"A Joyous Time Of Year/The B-Side" Marty Feldman (1968)

British comedian Marty Feldman is best remembered by American audiences as Igor in Young Frankenstein. (and his eyes, a product of a bad operation for his Grave's disease as a child.)

Feldman released some UK comedy albums and novelty singles in the late 1960s. This single failed to crack the UK charts and didn't get much (if any) airplay (not many comedy singles do.)

"The B-Side" is a poke at the flipside of a 45 RPM single...

Kenner Kiddie Fondue

I know I've been a little late on the posts again. But I've been working on one that'll be worth the wait. (I hope.)

Maybe you got this for Christmas in 1974. It seemed to be pretty popular. But not much has ever been mentioned on it.

Kenner Kiddie Fondue was an insulated plastic pot with fondue made with special packages of artificially flavoured melting chocolate inside a three compartment tray and heated by hot water in the red pot. Kids can then dip the mini-marshmallows in it and it was all fun and as close as they could get to those Saturday evening parties their parents would have when they would all smoke funny cigarettes with their friends in the living room around the real fondue pot.

This was made by Kenner when it was owned by General Mills. They were seeing some kind of synergy between both sides of their food/toy portfolio. (The Easy Bake Oven was another Kenner product.)

It came in chocolate, vanilla and cherry flavoured chips, which you poured into a three compartment tray.

Also see: Pizza Hut Electric Baking Oven.

Art Carney's 1954 Christmas Single

A Very '70s Kmart Christmas

Remember that Not Found In Nature, Only At Kmart shade of turquoise blue? Well bring it home for the holidays!

"This is a digitized version of an in-store reel to reel tape that was played within a Kmart store in December 1974.  The opening Kmart jingle is interesting at the beginning of both hours, and there are theft deterrent security pages and store policy announcements between every few songs.  This must have been in attempt to discourage shoplifting.

This is a Tape-Athon product perhaps in their early days - see the attached pictures.  There also was an insert within the reel to reel box stating that the recording was made on a state of the art system -- and to possibly adjust volume levels.

The recording contains both sides, which are 1 hour long each, totaling 2 hours.  This tape is in good shape and was recorded on the 3¾ speed. This was transferred to digital using my Akai GX-4000D which is in excellent operable condition, and I cleaned the heads between plays as the tape did leave residue.

Special Thanks to Tom Schwarzrock (Zephryrhills, FL) who personally provided this very rare tape to me so that it can be added to the archive collection.  Tom preserved this from store #3405 Lake street in Minneapolis, MN as he worked there as a department manager in the 1970's." - Mark Davis

The Colonel Sanders Christmas Albums

Kentucky Fried Chicken holiday bucket and lid, circa late 1960s.

The 1960s and '70s will always be the heyday of the Christmas album loss leader. Tire companies were using Christmas records to entice customers. Department and grocery stores too. If it was round with grooves and played at 33 1/3 RPM, you were likely getting extra business with it.

Colonel Sanders was also bitten by the Christmas vinyl bug. And released his own series of Christmas compilation albums through RCA from 1967 to 1969.

1967

1968

There was even an Australian pressing of the 1968 edition!

Here's the 1969 edition (the last in the series.)