June 2026 - Page 6 of 6 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Sesame Street’s Counting Songs: The Numbers That Got Stuck In Our Heads

When people mention the Sesame Street counting song, a lot of us instantly hear that funky:

“1, 2, 3, 4, 5…”

The best-remembered version is the Pinball Number Count, the animated segment where a pinball rolls through wild little number-themed machines while the song counts up to 12. It was recorded by The Pointer Sisters in 1976, which explains why it had so much more groove than a regular kids’ counting song.

That was part of Sesame Street’s genius. They didn’t talk down to kids. They used real music, catchy animation, and repetition that worked. You learned numbers without feeling like you were being taught.

There were plenty of other number songs on Sesame Street, including ones focused on counting to 10, but the Pinball Number Count is probably the one most people remember first. It was funky, fast, colorful, and impossible to forget.

For a lot of us, that little pinball didn’t just teach numbers. It gave us one of the greatest earworms in children’s TV history.

Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee

As a kid growing up, I didn’t understand why everyone said “Nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee” was incorrect English. I just knew they made great baked products.

The famous Sara Lee campaign was built around that odd but unforgettable line:

“Everybody doesn’t like something, but nobody doesn’t like Sara Lee.”

It was catchy, a little strange, and maybe not what your English teacher wanted to hear, but that was the point. The double negative made people notice it, remember it, and repeat it.

The commercials usually showed off Sara Lee cakes, pies, pound cake, coffee cake, and other desserts that looked like they came from a bakery, even if they came from the freezer. For a lot of families, Sara Lee was the “company’s coming” dessert you could serve without doing all the baking yourself.

Looking back, the grammar may have been questionable, but the advertising worked. Everybody had foods they didn’t like, but the campaign wanted us to believe Sara Lee was the one thing nobody could turn down.

And honestly, as a kid, I wasn’t diagramming the sentence. I was looking at the cake.

Columbia House: 11 Albums For A Dollar

Columbia House was how I started my record collection. 11 albums for just one dollar! What a bargain, until you forgot to send in the postcard saying you didn’t want the automatic shipment and wound up with an Engelbert Humperdinck album the next month. Not that there’s anything wrong with him, just not exactly a 17-year-old’s style.

That was the Columbia House magic and the Columbia House trap. The club pulled you in with a ridiculous opening deal, then made its money when you bought more albums at regular club prices, or when you forgot to decline the monthly selection.

Columbia House started as the Columbia Record Club in 1955 and became huge through mail-order records, tapes, and later CDs. The music club side shut down in 2009, after BMG bought and folded it into its own operation. The company kept going for a while as a DVD/Blu-ray club, but its parent filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015, after years of declining revenue and a music world that had moved to downloads and streaming.

Looking back, Columbia House was part bargain, part lesson in fine print, and part rite of passage. For a lot of us, it was the first time the mailman delivered music we actually wanted — and sometimes music we absolutely did not.

Virginia Slims: “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”

https://www.theretrosite.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Virginia-slims.mp4

The Virginia Slims commercials were some of the most memorable cigarette ads of the late 1960s and 1970s, built around the famous slogan “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

The campaign launched in 1968, aimed directly at women during the era of women’s liberation. The ads usually compared an old-fashioned scene of women being told what they couldn’t do with a modern, confident woman enjoying her independence. Then came the message: women had come a long way, and Virginia Slims was supposedly the cigarette made for them.

Looking back, it was clever marketing, but also pretty calculated. The ads borrowed the language of women’s progress to sell cigarettes. They made smoking look stylish, modern, and independent at a time when cigarette advertising was still everywhere.

For those of us who remember the commercials, the slogan is the thing that stuck. “You’ve come a long way, baby” became bigger than the product itself. It was catchy, bold, and very much of its time.

Today, the campaign feels like a time capsule: part advertising genius, part cultural manipulation, and a reminder of when cigarette commercials could still shape pop culture before they were banned from television in 1971.

Whenever I saw the Barbie Cut ’n Curl commercial as a kid, I always wondered if it really worked as smoothly as it looked on TV.

The idea was great: give Barbie a haircut, style her hair, curl it, and somehow keep the fun going without ruining the doll forever. Of course, commercials always made these toys look effortless. At home, I’m guessing it depended on patience, steady hands, and whether Barbie’s hair ended up looking salon-ready or like she had just lost a fight with a brush.

But here’s what I really want to know: Did you have Barbie Cut ’n Curl? Did it actually work the way the commercial showed?

And even better, did any of you start by cutting and styling Barbie’s hair and later end up becoming a hair stylist, barber, or working in cosmetology? Sometimes those childhood toys really did point us toward what we’d do later in life.

Wendy’s Soviet Fashion Show: “Daywear… Eveningwear… Swimwear”

The Wendy’s Soviet Fashion Show ad was a wonderfully odd 1985 commercial from the same general era as Wendy’s famous “Where’s the Beef?” campaign.

The setup was simple: a fake Soviet fashion show where every outfit looked almost exactly the same: gray, shapeless, dull, and joyless. The announcer presents each look as if it’s glamorous high fashion: daywear, eveningwear, and the best-remembered punchline, “Swimwear.”

