Steve, Author at Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures - Do You Remember

Why Did Kids Have to Be Warned About Blasting Caps?

I remember seeing these warnings as a kid. They showed us what blasting caps looked like and told us never to touch one. Even then, I wondered: Why would I ever find one? Why weren’t the adults keeping them locked up?

We recently posted an old public service announcement with Willie Mays warning kids about blasting caps. Seeing it again brought that question right back. The warnings weren’t limited to Boy Scout posters, either. They appeared in films, public service announcements and other safety materials.

The danger was real. An explosives industry report said six boys were injured in five blasting cap incidents in 1989. Its conclusion was that the injuries apparently resulted from adults storing the caps improperly or illegally. A later report described children finding caps beside a road, near a park and even during a school trip to a lighthouse in Connecticut.

Of course kids needed to know: don’t touch one, and tell an adult. But that warning only came into play after someone had left a dangerous explosive where a child could find it.

We don’t see those old television spots much anymore, although the “Don’t Touch” warning still exists. I’m glad Willie Mays told kids to be careful. I just wish the adults handling the blasting caps had always been as careful.

Do you remember seeing these warnings growing up? Did you ever wonder why kids needed them in the first place?

“WHAT IS THIS, SOME SORT OF PEYTON PLACE?”

This was a little before my time, but I certainly remember my parents and other adults saying, “What is this, some sort of Peyton Place?”

For years I understood what they meant even if I didn’t really know why they were saying it.

Take a look at this 1964-65 opening to Peyton Place. A church steeple. Bells ringing. A peaceful little New England town. Then that wonderfully serious voice announces, “This is the continuing story of Peyton Place.”

Everything looks so respectable.

And that was the joke.

Behind those neat houses and small-town manners were affairs, family secrets, violence, alcoholism, mental breakdowns and murder. Peyton Place became so culturally famous that the name itself turned into shorthand for a seemingly respectable place where everybody had something going on behind closed doors. New Hampshire Magazine notes that “Peyton Place” had already become a synonym for scandal after Grace Metalious’ hugely successful 1956 novel.

The television version arrived on ABC on September 15, 1964, starring Dorothy Malone, Mia Farrow, Ryan O’Neal, Barbara Parkins and Ed Nelson. It was revolutionary television — a continuing prime-time story airing not once but twice each week. It became so popular that ABC eventually bumped it up to three nights a week.

And here’s something I never knew about this opening. The announcer is Dick Tufeld. One year later, television audiences would know that same voice as the Robot on Lost in Space — yes, the man behind “Danger, Will Robinson!”

Even the music has history. The theme was composed by Franz Waxman, who had also scored the 1957 Peyton Place movie.

The series lasted until June 2, 1969, producing an incredible 514 episodes.

But I think its greatest legacy may be that the show’s name escaped television entirely.

For a whole generation, you didn’t need to explain the gossip, secrets or drama.

You just called the place “Peyton Place.”

Do you remember your parents saying that — and did you know what they meant even if you’d never watched the show?

LOOK AT US NOW — WHEN LINCOLN-MERCURY BUILT LAND YACHTS

Looking back at this commercial, you can see exactly how our cars got called land yachts.

This is Lincoln-Mercury showing off its 1969 models, and just watch these things move through the streets. Long hood. Long trunk. Chrome everywhere. Whitewalls. Hidden headlights. They don’t look like they’re driving — they look like they’re sailing.

And they really were enormous.

A 1969 Mercury Marquis stretched 224.3 inches long. That’s 18 feet, 8 inches of automobile, riding on a 124-inch wheelbase and measuring nearly 80 inches wide. The convertible could weigh around 4,550 pounds.

Then you opened the hood and found a 429-cubic-inch — seven-liter — V8, rated at 320 gross horsepower, with a 360-horsepower version available.

Even the wood-paneled Colony Park station wagon you see cruising along in this commercial was over 18 feet long.

But here’s something I found interesting: “land yacht” wasn’t always entirely an insult. These huge American cars were designed to give you that soft, effortless, floating highway ride. You weren’t supposed to feel every corner in the road. You were supposed to sit back on that huge bench seat and cruise.

