Mike and I moved from a tiny house to a huge house last July. All of our things that have been in storage for the last six years have been brought out of the storage unit, dusted off and reclassified. One of those finds were these:
I bought these stickers from Scholastic Books when I was in grade school in the early Eighties. I cannot remember what the two missing stickers were, but they must have been the coolest of the bunch. If I find them in my old sticker books, I’ll post them here as an update.
The most laughable sticker is in the bottom right hand corner and reads, “Terminal Video Fever.” I guess they were worried that Buckner & Garcia would sue them if they printed, “PacMan Fever.” If you’re unfamiliar with the song, here it is:
Video games were so new and cool when I was a kid that it was all I thought about sometimes. I was a lot like Marshall in this episode of Square Pegs, except I played on the Atari at home instead of the arcade.
Video games are so ubiquitous now that it’s hard to imagine there was a time when they were new, but these video game stickers in my box of old stuff brought the memories back full force.
I sometimes wonder what our lives would have been like if we had followed the adding machine path for computers instead of computing with tubes and microchips. I love this ad from 1948 for the Burroughs Class 5 Adding Machine.
My grandfather had an adding machine like this in the basement of his house. Stacey and I would play on it for hours pretending to be business people. We never quite learned how to use it. Here is a video showing how it works:
Whenever I start to feel like my computer is too slow or that I want something smaller or faster, all I need to do is look at these old machines and realize how very lucky I am to have a computer that is far more powerful in my pocket.
Glad you asked. It’s a Volkswagen Station Wagon. Don’t pity the poor thing. It can take it. It can carry neatly a ton of anything you can afford to buy. Or 8 people (plus luggage) if you want to get practical about it.
And there’s more than one practical consideration. It will take you about 24 miles on a gallon of regular gas. It won’t take any water or anti-freeze at all; the engine is air-cooled. And even though it carries almost twice as much as regular wagons, it takes four feet less to park.
What’s in the packages?
8 pairs of skis, the complete works of Dickens, 98 lbs. of frozen spinach, a hutch used by Grover Clevland, 80 Hollywood High gym sweaters, a suit of armor, and a full sized reproduction of the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Sadly, there isn’t a vehicle made today that has all that the old VW Bus had. Tons of cargo space, room for 8 passengers, 24 mpg and small footprint for easy parking. If I could buy a brand new VW Bus today, I would.
If you and your husband can’t agree on how many blankets you need for perfect comfort – and he tosses them off while you shiver with cold-
You can solve this problem so easily – as so many other smart couples have done – with a General Electric “Happy Marriage” Blanket.
Just ONE fluffy-light General Electric Blanket with Dual Comfort-Selectors is all you need – and you each enjoy personal comfort.
You choose the warmth you like… he chooses his – and GE’s Sleep Guard adjusts automatically to bedroom temperature changes.
The ad goes on to say that it’s washable and available in many colors.
The funny thing is, this EXACT electric blanket is still available today. The Sunbeam blankets have dual control, even now. Personally, I prefer an electric mattress pad instead. The Sunbeam Queen size also has dual control, but it lays UNDER you, heating up, so if your partner kicks off the covers, you’ll still be warm. The best new feature they’ve added since the Sixties is the auto-off feature, so the pad turns itself off after ten hours, even if you forget to. I LOVE that feature.
Now that it’s getting colder, it’s time for me to start using the heated mattress pad again. I’m so grateful for it when the weather gets chilly.
It is from the movie, Playtime, which was released in 1967 in France. I love seeing all the old cars and buses moving around the traffic circle. That’s the beauty of old movies. They’re a glimpse of the gadgetry of days gone by.
It was designed by a team working for Ericsson back in the 1940′s. The design is so beautiful and unique that it is featured in the Museum of Modern Art.
It’s surprising to me that this phone was designed over sixty years ago. It is obvious that the “brick” cell phones were based on this design, so it was years ahead of its time.
I love this old advertisement comparing the old Volkswagen bug to the bus.
It reads:
That’s about the size of it.
That special paint job is to make it perfectly clear that our Station Wagon is only nine inches longer than our Sedan. Yet it carries almost 1 ton of anything you like. [About twice as much as you can get into wagons that are 4 feet longer.]
Or eight solid citizens with luggage.
Or countless kids with kids stuff.
