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
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.
As The World Turns. This post will never go viral, but if someone remembers their mom or grandma watching this, it is well worth the effort for the post!
As the World Turns was a long-running CBS daytime soap opera that aired from 1956 to 2010, centered mainly around the lives, loves, scandals, and struggles of families in the fictional town of Oakdale, Illinois. At its heart was the Hughes family, with stories built around romance, marriage, betrayal, illness, family conflict, and the everyday drama that made soap operas part of the afternoon routine for generations. It was slower and more character-driven than some later soaps, which helped make it feel like viewers were checking in on people they knew every day.
As a kid, I always wondered why adults were leaving blasting caps around often enough that they had to hire Willie Mays to make a commercial about it.
This old PSA is such a strange piece of TV history. One minute you were watching cartoons or cereal commercials, and the next minute one of the greatest baseball players of all time was looking into the camera warning you not to touch explosives.
It feels like it came from that era before everything had ten warning labels, sealed packaging, and a legal department reviewing every word. The message was simple: if you find a blasting cap, do not pick it up. Tell a policeman, a fireman, or an adult.
Looking back, it is funny how many safety lessons were delivered to kids through television. Fire safety, seat belts, strangers, drugs, littering, and apparently, random blasting caps.
Only back then could Willie Mays interrupt your Saturday morning to warn you about explosives.
One of my family’s favorite shows starring Dom DeLuise only lasted one season, but we never forgot it.
Lotsa Luck starred Dom as Stanley Belmont, a good-hearted working guy stuck supporting his mother, sister, and unemployed brother-in-law. It was loud, silly, and very much built around Dom DeLuise’s lovable, frustrated comedy style.
It may not have lasted long, but if your family watched it, chances are you still remember it.
Nanny and the Professor premiered on ABC on Wednesday, January 21, 1970, and ran until December 27, 1971. It starred Juliet Mills as the mysterious Phoebe Figalilly, better known as Nanny, and Richard Long as widowed Professor Harold Everett.
The show had a gentle Mary Poppins feel, with Nanny always seeming to know a little more than everyone else. Was she magical, psychic, or just very clever? That was part of the fun.
For many kids, it fit perfectly into ABC’s family lineup, especially when it aired on Friday nights near The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family. It was sweet, quiet, and very much of its time.
Did you watch Nanny and the Professor? Did you think Nanny was magical?
Before Saturday Night Fever, before Grease, and before John Travolta became one of the biggest movie stars of the 1970s, he was Vinnie Barbarino on Welcome Back, Kotter.
One of his great early TV moments came in the episode “The Telethon,” which aired on February 12, 1976. In the episode, the Sweathogs try to raise money for much-needed school supplies, and Travolta gets to show off the charm that was already making him the breakout star of the show.
His bit was a goofy little number sung to the tune of “Barbara Ann,” turning it into “Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbarino.” It was silly, self-centered, and completely Vinnie — exactly the kind of moment that made kids repeat his lines at school the next day.
Welcome Back, Kotter had only premiered in September 1975, but Travolta was already becoming the one everyone was watching. Vinnie Barbarino gave him his first big break on television, and by 1976 the fan mail and attention were building fast. Within just a couple of years, he would jump from Sweathog heartthrob to full-blown superstar with Saturday Night Fever and Grease.
Looking back, this clip is fun because you can already see it: the grin, the timing, the swagger, and that Travolta confidence before the rest of the world completely caught up.
Mahna Mahna is one of those nonsense songs that somehow parked itself in everyone’s brain forever.
Most of us remember it from The Muppets, with the shaggy little “Mahna Mahna” character singing the goofy lead while the two pink creatures, the Snowths, answer back. But the song actually started in a very different place. It was written by Italian composer Piero Umiliani for the 1968 Italian film Svezia, inferno e paradiso, released in English as Sweden: Heaven and Hell.
Then Jim Henson and company turned it into something completely different. The Muppets performed it on Sesame Street in 1969, then on The Ed Sullivan Show, and later it became one of the memorable sketches from the first episode of The Muppet Show in 1976.
The funny part is, the lyrics don’t mean anything. That’s the whole charm. It’s just a silly call-and-response tune, but once you hear it, good luck getting it out of your head. Like a lot of the best Muppet moments, it worked because it was simple, weird, and somehow hilarious without needing a real punchline.
Before cooking shows became calm, polished, and perfect, there was Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet. He didn’t just walk onto the set, he practically burst in, full of energy, jokes, charm, and enough butter and wine to make every 1970s kitchen feel fancy. His show became a hit in the late 1960s and early 1970s, long before Food Network made TV chefs everyday celebrities.
In this clip, he’s doing what we would now call a kitchen “hack,” showing how to clarify butter with the help of a Dixie Cup, which also happened to be the advertiser. Back then, that kind of thing didn’t feel like a forced product placement. It was just part of the show, part cooking lesson, part commercial, and all entertainment. And somehow, Graham Kerr made even melted butter seem like a performance.
Oh, the magical opening for The Wonderful World of Disney and the wonderful world of color! This was the time when we got our first color TV, and we would sing this whenever a TV show was in color. Growing up, we didn’t have much money on Dad’s salary as a Marine, but we had one of the first color TVs on the market. What a hero he was bringing this big 21-inch console into our home! Between our toys and TV, we were all set.
We always looked forward to Sundays with The Wonderful World Of Disney to wrap up our weekend. Then came that sad little realization: the show was ending, bedtime was coming, and school was waiting for us the next morning.
The Disney anthology show first began on ABC in 1954 as Walt Disney’s Disneyland. It later became Walt Disney Presents, then moved to NBC in 1961 as Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, which was a perfect title for the era when color TV still felt like magic. By 1969, it became The Wonderful World of Disney, the name so many of us remember. Over the years it moved between ABC, NBC, and CBS, with different titles including The Disney Sunday Movie and The Magical World of Disney. The series has continued in different forms and special presentations for decades, making it one of the longest-running prime-time programs in American television history.
For a lot of us, it wasn’t just a TV show. It was part of the Sunday night routine, that last bit of weekend magic before Monday morning came knocking.
It still wasn’t as bad as when Dad turned on Lawrence Welk, but Hee Haw always felt like the country cousin of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. It had the same quick jokes, blackout skits, silly one-liners, and regular cast bits, just with more overalls, cornfields, banjos, and country music stars dropping by.
The show first aired in 1969, right around the same era when Laugh-In was still the cool, fast-moving comedy show everyone was talking about. Hee Haw took that same rapid-fire style and gave it a country spin, and somehow it stuck around for years. Even if you weren’t a big country music fan, you probably remember the corny jokes, the haystacks, the “salute” segments, and someone in the house laughing at lines that made the rest of us groan. And who can forget Grandpa?
