The Ben Cooper Pac Man Halloween Costume (1982)

One kid in a mask like this is alarming.

An army of kids in masks like this is nightmare fuel.

Mystery Food: Deep Sea Finger Lobster

What was this?

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.

Any clues?

Do It Debbie's Way (Sterling Entertainment Group/Video Associates, 1983 VHS Tape)

Do It Debbie's Way may sound like the sequel to something you'd find in the darker corner of your video rental store (usually the one behind the beaded curtains.)

The late Debbie Reynolds was one of America's 1950 and 60s sweethearts and a legendary actress and singer. And of course, mom to the late Carrie Fisher. And like many stars in the '80s, she also got into the exercise craze.

But this video wasn't for everybody. You must have a tolerance for '40s style Big Band music. And lots of corny humor attempts. This offering was tailored for a specific audience. Namely the older folks who wanted to lose weight, but didn't want any of that Jane Fonda commie crap (in spite of the fact Jane Fonda was the bourgeois favorite of the '80s.)

Unfortunately, there's no funked up version of "Tammy" (Reynold's 1957 mega hit) to jazzercise to. But you do get to see poor Shelley Winters (in the most awesome sweatshirt ever for this occasion) trying to keep up with Debbie.....

Tortura: The Sounds of Pain and Pleasure (Bondage Records, 1965)

You can listen or download here.

Greetings again my naughty readers. Today, we're going to look at one of the most bizarre non-music records of the 1960s.

Not much is known about this album. Yet it remains one of the most collectible non-music LPs for it's rarity and, um, oddness.

Tortura was produced by Los Angeles based Flag Publications, noteworthy for it's um, kinky products. Which of course includes “adult and juvenile discipline, transvestism, home movie and Polaroid hobbyists, exotica, sunbathing groups, male models, leather and rubber apparel, restraint, male and female domination and bondage." So there.

The other thing about the Tortura album was that it was mentioned in a 1969 obscenity trial, United States v. Baranov which ruled against the album along with several pornographic mail-order publications. Could it have been Flag Publications themselves that were on trial?

Listening to Tortura, it's not much more than whipping sounds and lots of "Ooooh"s, "Ahhhh"s "Ohhhh"s. But hardly anything worth making a federal case over. These utterances are more like the commentary you would make at a 6 year old's crayon drawing than anything illicitly sensual. 

Yes, this even spawned a sequel LP

The WGY Food Stores

Photo: Hoxie!

If there's one thing that pairs up with a great cup of coffee, it's great radio. And for a few glorious decades from the 1930s to the 1950s, people in the Capital Region of New York got both from the legendary WGY Radio.

WGY is one of the pioneering radio stations in America. Broadcasting continuously since 1922, it was home to many firsts in broadcasting, including the first remote broadcasts, the first radio dramas, the first high powered broadcasts, the first experimental TV station and one of the very first FM radio stations, among them. It's local reputation as a media powerhouse also lent itself to some unusual diversifications.

With the blessing of WGY's ownership (General Electric), WGY Food Stores was launched in the 1920s.

How WGY entered the grocery business isn't like how you would expect. WGY Radio itself never directly handled the grocery business. Instead, they licensed their "brand" (i.e. their call letters) to a local distributor and chain operator for a cut of the profits or a set fee.

This arrangement, plus the chain's whopping 130 stores in the full blast of it's signal (a full 75 miles around Schenectady!), gave both operators an advantage. The grocer had an instantly identifiable brand and the radio station had instant free advertising and a great promotional asset.

Because radio was a marvel for people in the 1920s and it's tie-in with anything sold well.

Photo: Hoxie!

Though best known for it's coffee (as evidenced by the many WGY coffee tins that circulate in the antique underground) WGY Food Stores also offered other branded products, such as canned evaporated milk (as mentioned in the ad above), fruits and vegetables, spices and tea. There were likely other WGY branded products as well.

WGY was still operating in the grocery business as late as 1958. But with the 1960s came the first waves of distributor consolidation and grocery stores became supermarkets. But the WGY stores seemed to be smaller stores, which were fading away to the supermarkets.

WGY Coffee jar, 1940-50s

But WGY could be considered the Amazon of it's day. It's one of the earliest examples of how one could get both their staples and entertainment from the same source (in name.)

