled when I put a new stereo in it and could listen to cassettes.
Electric Football - I had one too, it was lame and noisy. I quickly lost all of the players although I probably still have some in a box at my mom’s somewhere.
Electric Typewriter - for some reason my mom bought one that typed in script rather than print. I remember writing some short fantasy stories with it (Me and my friends played D&D, as I recall it kept us from running around and getting in trouble… well 3 out of 4 of us anyway!)
Electronic Football - I still have mine somewhere and got a new one a few years ago for Christmas as a gag. My kids actually enjoy playing it. Amazing that it’s still entertaining all these years later.
In Living Color - I remember my parents making me get up and change channels, as I’m sure many of us from that generation… We were the tv remotes. Fine tuning was a pain in the ass. I remember when channel 41 came on the air and it was UHF instead of VHF and it showed stuff that kids like… very exciting stuff!
Speaking of channel 41 - I clearly remember watching Johnny Socko and his giant robot as well as Ultraman after school when I was in elementary school.
I remember when my dad got Cable TV. He lived in Oklahoma and I used to go visit in the summers. I remember on a stormy night he changed the channel and the Royals game was on. I was amazed and thought it had to be some trick of the atmosphere that was allowing us to get a Kansas City station 240 miles away (I believe that was channel 41 back then too). He played along for a couple of hours before he explained what cable television was.
And interesting side story - Back in 2001 my wife and I bought a minivan and got a TV(and VCR) installed to keep our kids entertained on our long drives to Florida. At one point, our oldest son was complaining that TV reception sucked in the vand and wanted to know why we couldn’t get cable…..
I had a black members only jacket, very cool.
Rotary phones - I was flipping through the channels this weekend and saw Smokey and the Bandit was on so started watching. My 11 year old son sat down and started watching with me. There’s a scene where Snowman stops at a bar to get some food, and trys to call home while he’s waiting for his food. Of course he was using a rotary phone. My son wanted to know how the heck you used a phone like that so I had to explain it… He kinda looked at me like I was crazy.
Smoking area at high school - yep we had it at Oak Park. All the “freaks” would be out there smoking every chance they could get.
How about the first Pong games and soon after the Atari, that was some COOL stuff.
Jan 15th, 2008
Oddibe Kerfeld
Joe, I’m 31 so I don’t remember some of the things you write about, but I love the nostalgia. Did anyone out there ever use the UHF channels to pick up phone calls? In ‘89 and ‘90 I had a small black and white tv in my room that could pick up phone calls in my apartment complex. I’m not sure how I discovered this, but it was on the highest end of the UHF channels. This was before cell phone were big, so I was hearing calls of people using the wireless handheld phones in their apartments. You could only really hear one end of the conversation, but it was a lot of fun.
Jan 15th, 2008
Deric
FYI, I don’t know if you have Netflix but Johnny Socko is available and its a Watch It Now so you can stream it. I’d say there’s 20 or so episodes on there.
Jan 15th, 2008
Aaron
QUOTE :Oddibe Kerfeld Says:
January 15th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Joe, I’m 31 so I don’t remember some of the things you write about, but I love the nostalgia. Did anyone out there ever use the UHF channels to pick up phone calls? In ‘89 and ‘90 I had a small black and white tv in my room that could pick up phone calls in my apartment complex.
/end quote
You were probably picking up the first cordless phones as they probably transmitted in the upper UHF range since no one used it and it was short range so it didn’t interfere with TV. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
UHF and VHF are the most commonly used frequency bands for transmission of television signals. Modern mobile phones also transmit and receive within the UHF spectrum. UHF is widely used by public service agencies for two-way radio communication, usually using narrowband frequency modulation, but digital services are on the rise. There has traditionally been very little radio broadcasting in this band until recently; see digital audio broadcasting for details. The Global Positioning System also uses UHF.
Jan 15th, 2008
Jon
Well Joe, I’m only in my 20’s but I do remember at least my parents talking about some of these things. However, I did feel very young when I read “In Living Color” and thought about the old sketch comedy show that launched the Wayans and Jim Carrey among others.
