This Thanksgiving will look very different from years past. Myself, my wife and our 3 kids will be staying home this year, but just as she does with everything else, my wife is going big with the Turkey Day feast. She is making us a feast consisting of turkey, macaroni & cheese, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, seafood salad, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, deviled eggs, pecan cheese cake, cookies and pumpkin pie! It is going to be amazing! I am truly thankful for my wife and the rest of my family. This year would really suck without them around. I hope all of you have a great Thanksgiving full of food, family (probably via Zoom) and football! If you have the time I've posted some festive retro Thanksgiving commercials and specials below for you to enjoy.
While visiting my family back in New Jersey this past October, I took it upon myself to wander into my Mom's attic to see if some of my old stuff was still up there. To my surprise, she had not thrown anything out! So away I went, searching through bins and boxes looking for things that I could take back with me or at least get pictures of to share with you guys. One of the things that was uncovered was my old sticker album. Let's stop this chit-chat and get to looking...shall we?
The first and last pages in this album were dedicated to this old NBC Saturday morning lineup advertisement. There are some great things going on here from Mr. Miyagi teaching Daniel how to karate chop wood to Smurfs sharing a campfire with John Candy, but the main reason I taped this into my album was the appearance of Captain N! Coming up on the next few pages, you will see that I tried to keep these stickers in some kind of order. Each page has it's own theme. On to page 1!
The World of Nintendo featuring the Super Mario Bros. & Legend of Zelda
Back in the late 80s & early 90s Nintendo was everything! It was that one common bond that all kids had (except the ones who owned a Sega Master System). We would talk about high scores, what level we made it to and the latest cheat codes. Sure we all bragged about what we accomplished and some of us made up a bunch of crap about our victories. These stickers and their early art design really take me back to those days of the new and outstanding NES system.
Hockey Stickers I am by no means a hockey fan. I've been to 1 New Jersey Devils game in my entire life and I never collected hockey cards outside of Pro Stars alum Wayne Gretzky. I was given these stickers by one of my grade school teachers for achieving some kind of high score on a test and I turned them into the wacky game of shoot the puck that you see above.
Garfield Stickers Let me start off by saying Garfield and Friends was tha shiznit. We loved that cartoon in my house and watched it every weekend. That is probably what led me to buy these stickers.
Ninja Turtles Stickers from TMNT Magazine and TMNT Pies Yes, I had a subscription to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Magazine. That is why I have these awesome stickers in my collection. It really bugged me that they all had red bandanas when I was a kid. I wasn't aware until a few years after getting these stickers that in the original Mirage comic all the Turtles wore red bandanas. It wasn't until the cartoon came out in 1988 that the different colors were introduced for each Turtle. Not much to say about the TMNT Pie stickers except they were AWESOME and I thank my Dad for packing them in my lunch all those years ago!
Mello Smello Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Stickers Not too much to say about the TMNT stickers. Me and my brother were huge fans of the Mean, Green Machine and I bought these at the local Hackettstown, NJ Mall with my allowance money. I doremember it being quite a hard decision picking which sticker sheets would come home with me though. Those are were true real world problems!
Vending Machine Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Stickers
We tried so hard to collect the whole set of these and begged my Mom for quarters when she took us shopping at our local A&P grocery store.. Me and my brother came close, but alas the machine was changed out before we could complete it!
Stay tuned for My Old Sticker Book: Part 2, coming soon!
HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! I hope you are having fun watching football, enjoying some time with your family and stuffing yourself silly! In case you need a break from any of that festiveness, I have provided you with some Thanksgiving specials to kill some time below!
McDonalds Happy Meals were created in the mid-70s by McDonalds marketing manager Bob Bernstein. He took the idea of a kids size portioned meal and added the toy element to it when he noticed his sons excitement when he pulled a small toy from a box of cereal. The Happy Meal officially rolled out nation wide in 1979 and the fast food world was never the same! Myself and many other people believe the Happy Meal hit it's stride in the mid-80s to early 90s when the toy offerings were almost as good as anything you would find on the shelf at Toys R Us. I grew up with these toys and have very fond memories of playing with them. These are my favorites from the 1980s!
