Question 1: Do you still have any of your original comics /toys/books/memorabilia from your youth?
For many of us, those old toys and comics went away with the trash years ago, or were donated, or sold (my Mom did annual yard sales, and that's where many of my items went). Some things just 'disappeared' . I've no idea whatever happened to my old baseball cards ; when I was about 9 years old a neighbor who was a big Cincinnati Reds fan traded me a whole box of late 50's/early 60's Topps baseball cards. All he wanted were the Reds players I'd picked up among my 1970 Topps cards. That old box of cards would be quite a find now; but it vanished inexplicably before I even reached ten. Alas...
Nonetheless, I do still have a number of the actual things I treasured back then. Several old red line Hot Wheels cars still reside upon a shelf in my home.
Also, did manage to keep a Topps Willie Mays coin pulled from a pack in 1971 (Mays was my favorite player)...
And, I still have a fossil fish my Dad bought me during a trip to Colorado in 1971 (that must have been a memorable year for me)...
So how about you? What vintage originals managed to remain in your possession over the years ? And, what is our spectacular second question ?
14 comments:
Great question Red! I look forward to what the others write!
I still have a few things about!
I've mentioned before I still have my Amazing Spider Man 100 I bought off the spinner! Was walking to the beach one Sunday morning with my dad and brother. Not sure why but my dad detoured to the drug store / grocery store a block down the street and there it was!
More amazingly, he didn't give me the usual grimace when I bought a comic. (That ain't literature son!)
(Perhaps my dad was on a "secret" mission to the drug store that Sunday morning, before church, in anticipation of some afternoon delight, LOL???)
Still have my first baseball mit and hockey helmet too!
Cheers everyone!
Oh lordylordylordy--
Everything. I still have practically everything. None of it in collectible shape-- all of it ready for further use and enjoyment. The COMPLETELY battered Matchbox & Hot Wheels & Jonny Lightning cars (and some track, I think); the 10" GI Joes; SEVERAL games, including SkittleBowl-- remember that?. ALL of those same old comics that we reminisce about-- ragged and beloved in their boxes.
This is going to be an enormous burden to my family someday down the road---!
HB
I don't really see the point of a secondary question when a perfectly good one has already been asked but okay...
Who are you favourite female comedians? It's been claimed that women aren't funny - is that true??
As to the first question - I loved drawing and when I was about 9 or 10 my father gave me a plywood board to use as a drawing board. I'd lay it on the floor, lay some paper on the board and get drawing. I still have that board but nowadays I use it as an ironing board - I lie it flat on my bed and iron clothes on it.
Red, that's a lovely fossil. Do you know how old it is or anything about the species of fish?
This is always a fun topic and one that I revisit daily on various facebook groups.
As for comics, I don't think I kept any from my grade school years in the '60s. I must have traded my Archie's and Disney comics once I discovered Marvel in 1974. Of course, my collection spans from the late '30s to the present, including 10s of thousands of silver and bronze age goodness. It was much cheaper to collect back in the '70s, thank goodness.
Most of my books - favorites, at least - I still have. From Big Little Books to Little Golden Books, classic favorites to adaptations of Disney movies, old favorites from school to Fantasy and Sci-Fi, I've still got them proudly displayed on my shelves. Highlights are my multiple covers and treatments of Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, Wind in the Willows and John Carter of Mars.
Being a Disney fan, I've got tons of biographies of Walt and the people who worked for him, as well as numerous books about Imagineering and animation.
As for toys, I never threw anything away - and neither did my Mom - so, unless they were played with to disintegration or got damaged in some way, I've still got them.
This goes for old Disneykins to cereal premiums like Toolie Birds and Crater Critters from Apple Jacks to boxtop send offs for Woody Woodpecker cereal bowl/mug/spoon sets.
I've still got all my original Hot Wheels Redlines from '69 to '71.
Robots were huge in the '60s & '70s, so Zeroids and King Ding are favorites.
Monsters were also everywhere in the '60s & '70s, from Rat Fink rings to Universal Monsters model kits and more.
Gumball machines were too much of a temptation to pass up, so I've got little Gumby figures, miniature Marvel Comics, Rubber Uglies figures, etc. (Of course, some of these might have come from inside Cracker Jacks boxes, too.)
Thingmakers were huge for me. Unfortunately, the machines themselves are long gone, but I still have the figures that I molded so long ago, including Peanuts characters from a CartoonMaker set. Probably good that nothing is around from the Incredible Edibles, since they were supposedly made from edible goop and might be kind of gross after 50 years.
Of course, action figures, Megos and so much more line my shelves as well.
I've got St. Louis Cardinals baseball cards & character trading cards, as well as the Donruss set of Disneyland from 1965.
