online community focused on sharing and reminiscing about video, audio, and images that stir our memories of the past – old television, theme songs, commercials, print advertisements, the sights and sounds you remember
When this ad aired in 1974, America was right in the middle of changing the way it made coffee. For generations, the kitchen percolator had been the standard. Then Mr. Coffee came along with automatic drip brewing, and Joe DiMaggio became the familiar, trusted face convincing people to give this new machine a try.
He didn’t exactly “kill” the percolator himself, but he certainly helped America move away from it. Mr. Coffee had only been introduced in 1972, yet by April 1974 the company had already sold its millionth machine.
One of my favorite details is that DiMaggio reportedly turned down the endorsement at first—and had actually won a Mr. Coffee machine at a golf tournament before the company ever approached him.
And here’s the best irony of all: the man who became one of the most famous coffee spokesmen in television history reportedly wasn’t much of a coffee drinker himself.
Do you remember when your family finally replaced the old percolator with a Mr. Coffee?
As kids, we used to play army, and this commercial is a pretty good demonstration of what that looked like in the early 1960s. We sometimes make fun of kids today for fighting battles on video-game screens, but there’s an interesting full-circle connection — real warfare now makes extensive use of drones and other remotely controlled systems
The toy is the Tiger Joe Tank, introduced by Deluxe Reading in 1961. This was no little tabletop tank — it was about 26 inches long, moved by wired remote control and actually fired plastic shells. Deluxe even suggested putting a little flour or talcum powder in the barrel to create a puff of “smoke” when it fired
What really caught my attention is the line at the end: “Sold at food markets only.” Deluxe Reading deliberately sold many of its big toys through supermarkets. Those oversized colorful boxes could occupy the hard-to-use upper shelves, putting toys right in front of kids tagging along on the weekly shopping trip
Tiger Joe almost feels more like the kind of present Dad would have picked out, but the marketing actually put it directly in the path of whoever was doing the grocery shopping. I found a 1963 supermarket ad selling Tiger Joe for $12.88 — roughly $140 today — and you could leave a $2 deposit and have one held until Christmas
The company was founded by Henry Orenstein, who years later helped bring the idea that became Transformers to Hasbro
Did anyone get a Tiger Joe for Christmas — or spend the whole grocery trip staring up at one on the top shelf?
As kids, we used to make fun of the way Walter Brennan walked. Now I sort of walk like him!
Seeing this Real McCoys opening brought back one memory, but then I noticed where the clip came from and got another one — TNN, The Nashville Network. So this turned into a double reminisce for me: remembering a television show from my childhood through a cable network that itself has now disappeared under that name
The Real McCoys premiered in 1957 with Walter Brennan as Grandpa Amos McCoy, heading up a West Virginia family that relocates to a farm in California. Richard Crenna played grandson Luke, Kathleen Nolan was Luke’s wife Kate, Lydia Reed played Hassie, Michael Winkelman was Little Luke and Tony Martinez was farmhand Pepino. The show was filmed at Desilu and co-produced by Danny Thomas.
And about that walk we used to imitate — apparently Walter Brennan was acting it. A Los Angeles Times account notes that Brennan didn’t actually have the limp himself, although he used that distinctive gait for several of his characters. All these years later, I find out the walk we were copying wasn’t even really his!
Brennan was already a major movie star by then and had become the first actor to win three Academy Awards for acting. Richard Crenna had been the squeaky-voiced Walter Denton on Our Miss Brooks before becoming Luke McCoy, and years later many of us would know him as Colonel Trautman in the Rambo movies. Kathleen Nolan made some history of her own in 1975 when she became the first woman elected president of the Screen Actors Guild.
The show was no minor success either. It reached number eight in the Nielsen ratings during 1958–59 and climbed all the way to number five during 1960–61. After five seasons on ABC, it moved to CBS for one final season before ending in 1963.
Then there’s the second memory in this clip. TNN acquired The Real McCoys in 1999 and aired two episodes every weekday afternoon, actually giving the series its first cable-TV run more than three decades after it ended. TNN itself had started as The Nashville Network, became The National Network, disappeared as a name when it became Spike TV in 2003, and that channel eventually became Paramount Network.
So I started out remembering Grandpa Amos and somehow wound up reminiscing about TNN too
Do you remember The Real McCoys — and how many of you also remember watching those old shows on TNN?
Don’t Blow Your Top came out in 1972, and this is one of those wonderfully simple toy ideas that probably didn’t need much explaining to a kid. You spun the spinner, added the required number of marbles to the character’s hat, and watched the pressure build on a real balloon hidden underneath. Eventually — POP! — somebody literally blew his top
The game came from Marvin Glass & Associates, the legendary Chicago toy-design company connected with Mouse Trap, Operation, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Lite-Brite and eventually Simon. They created and developed toy ideas, then licensed them to companies like Schaper to manufacture and sell
Schaper itself had quite a history. The company was founded by Minneapolis mailman Herb Schaper, whose homemade Cootie game became such a huge success that Schaper eventually promoted itself as “The Cootie Company,” just as we hear at the end of this commercial. The company also gave us familiar games like Ants in the Pants and Don’t Break the Ice
And I have to give them credit for the name. “Don’t blow your top” was already a familiar expression for losing your temper, so turning that into a game where the poor fellow actually blows his top was pretty clever
The game apparently had some staying power too, with advertising for it continuing several years after its 1972 introduction
Did anyone have Don’t Blow Your Top — and was waiting for that balloon to pop more fun than actually winning?
