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 KHJ 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
Krofft 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
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl
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”?)
Trying to stack quarters on your arm and catching them in your hand just like Fonzi did.
Yo mama so short she plays handball on the curb..
Spork, Spoon or pencil fights.
Lightbulb, telephone and the spork, what would life be without them?
Smashing flies into oblivion with a plastic knife by pulling back the blade sideways and letting it go when a fly would land on the table or seat at lunch at school.
I am a Bill, yes I’m only a Bill and
I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill..
….
….
Someday I hope and pray I’ll become a La-aw,
But today I hope and pray,
but today I am still just a Bill…
How else did could anyone on earth learn the pre-Amble to the Constitution without Schoolhouse Rock…here goes with no cheating no googling or binging lets go….
We the people in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice and ensure domestic tranquility.
provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and ( ) ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.
how’d I do? I think I got at least 90% or betta’
What good would a “Lousy D” – LAUSD government school education do me?
If a didn’t have a Bible, Looney Toons, Davey and Goliath, Gumby and Pokey, the Three Stooges, Our Gang (pc renamed to the Little Rascals), Tom and Jerry, Fractured Fairy Tales, Top Cat, Felix the Cat and Mr. Rogers to teach me about real life?
Before paper towels: that hanging looped cloth to dry your hands on in a cheap Chinese restaurant bathroom. And you use the back of the towel, since you think it’s cleaner, when in fact everybody else before you probably did the same thing.
Before bagging there was capping.
Sneaking a swig of what you thought would be lemonade out of that plastic lemon-size lemon-shaped lemon bottle in the fridge, only to learn it was pure lemon juice.
The Pike
White Front
cool site for old pictures of and around So-Cal
http://www.synthetrix.com/vasc/source/n110_n5.htm
When I was a kid for years in the above picture
the circular staircase had the coolest large sized skull spray painted on it filling up the whole mid section of that column.
It appeared to be a skull wearing a WWII helmet.
I would love to see a captured picture of that! It was left alone for years when I was growing up,,, no other graffitti around or on it either.
Jon Lord RIP http://jaced.com/2012/07/16/jon-lord-rip/
Lion Country Safari
I remember the gates looked as high as Jurassic Park as a kid.
Those monthly Troll Books or Goodtime Paperbacks Student Book Club Newsletters/Book Order forms in elementary school. I got these all the time from 3rd to 5th Grade (1979-’81). http://www.leftylimbo.com/2012/07/goodtime-paperbacks-student-book-news-february-1979/
Water Wiennies by Wham-O.
Evelyn Wood Speed Reading classes.
Paper Moon Graphics
With Hostess all over the news right now (and Ebay): Taking the white cardboard insert from under the Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes and scraping the stuck chocolatey goodness off of it with your teeth, leaving chocolate “lines” from the gaps in your teeth. Most often, you’d do 2–3 scrapes, shifting your mouth over a little bit to compensate and pick those lines up—no waste!
Getting beach sand stuck (permanently) in the “furry” part of your velcro wallet, which although was slightly annoying, was totally ok because it was cool to be a surfer or have any sort of connection with SoCal beach culture.
Speaking of Ding Dongs and Ho-Hos….
I remember when they were wrapped in real aluminum foil and we would finish the treat inside and then form the foil into a coin.
Wearing Puka shells even the cheap ones with the “rust spots” on them was cool especially if you brought them back from Hawai’i, which you would just toss that out there as a matter of fact statement.
Using magnets in the sand/dirt and getting ‘fur’ all over it.
LoL! I vaguely remember the “foil coin” thing.
Aw man, Puka shells. Even more effective/convincing if you were Asian or Flip (like me) and had those around your neck…you could easily claim to be Hawaiian and nobody would question it, lol.
1cent CD sale. Get 11 CDs for 1 penny and the 12th for FREE!when you join the Columbia House Music Club. Just buy 5 Cds at the regular Club Price over the next two years. Every month you will be sent our CD of the month, feel free to keep it at our regular price of 24.95 or simply return it. Every month you will be sent a CD until your obligation is fullfilled, after you purchase 5 CDs at our regular Club Price you are free to cancel at anytime, yadda yadda yadda…
Wonderama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq1PMd15iRo
Chinese,
Japanese,
Dirty knees,
LOOK AT THESE!!!
Coffee, tea, soda pop, pee…
What about “marriage encounter” stickers on the rear window of the car and when someone else had the same sticker you gave each other the “hand” sign…
Bubblegum bubblegum in a dish…how many pieces do you wish?
