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...
There's an essence of a woman who buys her dresses with her buckets of KFC (nudge-wink).
Perhaps one of the most questionable products of the 1960s was the disposable paper dress.
And it still looks like instant disaster;Just add rain. Hoses and sprinklers. Sweat. Pets. Perverts. Wind. A wayward snag, tree branch or sticker bush. Hot cigarette/joint ashes. Sparks. And of course, plain old fire. To mention a few.
...and that's before Becky looks at it and turns up her nose... Image: Wikipedia
But the 1960s were of course, a very libertine time in fashion. But even so, somebody had to prove that a disposable evening dress could be both fashionably hip and safe. (Or at least in some mediocre way.) Enter the Scott Paper Company in 1966 with their promo ads in teen magazines.
Right there, you're probably thinking "Uh-oh", as tissue paper is not known for it's durability, no matter what the TV ads say. And assuming the worst, you're probably wondering where the hell Ralph Nader was on this, to say nothing of every parent of a teenage girl.
But these dresses weren't that flimsy. In fact, these dresses could be worn more than once. But still, there were risks involved. Washing them (which you could do on some paper dresses only once) will remove the fire retardant coating. Other paper dresses would disintegrate being washed.
But after a while, sweat stains, odors, wear, small tears and strap failure begin to take their toll.
Hallmark Cards really got into the act and made several styles of paper dresses.
But they were primarily a commercial avenue. Whether it's the Yellow Pages, Johnston's pies or The Chicago Sun-Times.
Hmmm...Not really knowledgeable about diamel, Rd. But when you mentioned the Doxidan Cowboy, you hit solid gold.
Everybody sing!:
When I’m irregular Here’s what I do I take Doxidan because it works When I expect it to Doxidan, gentle Doxidan, I get no surprises I feel better in the morning Sure as the sun rises Doxidan, Doxidan When nature needs a helpin’ hand Get overnight relief with Doxidan As sure as the sun rises.
The Doxidan Cowboy was a 30 second TV spot, circa 1987. And from the YouTube comments on this commercial, I'm starting to think if Doxidan's parent company had released this as a promo 45/cassette single with each package of Doxidan, it might have been played at weddings.
He's not quite George Strait. More like Don Williams in a porn 'stache. As smooth as, well, the effect of this product. But really, this should've won the CMA award that year.
Tragically, the Doxidan Cowboy remains anonymous. So it's unknown if he made any recordings of this jingle. Or has any albums. But here at History's Dumpster, he'll always be our Roy Rogers.
While many people today think the only products made by The Peter Paul Company (now a division of the Hershey company since 1988) are the famous Almond Joy and Mounds bars, that isn't true. They offered other kinds too, but a much smaller variety than competitors Hershey, M&M/Mars and Nestle. Being 4th ran against these giants made them that way.
Caravelle was introduced in the early '70s to compete with the similar Nestle's $100,000 bar (known the 100 Grand bar since the mid-'80s). But whereas the $100,000 bar tastes processed and is kind of rubbery, Caravelle was lighter and sweeter tasting.
They also had this famous TV commercial with an earworm jingle. I remember seeing this frequently when I was growing up in the '70s.
If there's one product that American families on a budget know and love/hate the taste of all too well, it was Hamburger Helper.
Hamburger was super cheap back in 1971 (not so cheap these days.) And more housewives were entering the work force. So they needed a cheap, easy to make meal that was satisfying and tasty.
So the folks at General Mills created what has since become a staple in the American kitchen cupboard.
However, there was a precedent. In the late 1960s, Betty Crocker had a product called Chuck Wagon Dinner.
It was test marketed before new flavours came and the decision was to incorporate it all under the Hamburger Helper brand.
Hamburger Helper originally came in Potato Stroganoff, Chili Tomato (the former Chuck Wagon Dinner), Beef Noodle and Hash (which was diced dehydrated potatoes and beef flavouring.)
And Rice Oriental. It was my mom's perennial favourite. Which has been discontinued since the late '90s/early 2000's to the dismay of many fans. And inspiring the launch of a Facebook group, Bring back Hamburger Helper Rice Oriental
But for me personally, the smell of Rice Oriental Hamburger Helper on the stove reminds me of simpler times. And dinner with mom, watching the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather on a gigantic Montgomery Ward console TV.
Newer flavours have come and gone every few years. Only Potato Stroganoff and Beef Noodle, now renamed Beef Pasta remain of the original lineup. My personal favourites, Cheeseburger Macaroni and Noodle Stroganoff came in the mid-'70s. And who remembers the Pizzabake from the 1980s?)
The Hamburger Stew was absolutely delicious.