Today marks the anniversary of the release of Red Dawn, which opened in theaters on August 10, 1984. For anyone who grew up during the Cold War, the idea of Soviet and Cuban paratroopers suddenly dropping into an American high school felt a lot more believable then than it probably does today
Patrick Swayze led a remarkably young cast that also included Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey. Their characters escaped into the mountains and became the Wolverines, a teenage resistance group fighting the occupying forces. Swayze and Grey would reunite just three years later in a very different movie, Dirty Dancing
Red Dawn also holds an unusual place in movie history. The MPAA had only recently created the PG-13 rating, and when the film opened on August 10, 1984, it became the first PG-13 movie actually released in American theaters
The movie began as a screenplay called Ten Soldiers by Kevin Reynolds before director John Milius reshaped it into the version we know. Although the story takes place in Colorado, much of it was filmed around Las Vegas, New Mexico, which was transformed into the fictional town of Calumet
It was considered extremely violent for its time, but audiences responded. The movie earned more than twice its reported production budget domestically and became one of those films that seemed to capture the tension and fears of the early 1980s
Its influence even reached the real military. When U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein in 2003, the mission was called Operation Red Dawn, with search locations named “Wolverine 1” and “Wolverine 2” after the movie
Do you remember when Burger King sold veal? Watching this commercial again, it almost seems impossible that one of America’s biggest hamburger chains was trying to convince us that a Veal Parmigiana sandwich belonged in the drive-through
Burger King had been expanding beyond burgers with its Specialty Sandwich line, offering chicken, roast beef, ham and cheese, fish and steak on those familiar long rolls. Then came the Veal Parmigiana — a breaded veal patty with tomato sauce and mozzarella — tested in selected markets before going national in 1982. The idea was to give adults something that felt a little more like restaurant food than ordinary fast food.
And Burger King really was out there by itself on this one. A May 20, 1982 Christian Science Monitor report specifically called Burger King the only major fast-food chain then selling veal sandwiches, adding that representatives from both McDonald’s and Jack in the Box said they had no plans to follow. Historical accounts of Burger King’s Specialty Sandwich program also cite that contemporary report.
The sandwich soon became controversial. Animal-rights groups organized a boycott over the treatment of calves raised for veal, putting Burger King in the middle of a debate that was becoming much more visible nationally. Burger King later said the protests were not why it removed the sandwich and blamed weak consumer demand instead. By 1983, it had disappeared from almost every Burger King menu.
What I find especially interesting is that Burger King didn’t completely forget the idea. Veal Parmigiana reportedly made a limited return in New England in 1988, and Burger King later had much more success putting marinara and mozzarella on chicken instead with its Italian Chicken Sandwich.
It’s hard to imagine McDonald’s, Wendy’s or Burger King introducing a veal sandwich today, but for a brief time Burger King actually tried to make Veal Parmigiana mainstream fast food
Did anyone actually try one of these, and was it any good?
I remember really enjoying The Second Hundred Years as a kid, although I must have caught it during the summer reruns. When it originally aired Wednesday nights at 8:30, it went directly against The Beverly Hillbillies, and that was one show our family never missed.
This was also a great time for those wonderfully strange fantasy sitcoms. We had I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, My Mother the Car, It’s About Time and The Flying Nun, so a comedy about a man being frozen for 67 years probably didn’t seem nearly as crazy then as it does today.
Monte Markham played Luke Carpenter, a 33-year-old gold prospector who disappeared in Alaska in 1900 and was thawed out in 1967. Technically, he was now 101 years old, but he still looked 33.
Arthur O’Connell played Luke’s 67-year-old son Edwin, while Markham also played Edwin’s 33-year-old son Ken. That meant grandfather and grandson looked almost identical, while Luke’s own son looked decades older than he did.
The series actually got off to an impressive start. Its premiere reportedly beat The Beverly Hillbillies in the ratings, but the audience dropped quickly and only 26 episodes were produced during the 1967-68 season.
The cast went on to some familiar places. Monte Markham later played Perry Mason, appeared on Baywatch and turned up on The Golden Girls as Blanche’s brother Clayton. Bridget Hanley soon became Candy Pruitt on Here Come the Brides, while Frank Maxwell later appeared for years on General Hospital.
It lasted only one season, but this is one of those forgotten shows that somehow stayed in my memory.
Does anyone else remember The Second Hundred Years, or did you discover this one later in reruns?
