AFTER SCHOOL TELEVISION

“Who’s the king of animals in Africa?” Come on you know the words, it’s Kimba the White Lion. I used to watch this everyday on the old Channel 48 in Philadelphia. I believe channel 5 in New York ran it also. Remember Daniel Baboon? How about Polly Cracker? I used to love the scarier episodes like the one with the giant grasshopper. I could never figure out what that spike coming out of Kimba's chest was though….

Go Speed Racer Go! Another one of my after school favorites! How cool was the Mach-5? That car could drive over high boulders!

Ok, I know I’m spelling this wrong, but there was this episode with the Malaj? Remember the one where the driver was a robot and would repeat the words, “The Malaj still races” over and over again? He would drive around and the hood would flip over and a big ‘X-13’ would pop up (that meant trouble) and would run the car in front of him off the road! Great stuff!

Gumby and Pokey. It was always cool the way Gumby skated across the floor. What I liked about this one was the toy Jeep they used in some episodes. This was the first show where you could go to a store and buy a bendable Gumby and Pokey that actually looked like they did on the show! A Clokey Production, those are the true classics!

SHOPPING IN THE 70'S - PART 1

One of my all time favorite hang outs was our local Two Guys Department store back in the 70’s. They had everything there; think of Wal-Mart Supercenter today. You could buy furniture there, clothes, food, even get your car serviced while you went into the pet department and bought a fish.

This is from one of there circulars from the day, check out the 8-track tape deck, and the $279 includes everything record player!

How about those ‘C’ code albums on sale! I loved the record department there, I remember they put there 45’s in these little wire baskets hanging from a wall.

This picture is from the Bluebook 77 catalog where you could buy all kinds of neat stuff. Tape decks and tape recorders everywhere in every color. What a groovy life.

Admit it. Come on. At sometime in your past, either you or your parents had carpeting like this. Or do you still have carpeting like this? My aunt used to have shag carpeted stairs, they looked so soft I threw myself down them one time and almost broke my neck.
We used to have gold carpeting and a yellow vinyl couch. That couch is still in my basement somewhere. Maybe someday I’ll take a picture of it and torture you with it.

Join us again for Shopping in the 70’s – part 2

60'S AND 70'S TOYS PART-2

It’s time once again for another journey into my toy past, and this time we have the Amaze-a-Matics car! How did this work? Well you had a pre-cut black strip that you would insert into the back of the car. It would go through the car sending it commands on what to do, for example, stop, turn, back-up, ect.

Now the real fun was in the white strips. Those you could cut notches into yourself and thus program the car to do what you wanted it to, like stop, turn, back-up, ect. It came with little plastic cones and if you had nothing to do that week you could dedicate yourself to program the car just right so that it would maneuver around those cones. Then after all that excitement was over you threw it in the closet and found something else to play with.

For a real thrill we had the Naval Rescue Sea Plane. You would wind this up and the propeller would spin. Now if you had a swimming pool you could put this in the water and watch it go across the pool. If you didn’t you could put it in your bathtub, but that wasn’t very thrilling. I used to have one of these things and carried it around pretending that I was flying. Today I write blogs.

The Stunt Car was the best. Now there were many battery operated toys that did similar things, but this was The Stunt Car! Basically you put in 2 batteries turned it on and stood back. It would start to ride around and a lever with a wheel on it would pop out of the bottom causing the car to ride on 2 wheels. Then (hold your breath!) the car would flip itself over and land on the wheels again!
I would chase this thing around the house with arms in the air screaming in amazement! Today I write blogs.

Keep an eye out for 60’s and 70’s toys part 3!

THE PREDICTION ROD

Do you know what’s going to happen? Can this device tell you? From the early 70’s, it’s The Prediction Rod. A great companion piece to the Ouija board (that was until we saw The Exorcist.)

You would hold The Prediction Rod over the board and ask a question. Slowly you would pan it back and forth over the various spiritual cards that you laid out in there proper circles. Once the rod found the appropriate card, it would ‘point’ to it.

You could ask anything you wanted, and if you were stumped, you could always check out the booklet with printed questions and say- yeah, I’ll ask that.

Magical you say? I used it for a while. If you believe in this stuff hard enough, it will work. If you’re a skeptic, well, just ignore the magnet at the end of the rod that would be drawn to the card that was sitting in a metal lined board. It was the 70’s a time to dazzle your friends with magic.

RANDOM STUFF PART ONE

Here’s some random stuff, in my childhood there was only one soap opera that mattered. That was Dark Shadows! You not only got the games and fangs, but you had to have the comic book. “My name is Victoria Winters….” That’s how each episode started and she would go on to describe what hellish thing happened to the family the day before.

