Dino Drac’s 31 Days of Christmas!
Friday, September 8th:
Thought you’d get a kick out of this supermarket display from 1997, featuring a bazillion bottles of soda shaped into a giant plastic Christmas tree, complete with tinsel and bows. What a vibe!
I made this point over the Halloween season, but some grocery stores still do fun stuff like this. As a general rule, the older and rattier the store, the better chance you’ll have at seeing something like that tree.
(Just speaking from my own experience, I know there are a few ShopRites dotted around New Jersey that are practically antiques, and each seems to march to its own beat. I’d have better luck spotting a display like this at one of those than at Target, where all the locations are homogenized.)
I don’t think there’s a single brand on that display that’s been discontinued, but all of them have had their labels redesigned since then. The one that pops most is that classic Hawaiian Punch label, which was so damn effective that I still can’t believe they changed it. Sometimes there’s nowhere to go but down, you know?
Thursday, December 7th:
Here’s a print ad from 1984, telling us how to make Crispix Party Mix – an obvious spin on Chex Mix, which in the ‘80s especially was a super common holiday snack.
Longtime readers know that I’m a big proponent of homemade Chex Mix. The bagged stuff you can find in junk food aisles is good, but it doesn’t compare. I’m also a fan of Chex Mix spinoffs, so this is way up my alley. Every ingredient in the recipe is still sold today, and yes that includes Crispix cereal, which a lot of folks assume was discontinued. Nope! It’s still around!
Here’s a bigger version of the scan, if you want to give it a try. The quick summary is that it’s Crispix, nuts, pretzels and a lemony mix of spices. Sounds excellent!
Wednesday, December 6th:
In a world where we can buy the leg lamp from A Christmas Story and the moose mugs from Christmas Vacation, I think it’s high time for a Gremlins plushie with light-up eyes that we can stuff in our Christmas trees.
It’s such an obvious idea, I have no doubt that some company will eventually do exactly that. And whether they’ve seen this post or not, I will absolutely take credit and demand a free sample as payment.
The above scene is, of course, from Gremlins. Even without the red-eyed monster hiding in there, I’ve always been fond of the Peltzers’ Christmas tree. I’m a sucker for old school silver tinsel, and there was enough of it on that tree to choke every vacuum on the Eastern Seaboard. A+.
Tuesday, December 5th:
When I was a kid, my mother always put out Hershey’s Kisses during Christmastime, in their special holiday wrappers. I emptied those bowls as fast as she could fill them, but it wasn’t really for the chocolate.
No, I was way more interested in the foil wrappers, which I passed along to my action figures. The five-inch freaks on my bedroom floor had a million uses for ‘em. Some used the foil as extra armor. Others used them to wrap teensy tiny gifts. Still others crafted strange works of art that I could best describe as the stylistic midpoint between Delia Deetz and Nick Moore.
I still think of it whenever I see Hershey’s Kisses in their holiday wrappers, which are still made today. I couldn’t have been the only kid who did that, but judging by the lack of response to a since-pulled post on Dino Drac’s Facebook page, I dunno, maybe there were only 3 or 4 of us.
Monday, December 4th:
I was never big on Sierra Mist, so when I heard that Pepsi was swapping it out for Starry, I was hardly upset. Besides, I liked Starry’s weird, retro, fake-product-in-a-sitcom vibe. All was well.
But eventually it hit me. Losing Sierra Mist meant that we were also losing Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash. Ouch! Introduced in 2006, I *adored* this soda. It was easily among my favorite holiday junk foods of the modern era, and it was around often enough to feel like a safe staple of the season. (It even survived that temporary “Mist TWST” rebrand.)
Today we pour one out for Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash, a high-point for the holidays in the 2000s. May the next generation of nostalgists steal my obnoxiously-watermarked photo for their Tikky Tok videos about how they tried it when they were 7. One love.
Sunday, December 3rd:
Shown above is the Star Wars Cloud City Playset, a Sears-exclusive from 1980. If you’re wondering why it’s turning up on a Christmas blog, well, that scan is from the 1980 Sears Wish Book, so it stands to reason that 95% of the kids who owned Cloud City had Santa to thank.
If you think it looks like cheap cardboard… it was! Cloud City wasn’t the only Sears-exclusive Star Wars playset from Kenner, and most of them were similar. You’d sometimes get a plastic “base” with a cardboard backdrop, but this one didn’t even have that much.
It was flimsy as fuck, but still totally gorgeous. If there was one benefit to cardboard construction, it was that Kenner could create environments that would’ve been far too pricey to do in plastic.
In truth, these “playsets” were usually just added value to what Sears was really selling: multi-packs of action figures. Cloud City came with four: Han Solo, Lobot, Dengar, and one of those rascally Ugnaughts. The whole shebang retailed for $11, which was actually less than the four figures would’ve cost if purchased separately. In effect, the cardboard playset was free!
Saturday, December 2nd:
If Santa brought you crayons back in 1992, they were definitely in that tin. Crayola must’ve made a bazillion of those things, which came with the standard 64-pack boxes of crayons inside.
I say this not just because of anecdotal evidence – I had one, and so did every other kid I knew – but because the empty tins have been all over eBay since the site’s inception.
It’s not surprising that so many tins have survived, as they were customarily repurposed again and again, even long after the crayons were trashed. Some of you might look at that tin and remember thread, thumbtacks, paper clips or store receipts way more than anything from Crayola.
Side note: Tin or no tin, I’m a big proponent of kids getting boxes of crayons for Christmas. They aren’t flashy, and they’re certainly not a “main gift,” but who doesn’t get at least a little excited over a fresh pack of crayons?