Today, WGY has been long out of the grocery business. But still broadcasting to to the Capital Region.

The Story of Tuna Twist

"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.

Photo: Gone, But Not Forgotten Groceries

The 1972 Xerox Alto: The Worlds First Internet PC

Photo: Michael Hick/Flickr

The year was 1972 and everything was perfectly normal. People sent text messages through snail mail, watched 3-5 local channels on broadcast TV. Movies on demand were viewed in theaters, mostly paid for things in cash at places called "retail stores" you had to physically get to, listened to music on tiny AM pocket radios with earphones and "downloaded" the latest pop singles from something called a "record store" on 7" polystyrene discs. Social media was done over the telephone. Perfectly normal.

Or was it? (I can't tell anymore. 47 years of change can do that.)

Computers as we know them today were mostly things you saw on science fiction TV shows and movies. And endless "World of Tomorrow" promotional films and magazine/newspaper articles.


But in reality, most computers back then were giant, cumbersome mainframe things that took up a very sizable portion of a very large room.

"GET OFF THE INTERNET!! I NEED TO USE THE PHONE!!" Photo: neweggbusiness.com

But at Xerox laboratories in Palo Alto, CA, a revolution was happening. It was our second major step in what would become the modern PC of today. The first was the development of ARPANET by the US government for the military in 1969, the genesis of the modern internet.

The second was the Xerox Alto.

It boasted the first e-mail, ethernet, local networking with printer and outside networks to other Alto computers via dial-up and even radio networking. Even ARPANET. It had the very first graphical user interface (GUI) and even the first mouse. Years before Apple even existed. It ran using a 5.8 MHz CPU, 128kb of RAM memory and 14" 2.5 MB removable cartridge hard drives

The software selection included:

- The first word processing programs.
- The first e-mail clients
- The first bitmap (photo) editors and paint/drawing programs
- FTP and chat (This was the earliest internet, so it was nearly all text. Graphics were few, in black and white and highly primitive and low quality. There was little audio support. Or anything really resembling social media outside a circle of super rich geeks.)  
- Games including Pinball, Chess, Othello and even the first network based, multi-person video game, Alto Trek
- OfficeTalk, the first computer generated office forms system.
- Support for many early computer programming languages.

Oddly, there were no spreadsheet programs. The first, VisiCalc, wasn't invented until 1979.

The Xerox Alto was destined to revolutionize the world. Or at least the 1974 TV commercial for it looked good.

You were probably thinking looking at the first photo "Where's the big beige tower for this thing?". Here it is, the size of a mini-refrigerator, it took 14" 2.5 MB "disk" cartridges a little bigger than the size of an LP record. Photo: history-computer.com

It first went on sale in 1973.

So why didn't the Xerox Alto launch us into the internet age in the 1970s?

Mouse for the Xerox Alto.

First, it was far from perfected for average commercial home consumer use. So it never really left experimental status.

Second, the price of one of these units was $100,000 in 1973 money. That works out to about $570,000 in 2019 money. The average 3 bedroom family home costed roughly around $25,000 in 1973.

Third, only about 2,000 were made.

And finally, only high end computer labs, corporations and government were able to get an Alto. Or afford one.

But it left an impression on Apple's Steve Jobs, who visited Xerox in 1979 and quickly began to design a system that would first be called the Apple Lisa, then the Macintosh (or Mac) which was the first home computer to incorporate a GUI interface and mouse. Jobs also hired away several key Xerox employees to help design his system.

Xerox also got into the home computing game in 1981. But their lowest price home computer, the Xerox 820 lacked the GUI interface and mouse of the Alto. It was a major opportunity squandered in favor of a lower consumer price and manufacturing cost.

But home computing was still a comparatively rare (and very expensive) thing. And would be throughout most of the 1980s. And by the time Xerox got into the home computing market, several competitors were already established, including Apple. Xerox soon realized how late they were and eventually abandoned the home computing market to focus on other products.

How To Get The Alto Experience in 2019


The easiest way is through the online ContrAlto emulator. Bear in mind this takes 20-30 seconds to boot and load programs (it really is an emulator, right down to original speed.) It is buggy on Firefox 66.02, although I haven't tried it on Chrome.

This was about as far as I got.

You can find a Windows emulator program for Alto here. The site also has the C# source code. Another, SALTO, looks more promising to Linux users.

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