1980's Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Jiffy Pop — Was It More Fun to Make Than Eat?

It’s Friday night, and this one brings back that whole feeling of the weekend finally being here. Maybe there was a movie coming on TV, maybe we were allowed to stay up a little later, and somehow popcorn just seemed to belong with Friday night. And if somebody pulled out a Jiffy Pop, making the popcorn became part of the entertainment. Standing at the stove, shaking that pan back and forth and watching the foil slowly puff up was almost as much fun as eating what was inside.

There was popcorn, and then there was Jiffy Pop, where half the entertainment was watching that aluminum foil grow into a giant silver ball.

Looking this one up, I found that Jiffy Pop goes all the way back to 1959, but it wasn’t actually the first popcorn sold this way. A product called E-Z Pop had been around since 1954, and its manufacturer eventually sued Jiffy Pop’s makers for patent infringement. The case went all the way to a federal appeals court, where Jiffy Pop won in 1963 partly because its foil expanded differently.

The magician connection in these 1970s commercials wasn’t just advertising make-believe either. Harry Blackstone Jr. was a genuine professional magician, and in 1976 Jiffy Pop was promoting the product as “the magic treat.” Blackstone came from quite a magic family — his father was The Great Blackstone, one of America’s best-known illusionists and a contemporary of Harry Houdini.

Harry Jr. went on to become a major star himself. He was twice named Magician of the Year by the Magic Castle, took his show to Broadway in 1980 and later donated his family’s famous floating-light-bulb illusion to the Smithsonian.

And Jiffy Pop certainly outlasted these commercials. It even had a memorable role in the opening of Scream in 1996.

Best of all, Jiffy Pop is still being made today. Some products really don’t need much improving — watching that foil balloon get bigger was the whole experience!

Since it’s Friday night, this seems like the perfect one to ask:

What memories does Jiffy Pop bring back for you — family movie nights, staying up late watching TV, or trying not to burn the bottom?

Cathy Rigby Built Quite a Career After the Olympics

This old Cathy Rigby Stayfree commercial brings back a completely different Cathy Rigby memory for me.

Back in the 1990s, I worked as a Communications Specialist at Caldor’s corporate headquarters in Norwalk. We were opening a new store in Pennsylvania and Cathy Rigby was there to meet customers and sign autographs. What I remember most about her personally was how soft-spoken and very polite she was. Nothing flashy at all, and that stuck with me.

Most of us remember Cathy first as the young American gymnast who became one of the faces of the sport. She competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics, but something I had forgotten is that her most historic medal didn’t come at the Olympics. In 1970, she won silver on the balance beam at the World Championships, becoming the first American gymnast ever to win a World Championships medal.

After retiring from competition, she did something a lot of famous athletes struggle to do — she kept finding ways to turn that recognition into a long career.

There were the Stayfree commercials, which became one of her best-known endorsement campaigns. She also spent 18 years covering gymnastics for ABC Sports, did other television and fitness work, and then built a whole second career on stage.

And that second career became huge. Rigby began playing Peter Pan in the 1970s and returned to the role for decades, eventually earning a Tony nomination in 1991. She and her husband also moved into producing through McCoy Rigby Entertainment.

Then there’s Caldor itself, another memory for a lot of us. The chain was founded in 1951 by Carl and Dorothy Bennett, and even the name came from them — CAL from Carl and DOR from Dorothy. By the time I worked there, it had grown into one of the Northeast’s best-known discount chains.

So for me, this commercial connects three different things: a familiar face from television, a remarkable post-Olympic career, and my own memory of meeting Cathy Rigby years later through Caldor.

Do you remember her most from gymnastics, the Stayfree commercials, Peter Pan, or somewhere else?

Shopping For Phones

Who remembers when we were finally able to go shopping for our own telephone?

For years, the telephone was basically part of your phone service. Ma Bell supplied it, you paid for it every month, and there usually wasn’t much reason to think of the phone itself as something you would go shopping for

That began changing in the 1970s with Bell PhoneCenters and all those new colors and styles. The transition was actually a little strange — with some early Design Line phones, you bought the decorative outer housing while Bell still owned and maintained the working parts inside. Eventually, complete customer-owned phones became the norm

And I’m sure many of us made sure that second or third phone had all the new bells and whistles — almost literally! Touch-Tone buttons, last-number redial, programmable memory dialing, speakerphone, mute, hold and answering machines became things to look for. Then there were telephone-company features like Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling and Speed Calling. Caller ID came later and suddenly knowing who was calling before answering seemed absolutely amazing

What surprised me is how successful the shopping concept was. Bell reported in 1974 that 73 percent of PhoneCenter customers selected an extension phone, compared with 58 percent of customers using the old sales method. The stores let you actually see and touch dozens of phones instead of having somebody describe them over the telephone

And look at the variety in this commercial — colorful phones, fancy phones, character phones and phones designed to match the furniture. Bell even sold Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, Winnie-the-Pooh and that unforgettable doughnut-shaped Sculptura phone

Then almost overnight it seemed every department store had phones, and eventually nearly every phone came loaded with features we once thought were something special

What was the first telephone you remember actually buying instead of renting from the phone company?

