During the previous spate of blogging, I made a sudden pop-cultural reference from my youth that it now transpires no one got / could care to remember / had ever known about in the first place. Now I know exactly how Seth MacFarlane feels everyday of his weird looping productive life.
[What – no cutaway to a character that sort of dresses like Seth McFarlane being shown at a desk unable to write one word in front of another for a script without deviating from that word with a cutaway scene about Storm Troopers in a bar?]
I had simply, naturally assumed that everyone knew about Bravestarr. That it had the same impact on others as it did me. And it did influence me in a couple of fundamental ways, one being I always give my guns women’s names.
Was I the only one in the playground who would give it the old "Speed of the Puma, puma, 'uma..." then run super speedy for about 15 seconds before needing "Rest of the Lemur". Seems so.
Bravestarr - you had a techno-horse sidekick and often asked for the strength of the bear, speed of the puma, ears of the wolf and the eyes of the hawk. You might have asked for cultural iconography of the Bald Eagle in hindsight, too.
Showing posts with label 1980's nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1980's nostalgia. Show all posts
Saturday, 4 June 2011
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Jumble Sale Toys
On having a conversation – and how I came to do so was by most diabolical means indeed – I was returned to a world in my head that I had almost forgotten. This was how the conversation:
“I remember getting a Sylvanian Family when I was little. I got it at a Jumble Sale.”
“Oh?”
“Yes – it was just one Sylvanian Family. It was a child Rabbit.”
“So you only had one member of a Sylvanian Family?”
“Yes.”
“Does that still count as a Sylvanian Family? Is it not, then, a Sylvanian Orphan?”
“No, that’s awful. Anyway later at another jumble sale I got a Sylvanian Family to go with the Rabbit. He was meant to be a Dad I think and had a chequered shirt. He was a Bear.”
“He was a Sylvanian step-father!”
“He wasn’t!”
“He was! How do you explain him having an anthropomorphized child Rabbit when he is an anthropomorphized Bear? How complicated was this Sylvanian family tree? I bet there were other Sylvanian skeletons in the closet too. We need the Sylvanian Family anthropomorphic Shrew Jeremy Kyle to get to the bottom of all this!”
So, yes. The Jumble Sale. Now generally out of fashion, years ago when the local jumble sale was announced – not to be confused with the similar appearing Sale of Works [notable difference: an old women sitting with a hat made of doily, selling bars of tablet? You are attending a sale of work] – it was real excitement round where I grew up.
Usually held in church halls or community centres with the different colours of tape lacquered onto the floor, there would be long bench tables filled, piled high – stappit fu – with every conceivable type of thing one could ever hope to put onto a shelf: Dog eared books, cracked china plates, LP records whose album covers had been scrawled with teenage graffiti, old dust choked computer monitors and small electrical items with copper wires dangerously exposed, paint splattered ornaments, engrained ash trays and so on. There was a huge amount of clothing, stacked high where nervous little ladies unable to see over would wonder about it all tumbling down to leave them crushed under a tonne of tops, skirts and sequined scarves. Then there were the chairs, curtains, televisions, welsh-dressers and gardening equipment held at the side for the mid-sale auction. And, of course, the big draw – the table of household sheets.
For me at that age, it was the toy bench that was obviously always going to be the main attraction. While the old folk were all about the heaving through piles of kitchen towels and bed linen, I was carefully picking through damp smelling cardboard boxes of cars and figures. It was truly exhilarating.
These boxes, full of used, broken and somewhat dated toys, to my mind, were treasure troves. If Willie Wonka had gone into the second-hand brick-a-brac business he would have found it hard to compete with the excitement I felt about a Jumble Sale Toy selection.