Fast Macs (1985)
I was big into small pull back cars around the time these guys came out. My favorites were the Penny Racer cars put out by Takara. This set consisted of 4 cars including Ronald, Hamburgler, Officer Big Mac and my favorite of the bunch Birdie! She was my favorite because she was the only pull back car that I received during this promotion and she was AWESOME! I always questioned what Birdie was meant to represent? Fry Guys were French fries, Mayor McCheese was a cheeseburger was birdie meant to represent chicken? Was I eating Birdie with every delicious bite of my McChicken Sandwich!!! No, eventually the mystery was solved and she was created to represent the early birds who woke up for a nutritious McDonalds breakfast. Mystery solved and tears diverted!
Fraggle Rock Cars (1988)
I was a huge fan of Fraggle Rock! My Mom even got me and my brother a Weekly Reader subscription so we could get the Fraggle Rock books and record! I still read those books to my kids today. Jim Henson really knew how to capture kids imaginations and these toys let us use those imaginations to come up with our own Fraggle adventures in the comfort of our own homes. I had all 4 of the vehicles and would use them to race other cars only to leave them in a puff of healthy vegetable dust!
McDonaldland Boats (1986)
Sometimes the toy you received with your Happy Meal was the box! These boats came in 2 pieces and your food was inside! These came with sticker sheets and you could decorate them however you wanted. Some people may have felt cheated by getting these "toys", but I loved mine. I would put my G.I. Joes or Bionic Six or whatever characters I wanted into my McDonaldland boat and float them around the pool, tub or even the puddles in our driveway. Eventually they did crack or break, but man were they fun when they were in one piece!
Muppet Babies (1987)
Jim Henson does it once again with the Muppet Babies! These were outstanding toys, because unlike the Fraggle cars you could actually remove the characters from their vehicles and have them mingle with your other action figures. I always wanted to recreate the Star Wars episode of Muppet Babies and now I could! The original line included Kermit, Gonzo, Fozzie and Piggie. It wasn't until years later that I learned an Animal toy was made for Canada! Luckily I scored one pretty easily on E-bay and he was reunited with his adopted brothers and sister. Also, I just learned that the Canadian version of Gonzo was barefoot whereas the US version had shoes! Why?
Garfield (1989)
In the late eighties into the early 90s Garfield was huge. You could find him everywhere from fruit snacks, to TV, to your Moms car window. I loved Garfield, so when these came to McDonalds I had to have them. The only one I did eventually get was the jungle version in the blue Jeep. The only thing that would have made this line better would have been if they included more removable characters like Odie or Nermal. Still totally cool though!
Well, there you have it...my top 5 Happy Meal Toys from the 1980s. Of course this is just my opinion. What were your favorite Happy Meal toys? Grab a Big Mac, contemplate what the hell Grimace is supposed to be and let us know in the comments below!
MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! I hope it is full of family, fun and cheer! I know I am having a great time, but what to do after the turkey is eaten and the presents unwrapped? Why not watch a few of my favorite holiday classics below! Enjoy and I send my goodwill to you!
He-Man/She-Ra: A Christmas Special (1985)
Star Wars Holiday Special: Boba Fett Cartoon Segment (1978)
After you are done scarfing down some turkey, avoiding your relatives and watching NFL Football... I suggest you take a load off for a few minutes and watch some clips from a few of my all-time favorite Thanksgiving specials! Videos are below! ENJOY!
Garfield's Thanksgiving
Peanuts Thanksgiving
Daffy Duck and Tom Turkey
Simpsons Thanksgiving
Free Birds
Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from 20 Years Before 2000!!!
In the late 80s/early 90s no cartoon was hotter than Garfield. This Monday hating, lasagna loving, orange cat's rise to fame was due to the success of his Saturday morning cartoon "Garfield and Friends". I read all the Garfield comic strip collections during library time in grade school and when I saw the "Garfield's Scary Tales" book in the Troll Book Club form, I needed to have it! This anthology of spooky stories featuring Garfield is wayyy different than those comic collections. These are all new stories that have a creepy twist to them. I love the artwork in this book. It is much more polished than what was in the papers.