The joke was Cold War-era contrast. Wendy’s was saying other fast-food burgers were all the same, boring and uniform, while Wendy’s offered something better and different. It was a very 1980s ad idea: take a shot at Soviet sameness, then turn it into a hamburger comparison.

The spot was directed by Joe Sedelmaier, who was known for offbeat, deadpan commercials, including Wendy’s Where’s the Beef? work. IMDb lists the writers as Cliff Freeman and Joe Sedelmaier, with Lily Monkus among the credited performers.

It also drew some complaints at the time, though not as many as you might think. A 1985 Washington Post article reported Wendy’s received about 120 letters criticizing the Soviet-themed commercial, while the company noted that was small compared with its daily customer count.

Looking back, it’s pure 1980s advertising: Cold War humor, deadpan delivery, one unforgettable visual gag, and a punchline people still remember decades later:

“Swimwear.”

The Swing Wing: The Toy That Looked Like a Neck Injury Waiting to Happen

The Swing Wing was a wonderfully weird 1960s toy introduced by Transogram Games in 1965. It was worn on your head like a little cap, with a long ribbon or tail attached. The idea was to whip your head and neck back and forth until the tail spun around like a helicopter. Think Hula Hoop, but for your head.

The commercials made it look like pure kid fun: boys and girls swinging, twisting, dancing, and making the Swing Wing fly around them. But watching it now, you can almost hear every chiropractor in America screaming.

It was supposed to be Transogram’s answer to the Hula Hoop craze, with company hopes that it might become the next big toy sensation. It didn’t.

That’s probably why people remember it now more as a “what were they thinking?” toy than a classic. It had the perfect 1960s formula: bright colors, a catchy commercial, kids moving around like crazy, and absolutely no adult in the room asking, “Should children be violently snapping their necks for fun?”

Looking back, the Swing Wing is peak retro toy madness. Simple idea, great commercial, questionable safety, and the kind of thing that makes you wonder how any of us made it out of childhood with our heads still attached

Pfft! You Were Gone Celebrity Edition!

“Pfft! You Were Gone” was originally written and recorded by Buck Owens in 1954, but it is most famously remembered as a recurring comedy sketch on Hee Haw, usually sung by Archie Campbell and Gordie Tapp, along with various celebrity guest stars.

The bit worked because it was simple, corny, and perfectly suited for Hee Haw’s country humor. One performer would sing a sad little setup, then the other would pop in with the famous “pfft!” punchline, turning heartbreak into a quick laugh.

Hee Haw first debuted on CBS on Sunday night, June 15, 1969, as a summer replacement series. Later, when it moved into syndication, many viewers came to remember it as a Saturday evening tradition, though the night depended on the local station.

For a lot of families, Hee Haw was easy comfort TV: country music, goofy sketches, familiar guests, and jokes that were silly enough for everyone in the room to understand. And “Pfft! You Were Gone” was one of the bits that stuck.

Ware oh ware are you tonight?

The New Casper Cartoon Show: The Ending We Remember

If you watched The New Casper Cartoon Show on Saturday mornings, the ending probably brings back just as many memories as the opening.

These are the Casper episodes I’m most familiar with, so seeing the closing again feels like finding an old piece of childhood TV you forgot was still tucked away somewhere. Casper was never the scary kind of ghost. He was gentle, lonely, and always just trying to make a friend.

The show first aired on ABC Saturday mornings in 1963, with new cartoons made for TV along with older Casper shorts. It gave Casper a regular place in the Saturday morning lineup, alongside characters like Wendy the Good Little Witch, The Ghostly Trio, Spooky, and Nightmare the ghost horse.

The ending has that simple old-TV charm. No big production, no loud cliffhanger, just a friendly goodbye from a cartoon that was never trying to be too wild or too scary.

For many of us, this version of Casper is the one that stuck: cereal bowl nearby, TV glowing, and a friendly ghost reminding us that sometimes the nicest character on television was the one everyone else was supposed to be afraid of.

The New Casper Cartoon Show

These are the Casper episodes I’m most familiar with, and it’s good to see them all once again.

The New Casper Cartoon Show first aired on ABC Saturday mornings in 1963, with its original run continuing into early 1964. It included 26 new Casper cartoons made for TV, along with older theatrical cartoons that helped keep Casper on television for years afterward.

Casper had already been around before this show, appearing in theatrical cartoons and Harvey Comics, but this version gave him a regular Saturday morning home. Unlike most ghosts, Casper didn’t want to scare anyone. He just wanted friends, which made him one of the gentler cartoon characters of the era.

The show also featured familiar Harvey characters like Wendy the Good Little Witch, The Ghostly Trio, Spooky, and Nightmare the ghost horse.

Casper would return in later forms too, including Casper and the Angels in the late 1970s and other Harvey cartoon packages that kept him alive for new generations of kids. But for many of us, The New Casper Cartoon Show is the version that feels like Saturday morning: cereal, pajamas, and a friendly ghost who was never too scary.