Mr. T's Commandments

 

You did NOT mess with Mr. T back in the '80s (or now frankly.) 

Coming on the scene in the early '80s as Clubber Lang in Rocky III (where he got his trademark "I pity the fool" phrase.) And most famously as B.A. Baracus in The A-Team, he became a combination actor/motivational speaker/religious advocate during his A-Team success.

In 1984 at the height of his fame, he released Mr. T's Commandments (Columbia, 1984), a sort of motivational record aimed at kids. Using his life and career success as a role model to youth, on this album Mr. T encouraged kids to follow the rules, be honest, avoid peer pressure, stay in school and off drugs, booze and cigarettes and listen to their parents. Or else. A pure advocate for clean living. With rap lyrics interestingly written by a young Ice-T (credited as Ice Tea.)

Yep, This guy. (Wonder what Mr. T thought of "Cop Killer"?)

And you really did have to pity the fool kid who didn't eat his/her vegetables in the '80s. As the lyrics of "Mr. T's Commandment" go; "Honor thy mother and father/The Bible makes it clear/If you break the rule, God help you fool/You got Mr. T to fear!" The kid will even be asking for seconds.

Mr. T released a follow-up for MCA later in 1984, a soundtrack to a motivational video titled Be Somebody...or Be Somebody's Fool!, following the same moral principles of Mr. T's Commandments. 

The video and soundtrack featured not only '80s stars New Edition, Bobby Brown and Martika ("Toy Soldiers"), but a surprising number of acts who would later find success in the 1990s and 2000s, including Ice-T, Shanice ("I Love Your Smile") and even Fergie. 

Mr. T continues to act and appear on TV programs today.

Milton The Pop Tart Toaster

 

 1975 TV Commercial

For Your Candy Cigarettes

 

Wow, perfect for these.

The Kids In The Mail

In 1913 it was legal to mail children. With stamps attached to their clothing, children rode trains to their destinations, accompanied by letter carriers. One newspaper reported it cost fifty-three cents for parents to mail their daughter to her grandparents for a family visit. 

As news stories and photos popped up around the country, it didn't take long to get a law on the books making it illegal to send children through the mail.

'Nuttin' For Christmas" Stan Freberg (1955)

Kawaii Crush

You know, it's the creepy weird crap they make for little girls these days that really makes me take back every bad thing I ever said about Holly Hobbie.

Or at least Holly Hobbie never wore outsized animal carcasses over bubble gum pink hair. And some of you also have young daughters who have begged you or Santa for this.  

Now look, I know we live in edgier times. But what the hell is Kawaii Crush?

I had to investigate.

Oh dear. For those of you who just ate Christmas candy, you're probably going to need an insulin shot in 4-3-2-1.....

And who sings this soundtrack? Maroon 5? (I can't tell anymore through all the AutoTune they use in commercial pop music these days.)

Finding no answers from YouTube (and Wikipedia has no current entry on it.)

I went to Kawaii Crush's web site.

A Flash video popped up with "What is Kawaii Crush?" above the player and feeling a bit of relief, I watched my relief turn to horror as apparently, these dolls or whatever are, are supposed to be cute and they have cute crushes on cute kitties, cute pandas, cute birds and cute bunnies and cover their craniums in cute cuddly carcasses of cute critters. They live in a world where everything is cute and everyone has a crush. ("Even on candy!")

They have names like Sunny Bunny Hop Hop, Katie Cat Meow Meow, Owlena Hoot Hoot and Amanda Panda Pop.

It's enough to make Hello Kitty look like G.I. Joe.

Fortunately, the web site had a "Grown Ups" link. Unfortunately, it has the only information a parent needs to know from a toy company: Like, Follow, Subscribe and BUY!!

I stopped right here. This is about as far into Kawaii Crush cuteness as I could go without going into catastrophic diabetic shock.

"Why Daddy" Ronnie Dove (1976)

This is a BIZARRE country Christmas tearjerker. By way of Motown.

That's right, Motown.

In the 1970s, Motown. The legendary home of snazzy R&B pop diversified a bit, starting Melodyland (which changed to Hitsville Records) for country music.

This wouldn't be Motown's last foray into country. In fact, Motown saw it's biggest country hits with Lionel Richie a decade later in the 1980s ("Stuck On You" and "Deep River Woman" w/ Alabama)

Pat Boone (yes, THAT Pat Boone) recorded some country albums for Melodyland/Hitsville. TG Sheppard recorded his first albums for them. And they signed Ronnie Dove. Who has been around as a Baltimore area country/pop artist since the '60s.

You can tell by the year this was released (1976) he was cashing in on the popularity of Red Sovine, who released another country tearjerker involving a little boy called "Teddy Bear" earlier that year that was a huge hit, cracking the pop Top 40 that year.