A very similar thing like this happened to me the other day. I was commenting on how I thought it was weird that my friends’ computer came with a 3.5 in. disk drive (Even though I lived through those disks and the 5.25 in. before them). The problem with stuff like this now is that everything only lasts for like 2 seconds, and the disks are a perfect example. By the time you had a 3.5 in. drive, everything came on CD, now DVD, firewire, internet transfer, whatever. When I was in 12th grade I bought an mp3 player (it must have been like the first one) right when Napster came out. It was roughly the size of the original iPods and held…get this…16 songs…if I was lucky. And that was just a few years ago. So, 20 years from now, people won’t be saying hey, remember iPods, because iPods are gonna start to get phased out and something new is coming…maybe the Zune? Shoulda got a Zune Joe…shoulda got a Zune.
Jan 15th, 2008
bulb
But some things like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots LIve ON!
Jan 15th, 2008
Mick
You’ll be happy to know that my own dad has set it up so that 2 of the 4 phones in my parents house are rotary phones! One looks exactly like the red batphone.
Jan 15th, 2008
Kev
Thanks for the stroll down Memory Land, Joe. I’m 42 so I remember all that stuff. Hong Kong Phooey rocked. I’d forgotten Super Toe. And Gnip Gnop.
How ’bout some love for Land of the Lost? Did anyone know that Bill Laimbeer played a sleestak in that show? Yes, THAT Bill Laimbeer.
Jan 15th, 2008
Drew
You Can Call Me Ray
Two youtube videos for you, Joe:
1. The well-aged comedian doing the same old routine a few weeks ago, for no apparent reason other than to post it on youtube. Maybe it’ll catch fire, creating a bond between your (our) generation and your kids’. Or maybe not.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoYsfbq3vMc
2. The routine in its hey-day via a Natural Light commercial.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR6AwEzVgBo
So not funny.
Jan 15th, 2008
Dave H.
Thank you!
I just had a conversation with my wife and a friend, both in their mid-30s, and they had no idea about Johnny Sako and his Giant Robot. I was starting to wonder if I hallucinated the whole thing.
Jan 15th, 2008
Nate P.
I still think it’s a source of high hilarity that my local semi-chain record store carries CDs and new vinyl LPs/45s/12″s (still being made and sold, thanks to dance music/hip hop/indie rock culture), but doesn’t actually carry cassettes aside from the requisite blank Maxells. It’s the unloved middle child of home audio formats, probably because (as mentioned) it’s more impractical and less durable than the other two. But man, I kind of miss making mixtapes as a teenager and decorating them with model car paint and/or whiteout, even if two times out of five I had to change my playlist because Side A cut off before the song ended (just like in Boogie Nights).
Jan 15th, 2008
Al
I’m 48, and I suffer from the same old age realization as you do. Quite sobering nonetheless.
Anyway- the thing that has struck me the most is the difference in smoking availablility as you described. When I first started working in the 80’s, it was usual for everyone to smoke in the office and at their desks (I never smoked). Anyway- firm meetings would be brutal, because everyone in the meeting- in a closed conference room, lit up! Heck- they’d pass around smokes for those that didn’t bring them! So some of the meetings I swear would become all out smoke-outs! I would come out of the meetings coughing and gagging.
On an earlier note, I was also struck watching a PBS show last night…. they had news archive footage of a newscaster interviewing someone from the early 1960’s- with a lit cigarette going the whole time, puffing away on live TV. Won’t see that anymore!
And smoking sections on airplanes!
Jan 15th, 2008
Tom S
Joe:
Thanks for a wonderful blog. Go as long as you want. Nothing better than tangents.
I’ve got a few years on you, but the cultural references are the same because…I’m a geek.
Match Game ‘77. Only thing better than that on a day off from school was Match Game ‘78. Charles Nelson Reilly, Richard Dawson, Brooke what’s her name — my introduction to flamboyant drunkards on daytime TV.
Truth or Consequences. With Bob Barker, back before the preservatives.
New Zoo Revue: Hateful lifesize puppets, precursor to the fat purple freak.
Creature Features on any UHF channel on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.
Roger Staubach and the Cowboys beating the Giants EVERY time, even when down by 13 with two minutes to play. (Speaking of which, whatever happened to the two minute drill and getting out of bounds?)
