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...
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.
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.
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.
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 sudden aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. a flurry of tribute albums to JFK were released.
Several labels participated, but it was mostly the budget labels, such as Synthetic Plastics Company (which distributed two albums on the Diplomat and Premier labels), Pickwick had a version as well as Crown Records and a few majors such as Columbia, RCA Red Seal and Decca.
They were mostly recordings of Kennedy's greatest speeches. Most sold for 99¢ and proceeds from these records went to benefit The John F. Kennedy Council on Mental Retardation.
Many people have asked me if these albums were valuable monetarily and to be honest, they're not. All of these recordings are now public domain and widely available through several download sites (including US government archive sites) or on YouTube. Sealed mint copies go for as low as $15 and copies in any condition could be easily found in most thrift stores, as millions were sold in the months following the Kennedy assassination.
