The Retro site Archives - Page 3 of 14 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

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?

Don’t Blow Your Top

Don’t Blow Your Top came out in 1972, and this is one of those wonderfully simple toy ideas that probably didn’t need much explaining to a kid. You spun the spinner, added the required number of marbles to the character’s hat, and watched the pressure build on a real balloon hidden underneath. Eventually — POP! — somebody literally blew his top

The game came from Marvin Glass & Associates, the legendary Chicago toy-design company connected with Mouse Trap, Operation, Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots, Lite-Brite and eventually Simon. They created and developed toy ideas, then licensed them to companies like Schaper to manufacture and sell

Schaper itself had quite a history. The company was founded by Minneapolis mailman Herb Schaper, whose homemade Cootie game became such a huge success that Schaper eventually promoted itself as “The Cootie Company,” just as we hear at the end of this commercial. The company also gave us familiar games like Ants in the Pants and Don’t Break the Ice

And I have to give them credit for the name. “Don’t blow your top” was already a familiar expression for losing your temper, so turning that into a game where the poor fellow actually blows his top was pretty clever

The game apparently had some staying power too, with advertising for it continuing several years after its 1972 introduction

Did anyone have Don’t Blow Your Top — and was waiting for that balloon to pop more fun than actually winning?

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

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?

Top Cat

There are certain cartoon openings where you only need the first few seconds before the entire show comes rushing back, and Top Cat is definitely one of those for me. The limousine, the fancy restaurant, T.C. helping himself to somebody else’s lunch and then heading back to the alley told us almost everything we needed to know about him before the episode even started

What I didn’t realize back then was how much Top Cat owed to another television comedy. T.C. was essentially Hanna-Barbera’s cartoon answer to Phil Silvers’ fast-talking Sergeant Bilko, always working another angle and trying to stay one step ahead of authority. They even brought over Maurice Gosfield, who had played Private Doberman with Silvers, to voice Benny the Ball, whose appearance was partly modeled after Gosfield. Arnold Stang gave T.C. that unmistakable voice, while Allen Jenkins became Officer Dibble

The theme is another big part of why this opening stuck with us. Hoyt Curtin, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera are credited on “The Most Effectual Top Cat,” which managed to introduce T.C.’s personality and his position as leader of the gang in less than a minute. Curtin, of course, was also behind music for an amazing number of Hanna-Barbera favorites

And here’s something I think many of us forget: Top Cat wasn’t originally a Saturday-morning cartoon. It premiered in prime time on ABC in 1961 and lasted only 30 episodes. Those episodes found a much longer life in reruns, and the show became especially beloved outside the United States. In Britain it was even called Boss Cat because a cat food already had the Top Cat name, while in Mexico Don Gato became popular enough to eventually inspire feature films

Did you watch Top Cat during its original prime-time run, or do you remember T.C. and the gang mainly from Saturday-morning reruns?

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?

F Troop

There’s no special birthday or anniversary behind today’s Ken Berry clips. They just happened to come up, and after seeing him in Mayberry R.F.D., it seemed only right to go back to the role that first made him a television star, Captain Wilton Parmenter on F Troop

Parmenter was a well-meaning but accident-prone officer who became a Civil War hero completely by mistake after his sneezes were misunderstood as orders to charge. From there, he was placed in command of Fort Courage, where Sergeant O’Rourke and Corporal Agarn ran their own questionable business deals while trying to keep the captain out of trouble

Ken Berry’s background as a singer and dancer helped make his falls, reactions and physical comedy look effortless. Before F Troop, he served in the Army with Leonard Nimoy and later became part of Desilu’s talent-development program after attracting the attention of Lucille Ball.

Melody Patterson was only 15 when she auditioned for Wrangler Jane after claiming she was 18, although she had turned 16 by the time filming began. Jane could ride and shoot better than most of Fort Courage’s soldiers, but Captain Parmenter somehow remained completely unaware that she was in love with him.

And then there was that unforgettable opening theme. William Lava composed the music and Irving Taylor wrote the lyrics, creating a song that quickly explained how Parmenter accidentally became a hero and ended up commanding F Troop. It was almost a miniature episode before the show even began.

F Troop lasted only two seasons, from 1965 through 1967, but Ken Berry, Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch, Frank de Kova and Melody Patterson created the kind of cast chemistry that kept the show popular through decades of reruns

Mayberry R.F.D.

How many of you kept watching Mayberry after Andy Griffith left? Mayberry R.F.D. continued the familiar small-town setting, but shifted the focus to farmer and town councilman Sam Jones, played by Ken Berry, and his young son Mike

The series still included many familiar faces, including Aunt Bee, Goober, Howard and Emmett. Its first episode even featured the long-awaited wedding of Andy Taylor and Helen Crump, giving longtime viewers a proper goodbye before the new chapter began

What may surprise many of us is how successful the show remained. Mayberry R.F.D. ranked among television’s top ten during its first two seasons and was still number 15 when CBS canceled it as part of the network’s move away from rural programming

This short clip also reminds us of the days when sponsors like Sanka and Post were announced as part of the program itself. Did Mayberry still feel the same to you after Andy left, or was something important missing?

I Can’t Believe I Ate That Whole Thing!

“I can’t believe I ate that whole thing!” became one of those commercial lines everyone seemed to repeat, even if they had forgotten it came from Alka-Seltzer. Milt Moss played the painfully overstuffed Ralph, while Lynn Whinic delivered the perfectly dry response that made the 1972 spot so memorable.

The idea reportedly came after advertising writer Howie Cohen overate at a celebration dinner and complained about eating the whole thing. The commercial later entered the Clio Awards Hall of Fame and was even recreated decades later with Peter Boyle and Doris Roberts. Do you remember quoting this commercial around the house?