The Retroist

The Magnavox Odyssey 2 was a contender early on in the video game console world. It had a lot going for it, but it was up against a gaming juggernaut, the Atari 2600, and just couldn’t keep up. Still it is a memorable system and worth spending some time remembering. So, on todays, show I will talk about this often overlooked gaming console.

I begin by talking about my childhood encounter with the Odyssey came about because of a case of mistaken identity. It was a magical find and surprising highlight of a few family visits that were to follow. Then I move onto the console itself, discussing its predecessor, creator, development, games, accessories, and much more.

I also sprinkle a good amount of retro audio into the show and return to reading a little bit from the paper. Nothing excessive, but it a few highlights from around the time of the console’s release. This included another pop culture TV event that I think was worth mentioning.

We have had a lot of consoles that failed. Ones that didn’t last long, but I believe by all measures, the Odyssey 2 was a success. That is why I think it is a shame that not enough people have heard of it or have forgotten it. So please join me while I share the history and some information about Magnavox Geewhizbang console, the Odyssey 2.

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• This is the 339th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 14 of the new season.

• I have wanted to do this episode for a few years. It has been requested by people often.

• I think my uncle came across his system from someone he knew - a bought off the truck kinda deal. Knowing him, it doesn’t surprise me that he didn’t consider that multiple game systems existed.

• My favorite game from this time period was a platformer called, Pickaxe Pete.

• Put in some fun retro audio, but I would love to have included more. They did some solid marketing and had some great commercials. Leonard Nimoy is a great spokesperson.

• I cannot think of another console where one person was responsible for so much of the games available for it, especially at such a large scale. Its amazing. Here is a great interview with Ed Averett.

• If you want to check out the console, you can emulate it at the Internet Archive. Its not perfect, but it gives you a great idea of the consoles capabilities.

• I am to try and put Bonus Clipping up at the same time the episode comes out and see if people prefer it that way.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thanks for reading The Retroist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

It took me a few years to get a computer in the 1980s, eventually landing a Commodore VIC-20. In the meantime, many of my friends and their families had all sorts of computers. The most popular were various machines from Atari, with a few outliers. All of my memories of these machines revolve around doing what kids loved to do back then, playing games. It was during one of these computer gaming sessions that I got to play a pretty exciting game on the TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo): Poltergeist.

I had played a few other games on the CoCo before, but when my friend invited me over with the promise of a game based on a horror movie that had electrified the neighborhood, I was there in a flash. While the game I played that day was simple by today’s standards, we found it immersive and very challenging. Not only that, but it was unique to the system. Yes, games with the Poltergeist name were released on other computers like the C64 and ZX Spectrum, but neither was based on the film. So this was, I believe, a CoCo exclusive. Surprisingly, even in the years that followed, and with all the movie sequels, they never developed another video game based on the movie or the franchise.

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For those unfamiliar with the film, Poltergeist (1982) was a supernatural horror movie about a suburban family whose home is haunted by restless spirits, culminating in the abduction of their young daughter Carole Anne into a ghostly dimension known as the “Other Side.” It was creepy, emotional, and left a serious impression on anyone who saw it back then, including a lot of kids who probably shouldn't have been seen it (but were lucky to do so).

The game was fairly involved, consisting of three levels. The first level had you running around the neighborhood collecting objects that would be used in rescuing Carole Anne from the “Other Side.” You had to move from house to house—those marked with black dots—while dodging cars. Once you collected all the objects, a moving red dot would appear, indicating the house you needed to reach. It moved pretty quickly, but usually just to a nearby house, so you just needed to stay calm. This level had a timer, described as “30 Units” of time. After a few tries, we never ran out of time. If you’re having trouble, here’s a tip: if you hold down the button when the level is loading, the cars won’t load. It makes it much easier to clear and is good for practice.

The next level is a Frogger-like climb up the stairs to the second floor of the house. It’s pretty busy on that stairwell, so you really need to think about your timing and can’t rely on a lot of lateral motion. After a few games, you’ll get the hang of it and reach the final level. I liked the initial challenge of this level. My one big complaint is that the color choice is just too bright. I imagine that was done to make things easier to see and to contrast with the final level.

This last one is pretty great, but also very challenging. It’s sort of a first-person view, with demons and ghosts coming out of the light toward you. You need to use your joystick to shoot them before they reach you. Unfortunately, and at random, one of these pixelated specters turns out to be Carole Anne. If you shoot her, the game ends immediately and you have to start over. If you avoid shooting her and manage to defeat the menacing demons, you rescue Carole Anne and are rewarded with a final screen that simply says, “This house is clean.” That’s when you high-five your friends and start jumping around the room, until your friend’s father yells at you to settle down because he’s trying to watch golf.

