the good old days

This is one of the most fun home movies I have ever seen. Creative, clever, innovative (extremely innovative!), and obviously oh-so-much fun to make… and no modern digital effects

The tune might get stuck in your head, though.

Via Retro Thing

I’m a sucker for stop-motion animation, particularly when it’s very well done. I’m also a sucker for Super Mario (which is a strange unfulfilled wish from the days when I desperately wanted a Nintendo (all my friends had one!!!), but my parents wouldn’t get one). And Legos are just pure awesome, of course.

So a combination of all three… well!

And he’s got lots of other short Lego animations as well… a good way to spend a morning.

If you’re having a Passover Seder, apparently there are a lot of accessories you can get.

Like this one.

Of course, this brings up two questions…

1. How does one distinguish this GENUINE inflatable matzoh ball from an IMITATION inflatable matzoh ball? (How embarrassing to buy an inflatable matzoh ball and then have a guest points out I’ve got a cheap knockoff hanging from the ceiling.)
2. Is it kosher to inflate your fake bread? It’s not exactly leavening…

Actually, what I most want to get for Passover is this really cute set of stuffed Ten Plagues that I saw in a catalog years ago. It’s got a cute stuffed drop of blood, a cute stuffed frog, cute stuffed lice, cute dead cow, cute sad baby face for the death of the first born… hmmm. Maybe this inflatable matzoh ball isn’t looking so bad after all.

I’m assuming you all listened to my advice and got potatoes for all the children on your shopping list this year. If there are any left over, you’ve got a head start on shopping for your New Year’s party! Celebrate the New Depression with this game from 1933.

The fun doesn’t stop until the host needs to take the toy down to make dinner.

Via Modern Mechanix.

Here’s a gift for any young ones on your holiday shopping list:

I know, I know… you’re all thinking, “What sort of horrible person would you have to be to give a child potatoes as a present? That’s a step up from coal, but only because potatoes are edible!”

Well, you’re forgetting the second part of the gift:

When Mr. Potato Head first came to market in 1952, it was sold as a set of parts (eyes, ears, noses, etc.) that could be stuck onto a real potato. And you could also make Mr. Apple Head, Ms. Turnip Head, and so on — any fruit or vegetable that was large and sturdy enough to hold the plastic bits.

I rather prefer that to the modern Mr. Potato Head, even if the big brown plastic potato doubles as storage for all the body parts. There’s more creativity — you have to pick the best-shaped potato, or choose a vegetable variety that looks most (or least) human. Or maybe I’m assigning a sense of whimsy to this that it never had… there’s also something sad about playing with your food this way.

The admittedly strange Potato Gift Box is via Kitchen Retro; original Mr. Potato Head picture is via the NIH (yes, that NIH); hint that Mr. Potato Head was a real potato is via my dad.

My daughter’s only four, so we haven’t gotten obsessively into Barbie dolls yet. And I’m okay with that — I was a Lego and Playmobil kid myself, for the most part. But Daughter loves dolls, so I’m sure she’ll “need” some eventually. However, a four-year-old isn’t the best at understanding consequences, and is often found destroying a beloved toy in some fashion — for example, I expect a Barbie to eventually get a haircut, or have her head removed and lost.

Paper dolls? Great toy for kids. Paper dolls you can print on demand? Even better — no worries about them being destroyed, I can recreate for cheap.

The first Buck Rogers film was shown to the public during the second year, 1934 edition, of the Chicago World’s Fair. The Century of Progress International Exposition was held in Chicago in 1933 and 1934 to celebrate the city’s centennial. The theme of the fair was technological innovation…. The “Buck Rogers Show,” as it was called on admission tickets, was located on the Enchanted Island playground for children…. after watching the movie, visitors could purchase the very same toy spaceships and ray guns they had just seen.
– from Matinee at the Bijou

The Tigermen from Mars have broken their treaty and are attacking Earth — with King Growlo in command! OH NO!

Um, kids, stop laughing, you’re supposed to be worried about this.

Ahem. As I was saying, can Buck Rogers save the day?

It’s delightful fun on so many levels. Dr. Huer’s cosmic-radio-television invention not only lets him keep an eye on the action (spaceships flying in circles going BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!), it lets him yells at the battle.

You know how some guys will sit on the couch at home screaming at the quarterback, hoping that if they should really loud, their team will play better? This is the 25th Century version. Mankind doesn’t mature in the next 500 years.

But still, it’s so bad it’s good.

Part of me says, OMG do they still sell these and where can I get one?

Then the rational part realizes it’s completely useless for a suburban mother who tries to pretend she has a veneer of normalcy. But still, wow… ya gotta love the spacesuit-and-sunglasses thumbs-up pose!

Thanks to Sleestak for giving me yet more things to dream about owning…

I have two kinds of experience which qualify me to comment on this 1971 Fisher Price ad…

(1) I actually had many of the toys pictured here. The farm was awesome: when you closed the loft doors, they said, "MOOO-OOO!" which is absolutely hilarious if you're four.

Eventually I expect to have my own kids playing with them -- once we dig them out of the inches of dust covering them in my parents' basement, I suppose. They're cute, fun, and offer lots of opportunity for creativity. (I even used to dress up the cow in the Fisher Price Farmyard set, as a substitute for Barbies. Yeah, I was a weird kid.)

(2) I am a mechanical engineer and have worked with injection molding machines. They don’t “lovingly” craft a damn thing; they spit out identical plastic shapes over and over and over until you run out of plastic. “Lovingly” means Grandpa used his woodworking skills to replace a wheel on a toy alligator, so it would go NOM-NOM-NOM again when pushed across the floor. “Lovingly” means Aunt Matilda sewed a little cloth bear by hand for the baby to snuggle (and, eventually, to be stuck in the alligator’s mouth so it would be NOM-NOMmed).

I enjoyed playing with Fisher Price toys, but made lovingly? Bah.

Thanks to Found in Mom’s Basement for the trip down toy-memory lane, and the image.

Major Matt Mason had a seriously cool moonbase. Enjoy a 1968 commercial:

thanks to Where’s My Jetpack for posting this, presumably because he wants Mason’s jetpack…

Apparently, the toy line used to be heavily based on actual astronaut equipment, before such additions as a giant with laser eyes.

When introduced in 1966, the figures were initially based on design information found in Life Magazine, Air Force Magazine, Jane’s, and other aviation- and space-interest periodicals. Later, the line would attempt to transition into the realm of science fiction.

Considering the strong relationship between science fiction’s young consumers growing up to be NASA scientists, I’m honestly not sure whether diluting the toy’s realism would have been positive or not.

[Trivial trivia: Major Sam Carter on Stargate SG-1 played with these as a kid, and ended up getting made into an action figure herself. Whoa.]

And in other NASA-related news, they are partnering with archive.org to make their video and still image databases available for public searching. Fun!