This promises to be a never-ending list. Let’s get started. Remember?:
The Mighty 690 on AM radio
94.7 KMET and Dr. Demento
KIQQ (100.3, pre-Pirate Radio)
93 KFJ and KDAY
The Three Stooges
The Little Rascals
Pippi Longstocking
The Incredible Mr. Limpet
Kung Fu Theater on Channel 9
The pre-Pure Rock 105.5 KNAC (slogan: “The Heart of Rock and Roll”)
Popeye on Channel 5 on Sunday mornings (Tom Slick and Super Chicken)
Twilight Zone Marathon on Thanksgiving and July 4th (also on KTLA Channel 5)
Members Only jackets
Le Tigre, the sellable knock-off to the exceedingly elite Izod “Alligator” shirts
Dolfin Shorts
Leg Warmers
Dittos (hurt me!)
Jordache jeans
Chemin de Fer
Gauchos
Girls with strawberry lip gloss
McDonald’s bracelets to hold your lunch money (fifty cents)
Pete Ellis Dodge commercials (“Long Beach Freeway, Firestone exit, Southgate”)
Carpeteria commercials
Phil n’ Jim’s commercials
National Lumber (Shorty!)
Lake Delores (Lake Dolores)
Cal Worthington and his dog Spot! (And no, you weren’t the only kid who thought it went “pussy cow”)
Jack LaLanne
Smog alerts, which called recess off
Earthquake Drills and “Drop Drills”
Heads Up Seven Up on rainy days at school
The Red Balloon
Steal the Bacon
Vans
O.P. shorts
Puka shell necklaces
Unbreakable combs
Switchblade combs
Bolt
Hang Ten
Stubbies
Baja Lopez ponchos
Flojos
Kroff Superstars, the show by Sid and Marty Krofft
POW!, the telephone call-in video game on the Krofft show
Sigmund and the Sea Monsters
The Bugaloos
Lidsville
HR Pufnstuf
Electrowoman and Dynagirl
The White Shadow
What’s Happening!
S.W.A.T.
CHiPs
Emergency!
Speed Racer on Channel 56 (UHF!)
Wally George on Channel 56
Real People
Bowling for Dollars
The Incredible Hulk
The Love Boat
Fantasy Island
Licorice Pizza
Pup n’ Taco
Sambo’s (renamed to Denny’s for the purpose of political correction)
Disneyland’s Monsanto’s Adventure Thru Inner Space
E tickets, D tickets, C tickets, B tickets, and A tickets
The Marathon Bar
Wax Lips
Candy cigarettes
Fred Rated and the Federated Group
Montgomery Ward (i.e. “Monkey Wards”)
MV3 with Richard Blade
Blue Chip stamp redemption centers
Sears Surplus
Fedco
Gemco
Zody’s
The Treasury
Orbach’s
Kinney’s
Buster Brown
Tom McCann
Farrell’s
Marineland
Skate parks
Top Siders with no socks
Pee-Chee folders
Trapper-Keepers
The denim folder
Pencil fighting
A.Y.S.O.
Shasta soda
Aspen soda (apple flavored)
Fresca
The Nestea plunge
Alba 77
Schwinn Stingrays
Green Machines
G.I. Joes
Army Men
Slime
Speak and Spell
Stop Thief!
Connect Four
Hot Wheels with never enough tongues for the tracks
Eraser Mate
The four colored ball point pen(!!!)
Mattel Football
Rubik’s Cube
Pyraminx
Missing Link
Water Basketball (thumb cramp!)
Sea-Monkeys
V (the series)
Pintos, Gremlins, Datsun B210s, and Volkswagen Squarebacks
Roller Disco
Space Invaders
Asteroids
Asteroids Deluxe (had a shield instead of hyperspace)
Frogger
Seawolf (sucked)
Dragon’s Lair
Centipede
Millipede (with the TNT)
Pengo
Defender
Defender Stargate
Scramble
Galaga
Galaxian
Pac-Man
Super Cobra
Atari 2600
ON TV
SelecTV
Red Devil Fireworks
Cool metal lunchboxes and the lame oddball yellow plastic Snoopy one
Slip n’ Slide
Toss Across (beanbag Tic-Tac-Toe)
Lawn Darts
Stephan! Jack Stephan!