In amongst the My Little Ponies, Smurfs, Sylvanian (abandoned) Families and trains, invariably there would be Star Wars figures with limbs missing [these already damaged figures were invaluable in scene setting while playing out a particularly robust game in your bedroom – storm troopers lying with only one leg at the side of Yoda, light-saber drawn] or a Han Solo with his face chewed [simply incorporated into your play with the line, “Why Chewie! Why!”], chipped lead painted metal vehicles and an Action Man in just his blue y-fronts with his patented gripping hand clutching a revolver [as if they had made Have Had Better Meetings in the Office and Now Waiting Quietly In On The Wife Action Man], perhaps an E.T. with extending neck would be caught up in the string of a yo-yo, or there would be a slightly granulating rubber Boglin. A myriad of small, plastic things which were mostly given away free in cereal boxes would often be at the bottom. If you were lucky, a rummage to the sides of the box would yield a ball-bearing game. And if you were very lucky the game would be a portable pinball game. These pinball games were great.
If I went home with a Marvel annual from 1978 with a major comic strip of the Incredible Hulk in it and a word search only half completed, a mauled star wars figure and a pinball game with a space/robot theme then that Jumble Sale would live long in legend.
Kids these days would be all about going to jumble sales to get MP3’s to inject up their i-pods and happy slapping an old PlayStation 2.
I doubt they would care much about finding a Boglin.
Changed times.
“I remember getting a Sylvanian Family when I was little. I got it at a Jumble Sale.”
“Oh?”
“Yes – it was just one Sylvanian Family. It was a child Rabbit.”
“So you only had one member of a Sylvanian Family?”
“Yes.”
“Does that still count as a Sylvanian Family? Is it not, then, a Sylvanian Orphan?”
“No, that’s awful. Anyway later at another jumble sale I got a Sylvanian Family to go with the Rabbit. He was meant to be a Dad I think and had a chequered shirt. He was a Bear.”
“He was a Sylvanian step-father!”
“He wasn’t!”
“He was! How do you explain him having an anthropomorphized child Rabbit when he is an anthropomorphized Bear? How complicated was this Sylvanian family tree? I bet there were other Sylvanian skeletons in the closet too. We need the Sylvanian Family anthropomorphic Shrew Jeremy Kyle to get to the bottom of all this!”
So, yes. The Jumble Sale. Now generally out of fashion, years ago when the local jumble sale was announced – not to be confused with the similar appearing Sale of Works [notable difference: an old women sitting with a hat made of doily, selling bars of tablet? You are attending a sale of work] – it was real excitement round where I grew up.
Usually held in church halls or community centres with the different colours of tape lacquered onto the floor, there would be long bench tables filled, piled high – stappit fu – with every conceivable type of thing one could ever hope to put onto a shelf: Dog eared books, cracked china plates, LP records whose album covers had been scrawled with teenage graffiti, old dust choked computer monitors and small electrical items with copper wires dangerously exposed, paint splattered ornaments, engrained ash trays and so on. There was a huge amount of clothing, stacked high where nervous little ladies unable to see over would wonder about it all tumbling down to leave them crushed under a tonne of tops, skirts and sequined scarves. Then there were the chairs, curtains, televisions, welsh-dressers and gardening equipment held at the side for the mid-sale auction. And, of course, the big draw – the table of household sheets.
For me at that age, it was the toy bench that was obviously always going to be the main attraction. While the old folk were all about the heaving through piles of kitchen towels and bed linen, I was carefully picking through damp smelling cardboard boxes of cars and figures. It was truly exhilarating.
These boxes, full of used, broken and somewhat dated toys, to my mind, were treasure troves. If Willie Wonka had gone into the second-hand brick-a-brac business he would have found it hard to compete with the excitement I felt about a Jumble Sale Toy selection.
In amongst the My Little Ponies, Smurfs, Sylvanian (abandoned) Families and trains, invariably there would be Star Wars figures with limbs missing [these already damaged figures were invaluable in scene setting while playing out a particularly robust game in your bedroom – storm troopers lying with only one leg at the side of Yoda, light-saber drawn] or a Han Solo with his face chewed [simply incorporated into your play with the line, “Why Chewie! Why!”], chipped lead painted metal vehicles and an Action Man in just his blue y-fronts with his patented gripping hand clutching a revolver [as if they had made Have Had Better Meetings in the Office and Now Waiting Quietly In On The Wife Action Man], perhaps an E.T. with extending neck would be caught up in the string of a yo-yo, or there would be a slightly granulating rubber Boglin. A myriad of small, plastic things which were mostly given away free in cereal boxes would often be at the bottom. If you were lucky, a rummage to the sides of the box would yield a ball-bearing game. And if you were very lucky the game would be a portable pinball game. These pinball games were great.
