The Retro site Archives - Page 5 of 16 - Retro Reminiscing Video and Pictures

You Get A Big Delight In Every Bite

This early commercial takes us back very close to the beginning. Ho Hos were introduced in 1967 after first being made by hand in a San Francisco bakery, with mass production following soon afterward. Ding Dongs arrived that same year, making 1967 a pretty important one for the Hostess snack aisle

I like how simple this commercial is. Long before Hostess surrounded its cakes with cartoon characters, the selling point was basically right there on the screen — chocolate cake rolled around crème filling, covered in chocolate, and the promise that “you get a big delight in every bite”

A few years later Hostess advertising became much more colorful. Happy Ho Ho arrived as a little Robin Hood-style character with a feathered cap, bow and arrows, joining Twinkie the Kid, Captain Cupcake, King Ding Dong and the rest of the Hostess gang. (popicon.life)

And Ho Hos certainly caught on. By their 40th anniversary in 2007, Americans were eating around 100 million a year. Pittsburgh was even declared the Ho Ho capital of America, eating more per person than any other city

The brand has survived quite a journey since this commercial. Hostess shut down in 2012 and Ho Hos disappeared from stores for a while, but new owners brought the familiar cakes back nationwide in 2013. Today Hostess is owned by the J M Smucker Company

For something that started as a hand-produced little cake in a San Francisco bakery, Ho Hos certainly became part of a lot of lunchboxes

Were you a Ho Hos kid, or did you reach for Twinkies or Ding Dongs instead?

He & She: One Season on TV, 64 Years Together in Real Life

On Friday I shared a post from Classic Movies Digest celebrating Richard Benjamin and Paula Prentiss and their remarkable 64-year marriage, so I thought this was a perfect time to bring back the opening to their 1967 sitcom, He & She

They met while attending Northwestern University and married in 1961. Then, six years later, CBS gave the real-life couple their own television marriage. Richard played cartoonist Dick Hollister and Paula played his wife Paula, a social worker — something still fairly unusual for a sitcom wife in 1967

Jack Cassidy nearly stole the show as Oscar North, the egotistical actor playing Dick’s comic-book creation Jetman on television. Oscar later became one of the inspirations for Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Unfortunately, audiences never really found He & She. CBS scheduled the sophisticated New York comedy Wednesday nights immediately after Green Acres, and Richard Benjamin later felt the two shows attracted very different audiences. After only 26 episodes, CBS canceled it

But the industry certainly noticed. He & She received five Emmy nominations, including acting nominations for Benjamin, Prentiss and Cassidy, and won for comedy writing. Allan Burns, one of those winning writers, would soon co-create The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Their careers certainly didn’t end with the show. Paula went on to The Parallax View and The Stepford Wives. Richard starred in Goodbye, Columbus, Westworld and The Sunshine Boys, then became the director of My Favorite Year, The Money Pit and Mermaids

One season together on television — and more than six decades together in real life

Does anyone remember He & She, or is this opening completely new to you?

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?

Birdman and the Galaxy Trio

How many of you remember this opening? Birdman and the Galaxy Trio arrived on NBC Saturday mornings on September 9, 1967, right in the middle of Hanna-Barbera’s great superhero period. Birdman could fly, fire solar energy from his hands and create shields, but there was one major catch — he had to keep recharging himself with sunlight. Take away the sun and suddenly our superhero was in serious trouble.

Birdman was created by legendary artist Alex Toth, whose fingerprints were all over this era of Hanna-Barbera adventure cartoons. He was also closely associated with the designs of Space Ghost and The Herculoids, which helps explain why these shows all had that wonderfully dramatic comic-book look many of us remember.

Keith Andes supplied Birdman’s powerful voice and that unforgettable “Biiiirdman!” battle cry. There were some other great connections hiding in the cast too. Don Messick was Falcon 7 before becoming Scooby-Doo, while Dick Beals played Birdboy — and if his voice sounds familiar, he was also Speedy Alka-Seltzer in hundreds of commercials. Over with the Galaxy Trio, Ted Cassidy, better known as Lurch on The Addams Family, voiced Meteor Man.

The music was by Ted Nichols, one of the composers who helped give Hanna-Barbera’s adventure shows such a big, dramatic sound. Nichols also worked on Space Ghost, Jonny Quest, Scooby-Doo and many other familiar cartoons during his years at Hanna-Barbera. He died earlier this year at age 97.

And September 9, 1967 was quite a Saturday morning. Birdman, The Herculoids and Hanna-Barbera’s Fantastic Four all debuted that same day on competing networks. Birdman himself lasted only 20 half-hours, but he certainly wasn’t forgotten. More than 30 years later he was completely reinvented as an attorney in Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, introducing the character to an entirely different generation.

Did you watch Birdman during its original run, or was this another one you discovered through Saturday morning reruns?

Speedy Alka-Seltzer

How many of you remember Speedy Alka-Seltzer? By the time this 1976 commercial appeared, Speedy was actually making a comeback. He had been one of television advertising’s earliest memorable mascots during the 1950s and early ’60s before disappearing from regular Alka-Seltzer advertising in 1964.

Speedy was a pretty clever character when you look closely. His body was an Alka-Seltzer tablet, another tablet became his little sailor-style hat, and he was brought to life one frame at a time with stop-motion animation. He was originally going to be called Sparky, but the name was changed to Speedy to match the company’s “Speedy Relief” campaign.

And that wonderfully youthful voice belonged to Dick Beals, who was already an adult when he began playing Speedy. A glandular condition left Beals only about four-foot-six with a voice that never changed from childhood, and he turned that into an extraordinary career. He also originated the voice of Gumby and was the first Davey on Davey and Goliath. He eventually performed voices in more than 3,000 commercials.

This 1976 revival also brought Speedy together with the line most of us probably remember best — “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh what a relief it is.” The jingle was composed by Tom Dawes, who had previously been a member of the 1960s group The Cyrkle. Two years later, even Sammy Davis Jr. recorded his own versions of it.

Speedy had already shared the screen with silent-film legend Buster Keaton back in the 1950s, and he would eventually make another comeback decades later. For such a little guy, he had quite a television career

Did you remember Speedy himself, or is it the “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz” jingle that immediately takes you back?

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?

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