Hey, hey, were the Monkees! A rock band! A TV show! And you had to have all the records!
Pleasant Valley Sunday always reminds me of the summer of 1967. This was all over AM radio at the time. I used to listen to this on the AM radio I had strapped to my bike!

TV Guide used to be a fun magazine. They used to deal with just TV shows at one time! You couldn’t wait for the new fall season to start- the shows were so inventive it was always an adventure. Gilligans Island was another of my faves. And before you ask, the answer is ‘Ginger.’

This ladies and gentlemen is a Sneet. Back in the late 60’s you were not a cool kid if you didn’t have one of these book covers.
I don’t remember what company produced these, but they were popular for a year or two. Everybody had one, but like most fads, it went away.

45'S - THOSE LITTLE PLASTIC DISCS WE LOVE

45’S! How could you not love them? I’ve been buying these things my whole life! In my era these were the most important way for you to discover new music. I used to buy 2 or 3 of these a week, especially on Saturday’s after watching ‘American Bandstand’ on TV. The best thing about the 70’s was the variety of music that would top the charts. You had rock, soul, country, it didn’t matter. A good song was a good song, and the 45 was a cheap and great way to introduce you to a new musical group or artist. The flip side was also a surprise as sometimes it contained a track not available on the album.

Collecting 45’s today is still big, but finding original labels can be a challenge as a lot of them have been reissued on ‘oldies’ labels. However, they are still out there, and finding the original factory sleeve that accompanied the original release is a plus.

A music fan knew the labels. You also knew what artist recorded for what label. For example, The Monkees were on ‘Colgems,’ The Jackson-5 on ‘Motown,’ The Beatles on ‘Apple’ or ‘Capitol (swirl)’ The Guess Who on ‘RCA (orange)’ ect.

How about the versions of the songs? Many oldies CD’s today use the album version and not the edited and remixed 45 version of the song. Some songs were specially mixed for the 45 version making it more up-beat.

If you bought a lot of these you knew that the early ‘Epic’ record releases were on a yellow label, and in the 70’s Epic changed it’s label color to orange – you knew what the ‘Laurie’ records label looked like, how about ‘Roulette,’ ‘Chess,’ and ‘Parrot’ records. The same rules applied to albums however as the CD era crept in sadly the label recognition went away. Most music fans today will have a favorite group and have no idea what label that group records for. There isn’t much of a recognition factor with a silver disc or worst, an I-pod.

This may not seem important; however it’s the stuff that made these records collectible in the first place. When you saw a ‘Colgems’ you immediately thought of The Monkees, it was embedded in our minds. That’s how you remember them spinning on the turntable. Besides, these 45's were little works of art. How cool is the Parrot label? A part of our past, sadly gone and discarded today.

SUPER-8 HOME MOVIES

Long before we had DVD’s and VHS tapes our home entertainment was in Super-8 Films. My dad always loved movies, so one day he comes home with a 16mm projector. I loved that thing, we would borrow films from the local library and watch everything from old horror films to nature films. My dad always wanted to keep up to date so he traded in the 16mm projector and got a Super-8 projector with sound instead. The film was cheaper than 16mm, so now we could shoot our own films of the family standing around waving. We quickly got bored with this and discovered the world of Super-8 home movies. During the early 70’s and up until 1979 Super-8 home movies were the deal.

You could buy the latest Hollywood blockbusters right away since they were abridged versions of what was in the theater. For example, I had ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ on Super-8 and was showing it in my home while the full length feature was still playing in the local cinema. For the home movie version you could buy the 200 ft. reel that lasted about 7 minutes, or you could go up to a 400 ft. reel that ran about 18 minutes. Now that doesn’t sound long, but it did give you the best scenes in the movie. Some of these films were available in ‘silent’ black and white versions with subtitles on the bottom, (they were the cheapest) but for more money you got ‘sound and color.’

Of course it is no wonder that the Super-8 film frenzy of the 70’s went away. Home video was just around the corner, and being able to buy full length feature films was much more attractive to people. You were able in some cases to buy or rent full length films on Super-8 but it would cost you a fortune. By the early 80’s the Super-8 home movie was extinct. Super-8 does still exist today, but it is used mostly by independent film makers. The companies that put these out, ‘Castle Films,’ ‘Ken films,’ ‘Universal-8’ have all but disappeared. ‘Blackhawk Films’ which was a company famous for putting out silent films began to distribute their films on videotape. The rest is history.

HBO in the 70's

Yes Virginia, we had HBO in the 70’s. As you can see above, we got it in August of 1975. Does anybody remember ‘Martha’s Attic?” HBO used to be on only a few hours a day, mostly at night and would ‘sign off’ around 1 or 2 in the morning. They used to go on the air about 3:00 pm and the selections of movies were few. Believe me, you got to know them well.

