Grey day; September has been one long dull toothache. Hey, I forgot to tell you what I had for supper yesterday! Pizza. On a Monday, you say? Doesn’t that violate the Order of Things. Yes. But wife is out of town, and daughter wanted to try this:
The 100-option drink dispenser. And it still doesn’t have Beverly. (I am the only man in America who likes Beverly. The only one.) She went to the Fanta sub-menu, and chose raspberry. I think I had strawberry. They tasted the same. The grape Fanta had blue foam. It’s an odd machine.
A fellow walked up as she was making her choice, said EXCUSE ME and inserted himself between her and the machine. Tall guy. He put in his cup. He made a selection. He pushed the button with one long finger and withdrew his digit. The machine spat out an ounce. He waited. He pushed the button again, just a tap. The machine spat out an ounce. I’m thinking he might figure out by now that the machine cannot automatically discern the size of his cup, and the button has to be depressed for a user-specified action. I’m hoping he doesn’t, because he sort of pushed my daughter out of the way.
While we’re waiting I notice there’s a hobby store across the street. Seen it for years. Never went in. We decided to go explore after dinner, and spent an agreeable half-hour – it rekindled my desire to have a train set in the basement, even though there’s no room. But I would love one. Amend that: I would love to be the sort of person who had the time and patience to build one.
They had model rockets, and I told my daughter about sending ants up in a capsule. She was appalled. But it was for science! And they survived. Ah, the hours I spent in the basement, putting rockets together; still amazed we ever recovered any.
Some retro models, brought back for purposes of nostalgia or a desire to experience a time when one was not alive, and hence must have been cool in some way our anodyne era lacks:
I remember these; they creeped me out. This was interesting:
It was made infamous by an ad that must have had Frederick Wertham sputtering with fury.
What the hell is this?
It looks familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s not the Land of the Giants spaceship. Okay, sub-orbital ship. It’s not the “Fantastic Voyage” ship; that was the Proteus. It’s not anything I can put my finger on. It may be a knockoff of the Proteus – the bubble on top, the viewing window in the front – but it seems odd that someone would bring back a knockoff that didn’t have a show to support it. The box was no help.
Google was no help, tossing up nothing but Star Trek, until I googled Voyager model kit, and hello:
Prepare for Miniaturization!
Ok, we know this cool sub/spaceship model isn’t from an Anderson or Irwin Allen production, but it’s so cool we just had to carry it anyway! Plus, we really like the folks at Moebius Models and want to support their efforts, even if this kit falls slightly outside our regular line of merchandise.
The Voyager is from Filmation’s animated Fantastic Voyage TV series which ran on ABC from 1968 to 1970. The told the story of the C.M.D.F. (Combined Miniature Defense Force), a secret United States government organization which possessed the ability to reduce people to microscopic size.
Recognize the voice? It’s Ted Baxter.
The closing:
I wanted to see if they had Pacer model kits; alas, only one, behind glass, expensive.
When I got to the candy aisle and saw the Bonomo Turkish Taffy, I wondered if the entire place was living in a bubble of time left over from the 70s. Then I saw this, and knew that it was:
New today: an update to the B&W world, a Lum & Abner film of interest to those who know Lum & Abner. If you don’t, well: the Old-Time Radio site is now up, if a bit spare. The art section is up, in case you want some custom art for your iTunes. A public service of limited utility, I know, but a public service nevertheless. See you around!
Pass it along, if you wish
82 Responses to Old things and a new (old) site
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Oh yeah, I did the Estes rockets thing too; my pride and joy was the Mars Snooper. For my eleventh-grade science project I launched a mouse in a built-from-scratch Mercury Atlas rocket, using one of the Estes big boy engines.
Thing took off like a sailor on a hot date, and kept going up. It was only a tiny dot when I saw the nosecone jettison charge kick in and the parachute deploy. Took forever to come back to terra firma, hundreds of yards away, but once we reached it, the mouse was A-OK, Colonel Glenn.
Freaking teacher wasn’t impressed though, and gave me a C.
@John Robinson, I believe the mouse would have given you a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
For some reason, Bygone Candy seems to be ubiquitous lately. CVS has an entire display of things like Blackjack gum, and the last time I stopped by Stop & Shop with my mom, there was Bonomo. I’m 31, so that basically went over my head, but my mom was pretty jazzed to see it.
My comment was removed. Did I say something wrong ?
only words I know that get kicked are words that have r-a-p-e in them of c-i-a-l-i-s (I assume also v-i-a-g-r-a).
This cause comments about the the lead character in Mad Men to get censored as well as ice sc—r you use on windshield. Also don’t mention soshoolism spelled correctly since name of ED treatment drug is inside the word.