You can see the program pak pictured above, which features the famous movie poster. That image also appeared on the box and in the manual. You can find the manual on the Internet Archive (where you can also emulate the game), and it does a pretty good job explaining how to play. My favorite part, though, something I never read as a kid, is a wonderfully written bit of copy that sets up the gameplay.

Steve and Diane Freeling have lost their youngest child, Carol Anne. Well, they haven't exactly lost her . . . she's somewhere in the Freeling's home, being held captive by the Poltergeist. Although her mother can communicate with her via the static emanating from every television in the house, the situation grows more hopeless each day.

It's up to you to rescue Carol Anne from the monstrous grasp of the poltergeist. To do it, you'll have to gather a few objects needed to help locate her: a length of rope, a ribbon, a towel, some tennis balls, and a handkerchief.

Once you have everything you need, including your courage, you'll have to get past the staircase which seems to forbid your entry into Carol Anne's bedroom. After all, it was from this bedroom that she was kidnapped.

If you're able to get upstairs, you'll have to go into the energy field and do battle with the tricky poltergeist, who is determined to keep Carol Anne forever. Your senses will have to be sharply honed to eliminate the poltergeist!

Can you save Carol Anne from an eternity of nothingness? Are you skilled enough to avoid the obstacles thrown in your path by the unrelenting poltergeist? Are you brave enough to keep on trying, no matter what happens? You could sacrifice your life for the sake of a helpless little girl— are you ready to risk it?

When the game hit stores in late 1982, it was priced at $34.95, which is the equivalent of around $111 today. That’s a lot of money for a game. Three years later, in 1985, they were still selling it, as you can see from this ad in Rainbow Magazine from that August. By then, you could pick up a copy on sale for $24.95. That would be a much more reasonable, though still pretty steep, $73 today.

The graphics on the CoCo weren’t jaw-dropping, but they had their charm. The neighborhood layout was simple and blocky, but easy to read, and the stairwell level had a nice sense of vertical movement, especially for the time. The final level stood out with its eerie flickering light and shadowy figures emerging from the center of the screen, it really did capture a sense of the otherworldly. The sound design was basic but effective, with just enough buzzes and beeps to add tension without overwhelming the gameplay. You kind of had to use your imagination to fill in the gaps, but that was part of the magic.

I am still surprised that this turned out to be a title exclusive to the CoCo. While Spielberg was not the director of Poltergeist, I remember even then, they made a big deal about his association with it. This game could have easily been remade to other systems, or at least a derivative of it could have. Maybe it was an issue or licensing or maybe since Poltergeist was released only a week apart from the mega-hit E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, the former was buried under the pursuit of licenses for the latter? Its hard to know, but I think it must have had an effect.

Looking back, what stands out to me most isn’t just the gameplay or the movie tie-in, but how moments like these were part of a bigger thing happening at the time, when movies, video games, and imagination all collided in our homes. Like other movie-related titles, Poltergeist on the CoCo wasn’t just a game, it was a window into a strange, digital version of a world we’d just watched in the theater, now somehow playable in our friend’s family room. It gave us an added thrill by discovering that our computers, quirky and underpowered as they were, could pull us back into those stories, even if just for a little while. That mix of curiosity, horror, and pixelated joy? That’s the kind of thing that sticks with you.

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When I was writing about the TRON Video Game Tournament of 1982 last week, I kept finding mentions of another contest that was taking place that summer, the TRON Radio Contest. I have tried searching for details about the contest and was able to find some stations where it was run. Outside of this and descriptions of how the contest would be run, I cannot find much else. The reason I would like to know more is because this wasn’t some standard contest, this involved computers and gaming on the radio.

Around the time of TRON’s release, local TV stations were doing an interesting tie-in with video games. They had programming where people would call in and engage with a video game using their voice. A simple word would cause the “fire button” to be pressed on whatever game was playing and you would score points for every hit. In my area, this programming ran on local station WPIX and was called, TV PIXXX.

This paradigm makes sense for television where you can see the action. So you can imagine my surprise when I was reading about the release of TRON and spotted this in the Muncie Evening Press,

Radio listeners around the country have also had a chance to compete via a unique “Tron” radio game. I don’t know all the details, but listeners would call the station and play over the phone - a “Tron” game complete with “sound effects from the film mixed with laser blasts and explosions,” according to a Disney press release.

So how was this played? I can’t see it being an action game, so maybe it was some sort of audio journey where you can interact with the Master Control Program and navigate the grid, but too many wrong moves and you are derezzed?