Only this one was....Wow....

REAL Handheld Gaming

 

 

Made and marketed by Tomy in the '70s and early '80s.

Halloween III: Silver Shamrock Commercial

It's almost time kids.......

The Oobi

It seemed like a cute idea....

Message on top "I'm Oobi. I contain a message to another human being. Please further my journey an inch, a foot, or a mile. Add a note, if you wish. Then help me to the next nice person like yourself!" 

A strange little toy came on the market in 1971.

A little plastic thing that looked like a giant M&M with eyes. It was for kids to transport written messages to each other using the kindness of strangers. The kids would write the address of their receiving friend on the bottom of an Oobi and leave it out anyplace someone would find it. And, assuming that person had nothing else to do, would presumably take it directly to the kid who was to receive it.
 

That was the idea at least behind the Oobi.

They were sold in packs of three, so they were probably weren't reuseable.

 

"oobi is a message center for conveying your written thoughts to other human beings. oobi has no home, no owner, but is forever going somewhere, on his way, in transit, never dying. oobi counts on the kindness of strangers to journey him towards his destination, but only the person to whom oobi is addressed may open him. When he is finally broken open, it is only to free oobi's spirit.

          You may buy oobi, but you never "own" oobi. You buy oobi to make him free.

oobi is love"

Parents however weren't as nice to Oobi. And this weirdo hippie 'love' babble only made them extremely nervous (or seriously pissed them off.) And you can't really blame them. They had every reason in the world not to like them. Even in that more innocent age, the very last thing you want is some pervert or creep knowing you and your child's address. The slits that held the notes were also big enough and useful for making your kids unsuspecting drug mules as well. So cops were naturally suspicious of these things as well.

It was the biggest toy failure in Parker Brother's history. And they were off the shelves within months.....

More on the Oobi here:

http://www.deuceofclubs.com/oobi/index.html

Loop-A-Lot Toy Commercial

Unquestionably the LAMEST toy ever invented.......

Controversial Magazine Covers

With the controversy this week over the latest Rolling Stone cover featuring Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, I thought I'd take a look at shocking magazine covers. While this photo, a self pic taken by Tsarnaev on his cell phone had long been circulating on the internet and even made the front page of the New York Times in May....

....the same, untouched photo on the Rolling Stone cover caused outrage in the media. Prompting many in the media to accuse Rolling Stone of making Tsarnaev appear like a rock star, in spite of the New York Times and other outlets use of this same photo.

Let's take a look at a few other controversial magazine covers.

 

2012's Time cover of a mom breast feeding her 5 year old son disgusted everyone.

A famous TV star coming out on the cover of Time magazine wouldn't raise an eyebrow today, but 16 years ago in 1997, Ellen DeGeneres was dealt a backlash by several media outlets, many of them dropping her program. But to the horror of social conservatives, there was actually far more public praise for DeGeneres than criticism. Society's attitudes towards the LGBT community were already changing not towards mere tolerance. but full blown acceptance. Rapidly. And there was no turning back.  

 National Lampoon has always been known for it's edgy, often politically incorrect humour. But this 1973 cover crossed the line from edgy to cruel with many people. But since any publicity is good publicity for a humour magazine, they reprised this cover photo on the picture disc version of their 1977 LP That's Not Funny, That's Sick

 In the '60s, there was a book written titled The Death of God by Gabriel Vahanian that explored the objectification of God as a symbolic or cultural artifact. The book was never intended to be a direct death certificate to God, but that's how many people took it. Time explored this and the movement surrounding it and the cover alone caused such a massive uproar amongst religious conservatives, Time's mail room was inundated with angry letters to the editor and the magazine lost thousands of subscribers.

As late as the early '70s, it was still very rare to see African-Americans on the covers of major national magazines (and virtually never in a flattering light.) But Playboy declared black is beautiful with it's October 1971 issue featuring Darine Stern by herself on the cover. Angry white readers in the South were outraged, but Playboy made no apologies.

Stern's cover pose was reprised in 2009, but featuring Marge Simpson.

 
The murder of former Beatle John Lennon stunned the world in December of 1980. Not since the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 had the world lost such a universally beloved icon and into January 1981, people were still recovering from the shock. Rolling Stone published this as the cover photo for their first issue of 1981. It was shot merely hours before Lennon's assassination. It wasn't intended to be offensive and would have made the cover regardless as Lennon had just released his Double Fantasy album. But a nude photo of any sort for a magazine sold on publicly accessible magazine racks at that time was too much - especially for a man that just died. And many stores banned this issue.

Pizza Hut Electric Baking Oven

From the late '70s.....