The things you never think about are worth thinking about, too. You never worry about freezing or boiling; the rear engine is air-cooled. You can expect about 24 miles per gallon and about 30,000 miles on your tires. And you can forget about going out of style next year; next year’s model will look the same.
The most expensive VW Station Wagon costs $2,655. It comes in red and white or grey and white or green and white.
And you won’t ever have to go around painting sedans on it to show how small it is. Just Park.
Right now, I really wish a company would adopt the Volkswagen company model. The cars are the same every year for decades, allowing me to fix my 2009 car as easily as the 2020 car. They brag about their gas mileage, small size and practicality, not their luxury, massive size or status symbol.
I froze and boiled in my old VW bug. It failed me on numerous occasions, dropping parts on the road as easily as birds drop feathers. I was grateful to have a new car when I finally stopped driving my old beetle, but it was a twenty year old car by then. I want a car company like Volkswagen used to be, because the new VW isn’t like it at all.
Filed under: Retro Gadgets — Laura Moncur @ 10:00 am
I was looking through some of my old files the other day and I found this advertisement for the Yamaha DX100 Synthesizer.
It reads:
It has two wheels, two sources of power and can go from 0 to 192 in just one shift. But instead of riding it, you strap it over your shoulder. Because this machine is so powerful, it can take you places just standing still.
The DX100 synthesizer.
Anything’s possible.
Yamaha
This advertisement happened to be on the back of a Swatch ad that I have kept for the last twenty years. I always thought it was an advert for a motorcycle, considering the helmet and all. I never read the copy on the ad until a couple of days ago.
What in the $#*@ were they talking about?
They are talking about a synthesizer that looks like this:
The DX-100 is a small and portable budget DX synthesizer from Yamaha. Like all DX’s it uses (FM) Frequency Modulation synthesis. It’s not the easiest form of synthesis to program but can result in some excellent sounds. The DX100 is not as flexible nor powerful as a DX7, but it does have some cool sounds. It is most renowned for its great analog bass sound (Patch #01) that is awesome for techno, house, jungle, and acid music styles; it’s very gritty, the bass tone with gristle! However, any other preset sounds that you’ll find in the DX-100 are pretty bad and require editing for anything else useable.
The DX-100 has mini-keys and only 49 of them. No filters, arpeggiators, effects or programmable controllers are available either. Small pitch and mod wheels in the upper left and guitar strap pegs make this synth usable for live use if you’re feeling whimsical. If you mess around with the settings on Parameter 13, even if you don’t know anything about FM, you can get some seriously twisted sounds out of it. If you’re willing to spend a little time with it, it has a lot more potential than just that one bass sound that people will eventually get sick of. And at its currently low street price, it just might be worth getting. It is used by Orbital, Scanner, Jean-Michel Jarre, Autechre, Laurent Garnier, and countless other house and dance artists.
All the talk about wheels and power and shifting are “funny” double-entendres comparing music gear with motorcycles. Considering that this ad was run in Seventeen magazine, it was a complete waste of money for Yamaha.
For fun, here’s a video of a guy jamming on a Yamaha DX100:
The Yamaha DX100 is one of the more beloved of the old synthesizers from the Eighties and you can find them selling on eBay anywhere from $400 to $150 for working models. Even a broken DX100 will earn the owner fifty bucks. In fact, this ad itself is something of a collector’s item, so feel free to click on over to Flickr and download the full size if you want to print it up and put it on your wall with the rest of your Yamaha memorabilia.
Our old neighbor, Lisa, just remodeled her kitchen. When we heard about it, both NakedJen and I were wondering what happened to her beautiful old pink oven. Fortunately, Lisa was smart enough to keep it. While we looked at her lovely new kitchen, we also took the time to take some photos of her old Frigidaire. Here are the photos:
The cool thing about this oven is that it is meant to be built into the wall at body level. The doors open out like a refrigerator to reveal a fairly small oven.
I love how the dark color of the knobs contrast with the light pink color. This oven was made during that time when you coordinated your appliances with your color scheme. Instead of only a choice of white, black or stainless steel, you had a rainbow of colors to choose from.
This timer is PERFECT and I trust timers like this so much more than the digital ones on my current oven (mostly because they are easier to set).
Lisa plans on selling her oven on eBay, so, if you like it, keep an eye out there for it.