My niece and nephew think it's funny that I refer to my collection shelf displays as 'visiting old friends' but they understand, since I've passed on my collecting mentality on to them.
Any comic I owned before 1973 just miraculously disappeared somehow (and I know they didn’t just get up and walk away all by themselves). But once I got serious about collecting comics, I cleared out one of my dresser drawers to keep them in, asked Mom to PLEASE not disappear them on cleaning day, and amazingly I still have most of them to this day. Some of them aren’t in great shape anymore — the covers on a bunch of them are detached, including ALL-STAR WESTERN #11, X-MEN 80 and SILVER SURFER #6, and I’ve bought “upgraded” copies of more than a few, but I’ve still kept some of my battered old originals for old times’ sake.
I also have a lot of my paperbacks from the same period — The Avenger, Doc Savage, The Executioner, The Destroyer, the Bantam James Bonds with the awesome Frank McCarthy covers, etc.
All of my old toys are gone — my Hot Wheels, Zeroids, Captain Actions and Major Matt Masons and G.I. Joes and Aurora Monsters and Big Daddy Roth kits. I’ve replaced a number of those since, either with modern repros or vintage originals (when I could get ‘em relatively cheaply). Plus, I’ve picked up a bunch of items that I never actually had back in the day but always lusted after (Batman and Monster Soakies and that awesome Green Hornet lunchbox that I missed out on back in ‘67).
I do have one surviving stuffed animal, a bulldog named Tuffy, that I’ve had since I was 8. His little bow tie is long gone, his fur isn’t as white and fluffy as it used to be, and my wife had to do a little surgery on him (one of his ears was hanging by a thread) but otherwise he’s in pretty good shape for a 51-year-old dog.
— b.t.
The "Women aren't funny/can't be comedians" mind-set was, of course, perpetuated largely by the old-school, casually-misogynistic comedy-legend louts that sat atop the stand-up empire for scores and scores of years. 'Cause even though they were few, there were more than enough brilliant women who managed to crack through that glass ceiling to prove their prohibition entirely unjustified and false.
Fanny Brice, just as a starter.
Gracie Allen-- although perpetually teamed with husband George, the ENTIRETY of their act & career road on her extraordinary gifts. (Catch re-runs of their TV show sometime, and ask yourself if you could even MEMORIZE the amount of difficult, off-kilter text she has in, like, 3 days. Let alone deliver it on cue AND BE FUNNY with it!!)
Imogene Coca
Hello--- Carol Burnett?? 60
My personal favorite, though, is probably Elaine May... during the years (later 50's/early 60's?) that she and Mike Nichols were paired as the whip-smart, extraordinary "Nichols and May". And man, I LOVE the fact that she's still out there-- won a Tony Award in the past year or so, I do believe!
HB
Sorry, but — “Women Aren’t Funny”, my ass!
Like Humanbelly says, it’s a standard Old School misogyny trope. I don’t know if it’s something dudes just said to keep female comics “in their place” or if they actually believed it . Just off the top of my head : Ginger Rogers, Phyllis Diller, Lucille Ball, Barbara Feldon, Madeline Kahn, Wanda Sykes, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Rita Rudner, Amy Schumer, Ali Wong, GILDA FREAKIN’ RADNER for Pete’s sake, hell I could fill up a page with just SNL alums, Jan Hooks, Nora Dunn, Kristen Wiig, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, etc etc etc.
— b.t.
Charlie- kept that vintage sports equipment, eh? Terrific! Each scuff mark must bring back a memory...
HB- Oh man, you have a Skittle Bowl? Had one myself; loved it; and of course it's long gone. Great game, even if you have to constantly reset the pins (going to the bowling alley is more hassle, but at least they have automatic pin setters). And you mentioned some fine comediennes...
Colin J- that's pretty resourceful; repurposing that board! Did you keep any of your old drawings?
Good question you offered up for us. Many great names have been mentioned already; I'd add Teri Garr. Always loved her (especially in Young Frankenstein).
As for the fossil, I wish there was some information on it. My best guess is that it originates from the Green River Formation, which dates from the Eocene . Known for well-preserved fish fossils...
Disneymarvel- your house sounds like a veritable museum of bronze age bounty! Glad you mentioned the gumball machine prizes and cereal premiums. Those are fun, and can frequently be found at the flea markets. I also have some of those: a bunch of old penny prizes from gum machines, on display in (appropriately) a small gumball dispenser.
b.t.- wow, managing to hang onto a stuffed animal is an accomplishment indeed. Most of us probably lost track of those before we hit ten!
Disneymarvel wins the thread!
The only thing I have left comic related is the 1981 Marvel Calendar I got in '80. It remains in the large envelope it arrived in (yes I opened it).
I have a ton of baseball, football and hockey cards from'73 thru '81. My son will end up with them whether he likes it or not.