I was a Centuri rocketeer. Also, MRC. I stopped buying Estes when they started selling rocket cars, which violated both the letter and the spirit of the NAR code.
Der-hey! I never realized that was why boshialism was censored. Thanks for clearing that up, bear.
I got banned for life from commenting on Neatorama because I mentioned “faggots in gravy” which is a real product, and which made perfect sense to mention in context (people misunderstading the names of foods). I guess they were just feeling niggardly about giving people a break.
There is a joke in the UK: “Name three English football teams with rude words in their names that will get you auto-filtered?
Arsenal, Scunthorpe United and Manchester F—king United
@bgbear: Good one. I’ll have to pass it along to my Anglophile soccer-player buddy.
@hpoulter: is that black humor?
@bgbear: reminds me of the New Fscking York Griddipping Yankees….
Other than an AMT Amtronic and some Rat Fink cars I built space and military kits. When I got tired of them I’d heat a safety pin and put bullet holes in the wings, fuselage and air crews, then blow ‘em up. One day during summer vacation one of my JD friends got the bright idea I should stuff a bi-plane with cotton balls and light them on fire so as to simulate being shot down. I had the brighter idea of pouring some gas on the cotton for a more realistic crash ‘n burn. It did not quite go as planned. I always remember that summer as “the summer of blisters”.
I still have the Amtronic. Some parts have fallen off due to cheap glue but I saved them all. One of these days I’ll restore and finally paint the thing.
Funny, for about five years before I retired I bought plastic model kits so I could keep busy in my “golden” years. HA, try that with NINE grand-kids! So there they sit, an entire steel shelving unit to themselves, whispering sweet entreaties as I sleep.
After my near elf-immolation I moved on to building balsa wood MCM buildings and….wait for it….burning them up! But that’s another story.
@fizzbin: “I still have the Amtronic. Some parts have fallen off due to cheap glue but I saved them all. One of these days I’ll restore and finally paint the thing.”
Me too, exactly; except I painted all the parts before assembly. Some folks want jet packs, I want my Amtronic.
How do I find the B & W updates without going through the whole catalog.
Estes rockets were cool, until you realized that even the Saturn V was just a glorified toilet-paper tube. That took some of the coolness and hi-tech factor out of it.
Biggest problem was retrieving the rocket– even a large park was not big enough to ensure the rocket and chute would not land on somebody’s roof.
And it was always tempting to slip in a rocket engine that was one step too powerful– the results were not unlike the first twelve attempts to launch the V-2 and Atlas rockets.
@Rightfromthestart: http://www.getoutofmywayiwantitnow.com does not exist yet. but if you search on it, domain trolls will camp on it and try to extort money for it.
I encourage you to play the home version of “bankrupt the domain trolls.” search or whois for totally fraudulent slop like “presidenthomersimpson2012.com” and catch them in their little game.
frankly, here, going through the whole catalog is a spendid way to find lots of neat stuff and waste lots of time. and it provides hits. hits make OGH money to pay for the website.
My husband also used to build rockets, as a kid… I just asked him if he ever sent ants up with him and he said, sure, we even sent a frog up once. He had an Estes rocket with a clear payload section at the top of the fuselage… it parachuted back down to earth after it separated from the nose cone. The frog survived, apparently.
ants up with them (rockets), not with him… duh…
I’d say there are three Beverly-likers. Me, our host, and EG’s husband. It’s not unlike Campari.
I had Creepy Crawlers when I was a kid. I’m kinda surprised my parents let me – ‘But, it’s for BOYS!’
I also had Fun Flowers.
We (my husband & I) had a dear friend who was into model railroading. Of course, he was self-employed to the max, childless and uncommitted, lived at home with his parents. Once we went to a show where he was exhibiting (Trains, and train accessories, that is). Wow.
Independent hobby stores are cool, but we prefer the independent books or music (CD) stores.
I had a co-worker who had a little guillotine (complete with splashing blood) instead of the arrow on his computer screen.
I had a comment not post once. Thought that it might have been too long (but look at hpoulter’s MST-300 today) or because I mentioned b-o-r-d-e-r-s bookstore. Maybe I hit the wrong button.
Re f-a-g-g-o-t: used to mean kindling wood.
F-a-g-g-e-d used to mean tired.
Just like p-u-s-s-y referred to a cat, g-a-y meant happy, and h-o was a way jolly people, like Santa, laughed. Someone in a writers’ group I belonged to objected to the word ‘niggling’ — as in bothersome, bugging, nagging — (thought, usually.)