Those Venice beach ponchos (made more famous by Jeff spicoli in Fast Times). Standard issue for surfers and stoners in the ’80s. Just recently found out they were also known as “drug rugs” lol. Check this strip out http://patheticgeekstories.com/archives/page2/drugrug.html
Engine engine number nine,
Going down Chicago line,
If the train should jump the track,
Do you want your money back?
A banana style plastic skateboard with Mag wheels. That’s what I wiped out on, in my hill in Woodland Hills. 20 mph into bushes. I was bruised but okay.
Hungry Tiger seafood restaurant and oyster bar: http://jaced.com/2013/05/22/hungry-tiger/
Lieutenant Hondo Harrelson RIP http://jaced.com/2013/05/23/steve-forrest-rip/
Busch Gardens (with Budweiser brewery tour)
Blacklight Posters
Mexican Jumping Beans
Sergio Valente Jeans commercials (“Oh-oh, Serg-ee-ooo”)
Davey and Goliath on Saturday mornings
Gumby (after school)
18 and under danceclubs (like “The Network” in Glendale, “Marylin’s Backstreet” in Pasadena)
Favorite blacklight poster was the full sized three foot tall mouse sitting down in orange.
There wasn’t much cooler and darker to do on a hot summer day in ’76 in Glendale or Eagle Rock than going to Spencer’s Gifts, I am talking all the way into the back of the store and going into the Blacklight Poster Room where there were about 100 or more from the top of the ceiling to floor of hand drawn (not computer generated stuff) or painted Blacklight posters from the many different Mice and Rat posters to the top of the world scenes, Castles, not to mention the rock and roll and stright out psychedelic blacklight posters. Seems there were a lot of posters with some really colorful mushrooms on them http://www.flickr.com/photos/31650354@N04/3658169476
‘Property of ‘ shirts.
HAWAII 78 shirts
MAUI 78 shirtshttp://www.defunkd.com/public/upload/images/product_images/big/fatandyz_20711367770768.JPG
Frito’s Corn Chips –
Frito Bandito erasers
http://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/6017978/il_fullxfull.213596824.jpg
For more random ’80s stuff, check out this list: http://worldobserveronline.com/2013/05/22/50-things-only-80s-kids-can-understand/
History of Mongoose BMX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIj9HQzsKxs
Did anyone bring up the pastel colored toilet paper from way back when. You would go to Grandma’s house she would have the green bathroom with the matching pastel colored toilet paper or the pink bathroom with the pastel pink TP.
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/192x/c1/11/3b/c1113bd7f8f5a192ad34e1292dca2118.jpg
What was the name of that little homemade paper toy thingie that girls did to tell fortunes? Kind of a Japanese flower shape, then you pick a number, then count it out, then unfold it, etc.
Drive-thru Kodak Fotomat kiosks in the supermarket parking lot.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-s1Mlzp1JcQQ/TwubdYWaADI/AAAAAAAAAiE/fvE7zQaXa7M/s1600/Kodak%2Bphotomat.jpg
Little Professor! http://img0.etsystatic.com/000/0/5715886/il_fullxfull.157267020.jpg
Did we mention Hungry Tiger? http://jaced.com/2013/05/22/hungry-tiger/
A slew of toy robots…
http://theoldrobots.com/robwk4.html
The shitty old TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack…
http://oldcomputers.net/trs80i.html
Speak and Spell from Texas Instruments….
http://www.speaknspell.co.uk/
Pong and every other videogame console that followed…
http://www.thocp.net/software/games/golden_age.htm#Odyssey
Swimming with friends, with a diving board at the pool.
Get to the end of the diving board turn around and do the “Nestea Plunge”…….ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………….
MASH game for the girls…tell their future
where they would live what car they would drive who they would marry and how many kids they would have..
Mansion. Apartment. Shack. House.
Ferrari, Cadillac, Corvette, Datsun B210 etc…
Jed, Gary, John, Chuck…
0 1 2 3
http://www.liketotally80s.com/images/mash-game.jpg
Television intros and 18 short-lived sitcoms of the ’70s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpGybFEcLxA
Flashback! -> KMET from August 25 1981. Includes commercials!
Duncan Yo-Yo commercial from 1976: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqykR14O3Y
TV Flashbacks:
The Ronco smokeless ashtray.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReYyd6cyNqA
Remember Nick and Murph? Fill ‘er up with spirit. The Spirit of 76…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7p8Ho7F8tc&list=PLWrm8mMQ3T4iGJ0j0k8eBzSmHzJ1Ey8YF