Bandini Mountain
Lolly lolly lolly get your adverbs here (anybody else think it was “f-words here”?)
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Remember Marineland (aka Marineland of the Pacific)? Remember their ’70s “Baja Reef” saltwater swim-through attraction where you could put on a snorkel or scuba gear (depending on your experience/skill level) and swim with fish, turtles and even nurse sharks? I vividly remember their full-color promotional brochure and fantasizing about swimming with nurse sharks. Too bad we never went on it. I wonder if they made you sign a disclaimer before going in. lol
I found an image of the brochure online! Check it out:
http://kasatka.com/gallery/album146/bajareef
Speaking of Lake Dolores, this guy found its ruins on his way to Vegas back in 2006. I wonder if it’s still there. Though many of the pics show its reincarnation as “Rock-A-Hoola” water park (which it became when it was sold by the original owners), they’re still somber pics of a dream gone to shambles.
http://www.timeattackforums.com/forums/photography-art/1566-lake-dolores.html
I’m still looking for that freakin’ commercial! Dang…
Calculator watches
The Spruce Goose!
KCET, KCOP, KRLA, KTTV Channel 11…
Let’s not forget thee ol’ “crack a fake egg on the head” trick.
Instructions:
1. On one hand, bring all four fingertips to your thumb. Like a spider touching its toes together.
2. Hold these fingertips atop a friends head. Like the spider’s standing on the friend’s head.
3. With your free hand, tap the top of your spider hand, achieving a slightly percussive effect against the top of your friend’s skull.
4. Slowly spread your joined fingertips apart, running them through your friend’s hair, mimicking dripping egg guts.
Ebonics.
White Front – pre Home Depot
Z Channel – the first cable channel
Mongoose, Webco, Redline – BMX bikes
Alpha-Beta tell-a-friend
Lucky
SH Kress
Beer Hats -crocheted hats with beer cans cut in panels then holepunched then sewn to make a beach/camping hat – usually Coors, Budweiser, Hamms
http://www.stitchymcyarnpants.com/tincan/beercantutorial.html
No scab beer – no Coors beer
Monterey and Rainbow card clubs in Gardena
the Horseshoe club
Ascot
Straw Hat Pizza – where you could get a strawhat made out of yellow styrofoam
Shakey’s Pizza where you could watch the dough being made on the machine through the long wall of glass, then you could for .25$ play a song that you picked from the hundreds of songs next to the player piano and then play Pong.
Webco spincast fishing set for the youndsters white rod with black reel.
Billy Beer
pull tabs on cans
Thrifty ice cream .05 .10 & .15 for a triple
the Man From Atlantis
cousin Oliver from the Brady Bunch
Police Story – too late, time for bed.
Love American Style
the Outer Limits
Room 222
the Flying Nun
the Courtship of Eddies Father – I hated that show!
Kung Fu
the Waltons
Burl Ives as the Snowman selling electric shavers (Norelco?) at Christmas time.
Sears Tough Skins – the poor kids Levis – me. iron on patches after each wearing and each washing as they were thin as paper.
Big Wheel
Schwinn Pixie for the lil’ ones.
Roller Derby – steel wheeled skates
Plastic skates that went over your shoes with plastic wheels.
Huffy ThunderRoad
Robinson’s
the May Company
Bullock’s
the Broadway
Swenson’s Ice Cream
Banana Bubble Gum
Stubbing your Big Toe and ripping the nail off and bleeding all over.
Falling off your bike and ‘skinning your knee’. I need a Band-Aid.
Mecurechrome on your owie if you were lucky if not, Mathialaide oww it burns!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Blow on it!
Pink Calamine lotion on your chickenpox.
original Kaopectate
seeing classmates with braces and full-on headgear you teased them, but then making your own retainer with a paperclip and sticking it in your mouth.
Drilling holes all the way through your pink eraser at school with your pencil.