And listen to that jingle:

“Lincoln-Mercury Leads the Way.”

It actually started as “Step to the Rear,” a song written by Elmer Bernstein and Carolyn Leigh for the Broadway musical How Now, Dow Jones. Singer Marilyn Maye recorded it, and Lincoln-Mercury hired her to rerecord the song with advertising lyrics. She continued singing the campaign for several years.

Lincoln-Mercury really committed to this campaign, too. For one commercial shoot in 1968, they constructed a 67-foot-long, 31-foot-high “Lincoln Mercury Leads the Way” sign on an offshore island and used a helicopter to get equipment there.

Everything about this era was big.

The cars, the engines, the advertising — and apparently even the signs.

Did your family have one of these giant cars — and what was the biggest “land yacht” you remember riding in?

“COFFEE? AISLE TWO. NO LINE.” — MOSCOW ON THE HUDSON

Sometimes a movie can explain an entire culture shock with one incredibly simple scene.

In 1984’s Moscow on the Hudson, Robin Williams plays Vladimir Ivanoff, a Soviet circus musician who defects in New York and suddenly has to learn how Americans live.

Then somebody sends him out for coffee.

He walks into the supermarket, asks where the coffee is and is told, “Aisle Two.”

Then comes the line that makes the entire scene:

“Coffee line, please?”

There isn’t one.

Vladimir walks down the aisle and at first he’s almost delighted. Then he starts reading the choices: Taster’s Choice, Maxwell House, El Pico, Chock Full O’Nuts, espresso, cappuccino, Sanka, Folgers, Café Caribe…

And you can actually watch Robin Williams change.

Wonder becomes confusion. Confusion becomes panic. Pretty soon all he can say is “Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!” before collapsing in the aisle.

It’s funny, but that’s what makes this scene so smart. Vladimir isn’t overwhelmed because there’s no coffee.

He’s overwhelmed because there’s too much.

For Americans watching in 1984, an aisle filled from one end to the other with coffee barely registered as unusual. But shortages and long shopping lines were a genuine part of Soviet consumer life. A 1982 survey of Soviet émigrés even reported coffee selling for the equivalent of $15 a pound in Riga.

Director Paul Mazursky and co-writer Leon Capetanos did their homework, interviewing Russian immigrants and traveling through the Soviet Union while developing the film. Robin Williams studied Russian and even learned saxophone for the part.

And decades later, this little supermarket sequence has actually been used in economics classes to demonstrate shortages, rationing and consumer choice.

But you don’t need an economics class to understand it.

Just watch Vladimir turn that corner and see an entire aisle of coffee.

Do you remember this scene — and did we ever stop to think how incredible an ordinary American supermarket would have looked to someone seeing it for the first time?

THE NIGHT MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL WAS BORN — SEPTEMBER 21, 1970

Can you imagine the NFL without Monday Night Football?

On September 21, 1970, America sat down for the first regular-season broadcast of ABC’s brand-new Monday Night Football — the New York Jets against the Cleveland Browns.

Now here’s something I didn’t realize: NFL teams had played occasional Monday games before this. CBS and NBC had even experimented with a few Monday-night telecasts during the 1960s. But this was different. This was the beginning of a weekly national television institution.

And ABC didn’t treat it like an ordinary Sunday football game moved to Monday.

Producer Roone Arledge wanted a show. He roughly doubled the usual number of cameras, emphasized instant replay and graphics, and put three personalities in the booth: Keith Jackson, Howard Cosell and former Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith. Frank Gifford, who many of us associate with that classic booth, wouldn’t replace Jackson until 1971.

Then there was the game itself.

A huge 85,703 people packed Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Cleveland jumped out to a 14-0 lead, Homer Jones returned the second-half kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown, and Joe Namath kept fighting back. The Jets actually outgained Cleveland 454 yards to 221.

But with New York trailing 24-21 late in the game, Cleveland’s Billy Andrews intercepted Namath and ran it back 25 yards for the touchdown that sealed a 31-21 Browns victory.

And listen to the music on those early broadcasts. The famous MNF music most of us recognize wasn’t there yet. The original theme was “Score,” written by Charles Fox, with that wonderfully funky Hammond-organ sound of 1970. “Heavy Action” didn’t arrive until years later.

