History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
I saw this 1977 Sizzler ad on Pinterest and it gave me a flashback to this 1983 commercial.
I’m not an expert at seafood (I’m actually allergic to it and I'm also revolted by the smell.) But even back then, this sounded suspicious. Because I have never heard of this type of lobster before. Ever.
And I’ve never heard of it since. So what was it? Lobsters shaped like an obscene gesture?
My first hunch then and the one I still hold now was baby lobsters. The inevitable trawler bycatch that wouldn’t satisfy any serious hardcore lobster lover. But served in quantity with a mouthwatering new name and target it to trendy young adults? New menu item.
So I did some research. And this is what I came up with under “Deep Sea Finger Lobster”: Nothing.
No scientific Latin name, no sub-species listing. No taxology of any kind.
As far as I know, they were only sold at Sizzler restaurants. However some have mentioned other places where this was available.
"Tastes as fresh as a garden! New Nabisco Tuna Twist has everything that tastes best with tuna; great garden vegetables, herbs and seasonings. Turns 4 sandwiches into 6! Tuna Twist contains nourishing natural vegetable protein, so you get two extra sandwiches from every can of tuna. Takes 1 bowl, 1 minute! Just add a pouchful of Tuna Twist to your tuna and mayonnaise. Try Onion, Cheddar Cheese or Italian! Each delicious flavor turns your tuna into sandwiches or salads that taste fresh as a garden!" Photo: Gone, But Not Forgotten Groceries
In the '70s, inflation became a problem. So more housewives were working outside the house to help make ends meet. But the extra work meant something also had to give, namely kitchen meal prep time. This led to a rise in boxed mix and canned food sales for all types of meals. Microwavable meals were still in the experimental stage and wouldn't become widely available until the 1980s. So Hamburger and Tuna Helper, Shake & Bake, Kraft Mac & Cheese. Chef Boy-Ar-dee pizza and Stir & Frost cake were among the huge sellers of the '70s
And then there was Tuna Twist.
Introduced in 1976, Tuna Twist did more than liven up lowly tuna fish, it expanded it. It gave you 6 sandwiches for the amount of tuna as 4.
Now some of you who read the ad copy above with 2019 eyes might have spotted something many housewives with 1976 eyes did not. I mean, just look at all the garden vegetable goodness in this stuff. It's all it talks about, right?
From the first glance, you'd think it was just loaded with veggies. And that's what made up the difference, right?
What actually made Tuna Twist stretch to 6 sandwiches was "natural vegetable protein" (i.e. tofu/soy) But that little detail was, as you can see, obscured by the glowing mentions of garden vegetables, underlines, exclamation marks and superlatives.
What wasn't understood were soy allergies.
Soy or TVP (textured vegetable protein) is an additive to most commercially processed foods because it's extending filler and absorbs the taste of whatever else you make it with. Most people can process soy based foods normally. But others simply cannot. In fact, there were a lot of food allergies corporate food giants were tone deaf about in the '70s (and some still are.) However, many processed foods now have labeling to alert consumers of certain allergy risks.
But after a few months on the market, Tuna Twist was recalled. Because people with soy allergies were getting sick en masse. It never came back.
Chills & Thills was a cherry and orange flavoured (artificially of course) frozen soda concentrate made from 1967-68 that was apparently targeted to those hip young people that were probably influenced by Timothy Leary. Or wanted to be.
You mixed it with tap water, which made it fizz into a thick foamy (and judging from the film degradation on these commercials, possibly psychedelically bright coloured) goo you ate with a spoon.....
....and once you hit brainfreeze, you begin acting like this lady.
But Chills & Thrills wasn't the first frozen soda concentrate. That distinction belongs to an earlier Bird's Eye product called Sodaburst.
Sodaburst was a frozen instant ice cream soda fountain drink made from 1963-64. It came in four flavours. All chocolate, "Black & White" (chocolate syrup and vanilla), Strawberry and Pineapple. Plus a scoop of vanilla ice cream in each one. Just add tap water.
The problem here likely, as mentioned in the TV ad, was the price. If it was too pricey, mom was not buying it. And chances are, it probably didn't taste very good.
In the late 1990s, before cell phone service became affordable and nearly ubiquitous for nearly everyone, there were dozens of phone numbers offering super cheap long distance and other gimmicks via a 10-10 prefix number for land line phones. (Image: Chris Stewart/The San Francisco Chronicle)
The 1990s were the last decade where home land line phones were still dominant. Cell phones were still prohibitively expensive, very few people had them and they had no features. Just voice.
In the 1990s, there was no unlimited talk, text messaging was still mostly unheard of and there was no mobile web/data access either. Charges for voice calls were still by the minute and at the rate of $2 per minute, they added up real fast. Plus you needed a perfect credit score or a massively huge deposit to even get cell phone service.