Papermate pens
then, ta-da Erasermate pens
actual toys in the bottom of cereal boxes which you would dig for all the way down to the bottom immediately after opening,
usually Cap’n Crunch, Cinnamon Crunch, Trix or Cucko for CocoaPuffs. Don’t forget the Captain Jean Lafoot or the Crunch Berry Beast.
Quisp, Fruit Brute, Frankenberry, Count Chocula and Boo Berry cereals. Trix are for kids you silly rabbit.
“Drilling holes all the way through your pink eraser at school with your pencil.”
LOL
LOL…classic.
“Pink Calamine lotion on your chickenpox” …totally. But my folks used “Caladryl” or something…doesn’t it still exist? I remember it being totally soothing. We used it for mosquito/flea bites too.
What about those wacky spaceship shaped erasers? Those were awesome. They had the standalone ones and then pencil-topping ones.
Erasermate. The bane of lefties like myself. =(
My folks used to get pissed that I would angle the brand new cereal nearly sideways so I could grab the toy wrapped in that plastic wrap at the bottom of the stuff.
Thrifty’s .05/.10/.15…the cheapest I remember was .15/.30/.45. Heh, inflation. =)
Thrifty’s .15/.30/.40 was what I remember. (Not .45, dude.)
I personally never understood why people would pay .30 for a double scoop when you can take the same amount of money and double-fist two singles!
Coin collectors. The half cent coin!
Calamine Calamine Calamine lotion…
ohhh nooo nooo noo no my lotion….
plastic rockets – pumped up with air and a little water.
“going around”
Washington Dee Cee pants – White painter’s pants
the girl’s Dee Cee’s came in all flavors of the rainbow
Sear’s Best Perma-Press
Marco ———————– Polo
Vans off the Wall, Navy-Red-Navy , Navy-Gold-Navy, Navy-Royal Blue-Navy OG
Van Doren’s with the Blue Bottoms
GT skateboard, Alva, Logan wheels, Loni Ta, sp?
Grape Ape
the Superfriends
Top Cat
KRLA – Elvis every night
the original Sony Walkman – full on anodized blue metal case – Tape Player only
Fishing with a yellow/orange Bobber when that went under the water WOW I GOT ONE!
Shamrock Roller Rink in Torrance – do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself about thats what its all about!
Ramonas – green Chile Burritos w/beans, back when they made em’ so hot your nose ran, your eyes watered, your lips burned, but they tasted soooo goood!
Maple and Brown sugar Quaker Oats with the ” animal packets’ you would save them at least until grandma threw them away
the deer stands out.
Ding Dongs and Ho Hos wrapped in the foil when you were done you would fashion them into coins
playing with magnets in the dirt where the iron would stick like hair to the magnet.
Hopscotch, four square, sockball, kickball, one bounce,
Handball – tap-tap no Americans, no waterfalls, no babies, no slicies, no fakies, no carryovers and no more taps.
Carroms , carroms golf
RC Cola 16 oz. glass bottles LOOK
Tic Tac Dough w/ Wink Martindale
The Joker’s Wild – Joker Joker Joker!
Wallabees
WaffleStompers w/ the red laces
Nike – All courts
Bruce Jenner on the Wheaties box – weanies when you were young
Big Stick
original red white & blue Bomb Pop
Orange, pineapple or raspberry push ups
twin popsicles
Strawberry Sparkle Bar
a little later in the 80s-
Cavariccis – for the studs
Creepers with the Zebra print
the boot looking shoes with the silver tips and silver tabs on the heel
The much coveted White Guess? shirt goes best with a Corona w/lime at the Red Onion or Bentley’s
Black Levis with the tapered leg,
Acid washed jeans,
the Fleetwood Mac style ponytail
Neon Green swimtrunks
Neon Orange
Neon Pink
Team Sinjin Smith and Randy Stoklos wearing those colors
Bananas at the grocery store having football team stickers on them.
Pulsar!
From skooldays.com:
I just learned about Tom Bosley from YOUR website, Jace! May he rest in peace. He sure was an icon throughout my life thus far.