Jan 15th, 2008
metz
Remember the world without ATM’s? We had to schedule our cash around a weekly visit to the bank, using our passbook savings accounts to get money out. Our local pharmacy kept our prescriptions on file on a rolodeck and gave us refills on credit. I’m 43 and the world sure has changed a ton. My parents just (within the past 3 years) switched over to tone dialing, they were on old style pulse dialing forever because their phone company would charge them extra for tone dialing and no they don’t live out in the middle of nowhere.
Lawn jarts that weighed about 2 pounds each with sharp heavy metal tips. You played them like horseshoes but with much more potential for loss of life.
Remember the start of each fall season, the networks would run promo shows on Friday night that gave sneak previews of their new Saturday morning lineups of cartoons?
Friday night videos, launched just after MTV but for those without cable. Howard Cosell’s talk show that had the Bay City Rollers on as guests every week (S-A-TUR-D-A-Y Night).
Intellivision, which had one of the best football games ever invented (better than Tecmo bowl IMO).
Bo knows commercials…and the rise of Nike and overpriced athletic footware.
Station wagons with the jaws of life tailgates? The window went up into the roof and the gate went down into the well of the car. The migration to unleaded gas and the energy crisis of the 70’s (oil companies have gotten a lot more sophisticated in rolling the consumer since then).
ahh…the list can go on forever…..
Jan 15th, 2008
Dan
On the subject of remote controls, did anyone else have the problem that when the dog shook his head, the jangle of his metal collar duplicated the frequency of the remote so that depending on how long he shook, the TV went OFF-ON-OFF-ON?
Speaking of cassettes, my Dad worked for Westinghouse at the time that cassettes first came out, so we had a big clunky cassette recorder before the neighbors did. I remember the day Nixon resigned because my mom wanted to tape the audio off the TV broadcast but she couldn’t understand that you had to depress the play and record buttons simultaneously. She held the two down for the entire speech only to discover after that she had only engaged the play button had no record of this historic event.
Jan 15th, 2008
Perry
When I was a kid in a small town in Ohio in the late 50s, we didn’t even have a dial phone. You just picked up the receiver, and an operator said “Number please,” and you told her the number you wanted. We didn’t have a 7-digit number, either, it was one letter and 3 digits. Our number was something like J-332. Then we moved to a bigger town in 1960 and got a dial phone and a 7-digit number. And yes, the first two digits often went by their letter equivalents. In our case, 654-xxxx was often referred to as OLive 4-xxxx. The movie “Butterfield 8″ takes its title from this custom, by the way. As does the song “Pennsylvania 6-5000.”
I played that light-bulb football game, too. My dad played it with me once when I was about 8 and got a little peeved when I scored a touchdown on a draw play from like his 2 yard line. He insisted that in real football a draw play didn’t make any sense at the goal line and would never work. True, of course, but I didn’t know that and neither did the game!
Jan 15th, 2008
Dan
Lawn Jarts - now that brings back memories. I always thought that was the toy that inspired the SNL sketch with Dan Ackroyd as the slimy toy seller - “Johnny Invisible Pedestrian” was one of the toys his company manufactured.
Jan 15th, 2008
Perry
Lawn jarts were fun! Even more fun was putting the targets about 30 yards apart and really flinging those suckers.
Here’s as good one: the “Roto-Tenna.” We lived near Columbus and got Columbus TV, but the local station only carried about half the Reds games the Cincy/Dayton stations carried. (I.e., about 15 games a year rather than 25, and man, did I envy people in Chicago or NYC who got to see baseball all the time). Anyway, we had a rooftop antenna, and you could buy an electric motor device called a “roto-tenna” that would enable you to rotate the thing by simply turning a dial in the comfort of your living room. So we could pull in a very snowy picture from distant Dayton or Cincinnati, God and the weather willing, and see an extra 10 Reds games a year. Good times.
Jan 15th, 2008
bulb
For Joe following Brian but in our age set: Quisp versus Quake, the former which I understand might already be being revived as an “Internet” cereal whatever that is…. I learned from Wikipedia, that Jay Ward did those famous 1970s ads; no wonder they were so cool!
Re: Match Game. 2 words “Trench Foot”
Also Mel Brooks’ Robin Hood TV show “When Things Were Rotten” so much funnier than Men in Tights . . .