So the land line phone was status quo for most people. Which meant if you had to call someone in a different area code, you had to pay by the minute for it, often at the rate of 25¢ to as high as $1.00 per minute (or more!) for international calls. However after 7pm local time and on weekends, these rates came down, but not by much.
In 2015, with the concept of area codes considered nearly obsolete (I live in the Seattle area and my cell phone number has a 415 - that's San Francisco, area code - long story, but no problems thus far) and nearly unlimited everything on your smartphone and zillions of apps you can do nearly everything with for around $30 month, it's hard for most younger people to imagine such a backwards and expensive system. But that's really how it was back in the day.
But to get a further glimpse into our topic, you need to go back even farther.
Making a long distance call in most of the 20th century was a complicated procedure. On top of expensive. Plus, there was only one provider of cross country long distance. It was called The Bell System (it's also been referred to as "Ma Bell" because of the ubiquitously female phone operators and automated voices. Plus it was the "mother" of the entire American phone system and dated all the way back to the very first telephone system in the 1870s.)
There were a few companies that provided local and regional phone service, such as GTE (the predecessor to today's Verizon.) But most long distance calls went through The Bell System.
But in spite of the Bell System's snazzy, friendly commercials and happy brochures, they could charge whatever they wanted if your call went through their lines. Because screw you. That's why. They were a monopoly, they set the rates, they provided the means of communication. There was no competition. So whaddya gonna do about it? Punk.
It frustrated millions of Americans who longed for some level of competition and better rates. So if you wanted to cheaply talk to friends and family across the miles in the days long before the internet, email and social media and today's smartphone services, you had to rely on old fashioned snail mail. Which took days or even weeks to arrive. And breaking family news and emergencies just couldn't wait. But more than anything else, people just wanted to hear the voices of their loved ones far away.
In 1984, the U.S. Justice Department ruled what everyone knew for over 100 years, that the Bell System was indeed a monopoly and ordered the break up of Ma Bell. This led to a flurry of complicated and strange new providers such as US Sprint (later just Sprint) and the now defunct MCI. And Ma Bell became AT&T.
This did lead to more competitive rates, but barely. The initial long distance rates of these new providers were in reality not much different than Ma Bell's. And sometimes, depending on where you were calling, they were even more expensive. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to yet even further fragmenting to the land line telephone systems.
A typical landline phone of the '90s. By this time, cordless phones had begun to overtake corded models.
The 10-10 numbers were created by the newly minted sub-long distance provider US Telecom (then a subsidiary of MCI, now operated by Verizon) as a workaround to your regular home long distance provider. Offering rates as low as 10¢ per minute. Which was actually not a bad rate for 1998 home long distance. Plus they were the same rate, 24/7. No need to wait until after hours.
But by 2004, these services themselves were becoming increasingly antiquated as cell phone services became more and more affordable and offered far more than the standard land line could provide. And even the 10-10 numbers began increasing rates to compensate. First to 18¢ and now at 30¢.
Surprisingly, some of these 10-10 dial-around land line services are still in business today, even as the use of land lines has dropped dramatically and land lines today are mostly used by businesses, the elderly and the vision and hearing impaired today. But 30¢ is a crazy rate to pay per minute for domestic long distance in 2015 when most people don't even pay for it at all. It just comes gratis with their cell phone service.
(Note: I know I'm probably going to hear from those who still have land lines about their virtues and yes, they do have clearer sound and one major benefit. When power is out, the phone lines - with corded phones - usually still work as their source of power is within the phone line itself and in areas that are disaster prone, that's a major benefit. But Seattle rarely has extreme weather or natural disasters. So I can live without one. Just the thought of having to go back to the Luddite old system just gives me the creeps - L.W.)
When I was a kid, I hated this record. Like smash this record to atoms, melt it into an unrecognizable blob, jump on it, toss it into a woodchipper, melt it back down into another blob, toss it into a lead barrel, seal it with concrete and launch it into deep space hate this record.
Up With People is a musical troupe that goes around the country (and even the world) trying to bridge cultural differences and create global understanding through public service. And musicals. They released several albums (all including this song) from the 1960s to the 1980s. Actress Glenn Close was a member in the '60s
Good intentions and wholesomeness aside, UWP became infamous for four years as being the selected Super Bowl halftime act from 1976 to 1986. They were lambasted as utterly the worst Super Bowl halftime act ever and, well, here. Take a look.
UWP's incredibly choreographed and cheerful singing and dancing acts were remarkable visually. No sleazy "wardrobe malfunctions", hard rock music, hip-hop or anything remotely disturbing to heartland American sensibilities. They were as threatening as milk and cookies.
But in spite of it as time wore on, Up With People's brand of entertainment had become increasingly stale and dated. Halftime became the time you made a run to the 7-Eleven for more beer, chips and ranch dip. It wasn't until 1987 when they were permanently dropped from the halftime act roster and were replaced by hipper, edgier pop acts and commercials you just have to see.
