Old Junk Food in Old Movies, Volume 2!
Earlier this week, I kicked off a new series on Dino Drac: Old Junk Food in Old Movies. Now even the worst movies are worth watching, because who knows, maybe I’ll spot a can of discontinued Pringles hiding in the background.
You can read the first volume over here, but if you ask me, this batch is way better:
Movie: Encino Man (1992)
Junk Food: Ninja Turtles Pies!
When Stoney takes Link to the convenience store, there’s a barely-visible yet unmistakable shot of a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pudding Pie. I’m so proud of myself for discovering this! If you remember me for nothing else, “found a TMNT Pie in Encino Man” is solid enough.
Fresh from the sewer to you, the pies were filled with vanilla pudding and smothered with green icing. Biting into one was somewhere in the area of biting into a giant beetle, which isn’t something I say from experience yet still say with confidence. Read More…
Old Junk Food in ’80s and ’90s Movies!
Whenever I watch old movies, I keep an eye out for old junk food. Sometimes I spot it during a kitchen scene. Other times it’s while characters zip around supermarkets. Whatever the case, spotting old junk food makes me lose track of the movies’ actual plots as I bittersweetly contemplate a world without Giggles cookies or Micro Magic cheeseburgers.
Below: Five classic snacks hiding in various flicks from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Movie: They Live (1988)
Junk Food: Giggles Cookies!
In a key scene, Nada (Roddy Piper) tests his magic sunglasses and realizes that we’re surrounded by aliens. This goes down in a little supermarket. Pause on the wide shot just as Nada enters the store, and you’ll spot an honest-to-goodness box of Giggles cookies!
Those things were legit. Think of them as the midpoint between Oreos and E.L. Fudge. I’m still shocked that they didn’t become a cornerstone brand for Nabisco, because the way I remember it, everybody loved Giggles.
The happy-faced cookie sandwiches with the two-tone centers were damn tasty, and the way that those kids from the commercials caught laughing fits from them was just so much fun to imitate. A+ on Giggles. (And on Nada, too.) Read More…
Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 29!
Happy 2019! One of my resolutions was to dig up as many old TV commercials as possible before my collection of home-recorded VHS tapes degrades any further. Expect a lot of these articles this year.
…granted, “these articles” were never strong performers for Dino Drac, so maybe you’re not as excited about that as I am. What can I say? Even after all of these years, rescuing TV spots from thirty-year-old recordings of Growing Pains is still my favorite hobby.
Below: The 29th edition of Five Retro TV Commercials.
Dr Pepper’s “Doctor Doctor” Song! (1987)
In what still ranks as my favorite Dr Pepper commercial, a dude busts into a parody of the Thompson Twins’ Doctor! Doctor!, all while dancing across a laboratory that looks like one of the guest suites from Cloud City. PERFECTION.
The song parody is so good that I initially wondered if the Thompson Twins recorded it themselves. That doesn’t seem to have been the case, but it’s still catchy enough to add to all of my playlists. (In any event, Dr Pepper must’ve paid a licensing fee, since the parody’s beats run so close to the original song.)
Also, five bucks if you can tell me who that actor is. I know I recognize him from somewhere, but it’s just not coming to me, and as much as I want to believe it’s the guy from Killer Klowns, that’s plain wishful thinking. Read More…
Toys from the ’84 JCPenney Xmas Catalog!
It’s basically Christmas even as I write this. The next few days are going to be dead online, but I was determined to get one last holiday-themed article on the site before Santa hightailed it back to the North Pole.
Consider this my Christmas gift to you. It’s not wrapped, and that’s good, because I am absolutely the world’s worst wrapper. Half a roll of Scotch tape on every box, with tears on every seam.
Let’s take a look at six great toys from the 1984 JCPenney Christmas catalog.
This is another one of those “too good” catalogs, filled with so many things I owned and cherished. Problem is, those just happen to be the exact things you’ve already seen a million times before. Like, yeah, I could include photos of Castle Grayskull and the old Darth Vader figure, but it’s not like you’ll get anything new from them.
Instead, I’m gonna focus on the deeper cuts. I’d completely forgotten some of the things featured below, even if they once meant the world to me. Hope they hit you the same way. If not, oh well, you’re at your Aunt Jan’s right now anyway, pouring spiked punch into a coffee cup while your worst cousin tries to bring up politics. Why do I bother?
Kronoform Robot Watch!
($14.99)
In the realm of transforming robot watches, Kronoform was the Rolex. In robot form, it looked right at home with the earliest Transformers figures. That was no coincidence. The watches were produced by Takara, which also created our beloved Autobots and Deceptions!
There were a billion similar robot watches, but Kronoform was the one name brand. (You might remember cheap imitators acting as the top prizes in so many fifty-cent vending machines. Honestly, even those knockoff versions were pretty great.)
These watches were way popular when I was in elementary school. Kronoform let us sneak toys into class in plain sight, and so long as you didn’t do anything stupid — like, say, demonstrate the transformation process while Mrs. Hatcher was standing right there — they were a fast ticket to schoolyard stardom. Read More…