Has anyone mentioned A&W Drive-in restaurants? We had one in City of Industry on Hacienda Blvd with car hop service (in the ’70s). It was cool. Papa burgers and root beer floats. Almost better than In-N-Out…
Does anyone remember Country Burger
It was a Drive-In at one time with car hops service but
by my time in the early seventies 1971c it was a really good burger spot where you went up to the place and ordered in yourself and had a large parking lot some spots covered with was once a car hop service covered area for the servers to use to bring you your food. It was located on Hawthorne Blvd. maybe where the Beni-Hana’s sits now or further south down Hawthorne.
Also the A&W Root Beer (might have actually been a Hires) stand on which is now the South Parking lot of El Camino college acroos from Ramona’s
Yup, I owned Pulsar as a kid. I used to make him bully Ken around and kick his butt, then afterwards have his way with Barbie. The dood was totally buff.
His “working innards” were actually my favorite part about him, but the only thing that sucked was eventually the “blood” dried up, and it rendered the pumping action useless.
This list is getting so long that there may be repeats by now, but does anyone remember the skinny little rubber red grocery checkout dividers they used at grocery stores (i.e., Lucky’s)? Life was so simple. Nowadays those things are 4-sided ad bars. Heck, they even have TVs in checkout lanes now, right?
@Mike Ballenger:
I blogged about this long ago, but have since lost the post. Your Handball snippet got me going. These are the moves I remember:
Slicies
Cross-Countries
Tea Parties
Over the Rainbows
Waterfalls
Babies
Bouncies (same as Tea Parties)
Are “Fakies” the ones where you pretend like you’re gonna slam it, but then instead just like barely tap it? lol
You gotta remind me what “tap-tap” is …I’ve heard of it but don’t remember what that was.
@Mike Ballenger: Didn’t you work at Lucky’s?
BTW, there’s still a Country Burger on Western Avenue at about Carson.
Also, I was talking to a dude a few weeks ago who was describing an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. Anybody remember when Steve Austin faced off with Bigfoot from a UFO?
Six Million Dollar Man, Bigfoot, UFO. That’s a seventies golden triangle right there.
@narvolicious: Were “popsies” part of your hood’s handball vernacular? When the ball hit the ground and the wall at precisely the same time.
@jaced: Yeah! But I think we called ‘em poppers. LoL yeah it was when the ball hit that wedge precisely where the wall met the ground.
We called em’ pop-ups I believe.
Tap-tap was just something you said to create a rule for that particular session of whatever you were playing that had different rules.
As in tag, you could “Tap” “No tagbacks” as in usually you could just tag the person right back with “No tag backs” you would have to tag someone else.
Freeze Tag
Statue Maker
I don’t remember Tea Parties
or Over The Rainbows
yeah
Fakies were you acted like you were going to do a baby and slammed it as far as you could!
or any other trick.
@myk:
“Tea Parties” or “Bouncies” were typically rules made up by the girls in my 4th-6th grade classes, who never wanted to play handball, and if they did, they wanted it to be as non-competitive and non-challenging as possible.
This allowed a player to set up an incoming ball for a second bounce, in order to give him/her a better opportunity to play it. Hence the term “Bouncies” because of the extra “bounce”…or “Tea Parties” because doing this made the game relaxing and friendly—like a tea party. Boys totally hated this rule because a round would virtually never end…especially if it was two girls playing.
“Over the Rainbows,” on the other hand, were balls that were slammed so hard that they rebounded off the wall with a high and wide arc trajectory (hence the “rainbow” term), landing far beyond the rear boundary of the handball court. If done at just the right time, Over The Rainbows were the ultimate power move that rendered the unprepared opponent totally helpless as they ran frantically to try to return it. Again, it was the girls who would call desperately in the beginning, “No Over The Rainbows!!”
I wish I could have captured an audio clip of us kids calling out the names before the rounds began. Apparently, though, the kids nowadays may have the same things. I’ve spoken to a 10-yr.-old kid who knew what Slicies and Waterfalls and Cross-countries were, at least.
The Bugaloos! =click here=
Good find on the Bugaloos. They’re in the air and everywhere! Can you find any video on HR Puffinstuff? “He’s your friend when things get rough.” And what about Lidsville? I tell ya, my childhood just wouldn’t have been the same without Charles Nelson Reilly, Don Knotts, Paul Lynde, and Phyllis Diller!
