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…??

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!!!

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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?