They returned as the pre-game act in 1991, but that would be their last Super Bowl appearance.
While some people may look at Up With People as some pseudo-hippie musical act about peace, love and understanding, I look at them as just one big, if somewhat creepily happy glee club.
However, They've received corporate funding, including from Halliburton (cue Jaws theme), General Motors, Exxon, Searle Pharmaceuticals - major progressive no-nos. Leading to criticism that they are more closely linked to right wing politics than they let on. They've also received praise from John Wayne, Pat Boone and Presidents Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, not exactly the most liberal statesmen.
It's 1985 and you're flipping through the late night TV channels, looking for a late movie or some kind of background noise to do whatever else. And you land on some crazy local UHF TV channel. Which is showing this infomercial.
Don't forget your "Scream Bag" (Photo: Peter L. Walsh/Baltimore or Less)
It's right here you wonder what the hell you are watching. And who (or what) the hell is Santo Gold? Is it jewelry? Some unknown rock star with a penchant for randomly screaming his own name? A factory with a boiler room office? A wrestling federation? A horror movie? A paper bag? WHAT?
I remember seeing this infomercial back then and for decades and even now, adjectives still fail me. But we aren't over yet. Here's the second half of the infomercial.
- Santo Gold was cheap steel costume jewelry coated with a microscopically thin coating of gold. People who were considering purchasing these things during the infomercial were encouraged to buy larger sets to sell at flea markets (as opposed at real jewelry stores.) They also came in spools to make custom length necklaces.
Phil Spector saw Santo Gold's look on TV, looked in the mirror and had an epiphany.
- "Santo Gold", the alleged rock star was Santo Victor Rigatuso. The creator of Santo Gold (the jewelry) and financier of an upcoming B-horror/comedy movie called Blood Circus. Rigatuso also went by the less ethnic sounding Bob Harris (are you still with me?)
To my knowledge, there were no known documented studio recordings by anyone named Santo Gold in 1985 or before. Nothing on the Billboard Top 40/Album Rock charts or radio playlists of 1984/1985 refer to Santo Gold (there was an album by Santana, but nothing from Santo Gold.) Which makes his credentials as "rock star" a stretch. And his music ("?") wasn't even rock. From the infomercials, the song he sings sounds like a jewelry advertisement as sung by Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes.
- Blood Circus was the movie that was to spread the Santo Gold gospel to the masses (once the infomercial blitz had paid off, I assume.) The plot was this; Alien wrestlers come to Earth to fight human wrestlers and promptly devour them before defeating them (rather than the more traditional method of defeating them before devouring them.) The movie was filmed at Baltimore Civic Center (now Royal Farms Arena) and was billed as a wrestling event and movie filming. The audience actually had to pay $10 each to attend. Some bit-part actors were actually paid off only in Santo Gold jewelry!
- The "Scream Bag" was a paper bag.
We don't know much more about this particular mess beyond that. We honestly don't. There are no known copies of the film and what known footage exists only on the scratchy, pixellated YouTube videos of the infomercials.
Some money from the jewelry came in. But by 1987, he still hadn't found any distribution for Blood Circus. He could have also gone straight to the then very lucrative VHS home video market with Blood Circus (which would have been perhaps the best alternate route.) Rigatuso did not. Finally, there was a showing for one week only at selected Baltimore area theatres. But according to one source, only three people showed up; Two reviewers and an extra from the filming.
When Blood Circus failed to get anywhere. Rigatuso later went into finance with a paper credit card for $49.99. Redeemable only for the Santo Gold jewelry he was probably still up to here with by then. He later began advertising alleged $2000 chunks of a millionaire's estate for an unbelievable $52 each.
I guess it was unbelievable, as he was finally convicted of mail fraud in 1989 and sentenced to 10 months in prison. That would be the end of the whole Santo Gold fiasco, right?
Nope.
In 2008 he finally recorded that elusive album we never saw in the '80s, titled I Am The Real Santo Gold. (No word from Slim Shady - aka Eminem.) One of the songs was a tribute to Donald Trump ("You're Fired") and another was titled "Obama Stomp".
In 2009, a female pop singer named Santogold was forced to change her stage name to Santigold, due to legal pressure from Rigatuso.
And then there was this.
There was an ad that appeared on eBay in 2011. The ad was selling a 35mm film copy of the Blood Circus movie. And starting bid was $21 million. Reserve price? $750 million.
Let's simplify this; The 1997 movie Titanic and one of the biggest grossing movies of all time costed $200 million to make. Blood Circus reportedly costed $2 million.
So until there is a complete, viewable and verified print of this film (and expectations considerably lowered.), the legend of Santo Gold's Blood Circus will only remain in cheesy '80s obscurity.
