Thursday, March 18, 2010

Time for a Retromercial


Here's a list of items I remember fondly from the 1970's.

Pop Rocks

We had a taste of this product right before the rumors
started. You know the ones, where some kid ate a couple packages and
his stomach exploded? I still have trouble eating them because of that urban legend. Backyard kid talk is pretty heavy stuff.


Breck Shampoo

Who didn't want mega-miles of golden,
waving hair? All possible with one fabulous bottle of amber-colored Breck Shampoo! Prell was freakishly green, stinky, and it left your hair heavy and dull. Head and Shoulders just made your dandruff worse, and Ooh lala Vidal Sassoon cost too darn much. Breck fit somewhere in the middle. Pure liquid gold.



RC Cola

Little metal tabs were everywhere. In the ditch, the gravel road, the baseball park, the beach at Paola Lake. Why? Because we were havin' fun drinking our super sweet and spicy RC Cola! The can design is hauntingly familiar to the red white and blue of the Pepsi logo, but whatevva. It was good stuff. Bubble Up, RC, Dr Pepper . . . they all say 1970's picnic to me.

Palmolive


























We actually did it. We dipped out hands in Palmolive. We grabbed a little bowl from the cabinet, squeezed in some of the green
goo and then dipped. And waited. After a few minutes, Mom would walk in the kitchen and start yelling about how much it cost to buy one
little thing of soap, and we'd scatter and run to the backyard, hands dripping with slime. A whole hose-full of hot summer water later, and the verdict was in: Palmolive didn't make your hands softer. It just made them . . . really clean.

Hamm's Beer

"From the land of sky-blue waters . . ." All of us kids sitting around the tube on Super Bowl Sunday saw how cute the ads were, and we often sang the little jingle that sounded akin to an old Indian chant, "Hamm's the beer refreshing, Hamm's the beer refreshing, Hamm's . . ." Someday when we were old enough to drink, this was the exact beer we were going to buy. We'd drink it every day, every night, at dinner, at the park, at the movies—all over the place. Because that bear was too cute and he needed our support to help him beat all those mean woodland animals that kept making his life a living hell. This is for you old Hamm's bear, gulp.







8 comments:

  1. Cool. I was still just a tyke in the 70s but I remember the Palmolive ads and RC Cola. Do they still make it? I love the stuff you come up with for your blog.

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  2. Yeah, I just had some Rc a few weeks ago. It was way too sweet. Blech. It's amazing the stuff you can consume when you're a kid!

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  3. LOL... POP Rocks! I love those things. When I was little I would eat them and drink Coke just to see if my stomach would explode. It never did. LOL. ; )

    Loved this post! Happy Thursday!!

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  4. I'm glad you guys are enjoying the post. It was fun for me to write about all this stuff.

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  5. All those brands that us Brits never had, but would have wanted - if they were available. Do you remember 'Space Dust' or was it a British thing? I tried Pop Tarts because of Warhol in the 70's, and I thought they were shite then... Lovely post.

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  6. Thank you for the compliment! I don't remember Space Dust. Pop Tarts I've definitely had, though I think they're a little too sugary for early morning eating.

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  7. Fun blog!! Found you over at Kimberly Franklins!

    Who doesn't love Pop Rocks!!!

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  8. Thank you! I just joined yours and, indeed, about the Pop Rocks, they're legendary.

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