If I went home with a Marvel annual from 1978 with a major comic strip of the Incredible Hulk in it and a word search only half completed, a mauled star wars figure and a pinball game with a space/robot theme then that Jumble Sale would live long in legend.
Kids these days would be all about going to jumble sales to get MP3’s to inject up their i-pods and happy slapping an old PlayStation 2.
I doubt they would care much about finding a Boglin.
Changed times.
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
"That yoghurt is our last hope" "No. There is another."
I was eating yoghurt the other day, and how I came to be so is a truly dark and most sinister thing indeed. However, my mind easily wandered as it usually does as I slug the mild, smooth, creamy taste of despondency down, to the halcyon days of yoghurt, which, you’ll find, were the mid 1980’s.
The 1980’s was when the yoghurt scene was vibrant and exciting. It was then when I settled on my favourite yoghurt flavour.
A clear and present child of the 1980’s my red M.A.S.K. lunch box had a matching red flask (which contained the fl.oz. for one and a half, small, plastic cupfuls of orange juice), one corned beef roll, one Masters-Of-The Universe moulded jelly sweet and a Star Wars yoghurt.
I suspect that I am one of a select few who remember Star Wars Yoghurts. One of the main characters was drawn on each pot. They were brilliant. Except Luke Skywalker pots [vanilla – was he ever heroic in anything?] and Princess Lea, obviously [a girl on a yoghurt pot? I don’t care if she does have her blaster drawn. Not in my M.A.S.K. lunch box].
Of course, Star Wars was never going to last and soon, too, their branded pots were replaced in my lunch box by St Ives’ Fiendish Feet.
Now, these yoghurts were genius. Their pots were designed as monsters: a fun monster character face drawn on each pot. But they were so much more. You see, the Pots. Had. Feet.
When you had eaten a Franken-pot monster yogurt, after your lunch, you could wash it out and you had a little empty yoghurt pot bloke to play with. It was no PlayStation 3, but these were simpler, more rubbish times [Google search the 1980’s Robosapien equivalent: “Little Professor Calculator”], post-MTV generation readers.
The thing was it didn’t matter. Screw your bipedal yoghurts: my mind had been made up.
To this day when anybody asks me what my favourite flavour of yoghurt is my answer is as swift as it is unerring:
Chewbacca flavour.
The 1980’s was when the yoghurt scene was vibrant and exciting. It was then when I settled on my favourite yoghurt flavour.
A clear and present child of the 1980’s my red M.A.S.K. lunch box had a matching red flask (which contained the fl.oz. for one and a half, small, plastic cupfuls of orange juice), one corned beef roll, one Masters-Of-The Universe moulded jelly sweet and a Star Wars yoghurt.
I suspect that I am one of a select few who remember Star Wars Yoghurts. One of the main characters was drawn on each pot. They were brilliant. Except Luke Skywalker pots [vanilla – was he ever heroic in anything?] and Princess Lea, obviously [a girl on a yoghurt pot? I don’t care if she does have her blaster drawn. Not in my M.A.S.K. lunch box].
Of course, Star Wars was never going to last and soon, too, their branded pots were replaced in my lunch box by St Ives’ Fiendish Feet.
Now, these yoghurts were genius. Their pots were designed as monsters: a fun monster character face drawn on each pot. But they were so much more. You see, the Pots. Had. Feet.
When you had eaten a Franken-pot monster yogurt, after your lunch, you could wash it out and you had a little empty yoghurt pot bloke to play with. It was no PlayStation 3, but these were simpler, more rubbish times [Google search the 1980’s Robosapien equivalent: “Little Professor Calculator”], post-MTV generation readers.
The thing was it didn’t matter. Screw your bipedal yoghurts: my mind had been made up.
To this day when anybody asks me what my favourite flavour of yoghurt is my answer is as swift as it is unerring:
Chewbacca flavour.
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