I have tried looking around for any hint of the game, but beside passing mentions? Nothing. I would think this would have been run in a major market like New York City, near where I lived, but no local press is talking about it. So this is a new wonderful mystery and I can only hope one day the audio and the script see the light of day. In my mind, a lot of the calls played out like Adventure Call.

(If you have retro finds you would like for me to share, I want to hear them. What old useful website are still lurking on the web? Some old TV show streaming online? Old tech being brought back? Let me know.)

ONE COOL VIDEO

Disney was spending up a storm on marketing and they had some great partnerships for TRON. Scott Paper Towels got in on the action with the Scott TRON Sweepstakes. What seems really interesting is the Iron-On you could get when you bought two Scott products.

TEN THINGS RETRO

😂 Pranks - Did you ever wonder about those pranks you could send away for in the back of comic books? What did they look like? How did they work? Philip David Treece did and he started a website dedicated to them called Old Jokes. He is also interviewed in the newest Ironic Sans.

🐉 Dungeons & Dragons - Some of the older Dungeons & Dragons books are getting pricey, so I am really glad that some people are out there sharing and discussing the art from often overlooked supplements like the Monster & Treasure Assortment.

🎞️ Movies - On the Back to the Future Blu-Ray, they have a too short segment showing auditions for actors who tried out for the film. Each of them is a wonderful what-if glimpse at an alternative film.

📺 Technology - Sony might have not have invented High-Definition video, but with their high-end products and global reach they certainly helped to shape how the world would use it.

🎮 Consoles - Mail Order Catalogs used to be big business. While they still linger, they do not have the reach they did in their peak just a few decades ago. The lure of these catalogs was hard to resist and for many people it was how we made some pretty big buying decision. For example, what video games or consoles we might pick up.

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🎨 Art - Jeff Easley is a celebrated fantasy painter. His art has graced some of the most well know fantasy properties out there. He is now running a Kickstarter for a book featuring curated selection from his impressive body of work.

🎸 Music - Here is a great clip from the 4K remastered version of the 1968 Jean-Luc Godard film, Sympathy for the Devil. In it we see some very young members of The Rolling Stones recording the title song

🕹️ Video Games - Super Nintendo Consoles, which are getting long in the tooth, are very slowly getting faster as they age. People are of course trying to figure out exactly why.

🐰 Cakes - Easter is coming and if you are looking for a fun cake to serve this time of year, you could can easily take your Bugs Bunny Wilton Cake pan and turn ol’ Bugs into the Easter Bunny.

🐻 Toys - Are you a fan of ShowBiz Pizza’s Rock-A-Fire Explosion? Did you know you can get your very own Billy Bob 16" fully plush doll? He ain’t cheap, but he is very cuddly and still as handsome as ever.

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FEATURED RETRO COUPON

They don’t make the Dandy Bar anymore. It was another bar that I think they tried to pass off as a healthier alternative to candy. I can tell you this, it tasted a lot like a candy bar and I loved it.

SUBSTACK RECOMMENDATION

Do you ever look at current trends and wonder how they connect to the past? The backstory for Andor? How Godzilla got his roar? Pop Culture Precursor is a newsletter that traces the origin stories of the these and many other modern trends.

FROM THE RETROIST ARCHIVE

Let's take a moment to look back at four posts from the Retroist's past. I have been at this a long time.

One Year Ago…

🥪 The Rise and Fall of the Burger King Meatloaf Sandwich

Five Years Ago…

⛵ The LeisureWave Aesthetic

Ten Years Ago…

🎵 Remembering Joe Dolce’s “Shaddap You Face”

Fifteen Years Ago…

🕹️ Up ‘n Down for the Atari 2600

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On the May Monthly Update I talk about what's been going on with the site and podcast, but also some other things going on in my life and some random thoughts I have. They include:

• Skip It By Tiger Toys

• Double Dutch Bus

• Streets of Fire

• Chuck E Cheese

• Game(dot)om

• Tron Tournament

• Strawberry Pepsi

• Punky Brewster Fridge Episode

• Timeless Movies

• Upscaled Nostalgia

• Do yo…

I have met a couple of adults who are unlucky enough to have never visited a Chuck E. Cheese as a kid. Many of them were not able to fathom why anyone would feel affection to the chain. Some of them would be lucky enough to see it through their kid’s eyes’ eventually, but for many, they will just never understand the magic. So on today’s episode of the Retroist Podcast, I want to talk a little bit about that magic.

I started by discussing my first experience at Chuck E. Cheese. It was a mind-blowing time and one that I wish I could relive. Then I move onto the company itself. I talk about its founding, its founder, its growth, its relationship with Showbiz Pizza, its falls, rebirths and much more. I tried not to go too deep on the business of the company, but instead try to give a solid overview that should work for people familiar with the chain and those who aren’t.

