Remember this article from last year, where I shared Christmas memories and used crayon doodles for visual aids?

Well, here’s the Thanksgiving version. Below are five bad drawings of five Thanksgiving memories. I’ll seize upon any excuse to render a turkey wing in burnt sienna.

Macy’s Brrr-ade!

It’s technically local, but I’ve only been to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade once. Based on that experience, I’d say you’re better off watching it on television.

I tagged along with some relatives in the late ‘80s. Can’t recall the exact year, but if any of you know when puffy jackets with the word “CORVETTE” stitched onto the sleeves were popular, maybe you can help narrow it down?

Holiday traffic into Manhattan would’ve been atrocious even without a giant parade going on, but with it… my God. What should’ve been a 45-minute drive took at least 3.5 hours, and the return trip was only a little easier.

It took forever to find a parking garage with an open spot. We eventually located one so far from the parade route that I can’t rule out the possibility that we were actually in Hoboken. It was a painfully cold and windy day, and my $20 Corvette jacket did little to shield me from nature’s hadoukens.

By the time we got to the parade, the crowds were so enormous that even the balloons were hard to see. Worst of all, since I wasn’t there with my parents, I couldn’t dull my frustrations with whining.

We arrived home late and nearly hypothermic, ironically missing the hot soup course.

(I was still glad I went, thanks to that bronze Statue of Liberty I finagled from a souvenir shop.) Read More…

Y’all know that I’m obsessed with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Hell, half of my “internet house” was built on the backs of those old parade reviews. I still watch it every year, and I’ll never stop. Entertainment value aside, those parades end up becoming such perfect pop culture time capsules.

With that in mind, I’m especially happy about this new episode of The Purple Stuff Podcast. This week, me and Jay from The Sexy Armpit do a deep dive into the 1994 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which featured everything from Skeleton Warriors to pro-wrestlers to Kenny G. SO good.

Click here to listen to the new episode!

And here’s a nervous sidenote: We’ve decided to start a Patreon campaign for the show, because like Lieutenant Eckhardt, we need to think about the future. Check out the details and see if you’d like to contribute. We’re hoping to use this as a springboard to put an increased focus on the show moving forward. Guess we’ll see!

PS: HUGE thanks to FragglevisionReturns from YouTube, who uploaded the entire 1994 parade — which means that you can watch along with us! Fraggle was incredibly kind and helpful when I reached out to her a while back, and she has many other old Macy’s Parades available, too!

Below are some spoilers about the stuff we’ll be discussing on the show. Seriously, this was a great parade! Read More…

This’ll take a minute to explain. Exactly a minute. Time me.

During the 1986 holiday season, Toys “R” Us unveiled a series of commercials hosted by giant anthropomorphized toys, like that amazing robot shown above.

Each spot featured a different batch of 1986’s hottest playthings. That December, it wasn’t uncommon to see four or five of these commercials over the course of one thirty-minute Christmas special.

The ads played out like a live-action version of the 1986 Sears Wish Book. I concede that they won’t be of much value to readers many years younger than me, but if you’re somewhere around my age, these are going to kill you in the best way.

Below are five of the spots from that campaign. Enjoy!

Spot #1: Birds & Bots!

While this commercial gave StoryMagic Big Bird top billing, I’m more interested in that Transformers Battlin’ Robots set. It was an obvious riff on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and MAN was it great.

Here we had Optimus and Megatron settling their differences in a boxing ring, which in of itself was worthy of fanfic. The designs were based on their action figures, but given the bulkier builds, these boxers actually resembled the cartoon characters more than Hasbro’s figures did!

It’s wild to think about, but “boxing Megatron” spent years as the most TV-accurate Megatron available. Read More…