Mini-truckers, mullets and Miller’s Outpost circa ’87-’88. Those acid-washed jeans and the “blizzard sweaters” or white turtlenecks and cardigans (don’t forget the gold cross on a chain) were all the rage for the latin boys on my side of town. Leonardo’s on La Brea? Mullet Mecca on “HI NRG” Friday nights, that’s where you found ‘em all.
Just had a flashback to the early 70′s
We all remember the candy cigarettes that had the powered sugar that you would blow air through them to make smoke.
Does anyone remember the plastic popeye style pipes bright green or red bowls with the white stems? You would put water and dishsoap in the bowl and blow bubbles for the smoke.
Spirograph by Kenner
http://www.seriouscraft.com/files/images/spirograph%5B1%5D.jpg
Solar calculators
LoL Myk. I’m positive I had the red bowl with the white stem. The white stem had the fluting on it, right? Didn’t it intersect the bowl (which looked like a barrel) like right at the midsection? Thanks for resurrecting that one.
Spirograph. I was just at Michael’s Crafts/Hobbies store in the car/plane model section (great 40-something geek getaway) and overheard this, yes, 40-something dood ask one of the young employees if they carried Spirograph. The girl looked totally lost as he tried explaining, “You know, little circle in the big circle kinda thing, you put your pen in it and draw designs…” I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
My friend had one of those in the ’70s. We used to play with it all day and tape up our favorite designs. I remember those little tiny tiny gear things being a total bitch to use—the pen would freeze up in the rotation and totally skip teeth, ruining the pattern. But if we used just the right combo and some real patience, we turned out some totally psychedelic designs. Those were awesome.
“Whimsy Works” in the Puente Hills Mall (a kind of Disney-inspired churro factory before we had even heard of churros- 1977), “Oz” arcade, AMC 4 theaters, then AMC 6 theaters added across the street, PJ Pizzazz (Chuck E Cheese before they even had the idea), Casa de Candles, “Back to the Future” being filmed in the mall parking lot, Eastland Mall before they put a roof on it….
Digital clocks with mechanical flipping numbers, Zenith TV’s with the first “ultrasonic” remote controls- they made an audible sound after pressing one of the 4 buttons sharply; “Heathkit” electronic “do-it-yourself” kits; “nixie” phosphorescent display tubes (before 7-segment digital displays) on gas pumps; CB radios; “Convoy”; trucker songs; CW McCall; Smokey and the Bandit…..whew.
@Vince:
omg, mechanical flipping numbers. My parents had a clock radio with those, and I used to love rotating the time adjust knob just to hear the flutter of those panels and pretend I was travelling in time. Then once I totally put my wrist into it and turned the knob as fast as I could, and one of the panels flew off, cutting one of the numbers in half. lol
“Heathkit!” I built one of those crystal radios. I always wanted one of those deluxe electronic experiment kits or the ultimate mega-microscope kit with those slides that had bug parts and whatever. I even asked my dad if I could get an electron microscope. Yeah right.
My home is in Texas. But I live… in Britannia.
LOL!! Britannia Jeans, omg. Classic!
Reminds me of the whole jean/denim phenomena growing up. Guess Jeans, Girbaud, etc.
What about this: “Uh oh, Sergio / He caught my eye when he walked on by / Uh oh, Sergio / Sergio Valente, Sergio Valente (“jeans” – whispered seductively by some chick)
Then there was the whole non-Levi’s faux pas …forget it if you wore Wranglers or some other non-Levi’s thing that didn’t have the signature leather patch on the back.
Who remembers Zeppelin Jeans from the ’70s? What about that one weird comedy movie about those jeans that had two cut-out things on the butt with clear plastic bubbles in the holes? I remember seeing the trailer and thinking that was so scandalous…dang!
Second Grade Christmas jingle (only funny if you’re, like, 7):
Jingle bells,
Batman smells,
Robin laid an egg.
The Batmobile lost its wheel,
And the Joker got away.
I guy I work with just came to work today in a brand new pair of Wallabees. I want a pair.
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