1984: Red Dawn Invades Theaters

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

Burger King Sold Veal?

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?

Peter Pan Peanut Butter

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?

Remember the Fruit of the Loom Lady?

A lot of us remember Fruit of the Loom commercials because they were just plain fun, but this one has an extra connection many people may not realize. The woman in the commercial is Loretta Tupper, a veteran actress who became one of television’s most recognizable commercial performers. Kids remembered her as the Fruit of the Loom lady, while older viewers may have spotted her in all kinds of other ads during the 1970s and ’80s.

What made these commercials so memorable was the simple but clever idea of bringing the Fruit of the Loom characters right into an everyday home setting. It gave the brand a playful personality and helped make those fruit costumes instantly unforgettable. Looking back now, it’s another reminder of how much charm older commercials had, when a funny concept and one memorable performer could make an ad stick in your mind for years.

Do you remember seeing these Fruit of the Loom commercials when they first aired, and did you recognize Loretta Tupper?

Whoop-dee-doo for my Subaru Midas Ad

I recognized Midas right away, but the lady driving the Subaru is another familiar part of this commercial. That’s Loretta Tupper, one of those faces we saw over and over again in commercials during the 1970s and ’80s. I’m going to save more about her for another commercial later, because she had quite an interesting career.

Midas itself started back in 1956 and, for its first few years, was basically all about mufflers and exhaust systems. One of its biggest selling points was the famous guarantee that covered the muffler for as long as you owned the car. The company gradually expanded, adding shocks in 1960 and brakes in 1979 before eventually becoming the full-service auto repair chain we know today.

It’s also a reminder of how common muffler shops once were. Replacing an exhaust system was simply a much more routine part of owning a car than it is today.

Do you remember going to Midas for a muffler, and did you recognize Loretta Tupper when she appeared?

7 UP the Uncola

How many of you can still hear Geoffrey Holder’s booming voice and unforgettable laugh before this commercial even gets going? This 1983 spot came during the later years of his long association with 7UP, when he reminded viewers that the Uncola was “crisp and clean” with no caffeine.

Holder was much more than a memorable commercial spokesman. He was a Trinidad-born dancer, painter, choreographer, actor and director who played Baron Samedi in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. He also won two Tony Awards in 1975 for directing and designing the costumes for The Wiz. That voice and laugh were entirely his own, and they gave these commercials a personality few soft-drink campaigns could match.

The name 7UP remains one of the interesting mysteries in advertising history. Creator Charles Leiper Grigg apparently never explained it. The most repeated theories involve seven ingredients, the original seven-ounce bottle or lithium’s approximate atomic mass, but none has been conclusively proven. Even the familiar story that its original name was “Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda” has been challenged because researchers found little historical evidence that it was ever the product’s official name.

Did your family regularly buy 7UP, or was it something you mostly remember being served when someone had an upset stomach?

New Coke

Wearing one of his familiar sweaters and sitting against a dark background, Bill Cosby holds up the can, calls it the best Coca-Cola ever and ends with “Coke is it!”

Coca-Cola replaced its original formula on April 23, 1985, after extensive taste testing. According to Coca-Cola’s own history, nearly 200,000 consumers participated in tests that favored the new formula. What those tests failed to measure was the emotional connection people had with the original drink.

Cosby was an obvious choice because he was one of television’s most familiar and persuasive advertising personalities. However, his appearance created an amusing contradiction. Shortly before New Coke arrived, he had appeared in commercials criticizing Pepsi for tasting too sweet. New Coke was then introduced with a sweeter taste designed partly to compete with Pepsi.

The reaction quickly became part of advertising history. Coca-Cola received thousands of complaints, consumers began hoarding the remaining original Coke and protest groups demanded its return. One Texas customer reportedly purchased $1,000 worth of the old formula before it disappeared.

Coca-Cola finally brought the original drink back as Coca-Cola Classic on July 11, only 79 days after introducing New Coke. The new formula remained available beside it, was eventually renamed Coke II and quietly survived until 2002.

Did you try New Coke in 1985, and was it really as bad as everyone remembers?