"Lightning Tree" The Settlers (1971)

I don't know what attracts me so much to this song, but somehow I love it. I remember hearing it many years ago online on the now-defunct Saga FM 105.7 in Birmingham, England. There's a certain, distinctly British beauty about it that's hard to put in words. It's a song that really should/could have been a hit here in the States.

"Lightning Tree" (York Records, later reissued on Decca Records UK.) was originally released in 1971 and only charted in the UK and a few other countries. It was the biggest hit for a '60s UK pop band called The Settlers.

The song is most famous there for being the theme song to the Yorkshire TV/ITV series Follyfoot, which was about a rest home for horses, It had challenging things to say about the treatment of horses in British society that was far ahead of it's time. The show had a two year run on British TV and ran there as repeats until well into the late '80s.

Here's the UK TV opener for Follyfoot:

The Settlers never had another hit single. Which was odd. I always thought they kind of sounded like The Seekers and I guess I'm wasn't alone when I looked them up on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_(band)

"The Settlers have generally been referred to as a folk group. However, like the Seekers, the successful Australian group with which they shared marked similarities, some of their material gravitated towards mainstream pop, which, taking its cue from American singer-songwriters Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and such groups as Peter, Paul and Mary and The Byrds, readily absorbed folk influences in various ways in the mid 1960s......"

Forgotten Candy

Snik Snak (1968-1977) Snik-Snak was M&M/Mars answer to the hallowed (and much more successful) Kit Kat franchise of Nestle International (however through some long standing arrangement, Kit Kats are made by Hershey in the US.)



Hose Nose (1980s) This is a candy dispenser that looks like a nose that you strap to your face. It oozes candy slime and they encourage you to stick out your tongue and catch the drips from the nose (I'll bet you're all screaming "EWWW!!!!" right now.) Some of the slogans: “It’snot what you think”, “candy slime filled”, “drippy”, and “catch it on your tongue”. Yes, this candy encourages you to eat candy snot. And unless you're 10 years old, VERY forgettable....

Archie McPhee Gummy Maggots (1990s) Another gross candy. I’ve never heard another human being say - not even Andrew Zimmern. “Mmmm, these maggots are delicious!” Maybe Zimmern has said this, but I’ve never made it more than ten minutes into his show before violently barfing in the trash can and changing channels. (I’m more of a Guy Fieri/Adam Richman type of guy.)

Abba Zaba (1920-Present) Still made, but rarely seen east of the Rockies



Lik-M-Aid (1965-1982) This candy came with vanilla cream flavoured compressed sugar "dipping" sticks. Original flavours were Cherry, Grape and Orange (later Lime.) The name was changed to "Fun Dip" and they're now a part of Wonka's candy empire. 





   More here: http://candyaddict.com/blog/

I Don't Like Mondays

"I Don't Like Mondays" The Boomtown Rats is a seminal New Wave classic from 1979. What many pop music fans had forgotten (or never knew) that the song has it's origins in a tragedy that became a sort of precursor to the school shootings that occurred during the late '90s that led to the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999 to the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings of late last year.

On January 29, 1979 (34 years ago today), Brenda Ann Spencer, a troubled 16 year old girl opened fire from the window of her house in San Diego to the playground of Cleveland Elementary School, which was across the street, killing the principal and a custodian and injuring eight students and a police officer. When asked why she opened fire, she flippantly remarked, among other things, "I don't like Mondays", which in spite of the context in which it was used became a sort of catch-phrase in the early '80s, appearing on buttons and t-shirts.

Her cold blooded lack of remorse for her crime at the time was enough to have her tried as an adult and sentenced 25 years to life for the killings. She had been denied parole four times. Her last parole hearing was in August of 2009 and she will not be eligible for parole again until 2019.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Don%27t_Like_Mondays

True

Baby Lu-Lu: The SCARIEST Record Ever Made

This is a TRUE story.

Some time in the late '60s or early '70s, a strange record appeared

I see a fence back there and I'm really hoping this cover shot was taken at a state hospital.

It gets worse. Look at the back cover. Click on it to enlarge. Read it.

You read this correctly. This was a middle aged woman, (allegedly) channeling a three year old.  

How a woman like this is loose on the streets (let alone allowed anywhere near children. Or a recording studio) is beyond me. But it takes "Born-Again Christian" to a brand new low (instead of being "born again", why don't they just GROW UP.)

I honestly don't know what it is with evangelist women and big hair, geological layers of makeup and poodles, I just don't.

But it's not just this woman who scares me like crazy. It's her enablers. Jay W. Turney, Steve Chandler, Eddie Crook and the entire staff of Electric Arts Studio of Madisonville, KY.

Mr. Turney is also this woman's husband. Whom she also refers to as "Daddy". And the oozing disgust about this record only BEGINS there.

There's nothing I can say that can illustrate this horror better than LISTENING to this record itself.