Jan 15th, 2008
Mike Bagnall
I’ll be 70 next summer. My grandparents’ phone number was Ashland (Maine) 2656, two longs and a short. That was how the operator rang the buzzer so all the other folks on the party line would know who the call was for. It worked great, but unfortunately the scheme was discontinued before we learned about outsourcing. Probably the operators would now be in Bangladesh–if there are any Bangladeshis who would work for what Mabel used to make.
Jan 15th, 2008
Steven Winokur
Johnny Socko Rocks! In fact, you can buy episodes of it now on iTunes. I bought some to show my kids. Luckily they are still young enough that they don’t notice how bad the special effects are.
Jan 15th, 2008
Steven Winokur
Hey McKingford - that must be why I remember that show, I grew up in Detroit. See previous message….
Jan 15th, 2008
Josh in DC
Man, if you had only mentioned Chief Wahoo, imagine how many posts comments would be …
I’m 32, so I don’t know how much I have to add. But someone mentioning how SNL used to be funny reminds me of a story involving a younger co-worker. She’s, oh, 24.
She: I remember when Saturday Night Live used to be cool. And then, it just got lame.
Me: [Trying to figure out what moment she might be referring to, keeping silent]
She: I mean, I remember when that Ashlee Simpson lip-syncing thing went down, I just couldn’t believe it.
…
I’ve always hated that Beloit list. I think they started doing it when I was a freshman in college or so (1993, in my case). It assumes that a college freshman has NO IDEA that the world existed, say, 20 years ago. I mean, I never saw any Reagan movies, but I knew he was an actor (thanks, in part, to Back to the Future). And so on.
Man, I love this blog.
Jan 15th, 2008
Joe
Regarding “In Living Color”,
To those of us who are a generation behind Joe, this means something completely different. This is where Jim Carey got his start. Well, he was James Carey back then, but still funny as all get out. Woah, just dated myself with that saying. Anyway, for those of you who have never seen In Living Color, it is worth a look. Some very funny stuff.
Jan 15th, 2008
Paul White
Just thought of a some junior high fashion statements that have also bitten the dust.
- Parachute pants. Nothing else needs to be said.
- Chic jeans. I think they still make them, but not the skin-tight variety that had the little “chic” logo on the back pocket that looked for all the world like “hi”. You can trust me on this; I read a lot of back pockets in junior high.
- Black concert t-shirts with melodramatic lyrics on the back, like “The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams. It’s Heaven and Hell.”
Jan 15th, 2008
Minda
This is entertaining to me as a young whippersnapper, a snot-nosed college kid, and someone who needs to get off your lawn. I’m being serious here; I can’t wait until I’m of the age where I, too, get to have these discussions… “Remember back when gas was only $3 a gallon? Man, those were the days,” or “I remember when DVR was first invented? People couldn’t believe you could skip those stupid Shawnee Mission KIA commercials,” and so on.
Jan 15th, 2008
Ken Arneson
The girl who did the “arm thing” on Zoom is named Bernadette Yao, and she has a web site:
http://www.bernadetteyao.com/index.asp?ID=29
I played that Mattel football game over and over until I had completely mastered it: in the end, no matter what the defense did, I knew the optimal move to attack it. I found the Mattel basketball game to be a bit more challenging, only because of the shot clock.
Jan 16th, 2008
Tim S.
Al — the smoking sections on airplanes was the first thing I thought of! I remember being seated in the first row of the “non-smoking” section and thinking, “this is the stupidest thing ever” as all the smoke from the row right in front of me drifted back to me. Smoking sections in restaurants went away more recently, but I still remember those (and they still have them in Europe–very jarring now). I love the fact that all airplanes STILL have “No Smoking” lights (because you had to extinguish your cigarettes for takeoff and landing, of course, so the light would go off when you could light up) that now never go out. I can picture kids asking, “So, okay, why don’t they have, like, “No iPod” signs? Or heck, why not a “No Cell Phones” sign that never goes out?
Smoking on airplanes. What the hell were people thinking?
Jan 16th, 2008
Brian
Have you ever noticed that no matter how old someone is, they think that their era of SNL was the only good one? If you’re in your 50’s, you think that nobody could beat Jim Belushi and Dan Akroyd. If you’re in your late 30’s or early 40’s, nobody will ever compare to Eddie Murphy. If you’re my age, you think that Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey and Mike Myers (and to a lesser extent Sandler, Spade, Farley, and Rock) were the best. And if you’re 20-25, it’s Will Ferrell. You know what the best part is? There’s a 13 year old kid right now who is watching Andy Samberg, and 10 years from now, they’ll be saying that Andy was the best that SNL ever had to offer. SNL is weird like that.
