Louis Armstrong and the Suzy Cute doll

Almost as bizarre as the Jimi Hendrix Experience opening for The Monkees on their 1967 U.S. tour, here is Louis Armstrong in a 1964 Suzy Cute toy commercial. Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong is widely considered to be the most important jazz musician to have ever lived. It is reasonable to believe popular music would be completely different had he never picked up a trumpet. 1964 was the year his version of "Hello Dolly" went to #1. So why would he have agreed to do this commercial? It seems demeaning, but what do I know? For better or worse, it would appear (based on the recording of this ad lib/rehearsal of the "Suzy Cute" jingle from this site) that Armstrong was directly involved in its creation.The money must have been good!


Here Louis, lend your talent and fame to this little tiny doll:

"You press her tummy, her arms go up!"

It just seems wrong somehow...


Why Louis, why?


There's nothing little white girls love more than sweaty black men and New Orleans-style jazz!

Hang on to your ego

Fellow Beach Boys fans at Bedazzled! and PCL LinkDump (who just linked to me!!!) have done posts about this, and I will too, because I think it's so awesome something like it gets manufactured:

Here's part of the official spiel from Brian Wilson's site:

Don't miss this special opportunity to purchase the Brian Wilson 1966 figure! Meticulously crafted, this highly realistic figure captures Brian exactly how he looked and dressed in 1966, in outstanding detail.

It's basically Brian's look from the photo shoot for the cover of Pet Sounds, and it's a beautiful thing. The 300 signed editions are $150, non-signed for $75. Wouldn't it be nice if you had that kind of money to burn? Perhaps you do. I'm very tempted.

Space: 1999

I missed the premiere episode of Space: 1999 (September 5, 1975) due to a Cub Scout meeting. This was long before people had VCRs in their homes, and there was no guarantee of a repeat. So, this caused me extreme consternation. I was not a happy Cub Scout.

If I'd only known that some day I'd own the entire two seasons on DVD, I might not have stressed as much over it as I most certainly did. Damn the Cub Scouts!!
Party over, oops, out of time?
This is what I looked at during lunch for an entire school year:I devoured this Starlog (I still have the issue, as well number 1).I loved the Eagle, and built and then destroyed several of these:I even built the Moonbase Alpha model:And I ran around the neighborhood with one of these:The show was on for two seasons (1975-77), and was the last TV series created by the team of Sylvia and Gerry Anderson, the people behind Thunderbirds, Fireball XL5, and UFO. I loved the special effects (very 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the opening credits (especially the theme song!). Here's season one's opening credits:


I was already familiar with the husband and wife acting team of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain from Mission: Impossible.

The opening sequence for season two was much flashier and included a plot synopsis:




Season two's opening had Landau and Bain "action" shots (I imitated Landau's many times in my backyard): In addition, the show's creators hoped to spice things up with some sex appeal (I suppose) supplied by the addition a newer, younger cast, which included former Bond girl (sort of), Catherine Schell, as "Maya."

Strangely enough, her last acting job (according to IMDb) was in something called "Space: 1899," the cast including Landau, Bain, Tony Anholt, and Nick Tate. Maya was like the show's Spock (she, like Mr. Spock, was the science officer), and was an alien rescued from the planet Psychon. Maya was able to change into any animal form, the ones featured in the credits sequence probably not existing on the planet Psychon:


Season two credit sequence:

Movie records

(Via Boing Boing) Retro Thing has "a great article on Red Raven records, which came with the cells of an animation printed on the LP label. You put a mirrored circus tent-topper over the spindle and watched the animation in its surfaces." Kempa.com has an oddly surreal, yet very cool, video of one in action.


Wow, check out The Kiddie Rekord King.

Toy ads from the 1970s

From boingboing comes this link to Plaid Stallions, where there are scans from a 1975 Toys R Us flier cover page. I'm pretty sure I spent some time staring at this.

And this past week, The Consumerist had a link to the Action Figure Archive, where there are some great scans of Sears Christmas Wishbooks.

Play N' Show

A big problem with American society is how kid-centered it has become. People's lives seem to revolve around their children. Compounding the problem is the number of divorce situations in which the parents compete against one another to be the "favorite" parent. This can lead to children receiving a lot of the things they want, but do not need.

For example, my sister and I begged and begged our parents to let us have a TV in our rooms, to no avail. Today, many kids not only have a TV, they probably also have a DVD player, numerous DVDs, and at least one video game console with an assortment of games. If the MySpace craze is any indication, many children also have computers and internet access. And I'm talking about families who are probably considered to be at poverty level. Credit cards are a hell of a drug.

Here is the type of thing Generation X had to settle for:



Yes, it's the Play N' Show. Slip in the phonograph:


project onto any wall:


and you're in bidness:

Hours of fun! Or, fun until you break it! Obviously, batteries are required:


Awwww

My brother has a real color TV!

Cranky older brother

It's not a TV!


It's Kenner's Play N' Show.

I reiterate--awwwwww

Isn't this a nice TV!?

Leave it to grumpy big brother to spoil the fun:

It's not a TV.
What a bitch. He looked like this later in life:

And by "later in life" I obviously mean until he died from an overdose of pills at the age of 59 on August 25, 1984.

"The Weird World of AURORA"

I stared at this for hours when I was a kid (it's a comic book ad for a model kit):



Seeing it brought back a lot of memories. retroCRUSH has a fairly amusing and disturbing analysis.

Battlewagon commercial

Is it just me, or do these kids seem stressed out and overworked? Either way, it doesn't seem like they are really having quite as much fun as they're pretending to have.






























C'mon guys, it's not that great.




Toy pictures from this site.