It really changed the way we saw television, no commercials, a shock at the time. We had a converter box that allowed us to pick up the normal channels 2 thru 13 then you flipped a switch over and up popped HBO. Sex, violence and nudity, though I saw my first nude shot not on HBO, but on Public Television in 1973. A program called ‘Steambath’ with Valerie Perrine. Yep, became a big fan of Valerie Perrine. Couldn’t tell you the plot of that thing but I remember Valerie Perrine.

But who needs Steambath, HBO had The Towering Inferno. And by December of 1975, there program guides were called On Air.

60'S AND 70'S TOYS PART-1

Ah, to be a kid in the 70’s where playing with toys might be dangerous but thrilling! Here we have ‘Super-Elastic-Bubble-Plastic!’ Very simple. You put the goo on the straw, blew into it and created a multi-colored plastic bubble that blew up in your face. Did it ever get in your eyes? No problem. Did you ever swallow any of this stuff? No problem. It was after all the 70’s.
We survived. Another great product from the company with the equally thrilling name- Wham-o!

Another fun toy was ‘The Battling Tops.’ Pull the string and let them go! They would fly out of the ring, pinging and bouncing everywhere. Just look at the excitement in the eyes of the kids on the box! You know you wanted to be a part of that!

Even the names of the tops spelled danger! Could you trust them?

Well somewhere around the late 60’s there were some toys for the little ones that were tame. But the technology was amazing. Take for example the ‘Tricky Busy School Bus.’ You blew the whistle and the bus rolled forward about 3 feet. The level of excitement was through the roof, and this prepared you for what was to come.
The thrills and danger of my childhood was just beginning - I’ve got lots of this stuff, so watch out for 60's and 70's Toys Part-2 !

BEATLES 78 RPM / ABBA SPEAKS!

A Beatles 78? No it’s not The Beatles, but an early Spanish cover band. Ok, girls, start screaming, it’s Carlos Diaz – Granados Jr. y los Beatles sur Americanos! Now here’s the scoop. Although American record companies abandoned the 78 rpm record in 1960 – Spanish record companies continued to issue out 78 rpm records until about the mid 70’s. This particular record I bought brand new back in 1966 in one of our many local record shops. I remember they still had listening booths around back then. You would take your records into this booth, sit down, put on some headphones and play them on a turntable that was supplied by the store. If you liked the record you bought it, if not you put it back. Nice. This record is a cover of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and on the flip side is “She Loves You,” yeah, yeah, yeah, ooops, sorry, I meant si,si,si.

ABBA speaks! And they have a lot to say! This was issued out to radio stations at the time they had recorded their ‘Visitors’ album which turned out to be their last. One of the last interviews? Possibly, but I don’t have a lot of info on this one except that it is a 2 record set issued in a blank white cover with black lettering. I have this in storage somewhere with a million other records so I’d have to look it up again. I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do.

JOHNNY EXPRESS 1965

I loved this toy as a kid. This was one big truck, and I remember getting this for Christmas in 1965. We had been in our new house for about a year and I saw this huge box under the Christmas tree. Having nagged my parents to death after seeing the commercials on television I finally got one. I remember the ad where the guy stands on this thing and would ride it across the floor.

Of course, you got the truck now you needed to get the countless accessories that came with it. I managed to get a few, but I loved the truck itself. It wasn’t known for speed even though the box shows it speeding along, and the cord that came with the controller wasn’t all that long, so you had to kinda walk along with it. I remember amazing my friends at the time by standing on this thing and having it drag me across the floor. It took little to thrill us in those days.
I lost the driver from my first truck and my dog found it and chewed his head off. The truck you see in the pictures is from my personal collection and is another e-bay find. That and occasional toy shows are your best bet if your looking for one of these.

EDITORIAL: CUSTOM VANS! WHERE DID THEY GO?

I remember back in the 70’s going to my first van show that was held in my hometown. At least twice a year all the custom vans from my area would line up on the avenue in our downtown and open their doors to the public. We would go down there and see some amazing paint jobs and interiors that were inventive to say the least. This is the stuff that made me want to get into vanning. Custom vans were everywhere in those days – you didn’t have to go to a show to see one. Just go down the block. You would spot them in intersections, shopping centers, McDonalds, (Remember Gino’s?) everywhere!

Back in those days the most expensive thing you did to your van (depending on the artist) was the exterior mural. If you didn’t have the bucks to spend on a real artist to paint your van, you could get a ‘stick on’ mural. I don’t remember if it was ‘vinyl’ or not, but you could stick these on the upper third of your van. It was usually a sunset or desert scene, and you could buy these at the local mall. Our local mall opened in 1972, so we had access to visors, roof vents, port holes (bubble windows) ect. This of course was before The Van House came to town. There you could by all of the above, plus get ice boxes, flares, even wooden cabinets for your interior.