Perhaps this is blasphemous, but I think the original SNL episodes really sucked. I watch the repeats now and they just weren’t funny. Maybe I had to be there.
Jan 16th, 2008
TD
Easy Reader, yo.
And I get nostalgic for elecTRONic football every time I hear Supertramp’s Logical Song.. with the Coleco ‘touchdown’ sound (daLEEdaLEEEEE) after “so digital”…
Jan 16th, 2008
Walter
One of the great things about posts like this is it makes you look at what people were expecting and what was cutting edge at that time. I’m going to assume there are a lot of Rocky fans for this one, so hang with me.
How about in Rocky 4 at the beginning, when he’s loaded with all that money. He has a freaking robot that has a phone and talks to him! How cool was that the first time you saw it?
Jan 16th, 2008
Brian
I can’t believe I put Jim Belushi and not John. I should be shot. My sincerest apologies.
Jan 16th, 2008
Jon Morse
Ah, SuperToe. After I finally got bored with mine, I launched an experimental research operation.
I nailed the base of the thing to a big hunk of board for stability so that I could really give him a good whack on the head, then I set him up 85 “yards” from the goal post. A few tries, kept coming up short, but the stability trick worked… so I set up for another kick and grabbed a wooden canoe paddle.
I made the field goal, but SuperToe was tragically slain in the process.
Some other things:
Full-service gas stations, at least outside of New Jersey. (And even there, they just pump your gas unless they’re bored and you ask for an oil check, etc.) Also, free maps at the gas station.
Drive-in movies are still scattered around here and there, but I’m pretty sure the days of the local drive-in being a big hangout are dead and buried.
When we first got cable, our cable box was a little plastic doohickey with 36 plastic buttons. And an A/B switch. It had a channel called “Premiere Theater”, where they showed the same four movies over and over for a month, until HBO finally came along and killed it.
Hammond organs. The ones with like 435634523 switches all over the place to choose sounds, instead of a simple LCD interface with a couple of buttons.
The “Close-Up” on that day’s NFL games in TV Guide — complete with numerical team rosters!
Canister vacuums. And coffee percolators.
Jan 16th, 2008
Mike
I wonder if Star Blazers has a place on your list.
Jan 16th, 2008
JG
I just got my boys a Super Toe for Christmas! Only now he’s called Big Kick. And the footballs are soft, like Nerf. Dude’s got big-time range. Much better than I remember.
Jan 16th, 2008
Old Man Duggan
Honestly, I don’t know that any SNLs past about 1984 were funny and even those were hit-and-miss. Sketch comedy in general just isn’t that good. The only exception was the always “on” Mr. Show. The SNL’s of my youth (end of Carvey, beginning of Sandler) were awful.
As for the Rocky IV robot, it is still awesome. I’d give anything to have that.
Jan 16th, 2008
Chipmaker
I’m a bit older than you, Joe — let’s just say that the Hank/Reggie/Stretch number is coming up — but you strike the gold with this post.
3 1/2″ disks
5 1/4″ disks
8″ disks !!!
Soon CDs will be a thing of the past — and exactly what are they more compact than, anyway?
My mother had a console stereo with a four-speed turntable — 78, 45, 33 1/3, and 16 2/3. I knew 45s and 33s well, and my folks even had a few old 78s, but I’ve never seen a 16-speed recording. Playing the 45s at 78 was always good for a laff — everything sounded like The Chipmunks.
I remember one Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (another great thing gone). It was his annual Christmas Toys show, wherein he would show off a selection of the year’s popular gifts. This one time he had, among other things, a toy cannon, which made quite a blast. He also had one of those SuperJocks — probably the football player. The jock toy didn’t cooperate at all, no matter how Johnny tried to finagle it. Without saying a word — classic Carson moment — he got the cannon and set it next to the jock.
BARROOOOM!!!
The jock landed on the far side of the soundstage.
Jan 16th, 2008
Dan V.
“Soon CDs will be a thing of the past — and exactly what are they more compact than, anyway?”
Those doodads called LaserDiscs.