Long time ago, there was a poem in A-n-n L-a-n-d-e-r-s or Dear A-b-b-y that began with “Remember when ‘hippie’ meant big in the hips?”
_@_v – my li’l rocket project…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v620/theweaselking/main4/2aanina.gif
I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED that no one has yet pointed out that “Busby Birdwell, builder of the Voyager” from the first YouTube link bears a striking resemblance to OGH!
Pacer X, Racer X: Speed Racer’s brother’s secret was that he was Speed’s brother. This would make his real name Racer Racer.
Jerks like Tall Boy are rampant. You, James, were right to not to point out to him that he had to select a cup size.
on the Speed Racer live-action movie: Daughter and I caught only the end of it, but we were on the floor laughing at the ‘use the force, Luke’ ending of it.
Busby Birdwell — Busby Berkeley?
Browniejr, if you think a minute, you’ll realize that “Racer X” was an alias, like Clark Kent. If he’d used his real name, the mask would have been pointless.
I remember watching that Fantastic Voyage cartoon when a kid. It’s a B-toon, but the elevator sound effect in the intro is straight out of Johnny Quest. Give it another listen, and you’ll recognize it.
CaliforniaJeff- re: Speed Racer- you probably have a point, but I never found the characters on the show to be intelligent enough to use an alias- after all, Speed never figured out how to check his car trunk for a little kid and monkey before each race. Perhaps “Racer X” was the smart one, by keeping his family ties a secret!
You’re spot on about the sound effect.
Gad, I remember those goop hotplates–one particular friend & I spent ages recombining the colors to nasty effect(almost as horrific as that dull, plastic flavor). At one point, someone’s toll & die-maker dad even made us a few custom plates.
Chas C-Q:
Are you saying you found the “The Bickersons” tiresome? I know comedy is subjective, but where else can you hear such beautifully sustained loathing and mania, like Ameche was doing(my favorites are the formerly white cat, “Joy Boy”, that he’s been using as a grease rag while fixing the car and his near-hysterical assertions that another of their cats had committed suicide–after he’d caught the cat knocking his bottles of scotch off the shelf:
Blanche: You’re shirt’s all wet–
John: (desperately) I hope it’s blood!).
Just wonderful writing, and Ameche was like a frustrated, misanthropic Benchley. Our whole family listened to an album of their shows(that, and Hudson & Landry, now sadly forgotten).
“Why don’t you feed the baby, John?”
“Ajax Airlines? Book two to Bogota!”
Beverly is just yellow Triaminic without the multi-syllabic ingrediments.
And off to work…
@Ross: Yes, it was well-written; that might my problem. I know that comedy is often a safety valve. Let’s just say that – without assigning roles – at the time I heard the episodes, it was too close to home for me.
As I see it, other shows that cast married couples as “frienemies” are still usually about other things, less intense. They were the Bickersons, after all. I’ve seen the show described as tame compared to later kitchen-sink comedies. My reaction is undoubtedly idiosyncratic.
I never followed “Married … with Children” for the same reason. What little of that I saw was centrally about the (well-deserved, on all sides) hatred. I don’t have fun with that.
YMMV, of course.
I don’t remember which kit-maker included the helpful warning on the front of the box: “Caution – this set makes ogre-monsters only.”
And whatever happened to “Rondo – The Thirst Crusher!”? Commercials typically featured a fellow skiing down a sand dune wearing only a pair of cutoffs.
My ghoulish sister had that Iron Maiden kit – she liked all of those models plus the RatFinks. And Space Sticks! Yuck! Tang! Any wonder why the ’70′s are the nadir of civilization?
Perhaps “Racer X” was the smart one, by keeping his family ties a secret!
I started watching Speed Racer in third grade, and I figured out Racer X’s identity pretty quickly, because I misheard his name as “Racer Rex.” It totally made sense to me that Racer Rex was Rex Racer in disguise.
Wow… covered a lot of ground here.
First, I still have model rockets. Until a few years back, I was fortunate enough to be involved in astronomy and aerospace science education, so I had an excuse. Which was really just an excuse, because I loved the hobby. “Loved” being the operative term; engines (really, they’re motors, as they are solid fuel) have gotten a bit pricey.
I also have a plastic model spacecraft kit collection that was also used for teaching. A few were built, but most reside unbuilt. Never cared for science fiction or monster kits, though military models still fascinate me.
Interestingly, I had the MPC AMC Pacer X kit, as my first car was the 1975 model. Silver, red interior, doors that went on for days.
To really reinforce the retro feel of this moment, we’re watching an episode of “The Saint”. Wrong decade, yes, but still…