1970's Archives - Page 8 of 21 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Speedline Race Cars: The Hot Wheels Rival

Many of you asked about these when I posted the Hot Wheels advertisement. So now I have to ask: which did you have? Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Speedline, or all of them?

Speedline race cars were part of that late-19660s toy-car boom, when every company wanted a piece of the racing action. Hot Wheels had the orange track and wild colors, Matchbox had the more realistic little cars, and Speedline tried to get into the race with its own fast-looking cars and track sets.

They never became as famous as Hot Wheels, but that’s what makes them fun to remember. Some kids had the big names. Some had the off-brand or lesser-known racers. And honestly, when you were on the floor setting up races, it didn’t always matter what brand was stamped underneath. If the car was fast, it made the lineup.

For a lot of us, these little cars were more than toys. They were races across the living room, arguments over whose car won, and the beginning of a car collection before we even knew we were collecting.

So which ones were in your house?

Here’s Lucy

Here’s Lucy kept Lucille Ball on Monday night TV with the same kind of physical comedy, celebrity guest stars, and family-style chaos that made her a television legend. This time, Lucy Carter was a widow working for her brother-in-law Harry, played by Gale Gordon, while her real-life children Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. played her kids.

The show had that familiar Lucy formula: a simple situation gets out of control, Lucy gets into trouble, Harry gets frustrated, and somehow the whole thing turns into comedy. It also became known for big guest stars, including classic Hollywood and TV names, which made each episode feel like a little variety-show surprise.

For fans, Here’s Lucy was not just another sitcom. It was Lucille Ball proving she could still carry a hit show after I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, while bringing her own family into the act.

Cheerios: Get Yourself Go!

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Before cereal commercials got too complicated, Cheerios gave us the Cheerios Kid, Sue, and the promise of “go-power.”

The idea was simple: eat Cheerios and suddenly you had the energy to take on whatever trouble showed up next. The late-1960s ads had that catchy “Get Yourself Go” jingle, the kind of line that stuck in your head long after Saturday morning cartoons were over.

A fun bit of trivia: the jingle is credited to Neil Diamond, before most of us knew him as the Neil Diamond.

Looking back, it was pure cereal-commercial magic: a bowl of oats, a quick cartoon adventure, and one more earworm we never quite forgot.

Silly Rabbit, Trix Are For Kids!

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The Trix Rabbit is one of those cereal mascots who spent decades chasing the same bowl of cereal and almost never getting it.

Trix cereal was introduced by General Mills in 1954, but the famous slogan came a little later. General Mills says “Trix are for kids!” first appeared on the box in 1959, before the now-famous rabbit fully took over the campaign.

The setup was simple and perfect for kids: the rabbit wanted Trix, the kids caught him trying to get some, and then came the line everybody remembers:

“Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”

It worked because it was funny, colorful, and a little unfair. As kids, some of us probably felt bad for the rabbit. He tried costumes, schemes, disguises, and tricks, but those kids almost always shut him down.

Looking back, that was the magic of the campaign. One rabbit, one cereal, one catchphrase, and a generation that can still hear it in their head.

Two-Year-Old Tiger Woods On TV

Before he became one of the greatest golfers of all time, Tiger Woods was a 2-year-old kid on The Mike Douglas Show, standing beside his father Earl and putting while Bob Hope watched.

The clip is incredible because it is not just cute. You can already see the swing, the confidence, and the beginning of something unusual. Tiger’s father, Earl Woods, had introduced him to golf almost as soon as he could walk, and he became his first coach, teacher, and biggest influence.

Earl did more than teach him how to hit a ball. He taught Tiger discipline, focus, and how to handle pressure. That early father-son bond helped shape the child prodigy who would grow into a golf legend.

Looking back, that little TV appearance feels like the first public glimpse of history. A toddler with a golf club, a proud father nearby, and the start of a career nobody could have fully imagined yet.

National Donut Day: Time To Make The Donuts With Fred

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Today is National Donut Day, so it feels like the perfect time to celebrate with Fred the Baker and his famous line: “Time to make the donuts.”

Fred was played by actor Michael Vale, who became the face of Dunkin’ Donuts in commercials from the early 1980s until 1997. The whole idea was simple: while the rest of us were still sleeping, Fred was dragging himself out of bed before dawn to make fresh donuts. That tired little walk and mumble made him feel like every hardworking person who had to get up early and do the job.

National Donut Day itself goes back much further. It was created by The Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938 to honor the “Doughnut Lassies,” women who served donuts to soldiers during World War I. It also helped raise money for people in need during the Great Depression.

So today, grab a donut and give a little nod to Fred. He made getting up before dawn look exhausting, funny, and somehow heroic.

Time to make the donuts!

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”

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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.