Love that fossil, Red. I wish I had kept all those arrowheads I found as a kid while in KY.
So many funny females, the first I remember was Lucy but my top is Carol Burnett.
I still have a lot of my old stuff......lots of paperback books (my kids are amazed at the fact that they only cost 79 to 99 cents) and comic books. Most of these are at my parents' home a few miles away, but I've brought assorted product to my own house from time to time. It's sort of neat to run across something that I forgot I owned. My mom kept nearly everything that I had on the toy side......my younger brother played with it growing up and later my kids did, too. Guess my grandkids might, too.
I don't really keep up with the current female comedy scene, but I was always a Lucy and Carol Burnett fan. Imogene Coco was pretty funny, too, as was Gilda Radner and Madeline Kahn. I always thought Rita Rudner was good as a standup, too.
I'll tell ya-- at some point in my adult life, Lucille Ball's "Lucy" character- which she pretty much maintained across 25 to 30 years of 4 (or 5) different TV series- stopped workin' for me like a snapped fan belt. And it was just about that abrupt. Her performance was never an issue, nor her comic abilities. But I remember an old I LOVE LUCY episode being on in the kitchen while I was cooking, and it struck me that this character was the most self-absorbed, stubborn, narcissistic, dishonest, toxic, and unreliable creature on earth-- and spreads no small amount of chaos and misery wherever she goes and upon whomever she touches. And I had a tough time finding significant off-setting positive qualities. And once that perspective presented itself, I could never unsee it again, y'know? Truly, I DIDN'T Love Lucy anymore from that point on. It's almost like being a lapsed member of a fundamentalist faith. . .
It does look like the entertainment "home" for funny women became radio and television series, doesn't it? Since straight stand-up and sketch comedy avenues were largely denied to them. One suspects that Lucille Ball would have been BRILLIANT in sketch-type comedy as well-- there are glimpses of it from radio appearances and such. So, looking at other "comic actresses" who flourished in the world of radio and television, where those gifts were always seen, but possibly not fully appreciated:
Eve Arden in OUR MISS BROOKS-- Dryest delivery on planet Earth. Could make the lamest of punch lines sound like PG Wodehouse.
Sally Field-- both in the (sadly) one season of GIDGET and on-- oof-- THE FLYING NUN. Her energy and sense of shtick on TFN is what held that awful, awful concept-show together.
Mary Tyler Moore-- Both on DICK VAN DYKE and on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW.
Elizabeth Montgomery-- BEWITCHED
Montgomery & Moore have something in common with Ball, in that they were unusually beautiful women who weren't vain at all about looking silly or funny (or unattractive) to punch a comic moment. Stretchy faces, stretchy voices, BIG physical choices when the moment called for it. You cannot believe how rare a quality that is to find in an actor who carries the (sometimes) burden of outer physical beauty. [Personal anecdote example: I am sharing a very brief, broadly comic scene right now with two astonishingly beautiful young actresses-- who are terrified of it-- because they NEVER do comedy-- because they've always been trained and cast to match what they look like-- and have no idea how to embrace the "risk" of looking foolish onstage. And it's a tough row to hoe at this point. THAT'S the hurdle I'm describing. . . ]
HB-- shoulda gone to the shop LONG ago-- hoo!
Yeah, I still have a lot of stuff from when I was a kid (some might say too much): Star Wars figures, Hot Wheels, stuffed animals, and random knickknacks and doodads (like a plastic Dimetrodon that I bought during my dinosaur phase, or a rubber robot that I got in 1977 and is still pliable after all these years). I still have some original comics too ... lots of Marvel Tales reprints, among others.
As for female comedians, I always thought Wendy Liebman was funny in a dry sort of way. Caroline Rhea is great and Margaret Cho can be hilarious when she's in the zone.
Some funny women not mentioned:
Joan Rivers
Barbra Streisand
Valerie Harper (from Rhoda)...
and Julie Kavner as Rhoda's sister (and the voice of Marge Simpson of course)
Loretta Swit (my father was a huge fan of M*A*S*H)
Elaine Stritch - in the '70s she starred in a British comedy TV series called 'Two's Company' about an American woman living in London, and her snooty English butler.
We have lots of female comedians in the UK too. I'd say the most successful was Victoria Wood - she first came to fame in the '70s by winning a TV talent show but her career took off in the '80s and she remained Britain's most popular comedienne until her death in 2016, aged 62.
Red, I didn't keep any of my drawings. My love of drawing fizzled out in my teens but I still like to doodle :)
I really don't still have much from my childhood but I do still have my Marvel UK Christmas annuals, including the one from 1972, which has become something of a legend, thanks to being packed solid with Silver Age Marvel reprint goodness.
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