childhood memories Archives - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

Enjoli: The 24-Hour Woman Who Could Bring Home the Bacon

Who remembers “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan…”? Sometimes the commercial becomes more memorable than the product itself, and I think Enjoli is a perfect example

Charles of the Ritz introduced Enjoli in 1978 as “the eight-hour perfume for the 24-hour woman.” The woman in this commercial could go to work, come home, take care of the kids, cook dinner and still have enough energy left for romance. Looking at it today, it’s quite a time capsule of what advertising was telling women they should somehow be able to accomplish

The jingle wasn’t created from scratch for Enjoli either. It was adapted from “I’m a Woman,” written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Christine Kittrell recorded it first in 1962, but Peggy Lee’s version later that year became the one most of us recognize. Enjoli rewrote the lyrics and turned a song from the early ’60s into one of the most memorable advertising jingles of the late ’70s

And apparently the advertising worked. Enjoli won the Fragrance Foundation’s 1979 Fragrance of the Year award in the Women’s Popular category.

The whole “24-hour woman” idea has become interesting historically too. Writers looking back at the period have used this very commercial when discussing the expectation that women could build careers while still handling most of the work at home

Enjoli even got a sequel of sorts in 1984 with Enjoli Midnight, advertised as a fragrance for “another eight hours in your life”

I’m guessing plenty of people who never owned a bottle of Enjoli can still sing that commercial

Did the jingle come back to you before the commercial was even over?

Who remembers when Bugs Bunny was actually on the Kool-Aid package?

This commercial takes us back to around 1965, when Bugs and Elmer Fudd weren’t just Saturday morning entertainment — they were helping General Foods sell the relatively new Pre-Sweetened Kool-Aid

What I love is that they didn’t just drop the characters into a generic ad. Elmer is still chasing that “wascally wabbit,” Bugs is still one step ahead, and somehow the whole thing turns into a Kool-Aid commercial

Legendary animator Tex Avery, who helped shape Bugs Bunny’s personality years earlier, returned to direct some of these commercials. Mel Blanc was still Bugs, but Elmer was voiced here by Hal Smith, who many of us remember better as Otis Campbell on The Andy Griffith Show

Pre-Sweetened Kool-Aid itself was fairly new, introduced in 1964 so you no longer had to add your own sugar. Bugs became so closely tied to the product that his picture appeared right on the packages

And then this commercial gives us another nearly forgotten memory — Kool-Pops. The frozen treats had been around since at least 1960, giving General Foods another way to turn Kool-Aid into something kids could beg Mom to buy

It’s funny how one short commercial can bring back so much at once — Bugs and Elmer, the old Kool-Aid packets, Kool-Pops, and the days when cartoon characters regularly helped decide what ended up in the grocery cart

Do you remember Bugs Bunny on the Kool-Aid packages — and does anyone remember Kool-Pops?

The Herculoids

How many of you can still name all the Herculoids just from watching this opening? Zok, Igoo, Tundro, Gloop and Gleep — along with Zandor, Tara and Dorno — made for one of the strangest and most memorable groups Hanna-Barbera ever put together

What amazes me is how few episodes there actually were. The Herculoids debuted on CBS in 1967, and only 18 original half-hours were produced, containing 36 shorter adventures. Yet those episodes were rerun enough that the show feels like it was around much longer than it really was. Joseph Barbera later even recalled the series pulling an extraordinary 60 share in the ratings

The incredible look of the show came from Alex Toth, the legendary comic-book artist who helped shape Hanna-Barbera’s adventure cartoons. Toth was also heavily involved with characters and designs for Space Ghost, Birdman, Fantastic Four and other shows that gave Saturday mornings a very different look from Hanna-Barbera’s comedy cartoons

There was some great voice talent hiding behind all those creatures too. Mike Road, who many of us also remember as Race Bannon on Jonny Quest, handled Zandor along with Zok, Igoo and Tundro. Don Messick gave us both Gloop and Gleep before becoming the voice of Scooby-Doo just two years later

And those creatures really were wonderfully bizarre. Tundro had ten legs and fired explosive rocks, Zok shot energy beams, Igoo was essentially a walking rock pile, and Gloop and Gleep could turn themselves into practically whatever the story required — shields, trampolines, parachutes or slingshots

The Herculoids weren’t forgotten either. They crossed paths with Space Ghost, appeared in comics from both DC and Marvel, and returned with 11 brand-new adventures in 1981 as part of Space Stars. Oddly enough, their planet Amzot became Quasar for the revival

For a cartoon with only 18 original half-hours, The Herculoids certainly left a big impression

Who was your favorite — Zok, Igoo, Tundro, Gloop or Gleep?

Tiger Joe

As kids, we used to play army, and this commercial is a pretty good demonstration of what that looked like in the early 1960s. We sometimes make fun of kids today for fighting battles on video-game screens, but there’s an interesting full-circle connection — real warfare now makes extensive use of drones and other remotely controlled systems

The toy is the Tiger Joe Tank, introduced by Deluxe Reading in 1961. This was no little tabletop tank — it was about 26 inches long, moved by wired remote control and actually fired plastic shells. Deluxe even suggested putting a little flour or talcum powder in the barrel to create a puff of “smoke” when it fired

What really caught my attention is the line at the end: “Sold at food markets only.” Deluxe Reading deliberately sold many of its big toys through supermarkets. Those oversized colorful boxes could occupy the hard-to-use upper shelves, putting toys right in front of kids tagging along on the weekly shopping trip

Tiger Joe almost feels more like the kind of present Dad would have picked out, but the marketing actually put it directly in the path of whoever was doing the grocery shopping. I found a 1963 supermarket ad selling Tiger Joe for $12.88 — roughly $140 today — and you could leave a $2 deposit and have one held until Christmas

The company was founded by Henry Orenstein, who years later helped bring the idea that became Transformers to Hasbro

Did anyone get a Tiger Joe for Christmas — or spend the whole grocery trip staring up at one on the top shelf?