What ABC created that night went far beyond football. Monday night became an event. You knew the voices, you knew the personalities, and if you were a kid, you probably tried negotiating just how much of the game you were allowed to stay awake for.

Were you watching Monday Night Football in those early years — and who do you remember most: Cosell, Meredith, Jackson or Gifford?

Branded

I remember Branded, but what sticks with me most isn’t the stories—it’s that theme song.

And I also remember that we had all kinds of our own reworded versions of it as kids. I can’t remember exactly what ours were anymore, but I know we weren’t singing the real words!

Branded premiered on NBC on January 24, 1965, starring Chuck Connors as former U.S. Army Captain Jason McCord. The entire premise was explained before the episode even started:

McCord was the only survivor of the Battle of Bitter Creek. Because everyone else had died, the Army concluded that he had abandoned his men and fled. He was court-martialed, stripped of his rank and publicly drummed out of the cavalry as a coward.

But McCord wasn’t a coward.

The tragedy had actually resulted from decisions made by his commanding officer, and McCord refused to disgrace the dead by publicly revealing everything he knew. So wherever he went, people knew him as the man who supposedly ran away, and each episode gave him another chance to prove what kind of man he really was.

And that opening was hard to forget — his insignia ripped off, his buttons removed, his sword broken in half and the fort gates slammed behind him.

The theme was written by composer Dominic Frontiere with lyrics by Alan Alch. Frontiere also supplied music for the series. The song was unusual because instead of simply introducing the show, it told you the whole setup in less than a minute.

Branded lasted only two seasons and 48 episodes, ending April 24, 1966. And here’s something I never realized: the television series never gave Jason McCord the big final exoneration the whole story seemed to be building toward. The show simply ended.

Interestingly, a feature-film reworking of the three-part episode The Mission, released as Broken Sabre, reportedly gave McCord a happier resolution in that version — but viewers of the weekly television series never got that ending.

For me, though, it still comes back to that song.

I know we weren’t the only kids who changed the words to the Branded theme. What version do YOU remember singing?

SEARS IN ITS HEYDAY — “THERE’S MORE FOR YOUR LIFE AT SEARS”

Believe it or not, Sears has an early online-shopping story that deserves a report all by itself. I’m working on that one. But for now, let’s go back to Sears during its heyday.

If you were watching football on a Sunday, it seemed like you were guaranteed to see a Sears commercial somewhere along the way. And that memory actually has some history behind it — Sears was buying advertising around NFL broadcasts as far back as the 1970s, including ABC’s NFL coverage and CBS NFC games. By 1981, an NFL executive said the first 32 pages of the Sears Christmas catalog were NFL merchandise.

This commercial comes from 1983, and watch how much Sears manages to squeeze into 30 seconds. Cheryl Tiegs and fashion. Winnie-the-Pooh for the kids. A big stereo. Lamps and home furnishings. Craftsman tools. It’s not really a commercial for any one product — the product is Sears itself.

And then there’s that jingle:

“There’s more for your life at Sears.”

You heard those few notes and immediately knew what was coming.

Cheryl Tiegs was especially important to Sears in this era. She had launched a Sears clothing collection in 1980, and the company used her in its catalogs and television commercials to shake off some of its old-fashioned image. By 1984, TIME was writing about a revitalized Sears, with its catalog reaching roughly 12 million homes and the company operating more than 800 stores and thousands of catalog-sales locations.

And Sears was enormous. In 1984 it reported a record $38.83 billion in revenue and $1.45 billion in net income. This was still the retailer Americans measured everybody else against.

I think that’s what makes this commercial hit differently today. Sears wasn’t trying to convince America that it mattered.

Everybody already knew it did.

Do you remember shopping at Sears — and did Sunday football immediately make you think of that jingle?

Major Matt Mason: When the Moon Was Every Kid’s Next Adventure

This may be one of the most optimistic toy commercials of the 1960s.

“He lives on the Moon, we may all be there soon…”

This 60-second Major Matt Mason commercial dates to around 1967, and think about that line for a moment. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wouldn’t actually walk on the Moon until July 20, 1969.