Jan 16th, 2008
Doug M.
Joe, I’m one year younger that you and also from Cleveland. The UHF story really hits home. I remember spending (what seemde like) hours finding channel 43 so I could watch Combat while my sister used the good (ie. color) TV to watch Donnie and Marie. I too spent hours with the Mattel football game and Electric Company.
Other things that make our kids say - What !?
Full service gas station - I remember getting football stickers w/$.60 gas.
Milk and bread delivery to house
Bookmobile - probably still around, but I havent’s seen one in ages
EVERYTHING closed at 5:00 pm.
Antennas
No Airconditioning - remember before everything was Airconditioned ??
Jan 16th, 2008
MonkeyHawk
Sigh, I’m so old I remember when people used to tune into the American Football League games just to see Pete Gogolak kick field goals for the Buffalo Bills.
George Blanda’s single-bar face mask.
Rocky Colavito, who wouldn’t wear a batting helmet. (Actually, he wore an internal helmet under his felt cap.)
“ABC’s Wide World of Sport,” in glorious black-and-white with demolition derbies from Islip, New York and the US Firemen’s (not “firefighters,” mind you…fire *men*) championships.
“To look sharp every time you shave,
to feel sharp and be on the ball,
just be sharp - use Gillette Blue Blades
for the slickest quickest shave of all!”
“Mister Clean gets rid of dirt and grease and grime in just a minute.
Mister Clean can clean your whole house, and everything that’s in it.
Mister Clean, Mister Clean, Mister Clean.”
You didn’t go out on Saturday night until you watched “All in the Family,” “Mary Tyler Moore,” “The Bob Newheart Show,” and “M*A*S*H.” And ending up in someone’s apartment to smoke dope and watch “Saturday Night Live,” after you cleaned seeds and stems on a double-album record jacket.
Stems and seeds.
Jan 16th, 2008
ganderson
The last real fight my brother and I got in was while we were playing a broken electic football game- we called it “ratty-tatty” football and we’d tap on the field to get the players to move- I was tapping too hard, he got cheezed, and WHAM- he got a bloody nose- remember the kickers with their little spring loaded legs?
Also-We had an actual smoking lounge for seniors inside our high school. And- anyone remember driving outside the 75 mile limit to see home NFL games on TV?
Jan 16th, 2008
Cooper
We didnt have a “roto-antenna”…..but we did have a super complicated system of brothers and sisters lined up ready to pass the word along. Here’s how it worked: one person would be downstairs looking at the tv ready to yell some version of “it’s good” or “right there”…the other sister would be on the stairs passing the word along to the sib who would be turning the outside antenna by hand.
Usually by the time things got communicated it was too late so you had to yell “turn it back”.
After a while the family got really good at this…and when something good was going to come on tv dad would say “ok, time to turn the antenna” and we would all line up and take our positions. To this day if dad said those words we would probably all take our positions and hope for the best.
Couple other memories: turning the channel changer as fast as possible where you could change that thing by 8 channels and hit it on the dime (thus, hiding the fact from your mom that you were watching Benny Hill).
About 3 times a year it would get really foggy -when this happened you would pull in these channels from 200 or 300 miles away…and when this occured it was like finding lost treasure “oh my gosh, i’m getting some channel 62 from louisville, ky!!!!!”. When that occurred -my sister and i would run to my parents and older sibs just to let them know what we had found. Pure joy.
Jan 17th, 2008
Randy Stevens
Joe, I am 45, and I remember gas being 29 cents a gallon for years. Also, Ultraman is the coolest superhero ever. Don’t believe me, just ask my 5 year old son. The special effects on the original were a little lame, but they have continued to make them in Japan, and some of the ones from the 90’s and 00’s are pretty cool. Just type in Ultraman in youtube, you will be flooded with clips. I have never heard of Johnny Socco, but I will check it out on Netflix.
Keep up the good work. I like the tangents off baseball almost as much as the baseball stuff, so keep doing it. I’ll be here waiting to see what you come up with next.
Jan 17th, 2008
Ray
I’m 46. I HATED, and still HATE the Mr. Johnson sketch. People STILL go into that routine when I am introduced to them, even if they weren’t born at the time it was popular.