It Was More Fun the Colorforms Way

As requested by a number of viewers, here is the Raggedy Ann Colorforms commercial I remember from childhood. I have since discovered just how many different Colorforms kits were made, and I will share more of them over time.

Colorforms used colorful pieces of reusable vinyl that clung to smooth surfaces without glue. Children could dress the characters, rearrange the scenes, peel everything off and begin again. The Raggedy Ann kit shown in this 1967 commercial allowed kids to change her dresses and accessories as often as their imaginations allowed.

Colorforms began in 1951 after Harry and Patricia Kislevitz experimented with colorful vinyl originally used to make handbags. They discovered that the pieces clung to the glossy walls of their bathroom and began cutting them into different shapes. What started as a creative experiment soon became a successful toy.

FAO Schwarz placed an early order for 1,000 sets, helping turn the small project into a real company. The first kits featured basic geometric shapes, but licensed characters soon followed. Popeye became the first in 1957, opening the door for hundreds of television, comic book and movie characters.

Even the familiar Colorforms logo has an interesting history. Legendary graphic designer Paul Rand, who also designed logos for IBM, ABC and UPS, created it in 1959.

I also remember watching the local weather forecast as a child. The station used happy, smiling suns, large red H’s for high pressure and other colorful symbols that looked like oversized Colorforms.

Before computer-generated weather graphics, forecasters physically moved reusable symbols around a large map. Depending on the station, those symbols could be made from magnetic rubber, felt or another cling-on material. Whatever they were made from, they looked remarkably similar to the Colorforms we played with at home.

Maybe that is why those old weather maps remain so memorable. The smiling suns, rain clouds and giant H’s and L’s made the forecast feel like a giant Colorforms set coming to life on television.

Do you remember your local weather forecaster moving those colorful symbols around the map?

Thanks Gumball _____________ what comes next?

My wife handed me something tonight, and I said, “Thanks for the gumball!” Before I could even finish, she immediately answered, “Mickey!”

It’s fun when you both connect at exactly the same time with an old commercial from your past. One little phrase can bring back a memory neither of you realized was still tucked away.

These Hasbro gumball banks combined three things kids loved: cartoon characters, candy and collecting pennies. The colorful gumballs filled the clear heads of Mickey Mouse, Bozo the Clown and Popeye, making each character look funnier with every refill.

You inserted a penny, received a gumball and heard the memorable line, “Thanks for the gumball, Mickey!” Decades later, that silly commercial is still bringing back memories and apparently finishing sentences in our house!

Did you have one of these gumball banks, or do you still quote the commercial?

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.

Everything’s Archie

There was a time when the back of a cereal box could be almost as exciting as what was inside.

This Everything’s Archie Post Cereal commercial is a perfect example. In the late 1960s, kids could find Archie-themed prizes on specially marked Post cereal boxes, including cardboard records you could actually cut out and play. They were not exactly hi-fi, but to a kid, getting music from the back of a cereal box felt like magic.

The timing was perfect. The Archies were everywhere, with the cartoon band becoming a Saturday morning favorite and “Sugar, Sugar” turning into one of the biggest songs of 1969. So Post put Archie, Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Reggie, Sugar Bear, cereal, cartoons, and music all into one kid-friendly promotion.

Who else remembers cereal boxes that gave you something to do after breakfast?

Rocky and Bullwinkle

Rocky and Bullwinkle was one of those cartoons that worked on two levels. Kids saw a flying squirrel, a goofy moose, spies, fairy tales, and silly adventures. Adults heard the puns, political jokes, Cold War humor, and smart little digs that went right over a lot of kids’ heads.

The show began in 1959 as Rocky and His Friends on ABC, then moved to NBC in 1961 as The Bullwinkle Show. Rocky was Rocket J. Squirrel, the brave flying squirrel, and Bullwinkle J. Moose was his well-meaning but not always brilliant best friend from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. The show originally ran until 1964, with reruns continuing for years, including ABC Sunday mornings into the early 1970s.

What made it different was the variety-show style. You did not just get Rocky and Bullwinkle fighting Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. You also got Fractured Fairy Tales, Peabody’s Improbable History with Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Aesop and Son, Dudley Do-Right, Bullwinkle’s Corner, and all those cliffhanger endings with ridiculous titles.

The animation was not fancy, even for its time, but the writing was the real star. Jay Ward and Bill Scott leaned into wordplay, satire, narrator jokes, and absurd situations. That is why Rocky and Bullwinkle still feels different from a lot of old cartoons. It was funny for kids, but it was also sneaky smart for the adults in the room. UCLA’s Hammer Museum called the series a “rare gem” and credited its wit to the Jay Ward team, including Bill Scott, June Foray, and the show’s writers and animators.