wasting bandwidth since 2005

It’s almost Halloween, so I figure I need to post something in the spirit of the holiday. Here it is. A still from my favorite Halloween movie “Mad Monster Party.” 1965 Rankin & Bass full length feature from the guys responsible for all those Christmas specials like “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” and others. If you don’t remember it check it out. It’s good fun and your kids will get a kick out of it. Happy Halloween.

Masto.

Extra special bonus post. Enjoy the rockin’ tune the from the Band pictured above.

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Odds are that if you even picked up a comic book from the mid 60′s to the early 80′s you saw this ad. This thing must have been printed tens of thousands of times. I always remember seeing it on the inside back cover of just about everything I read.

I would love to know just how many of these damn footlockers they actually sold for a buck 98, it was a buck and a quarter through most of the 70′s. Or how much they made on them. Notice the dimensions of the “footlocker”. That is roughly the size of a children’s shoe box. Let’s do the math shall we. At 6x3x3 roughly we are just under 60 square inches. Which means you have about 1.5 army men per square inch. That is not a big army man in my book. But there is nothing in the ad that says “big army men”. With that and a price break down of under 2 cents a man my gut tells me there were not a lot of oohs and aahs when you ripped open that parcel. And you know you would be just dying inside day after day waiting for that package to arrive. And the wait? An ungodly 5 to 6 weeks! Holy Christ when you are 10 three days is a lifetime. This is probably why I never bought the things. 5 to 6 weeks…pfft. no way in hell.

Masto.

PS. My curiosity has been satisfied. Thank God for Google. Check them out here.

Back in 1984, after 6 or 7 years carrying Pee-Chee folders around school, I swore, as I left high school for the last time, that I would never touch one of these god damn things ever again. Well for the most part I have stayed true to that promise. But it seems that, for whatever reason, after I returned home I tossed the thing, I used through most of my senior year, into a box of assorted mementos. I ran across it awhile ago and was glad I had kept it. It’s a hysterical snapshot of the spring of ’84.

Now over the years of talking to people it seems the whole Pee-Chee thing was very West Coast. These things were completely ubiquitous in the schools of Southern California in the 70′s and 80′s. I defy you to find someone from that place and time that doesn’t know what they are. Most people I have talked to from the Midwest and East have had no idea what I am talking about.

Pee-Chees were cheap 20 cent folders that were good for holding your classwork in. Both sides had 3 sports illustrations and to this day, anytime someone brings up the folders, anyone familiar with them can tell you the more popular improvements people made to the artwork. As the year would unfold they would be a mess of doodles, from you and others, and tape, to hold them together. Now why you wouldn’t just replace the damn thing I have no idea. But I can only remember doing that on a rare occasion.

I’m going to have to go out tonight and see if I can find if they still exist. I think I need some for my desk at work.

Masto.

It’s that time again. Arizona State Fair time. Time to load up on deep fried crap and watch the kids pay good money for the pleasure of heaving up said deep fried crap. You have to love it though. Catch a little demolition derby and hopefully a concert. Hell Weezers playing. I would love to check that out. Meatloaf not so much.

Plus I dig walking around shooting pictures like the above shot. There is always plenty of photo ops at the fair.

See you there.

Masto.

Krak-A-Jap!

That is pretty much all you need to know. This is light years away from the “kinder, gentler” warfare we have today. Back then it was across the board. Everything was fair game. Our enemies entire race was deemed sub-human and worthy of extermination. Ah good times.

Could you imagine the rioting in the streets over the “Massacre-A-Muslim” or “Assault-A-Arab” toy guns.

Masto.