The wild popularity of Hamburger Helper spawned Tuna Helper in 1972 (which my cat loved), Fruit Helper (a dessert product) in 1973, Chicken Helper in 1984, Pork Helper appeared in 2003, Asian Helper in 2006 (which was OK, but really disappointing in the fact that Rice Oriental was not included in that line.) Pork and Asian Helper are no longer on the market and Fruit Helper has been defunct since the mid'70s.
Cheesy Potatoes Au Gratin
In 2013, they shortened the name to just the monosyllabic "Helper". Another one of those slick sounding, but ultimately pointless corporate 'synergy' things to tie in all it's products and subsidiary lines, I guess.
But on last Friday, April Fool's Day, Betty Crocker/General Mills suddenly and quite unexpectedly threw down the The Ultimate Hip-Hop Party Jam Mixtape of '16.
Lefty is the anthropomorphic talking oven mitt mascot whose image graces the boxes and appeared in countless classic commercials for Hamburger Helper.
Now for my generation and older, Lefty's transformation is a bit of an, um.... Shock? But try to understand that your career options are very limited when you're an anthropomorphic talking/singing oven mitt. So you take whatever gig you can get.
Watch The Stove Helper feat. Lefty. Listen to the entire mixtape free at Soundcloud. No word as of yet of any vinyl issues of this mixtape.
It quickly went viral on Twitter. Stirring up a piping hot pan of delicious memories amongst the usual snarkiness. But more than anything else, this is actually starting to be considered a landmark album in hip-hop, receiving praise in Billboard and The Los Angeles Times.
Anyway, what are you waiting for? It's 3:23am as I'm finishing writing this and I got me a hot bowl of Cheeseburger Macaroni right here. Bon Appetit!
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.)
Danka was a tragically named breakfast pastry for toasters that existed in the late 1960s and early '70s.
From the advertising, Danka was for your square, sensible middle aged person who wanted their toaster pastries to do more than pop up. (Well, what do you want them to do then? Your taxes?)
In 1973, Jack In The Box ran a TV
commercial for it's Jumbo Jack burger featuring a cute little
kid named Rodney Allen Rippy, who held the Jumbo Jack in his hands
and said "It's too big to eat!". But being a little kid, it came out as "It's too big-a eat!". It became a national catch-phrase in 1973-1974.
This led to a 45 RPM single with Bell
Records called "Take Life A Little Easier". At age five, he also became the youngest person ever to have a Billboard charting pop hit. A record that to this very day, remains unbroken.
So whatever happened to Rodney Allen Rippy?
Well according to his website, after his Jack In The Box commercial run, he starred in other commercials, including Nehi soda, Chevrolet and others. He graduated from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1995.He's taken on a few TV acting roles since his childhood stardom backin the early 1990s and appeared in the 2003 David Spade comedy Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. He also hosted a Los Angeles radio talk show.
Contrary to many internet hoaxes and urban legends, Rodney Allen Rippy is still very much alive and well. He was badly injured in a bike crash in 2010, but he's fully recovered.
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 all started with a fairly run of the mill TV commercial for national fast food chain Wendy's....
....that turned three words into the national catch phrase of 1984. And launched a tiny octogenarian lady named Clara Peller into viral superstardom.
This wasn't Clara Peller's only commercial. She starred in a few others prior to the Wendy's ads.
The Wendy's commercial debuted on January 10, 1984 and instantly caught on nationwide. Leading to several sequels to the original Wendy's commercial and a simply massive merchandising blitz.
She also had a small radio hit, which sampled her "Where's The Beef" phrase. Copies of the single were sold at Wendy's.
"Where's The Beef" Coyote McCloud feat. Clara Peller (1984)
The "Where's The Beef" commercials and product tie-ins made millions for Wendy's and brought them out of a deep sales slump. According to Wendy's, Clara Peller made $500,000 from the commercials, a number Clara Peller herself had disputed.
It even became a political comeback when former vice President and Democratic challenger to President Reagan, Walter Mondale used this line against his Democratic primary challenger Gary Hart.
However, the "Where's The Beef" mania didn't last long. (Oversaturation, as you can clearly see here, has a way of doing that.) But Clara Peller thought her Wendy's contract allowed her to do commercials for other products that didn't directly compete with Wendy's, such as Prego spaghetti sauce. Not so. Lawyers for Wendy's insisted "Where's the beef" meant ONLY Wendy's hamburgers and she was released from her contract.
She went on to use variants of the line in movies, TV and other commercials. But with no mention of the word "beef".
Here's a clip from the movie "Moving Violations", where she stars opposite Nedra Volz ("Different Strokes")
Clara Peller died on August 11, 1987, a week after her 85th birthday.