BTW, if you have an iPod and use it running, please take a look at this Modest Proposal:
http://y42k.wordpress.com/2008/01/13/a-modest-proposal/
Jan 17th, 2008
jim willoughby's 'do
god, i loved this one (and coincidently i just turned 42 this week).
a few comments on yours:
- there was also a downside to 8-tracks’ quadrants: often, a song would be split between two of them so halfway thru it’d fade out, you’d have 5-10 seconds of dead air/clicking while the track advanced and it’d fade back in at the point it left off. to this day i cant listen to elo’s “mr blue sky” w/o waiting for it to fade out in the middle!
- i reference fred travalena all the time & have NEVER had a single person kno who i’m talking about. if i recall, he was a regular on ’solid gold’ for a while. btw, what about musical variety shows like solid gold (the black-haired dancer opened my eyes to appeal of the ‘dirty girl!’), pink lady & jeff (w/o question the most offensive show since amos & andy), shields & yarnell (the robot!), etc?
- i grew up in boston, where zoom was produced (by our pbs affiliate, wgbh). needless to say, we all did the arm thing, spoke ‘ubby-dubby,’ etc. however, after graduating from college, my world was rocked when i addressed a birthday card to a friend at b.u. law school & realized i was writing “boston, ma o-2-1-3-4(!!)
here are a few additions:
- super elastic bubble plastic - made by wham-o (frisbee, hula hoop, silly string, slip n’ slide…). this is from wikipedia: “Besides the obvious potential for messes when letting children play with liquid plastic, the substance also emitted noxious fumes. The fumes could become concentrated inside the straw, so users had to be careful never to inhale through the straw while inflating their balloons. Because of these problems, Super Elastic Bubble Plastic was eventually taken off the market.”
- first vcr’s - ours had a remote that PLUGGED IN to the device, so you couldnt use it from the sofa because the cord didnt reach that far. plus, you could only fast forward. for rewind, you still had to get up & press the button on the vcr itself.
- stick hockey - i loved this game (mine was the bruins & the rangers). once you got good, you could maneuver the puck to the center & work your way toward the goal such that it was impossible for a player on the other team to stop you. also, the defensemen couldnt make it all the way behind the net, so sometimes the puck would get ’stuck’ there. i remember an arcade version when i was in college - usa v. ussr (best part: the ‘boo’ button!), but it wasnt nearly as much fun as the crappy table top version from when i was a kid.
Jan 17th, 2008
Lynn WEIRDWOLF Schmidt
Joe, It is KC Chiefs fan Weirdwolf. Electric Football is not gone. Visit http://www.miniaturefootball.org or .com We have a very active community with national tourneys and conventions. Yes we are nerds but we have a great time playing. I am also president of the MFCA Miniature Football Coaches Association. Call me Joe and I’ll teach you how to play. You gave up too soon and never learned what it can become.
NFL Films just aired a piece this week on NFL Film Presents about last years electric football super bowl in Jacksonville. I ran a near perfect 65 Toss Power trap for them that was featured on the show.
Jan 18th, 2008
Jeff A.
Electric Football: The early “disc” version.
Don’t think anyone here has yet mentioned what was the most popular “electronic football” game of the early 70’s in my neighborhood. I believe it was something called “Talking Football.” The offensive player had a dozen or so small, black plastic discs (about 2″ diameter), one for each possible offensive play. They’d select their disc and insert it part way into what could best be described as a small “disc player” that looked like a little transistor radio. The defensive opponent then would rotate the disc in the player until his desired defensive alignment appeared in a viewing window , and then pushed the disc all the way into the player. An “announcer” would then “call” the play to give you the results. We played that thing for hours– had leagues and everything! Nothing better than 4th and goal from the 2, and dropping in your “gadget plays” disc. Oh my!!!
Jan 22nd, 2008
Pete A
Chipmaker,
Have you or anyone else found a video anywhere of Carson’s Annual Christmas Toy Show with the toy cannon and SuperToe? I would love to see that again or show my kids…??
Feb 16th, 2008
Robert Pearce
Johnny Sokko and his Giant Robot was one of my favorite television shows from the age of 5 to 7. I lived in northeast Ohio back then, in Orrville, the home of Smucker’s Jelly, and watched Channel 43. I saw many great and many truly terrible horror movies on Superhost’s Creature Double Feature.
Nov 3rd, 2008
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