Sesame Street--Gimme FIVE!

This is so awesome that if you were not about during the '70's and early 80's, you totally missed out--



I think more modern sounds prevailed in the late '80's etc.

That sound was down. This was a great way to learn. I'm ridiculously pleased that was something I saw and learned from as a kid.

Easy Reader (aka Morgan Freeman) from the Electric Company--

With Rita Moreno! We didn't know back then the awesome talents who decided to teach us how to read and learn phonics and sound things out. I know I should be tickled with some of Morgan Freeman's recent serious roles, but for me, he won't do a thing cooler than Easy Reader. That was the bottom line of cool when I was a kid learning to read, and I'm still mightily enamoured.

Fred Rogers About PBS

Fred Rogers was the man when I was a small child watching television. I think he taught and demonstrated compassion and understanding, and set a positive example of managing feelings. He understood what being a kid was like and how to talk to us. I really liked feeling I was part of his neighborhood when I was a kid.

Okay--Roland Gift Appreciation Society, here.

The Fine Young Cannibal's version of "Suspicious Minds":




You might have to put it on "pause" and let the thing download a little--I did. But it was a fun video.

Toys I totally remember having--

They also had guns and flashlights that were just a little too big for their hands. I don't remember mine having the night-time outfits, though.



(Back in the '70's, if commercials did not explain what kind of adventures--"She does bionic things!"--your action figure could have, you would just leave it in the box until it was worth money.)





Okay I DID NOT HAVE THIS! Okay? But I seriously remember that commercial. What I also did not have, but recall very well, was this....thing.




This is the more recent version--the '70's version of the doll didn't just eat and poop, but it also started to smell funny after a while. It scared the household animals and had to be buried in the backyard.



If I never took Princess Leia out of the box, got her naked, made new outfits for her so she could hang with the "Barbies" despite being too tall and having totally blocky feet, (which resulted in her being barefoot all the time) and then probably gave her to a younger friend or possibly cousin, that would have been cool. Also, her hair got messed up because the "buns" were hair wrapped around plastic wheels that popped off and wouldn't go back on. But I can honestly say my Princess Leia doll "lived." I never got any of the other Star Wars toys. For that matter, I never had "Kens". Luckily, my Barbies were bi.



These were absurdly popular among the small children of the block I grew up on. There was a chase game based on "Dukes of Hazzard" played with them. That lasted about a year. Then everyone had dirt bikes. Except me. I had a vintage steel-bodied hand-me-down, from I forget who, but it was very '60's with a hard seat on big springs. It was spray-painted an acceptable shade of gold. "Popping wheelies" and doing jumps with it was way aggro. Trust me. Landing the wrong way chafed!

I also had Kiss Colorforms. Also, I remember Kiss Hallowe'en costumes. I think the first album I got, when I was about six, was probably Kiss. That makes no sense. Looking back, why was one of the first record albums I received as a small child was a hard rock album featuring a grown man in makeup with blood squirting out of his mouth? (I can't recall what album it was--but here is a picture of Gene Simmons with blood coming out of his mouth--




Ew!)

Also, why did we play with stuff like glow-in-the dark slime? Can of worms--which I can't find on line, but was rubbers worms in a plastic can of slime? And how does "Slime" ever get to be a toy, anyway? Did people just take an evolutionary step--Playdoh....Silly Putty...."Hey, let's just put gooey crap in a tub and call it a toy! (And I spent hours playing with things just like that.)

Anyway, I was feeling nostalgic, and wanted to share.