But Mattel was already letting kids live there.

Major Matt Mason was “Mattel’s Man in Space,” complete with a Moon base, jet pack, lunar vehicles and fellow astronaut Sgt. Storm. This commercial even introduces the giant Captain Lazer, supposedly powered by energy from the stars.

What surprised me is how much of the original toy wasn’t simply made-up science fiction.

Mattel studied real aerospace concepts, and Major Matt’s strange Moon Suit was actually based on a 200-pound experimental lunar suit designed in the early 1960s. The real thing appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine in 1962.

Even one of the men behind the toy had genuine aerospace credentials. Mattel designer Jack Ryan had previously worked at Raytheon on missile systems, and he and Ralph Dunn patented Major Matt Mason’s unusual wire-supported bendable body.

Of course, Mattel eventually let its imagination run wild. Captain Lazer arrived from Mars, other aliens followed, and a Major Matt Mason book even featured giant genetically engineered Moon rabbits.

That closing “This world is swell, it’s made by Mattel” has an interesting connection: Mattel’s famous “Mattel — it’s swell!” slogan was created by Tony Asher, who also co-wrote several songs on the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

For a kid watching television in 1967, though, none of this probably seemed that far-fetched.

We were going to the Moon — why wouldn’t we be living there next?

Did you have Major Matt Mason, or was this one of those toys you desperately wanted for Christmas?

Happy Birthday to the United States Air Force!

On September 18, 1947, the U.S. Air Force officially became an independent branch of the military. So today marks its 79th birthday.

I thought this early-1950s recruiting commercial was a great way to look back at just how young the Air Force still was at the time.

The cartoon wasn’t simply advertising enlistment. It was recruiting young men for the Aviation Cadet program, where successful candidates could become pilots or other flying officers.

And check out the sales pitch: jets, travel, officer’s wings — and more than $5,000 a year after graduation.

There was a reason the Air Force was advertising so aggressively. Historical records show it was dealing with a serious shortage of Aviation Cadet applicants in the early 1950s. Requirements were adjusted, the minimum age was lowered to 19, and recruiting teams were sent onto college campuses looking for candidates.

It’s also easy to forget just how new everything was. The Air Force hadn’t even celebrated its tenth birthday yet, and the Air Force Academy didn’t exist when this recruiting push began. Congress wouldn’t authorize the Academy until 1954.

And since we’ve been paying more attention to the music in these old commercials, I looked into that too. I couldn’t find a reliable credit for the jingle used in this particular ad, so I’m not going to guess.

But here’s something I never knew about the official Air Force Song.

Robert Crawford wrote what became “Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder” in 1939 — and according to Air Force history, he first came up with the melody while flying from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Trenton, New Jersey.

Even better, the first page of Crawford’s original handwritten score eventually went much farther than Bridgeport or Trenton — Apollo 15 carried it to the surface of the Moon in 1971.

From a brand-new independent service in 1947 to the Moon barely 24 years later.

Who Remembers “The New People”?

I remember The New People, but oddly enough I remember the sound of the show more than I remember the stories. There was this strange little segue or transition sound they used between scenes that somehow stuck with me all these years. Hearing it again instantly brought the show back.

The New People premiered on ABC in September 1969 with a very late-’60s premise: a group of college students survives a plane crash on a deserted South Pacific island that had been prepared for an atomic test. The island came complete with buildings, supplies and even nuclear-test mannequins, giving the young survivors everything they needed to try building a new society from scratch.

There were some impressive names behind it. Aaron Spelling helped create the series, and Rod Serling wrote the original pilot. ABC also gave the show an unusual 45-minute time slot and paired it with The Music Scene in an effort to attract younger viewers.

The series only lasted 17 episodes, airing from September 1969 to January 1970, but it had some interesting future stars pass through. Richard Dreyfuss, Billy Dee Williams, Tyne Daly, Susan Howard and A Martinez all appeared during its short run.

The regular cast never produced a huge breakout star, although Tiffany Bolling went on to become a familiar face in cult films and television.

And then there’s that sound.

Does anybody else remember The New People — and do you remember that strange little transition sound too?