How many of you remember this Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercial? This one really seems to have stuck with people, and watching it again I can understand why. Instead of giving us a normal family making peanut butter sandwiches, they filled the commercial with recognizable characters and images including Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Beethoven, the Mona Lisa and even a hockey-masked horror character, all brought together by Peter Pan Peanut Butter
The biggest surprise for me is the music. That catchy “peanut, peanut butter” jingle wasn’t originally written for the commercial at all. The melody goes back to “(Baby) Hully Gully,” written by Fred Sledge Smith and Cliff Goldsmith in 1959. H.B. Barnum and Marty Cooper then adapted it into “Peanut Butter,” recorded by The Marathons in 1961, and that song eventually found another life in Peter Pan’s advertising more than twenty years later.
Peter Pan needed memorable advertising at the time, too. In early 1984, Skippy controlled about 40 percent of the national peanut-butter market and Jif had 17 percent, while Peter Pan was down around seven percent. So this wonderfully strange commercial was coming from a famous old brand trying very hard to get our attention, and I’d say they succeeded.
The brand itself goes all the way back to 1928 and was once the dominant national peanut butter. By the time this commercial appeared, Peter Pan was also changing corporate hands as Beatrice acquired Esmark, which explains that very familiar 1980s “We’re Beatrice” identification some of us remember seeing at the end of commercials.
Peter Pan advertising had also featured some familiar faces over the years, including Sterling Holloway, Alan Sues, Art James and later Perfect Strangers star Mark Linn-Baker. I tried to track down the performers in this particular commercial, but I couldn’t find a reliable cast list, so rather than guess at their identities or what became of them, I’m leaving that part as one of the mysteries behind the commercial.
Do you remember this one, and did that “peanut, peanut butter” jingle immediately come back to you?
How many of you remember this version of The Fantastic Four? Long before superhero movies became huge Hollywood events, Hanna-Barbera was bringing Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm into our homes on Saturday mornings
The series premiered on ABC on September 9, 1967 — amazingly, the very same day ABC’s original Spider-Man cartoon debuted. Only 20 Fantastic Four episodes were made, but Hanna-Barbera made a real effort to keep the show connected to the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comics. Alex Toth redesigned the characters for animation, and director Lew Marshall went so far as to clip panels directly from Fantastic Four comic books and hand them to his layout and background artists as reference.
There was also some terrific voice talent behind these characters. Radio veteran Gerald Mohr was Reed Richards, Jo Ann Pflug voiced Sue Storm, Paul Frees handled The Thing and several other characters, and Addams Family fans might recognize another familiar connection — Ted Cassidy provided the booming voice of Galactus. Vic Perrin voiced the Silver Surfer
And that opening certainly helped make it memorable. Ted Nichols wrote the theme and background music, giving the show a slightly jazzy, almost grown-up sound compared with many Saturday-morning cartoons of the period.
There were some interesting compromises too. Hanna-Barbera couldn’t use Namor the Sub-Mariner in one adaptation because the character was already tied to The Marvel Super Heroes, so they created Prince Triton instead. Then when Fantastic Four returned to television in 1978, the Human Torch was unavailable because his rights were tied up elsewhere, resulting in the creation of the little robot H.E.R.B.I.E.
What I find especially interesting is that this little 1967 Saturday-morning cartoon still has an influence today. More than half a century later, The Fantastic Four: First Steps included a cartoon within the movie designed to evoke this Hanna-Barbera version
Did you watch the 1967 Fantastic Four when it originally aired, or did you discover it later in reruns?
There are certain cartoon openings where you only need the first few seconds before the entire show comes rushing back, and Top Cat is definitely one of those for me. The limousine, the fancy restaurant, T.C. helping himself to somebody else’s lunch and then heading back to the alley told us almost everything we needed to know about him before the episode even started
What I didn’t realize back then was how much Top Cat owed to another television comedy. T.C. was essentially Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon answer to Phil Silvers’ fast-talking Sergeant Bilko, always working another angle and trying to stay one step ahead of authority. They even brought over Maurice Gosfield, who had played Private Doberman with Silvers, to voice Benny the Ball, whose appearance was partly modeled after Gosfield. Arnold Stang gave T.C. that unmistakable voice, while Allen Jenkins became Officer Dibble
The theme is another big part of why this opening stuck with us. Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are credited on “The Most Effectual Top Cat,” which managed to introduce T.C.’s personality and his position as leader of the gang in less than a minute. Curtin, of course, was also behind music for an amazing number of Hanna-Barbera favorites
And here’s something I think many of us forget: Top Cat wasn’t originally a Saturday-morning cartoon. It premiered in prime time on ABC in 1961 and lasted only 30 episodes. Those episodes found a much longer life in reruns, and the show became especially beloved outside the United States. In Britain it was even called Boss Cat because a cat food already had the Top Cat name, while in Mexico Don Gato became popular enough to eventually inspire feature films
Did you watch Top Cat during its original prime-time run, or do you remember T.C. and the gang mainly from Saturday-morning reruns?