By the way, not all vans had the full treatment. If you were short on cash the first thing you did to your van was put on a nice set of tires and rims. It separated your van from the work van down the street. You were still a vanner, and you were proud of your ride.

So what happened? Where did all the vans go? Is vanning dead?
Well that depends on who you talk to and where you live. My answer to that question is always, “yes vanning died the way I remember it.”
But there is a new vanning movement out there embracing a bit of the old school stuff and welcoming in a whole new flock of vanners who are driving mini-vans and conversions. What does this all mean? Well let’s back up a moment and I’ll explain it the way I saw it develop throughout the years.

What got me into vanning in the first place was quite simple. The vans. The custom vans. I marveled at the artwork and interiors that were created for show, not for convenience. The wildest interiors, with mirrors, staircases, how about the then traditional archway that led to the shag carpeted bed in the back? The vans I remember the best were rolling works of art. They stood out not just for there paint jobs and interiors, but for the body work that was done on them, chopped tops, flares, gull wing doors, ect. This is what drew crowds to the van shows. The people that went to these were not all vanners, but people who wanted to see something different than the van you would see driving down the road. Some of them saw the show and left, but others were inspired. They would go out and buy and modify there own van, and the vanning universe would expand. So how did it all change?

I hung out with a group of vanners at the time and we all had our custom vans in a cruise when one of our flock announced that he was getting a new van. He had a custom Ford called ‘Mount Rushmore’ and the guy traded it in and showed up in a long wheelbase Chevy conversion. I thought it was a nice van, (and trust me I have nothing against conversions I have one myself) but I saw it as the beginning of the end. The way it was explained to me at the time was that he didn’t want to go through the hassle of rebuilding a whole new van so why not buy one that’s already customized? This thing had the multiple chairs, lighting on the ceiling, no doubt a beautiful interior, but it reminded me more of a limo than the stuff I was used to seeing at the time.

Well what can I say. As time went on I saw more and more conversions on the road. Now for those of you that don’t know, a conversion is simply a van (Ford, Chevy or Dodge) that is customized by a company that makes them in bulk. In other words, they can make thousands of Chevy vans look the same. You can buy them in different colors, but you get the same set up – four chairs, a couch across the back, bay windows cut into the sides so your passengers can look outside, and a set of stripes. They all had stripes.
They eventually became family campers and the rest is history. They would eventually take a hit from the popularity of the mini-van, much cheaper, smaller, easy to park and family friendly.

Keep in mind that because of this, as more and more people including grandma and grandpa started buying conversions, there was no need for the many shops and outlets that sold the flares, visors, bubble windows and ice boxes. So one by one, they began to close. If there was a guy or gal out there that wanted to create there own custom van, it would become more difficult to obtain parts that at one time were available everywhere. Yes the times were changing and what about the old custom vans that were left? Some people today find the murals that were on those vans ‘hokey’ ‘awful’ and ‘tacky.’ Painting your van straight black, or red is preferable to a mural for many out there today.


Time has not been kind for the few old custom vans left. Even the once most prized award winning custom van would end up un-wanted in the used car lot only to be sold, stripped, turned back into a work truck or abused and parked in a back yard somewhere. There it would sit, be filled up with junk, rot and eventually if it didn’t become the neighborhoods most colorful shed, would end up in the crusher gone forever. Yes, vanning as I knew it - died.

However in many eyes it has not. Yes there are still vans out there though not in the great numbers that they once were, and a few websites to help get you back in the mood. There are van events that still take place in some parts of the country, and there are still those that go that extra mile to customize a van to the hilt. But alas, it is a different world.
Gone are the van shops, and gone is the local van scene in many areas. I haven’t seen a custom van in my town since the late 80’s.

Today the van world is filled with conversion vans, (some people are rebuilding some of the older ones) mini-vans of various makes, new vans like the ’Sprinter’ (which I’m sorry is one of the ugliest vehicles out there!!)
and a few restored older vans.

Many are trying various ways to bring vanning back to what it once was, but I don’t believe it ever will. What the vanning community needs to do is bring the interest of vans back to the public, not just other vanners. Think for a minute if you’re a new vanner. What was it that made you interested in vanning? A mini-van? A conversion? Or was it a tricked out van that you saw in an old magazine somewhere? A group of vanners sitting in a field somewhere surrounded by stock mini-vans and conversions is not going to bring the interest of vanning back to the general public. You have to put on a show! You have to put out there vehicles that people want to see. You’ve got to get the kids interested in fixing up and customizing vans again, not just ride in them. Once you get people customizing again there will be a demand for van product. Once you have a demand for van product, someone is going to supply it. The van shops will return. The rest will be history.
Let your imagination run wild again, it’s what made vanning work in the first place.