The first story titled "The Midnight Stalker" focuses on Jon, Odie and of course Garfield staying at the broken down Wary Inn. While there Garfield is confronted by a were-cat named Beezle!
The next story is probably my favorite of the bunch and is titled "Surprise Package". This is a story of revenge gone awry as the postman, finaly tired of Garfield's ambushes, leaves a special package for the fat cat. The package contains a huge, cat eating, nasty looking spider creature! Here's the best part, as the spider crawls up Garfield's back, he faints and squishes the creepy crawly under his own weight! This was crazy to see as a kid!
Next is the story called "Terminal Terror" this was my least favorite of the stories. It's something we've all seen before. A computer with a mind of it's own ends up controlling Jon. Then he moves onto Odie, who makes the evil computer explode due to his lack of a brain to drain.
"A Ghost's Story" comes next. Jon, Odie & Garfield go camping and start to tell scary stories. Already shaking from Jon's tale a stranger comes by and joins them. He tells them a tale of an axe wielding woodsman who goes crazy at the loss of his lady. Jon and the guys believe this story to be about their new acquaintance and run off. Leaving "Ol Zeb" to enjoy their meal! For some reason this picture of Zeb eating beans was always the one that stuck with me?
Lastly we have "The Closet Thing"! Garfield's attempts to help Odie go to sleep and reassure him that there are no monsters in their closet is a pretty short one. Odie is scared, Garfield looks in the closet to find nothing there, then at the end we finally see what has been keeping Odie up at night.
Overall, this is not a bad little collection of creepy stories featuring Jim Davis' greatest creation. I liked the stories as a kid and now my kids get creeped out by the sight of squished spiders and were-cats. It's a lot of Halloween fun for the young ones...and some old ones too!
I have a fairly big collection of loose figures from the 80s & 90s. I would like to share a few of my faves with you at this time. Here we go!
Darth Vader (Kenner, 1978)
Darth Vader was one of my favorite characters and figures growing up. He used to have epic battles with Luke Skywalker in my back yard. In those battles, he managed to loose his cape and light saber. I still have my childhood figure somewhere. The figure that is shown, is one that I purchased while working for a small mom & pop toy store in high school. We would purchase collections from people and once a huge Star Wars lot came through the door. It had Yak Face and Ghost Anakin, but the figure that caught my eye was Darth Vader with cape & light saber. I grabbed this guy up and now he is featured prominently on my shelf of greatness!
Garfield (Applause, 1983)
I think every kid in the 80s had one of these figures or one similar to it. Everyone around this time enjoyed Garfield and his friends. I don't know who bought this figure or when we got it, but I loved it! I used to have another version of this figure where Garfield was wearing a winter hat. Don't know where that one went? My guess, mom's attic?
Gargamel & Azrael (Schleich, 2011)
This is a recent release from Schleich in the classic Smurfs style. I believe it came out around the time of the first Smurfs movie? As a kid, I had a ton of Smurfs. Only a few have survived to be in my collection today. One I never had was Gargamel. So to find a figure of him with Azrael on clearance at Barnes & Noble was a surprise. I did have a Gargamel toy as a kid. But not to this scale. It was a wind up toy, where Gargamel would try to catch a moving Smurf in a box. Anyone remember that one? I may have to track one of those down someday?
Thundercats Miniature Lion-O (Kidworks, 1986)
We had a whole army of these little guys in the mid 80s. Me and my brother had Mumm-ra, Ssslithe, Monkian, Vultureman, Tigra and even a mini motorized Thundertank! These toys were perfect to take in the car. Much smaller than the large LJN toys, but pieces were lost easily. Notice how Lion-o is missing his Sword of Omens. These figurines had no articulation, but that didn't stop us from having epic battles for the fate of 3rd Earth!
Pac-Man (K'nex, 2013)
This figure was from the "Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures" K'nex blind bag assortment. A tie in to the cartoon show. We actually own 2 of these because the first one had a leg break off! The kids do play a little rough, but we love Pac-Man enough to go out and buy a new figure. It also helps that these were on clearance for under $1 about a year ago at Toys R Us.
On a final note, enjoy this commercial from 1984 for delicious Pac-Man Pasta from Chef Boyardee! I still remember how the chicken pasta looked and tasted.
