Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures - Do You Remember - Page 14 of 58 - 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

ABC’s Wide World of Sports

For generations, Saturday afternoons meant watching Jim McKay “span the globe” on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Beginning in 1961, the program introduced viewers to famous championships, unusual competitions and athletes they might never have seen otherwise. What was supposed to be a one-summer program became a television institution whose traditional anthology format continued until 1997.

Its most famous scene was not a victory. It was Yugoslav ski jumper Vinko Bogataj losing control and crashing through the side of the ramp during a 1970 competition. ABC repeatedly used the frightening tumble beneath the words “the agony of defeat,” making Bogataj one of the most recognized athletes on American television, even though most viewers never knew his name.

Do you remember watching that skier crash every Saturday, and did you ever know his name was Vinko Bogataj?

Josie and the Pussycats

“Long tails and ears for hats!” Josie and the Pussycats brought music, mysteries and wild adventures to CBS Saturday mornings beginning in 1970. Josie, Valerie and Melody traveled around the world performing songs, but they always seemed to run into spies, villains and trouble along the way.

Patrice Holloway, who provided Valerie’s singing voice, sang lead on the unforgettable theme song. The recording group also included Cathy Dougher as Josie and Cherie Moor, later known as Cheryl Ladd, as Melody.

Only 16 original episodes were produced, but the group returned in 1972 for Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Thanks to years of reruns, the catchy theme song and those unforgettable leopard-print outfits, the Pussycats remained favorites long after their original run ended.

Did you watch for the music and mysteries, or were you waiting to see what Alexandra and Sebastian would do next?

Marcus Welby

Long before television doctors relied on dramatic emergencies and high-tech machines, Dr. Marcus Welby was the calm, caring family physician who knew his patients personally and still made house calls. Robert Young played Welby alongside James Brolin as the younger Dr. Steven Kiley, giving viewers two generations of medicine working side by side.

The show’s instrumental theme was composed by Leonard Rosenman and is generally known simply as the Marcus Welby, M.D. theme. Welby was also remembered for making his rounds in a series of light-blue Chrysler sedans, including the beautiful 1969 Chrysler 300 used during the first season.

What memories does this show bring?

Chatty Cathy

Chatty Cathy was one of the dolls that made kids stop and stare back in the early 1960s. Introduced by Mattel in 1960, she became famous because she did more than just sit there looking cute. Pull the string, and Chatty Cathy would actually talk.

Her voice was provided by June Foray, who also voiced Rocky the Flying Squirrel, and the doll became such a pop culture memory that she even helped inspire the creepy “Talky Tina” doll from The Twilight Zone. Decades later, GEICO used a Chatty Cathy-style parody in a commercial, proving that people still remembered the idea of the pull-string doll that just would not stop talking.

Sweet, simple, and a little bit magical, Chatty Cathy became one of the great talking toys of the era.

These Cards Are Marked!

I don’t know why, but this M&M’s commercial was a big hit in my family.

The whole joke was simple: a card game, a suspicious player, and the line, “These cards are marked!” Of course, they were not marked from cheating. They were marked with chocolate fingerprints, which led right back to M&M’s famous selling point: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”

For some reason, that one line stuck with us. To this day, anytime someone in the family is playing cards, there is a good chance somebody will say, “These cards are marked!” That is the funny thing about old commercials. Some of them were only 30 seconds long, but they became part of the way families talked to each other for years.

Slip ’N Slide Memories

I’ll never forget when we got our first Slip ’N Slide back in the 1970s. I had to be the first one to go down it. Ours did not have the fancy landing pad like this 1980s version. I slid down, kept right on going onto the lawn, and mud sprayed all over me, including my face! We all laughed! My brother still brings it up to this day!

The original Slip ’N Slide came along in 1961 and gave kids a cheap way to turn the front lawn into a water ride. Hook up the hose, get a running start, and hope you made it all the way down that slick yellow strip without sliding into the grass.

By the 1980s, Wham-O was still trying to keep the idea fresh with versions like Slip ’N Splash. It was the same basic summer fun, but with more emphasis on the splash at the end and the kind of over-the-top commercial that made every kid think they needed one.

Of course, most of us learned pretty quickly that the TV version always looked smoother than the backyard version. But on a hot day, with the hose running and everyone waiting for a turn, it still felt like the next best thing to having a pool.

O.J. Simpson and the Hertz Airport Dash

In the 1970s, O.J. Simpson became one of the most recognizable pitchmen on television thanks to his Hertz commercials. The ads showed him sprinting through airports in a suit, briefcase in hand, while people cheered, “Go, O.J., Go!” It was a perfect use of his football image: fast, famous, smiling, and always on the move.

At the time, the campaign was a huge hit and helped turn Simpson from a football star into a mainstream TV celebrity. It is strange to watch now because the cheerful airport-running image became one of the most famous commercials of its era, long before all the later headlines changed how people looked at him.

McHale’s Navy

The show aired from 1962 to 1966 and starred Ernest Borgnine as Lt. Commander Quinton McHale, the skipper of PT-73. McHale and his crew were stationed in the South Pacific, where they were supposed to be fighting the war, but most episodes were really about schemes, shortcuts, gambling, trading, and staying one step ahead of their commanding officer.

The breakout comedy came from Tim Conway as the nervous and clumsy Ensign Parker, and Joe Flynn as Captain Binghamton, who was always trying to catch McHale and his men breaking the rules. The crew also included familiar faces like Carl Ballantine, Bob Hastings, and for a time, Gavin MacLeod, years before The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Love Boat.

What made McHale’s Navy work was that it had the setting of a war show, but the feel of a workplace comedy. McHale’s men were not polished heroes. They were lovable troublemakers who somehow got the job done when it mattered.

For a lot of viewers, it is remembered as one of those black-and-white sitcoms with fast jokes, big characters, and Tim Conway stealing scenes long before he became a legend on The Carol Burnett Show.

Space Food Sticks

They were chewy, rod-shaped energy snacks developed after Pillsbury worked with NASA on foods astronauts could eat in space. The idea was that the food had to be compact, nutritious, not crumbly, and easy to eat, even in tight spaceflight conditions. Pillsbury then marketed them to the public during the Apollo era, when anything connected to astronauts and the moon felt exciting.

They came in flavors like chocolate, peanut butter, and caramel, and were sold as a “nutritionally balanced” between-meal snack. In a way, they were an early version of what we would now call an energy bar, only shaped more like a little chewy stick.

TRS write-up:

Pillsbury’s Space Food Sticks were the kind of snack that could only have come from the space-race era.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, kids did not just want candy. They wanted something that felt like it belonged in an astronaut’s lunchbox. Space Food Sticks looked like little chewy rods and came in flavors like chocolate, peanut butter, and caramel. They were promoted as a nutritious between-meal snack, but the real selling point was right there in the name: space.

Pillsbury had worked on food for NASA, and the company turned that connection into a grocery-store snack kids could imagine taking all the way to the moon. They eventually disappeared from shelves, but for anyone who remembers them, Space Food Sticks were a perfect little bite of Apollo-era childhood.

For a lot of us, this is the mail truck we remember.

Before the boxy Grumman LLV became the familiar neighborhood mail truck, the Jeep DJ-5 was the little right-hand-drive postal Jeep that seemed to be everywhere. It was simple, tough, and built for curbside delivery, with the driver sitting on the mailbox side and a tray inside for sorting letters.

These Jeeps were a common sight through the 1970s and 1980s, and in some places lasted into the 1990s before finally being replaced. It may not have been fancy, but when you saw one coming down the street, you knew the mail was here.