Chuck E. Cheese was built for kids. It was a message its founder, Nolan Bushnell liked to make sure people working there knew. But this was also a major chain that made history and looked like it was going on to huge things in the early 80s, but having tied themselves to the arcade industry, it was hurt by the crash of 1983. Still, the company managed to dig itself out, refocus and continue. Other companies and food chains have come and gone, but Chuck E. Cheese adapts and survives.

You can support the Retroist by joining my Patreon. Supporters will get member-only shows and audio extras associated with the show. Click the giant button below to check out the Patreon Page.

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• This is the 338th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 13 of the new season.

• I recorded an episode about Chuck E. Cheese about a decade ago, but never released the episode for reasons.

• Chuck E. Cheese brought on a lot of competition and over the years I have heard from many people who went to non-Chuck or Showbiz pizza places that had animatronics.

• Pardon my attempts at a NJ accent.

• I was going to talk about Showbiz Pizza, but I think I will save that for a future episode. I was lucky enough to have tried both in my youth.

• The one I went to most was in the parking lot of the Willowbrook Mall in New Jersey. We would go to the mall and I would see Chuck E. Cheese across the parking lot and beg my Mom to take me. My biggest dream at the time was to have my birthday there. Sadly it didn’t happen.

• I cut out a great deal from this episode, but did add in some fun retro audio. The part I might revisit would be the subsidiary and ancillary businesses that sprung up around the business. Maybe as a bonus track.

• The last time I was in a Chuck E. Cheese was in the mid 90s. It still had a few arcade games that I could recognize, but a lot had changed. It was already not the place of my youth.

• Bonus Clipping should be up on Patreon tomorrow.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thanks for reading The Retroist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Reviews for TRON might have been mixed when it hit theaters in the summer of 1982. While some might complain about its plot or length, it was hard to deny the technical virtuosity of the film. Moreover, this film was making a statement. We were all entering the age of the computer, and video games were going to be at the forefront of our interaction with them moving forward. To punctuate this point, they released a series of tie-in video games, including an arcade game that was a masterpiece of graphics, sound, and gameplay.

The potential of the arcade game allowed Disney, who made the film, to do something that no other film had done up until that point—use the video game as marketing for the film. To do that, they held a National Video Game Tournament that drew thousands of entries and became the most successful video game competition of its time, giving us a glimpse of the e-sports craze decades before that word would come into common use.

The TRON arcade game was designed by Bill Adams, with music composed by Earl Vickers. The game was released for the competition in June of 1982, just a few weeks before the film’s release. It would get a wider release in arcades later that summer and would become a massive success, eventually selling over 10,000 arcade cabinets and gobbling up countless quarters.

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Players of TRON are thrust onto the game grid just like in the film. Each game starts on a sub-game selection screen with four choices. Once you choose the game you want to play, you use a combination of an eight-way joystick, a trigger button, and a rotary dial to score points and beat the challenge you chose. Once you are victorious, you move on to choose another sub-game. If you clear all four, the difficulty increases, and you continue to choose.

The four sub-games, in order of greatness, are:

1. Light Cycles

2. I/O Tower

3. MCP Cone

4. Battle Tanks

It was an addicting game, and the sound and visuals were a magnet for anyone entering an arcade in the latter half of 1982. Before TRON, I would usually spread my quarters around during a visit to the arcade, but for a good six months, it was TRON all the time, every time.

With this tremendous game in their pocket, Disney decided to sponsor a national video game tournament. Announced in newspapers and magazines in May of 1982, the first part of the tournament ran from May 24 through June 18 and was sponsored by Bally Midway Manufacturing and the Aladdin’s Castle arcade chain. In arcades they had a very cool TRON cardboard standee with entry forms that has become quite collectible.

While Aladdin’s participated, it appears other arcades also hosted the event, which was open to anyone with no purchase required. Although, once you entered an arcade to play some TRON, I imagine a lot of people lingered and enjoyed these location before and after playing.

On June 19, they held an arcade champion round of play at over 400 locations throughout the United States. Winners from that round moved to a regional competition on June 26, which whittled the field down to just sixteen finalists. These gamers were flown to New York City via Eastern Airlines, where the first round of the finals took place at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on July 6 (where they were also staying). After that, they headed over to Madison Square Garden and played in the Felt Forum for the grand finale on July 7.

