Nintendo Cereal System, from 1988!
Breakfast peaked in 1988. You’d need a strong argument to believe otherwise.
Nintendo Cereal System was its name, and according to everyone who was appropriately-aged in ’88, it was the stuff of the gods. I can think of dozens of cereals I’ve liked more, but never did I NEED one more than this.
Nintendo is obviously still huge today, but back then, it seemed to be the only common ground that linked all kids. The exceptions were too few to count. Everyone had a Nintendo and everyone spoke the language.
A lot of things get “hot” for a while, but Nintendo became so much a part of a kid’s very culture that it was less an “interest” and more a way of life.
So, it only made sense that it’d become a cereal. Of course we were going to eat this. Of course we wanted Nintendo to start our days, even when there wasn’t time to kick Bald Bull’s ass before the bus came. Read More…
Freddy’s Greatest Hits Album!
I picked up Freddy’s Greatest Hits nearly a decade ago, and I’ve been listening to it constantly ever since. Sure, I originally bought it for the “novelty” potential, and admit that the first time I heard it, I cackled over the complete ridiculousness of a Freddy Krueger pop album with a vague doo wop motif.
But after listening to it a few more times, something changed. This wasn’t just some gag for me to parade around as an audible oddity. It was a really, really great album. I mean it.
Released in 1987, Freddy already had three movies under his belt, and a fourth on the way. Even by then, he was a veritable pop icon, as Americana as hot dogs. It would be incorrect to say that the Elm Street movies weren’t “mainstream,” but even if you do want to argue that, there’s no denying that Freddy Krueger was mainstream. If I told you that he was earmarked for a Saturday morning cartoon series, I’d be lying, but you’d probably believe it.
Freddy’s popularity would see many peaks and valleys in the years to follow, but in 1987, he still had the Midas touch. Hell, nobody ever put Robert Englund on a “most bankable” actor list, but so long as he was in the latex, it was absolutely true. People of all ages were nuts for the character, and though I don’t mean to overstate his popularity, Freddy certainly had enough fans to warrant lots and lots of merchandise.
Beyond the costumes and suction-cupped window dolls was this album. This beautiful album, aimed at God knows who. I doubt it sold more than a few thousand copies, but then, maybe no more than a few thousand copies were produced to begin with.
It’s a bizarre thing with no clear audience. Too sophisticated for kids, too stupid for adults. Too much like show tunes for the horror crowd, too much like scary bloody horror for anyone else. It takes a perfect storm to find a customer for something like this. Apparently, my life was that storm.
Give it a listen, and then we’ll talk about it:
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(If you can’t see the player, it’s because you’re viewing the site on something that won’t allow Flash. Sucks to be you.) Read More…
Vintage Vending #6: Moon Monster!
It’s been ages since the last Vintage Vending post. Let’s fix that.
Pinpointing an exact date is impossible. All I can be sure of is that these came out in the ‘80s. The “Moon Monster” title was just their way of skirting copyright issues, because these are obviously Godzilla toys. Hell, the whole collage behind the toys consists of stills pulled directly from Godzilla movies.
The prizes are Godzilla figure/stampers. They are TERRIFIC. I don’t know enough about Godzilla lore to name every monster, but I know King Ghidorah when I see him, and best of all, the goddamned Smog Monster is in there. Hedorah the Smog Monster! Read More…
Weird 1993 Photo Album Thing.
While cleaning out some old bins, I came across this photo album. Pretty sure it’s from 1993. Only around a fifth of its pages were used, and only half of those pages were used for actual photos.
I vaguely recall putting this together, and it’s jusssst weird enough to be worth archiving here.
For the first chapter, I glued blue construction paper over the album pages, and turned it into a sci-fi scrapbook. Most of the “decorations” were lost over the years, but you can still see some clippings from old Starlogs, complete with handy marker-drawn titles! Read More…