1930s Traveling Movie Theater

                                             (Click on photos to enlarge)

Dark Shadows Barnabas' Music Box

The W.C. Fields Battery Tester

Reveal See Thru Roasting Wrap

Here's something you probably need this Thanksgiving that you'll also need a time machine to buy.

Reveal See Thru Roasting Wrap was a hybrid foil/plastic wrap product of Colgate/Palmolive of the 1970s. It essentially turned your oven into a rotisserie when you wrapped it around prime rib, ham, fish, turkey or chicken. The foil ends sealed everything, roasting everything in it's own juices.

The inner plastic was of a special heat resistant type. But being plastic, it could only be heated to a certain temperature. And even in those days, there was concern over chemicals in the plastic leaching out into your food.

Reveal disappeared off the grocery shelves by the late 1970s, but it was actually used in the restaurant business well into the mid '80s (I remember seeing this in some kitchens under a different name.)    

Wheelee Board

The Wheelee Board (1977) unquestionably was the oddest skateboard. Ever.

With six wheels and a plastic board with the rear wheels set at an angle, it was designed for tricks. I haven't had much personal experience with skateboards of any kind, but I imagine one would have to be particularly deft in their skills to ride these things. Or suicidally insane.

Not much else is known about the Wheelee Board, except that it's apparently a joke in the skateboarder community.

Bottoms Up

One of the many politically incorrect drinking board games of the 1960s and '70s, Bottoms Up was a game produced by Colt 45 malt liquor.

The object was to accumulate 30 credits, thereby completing one year of college. All while drinking Colt 45 "bottoms up" wherever you land on a space or take a card requiring you to. (I would be shocked if anyone actually finished a game.)

Some of the action cards that you were required to do:

Smoke two cigarettes simultaneously
Obey any wish or request of the player on your right
Put an article of your clothes on backwards
Do a Jack Benny imitation for 30 seconds
Explain to other players why you think that sex before marriage is a necessity.

Obviously, this game was from a very different time.

Children's Disco Musical Stories (Venus, 1988)

It's not every day you run into disco versions of children's stories, especially South Asian ones. And one made eight years after disco fizzled out in America. But this cassette really exists. 


Listen Here

The Ethel Merman Disco Album (A&M, 1979)

There are some records you just can't make up even if you tried.

Whoever thought combining an aging Broadway singer like a then 71 year old Ethel Merman, who's star had largely faded by this time and disco music would be a smashing crossover success probably has been court-ordered to stay away from recording studios for life.

Her last big hit up until then was 20 years earlier and she was mostly doing variety and talk show TV appearances by the late '70s.

12" inch Ethel Merman single from the album.

The vocals are definitely vintage Ethel Merman. But the disco arrangements and instrumentation are by-numbers and nowhere do Merman's vocals and the disco interpretation of the music gel in any way. At all. Donna Summer's crown as Queen of Disco was secure.

But not for long, as the disco backlash was well underway at the time of this album's release. And to the cut-out budget bins this record went.

Ethel Merman died on February 15, 1984.

Plastic Man

From reader/contributor Amber Walsh of Everett, WA

"Seen this at Grocery Outlet today... It's called Plastic Man and looks like Michael Jackson... I laughed so hard I almost fell over...."

Photo courtesy of Amber Walsh

Six Star Factory Outlet Stores

Hello Dumpster Divers,

My kitty, Mr. Smokey Gato

Sorry for the lack of action, I'm caring for a terminally ill kitty right now. Mr. Smokey Gato has feline cancer and it's advanced. He is getting weaker and thinner. And this kitty has been my buddy, always there for me. So I'm paying a lot more attention to him. Because I don't know how long I will have him. 

I recently made a list of vanished retail chains, mostly in Puget Sound, I had a few requests to post about some chains. But it's not easy to find information on most of them. There are a few chains that have simply no hard information I could research on them and others I have memories of shopping at, but little else overall to go on. 

One of those is Six Star Factory Retail Outlets (best known as Six Star) Six Star was a discount store from 1987 to 2009 that also specialized in craft supply merchandise. Six Star was once a rising chain in the Western America, mostly in suburban areas as far east as Colorado. My local Six Star was in Lynnwood, WA

Six Star was mostly a dollar store, with some items going as high as $6. But no higher for most merchandise. Some products, such as an aluminium cookware set were available for $6, plus the balance in "Bonus Bucks" coupons, which for each $5 of things you buy, you got one Bonus Buck coupon. 

Six Star also expanded full tilt into craft merchandise in the early '90s by opening Super Star locations (there was one in Lynnwood across the parking lot from the Six Star), which offered craft supplies only. These were meant to offer all craft supplies and an employee there once told me they were planning to transition the craft supplies out of the Six Star stores and into the nearby Super Star locations, freeing up shelves for even more general merchandise in Six Star locations.

But there was one thing I looked for specifically at Six Star and it were these.

On the cashier counter, there sat a rack of compilation cassettes, mostly of the cornball country/religious crud that Gusto Records specializes in as well as warmed over mini-compilation cassettes from any given major label's special products division. But amongst them were Canadian compilations from Quality Records. They sold for $4.00 each

They were K-Tel like and offered a pretty good mix of pop tunes. Including at least 3 Canadian tracks. OK, so Zappacosta, Frozen Ghost and The Parachute Club aren't exactly the first names that jump off American tongues when you bring up '80s pop music. But they were a pretty good deal for the money. And I could only find them at Six Star.

The last store closed in 2009 in Poulsbo, WA.

1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph

The 1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph was the hipster audio freak's must-have long before Bang & Olufsen. It played vertical cut discs of the Edison/Pathe variety. But could be modified to play lateral cut gramophone records with the use of an attachment to the tone arm.

And they're still very classy looking.

And in the days before electrical recording, vertical cut discs were sonically best for acoustic recording than conventional lateral cut gramophone records. A suddenly loud passage could cut through the wall of a lateral cut groove, so the singer had to stand back from the recording horn or the horn had to be muffled to protect the groove wall of the record being recorded. On a vertical cut groove, it only makes a deeper groove.

The teak horn inside was perfect for acoustically recorded records, Not brassy or tinnier than it had to be with conventional gramophone horns. Or boxy like Victrolas.  

They're extremely rare today.

Rickie Tickie Stickies

Rickie Tickie Stickies, in spite of their long association with hippies and flower power were actually a creation of ad man Don Kracke in 1967. These reusable plastic flower decals adorned many a Volkswagon and girls bedroom in the late 1960s/early '70s. By 1968, some 90 million had been sold.

They were expanded to include other designs in the '70s and even moms started adding them to windows and cupboards.

Building Mind Power - The Ben Sweetland System (Nocturnal Education/RCA Custom, 1956)

Ben Sweetland was a motivational speaker. Similar to Norman Vincent Peale, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar and the late Robert Schuller. He was a godfather to the self-help craze that continues to lure in desperate people to this day.

A pioneer in "sleep training", he published this 22 record ‘system’ as a way for average people to improve themselves via conscious and subconscious education.

These records look like 45 RPM discs. But they actually played at 16 RPM with an average playing time of 20-30 minutes per side.

Are you sure this is something that ought to be played during daytime hours?

On top of this MAMMOTH 22 record set, Sweetland also offered a special phonograph changer with a timer. So users of the program can select when certain talks were to be heard during the night or day.