Friday, October 31, 2008

Random Crap from the 70s - More Odd Kid Shows


It's Friday night and it's Halloween. So let's remember how scary things were for some of us when we were growing up.


I didn't watch this first show that much, but it was always especially strange the few times I watched it. It was our favorite secret agent:




So do you suppose that PETA would let something like this go by nowadays? You also have to love the stereotypes -- nothing like putting a Fu Manchu mustache on a chimpanzee.


I hate to admit this, but one year I carried this lunch box. Mercifully, it was only for a year and only because I had broken an infinitely cooler one. But I do remember watching the show in question, a bizarre cross between Scooby Doo and Yogi Bear. Help, help! Here come the bears




A few years on, we were treated to the "U.S. of Archie," where for reasons that are hard to understand at this point, someone decided to use the durable teenagers as instruments of learning. Only in the 70s could you have something like this, as the Archies celebrate Thomas Edison with an odd, dirgy song.


Meanwhile, Sid and Marty Krofft continued to pursue their empire of oddness with the Krofft Supershow. This clip brings back a lot of very bad memories. They're all here -- Captain Kool and the Kongs, Superbug, Doctor Shrinker and of course, the delight of any number of boys approaching puberty with some trepidation -- it's




And they're electra-annoying! But they were a stopgap between this (which had a few subtexts that I didn't get at the time) and this (which was to arrive soon thereafter). They did have some happening theme music in the 70s, too.


And it's worth remembering that as weird as the shows were, the ads were perhaps even stranger. Besides the perfidy of Mr. Owl, let's consider this interlude between Big Jim and Big Josh. What was Mattel selling here, really? At least it wasn't as odd as this ad for Calgon, which I swear ran for 20 years. But it could have been worse -- you could have spent $4.99 for this "20 Top Hits" record, with fake versions of bad songs. "Because of low royalties, we can't reveal the artists," but they were pretty good ones, like Ringo Sturr, Kat Stephens and Gladys Night and the Peps. Don't forget, order before midnight tomorrow.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I loved Lancelot Link! I looked forward to new episodes to see what they would have the monkeys do. I thought DynaGirl was cute & I think my younger brother wanted Big Jim & Big Josh because they were tough outdoor guys. Hadn't considered the "Brokeback Mountain" thing though.... The Top 20 Hits ticked me off because when I bought a couple of them, they were not the real artists and I felt ripped off. Wasn't K-Tel from Minneapolis? Also, never got sick of the Calgon ad. :o)

Mr. D said...

Yep, K-Tel was a Minneapolis company. They put out the actual songs, but usually in truncated versions. And I swear the records they made were made of styrofoam or something, because they didn't last past a few plays, it seemed.

And no doubt, DynaGirl was cute. The Kroffts always found cute girls to put on their shows. The girl on the Bugaloos was really cute, as I recall.

Anonymous said...

Let's not forget the fetching Mata Hairy, the Agent 99 to Link's 86.

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