TRON was new to everyone playing the game, but it turned out people were better at it than expected, with really high scores and very long games. This required Bally Midway to alter the game and make it more difficult. For a while, if you were playing TRON at an Aladdin’s Castle, you might have been playing on an older chip that seemed to be an easier version of the game. Even with the new chip, to help speed up play, they adjusted the game so that later competitors entered at higher levels as they progressed in the tournament.

Reading old newspapers, it appears that many arcades held unaffiliated competitions with local prizes. In the official competition, I can’t find mention of smaller prizes during early rounds, but a win in the final competition could get you a Commodore computer valued at $4,000 and a TRON arcade game priced at $2,500. This was all in addition to travel, hotel, and meals, which were covered for the finalists. Not a bad way to spend the two days leading up to the film’s release, for which they were given a special screening. Two cast members from the film, Cindy Morgan and David Warner, attended the event.

After the competition was announced, it was easy to lose track of what had happened. Luckily, as the year drew to a close, both RePlay and Joystik magazines mentioned it. In the November issue of Joystik, they provided a nice breakdown of the finals. They played at eight arcade machines, all wearing matching TRON blue competition shirts. The machines all had screens on top so that spectators and judges could watch without getting too close to the players. These were some amazing gamers with hours of play logged.

Since this was a media event, they tried to bring in some more star power and held a small celebrity tournament that included baseball greats Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, as well as Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie, among others. For this competition, Disney donated $2,000 to the charity of their choice. In the end, actor Doug McKeon beat Hank Aaron, with the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society.

After the celebrity event, it was time for the three finalists to take to the game grid on the last day. The competitors were Richard Ross of Jacksonville, FL, Sterling Ouchi of Torrance, CA, and Scott Katkin of East Greenwich, RI. To say Richard Ross ran away with it would be an understatement. The final score tally was a three-game score, and Ross was over a million points ahead of Katkin, the second-place finisher. Here is the full list of all competitors, along with their ages and total scores as published in Joystik:

1. Richard Ross (29) - 3,958,901

2. Scott Katkin (19) - 2,731,770

3. Sterling Ouchi (18) - 1,158,085

4. James E. Hatley (17) - 835,196

5. Tim Collum (19) - 604,187

6. Scott MacDonald(17) - 535,197

7. Walt Marchard (33) - 400,174

8. Matthew John Collins (15) - 343,604

9. Rick Storer (20) - 333,433

10. Steve Baker (23) - 237,905

11. Matt Gordon (13) - 231,506

12. Robert Withers Morgan (21) - 212,705

13. Allen Waits (15) - 190,364

14. Scott W. Starkey (23) - 190,183

15. Mike Simmons (17) - 173,517

16. Al Cooper (27) - 145,065

In early 1983, Ross was asked to share his strategy for playing the game in Joystik magazine. It’s only a couple of pages long, but this illustrated guide is a great way to improve your game at all levels of play.

The numbers on this tournament were impressive. In just its first five days, over 120,000 people had entered the tournament. On the machines located in 400 arcades, over a quarter of a million games were logged. In total, they estimated that 7.5 billion points were scored in that first week alone.

Video games had been around for a while when the TRON Video Game Tournament took place. They had even tried to have competitions before, with one featuring Centipede becoming an infamous failure. But this one worked for many reasons. It was well run, with a budget backed by Disney and a nationwide infrastructure of arcades that could handle the number of entrants. The way they treated the players also changed, with competitors being treated like the winners they were, not having to get themselves to the finals on their own dime. It was about a video game, but it also got a dose of Hollywood glamour. In the end, the winner had to not only be skilled but have the endurance to play the game for hours. It was a glimpse of what we would eventually call e-sports and one worth remembering.

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My mother was always cautious. From an early age, she frequently warned me about the dangers lurking in our neighborhood. "Stranger danger" in all its many forms was a common topic of discussion, especially if she heard anything even remotely related to it on the local news. I wasn’t a rebellious kid, and when she warned me about something, I tended to take it seriously. But one warning that recurred with surprising regularity was about the dangers of refrigerators.

More specifically, she warned me never to get inside one. This confused me because, even though I wasn’t a big kid, there was no way I could fit into a fridge with all those shelves. When I asked for clarification, she explained that she was worried about an old refrigerator I might find outside—one that I might be tempted to hide in or play in with my friends.

It sounded silly, but when I thought about the goofy things my friends and I liked to do, I couldn’t say the odds of us trying it were zero. So I always gave any discarded fridge a wide berth whenever I spotted one on the street. Still, at home, I couldn't help but wonder—how exactly did someone get stuck in a fridge? They seemed so easy to open. Then I realized the warning wasn’t about modern refrigerators but older ones.

This became clear when on January 19, 1986, I watched Punky Brewster, specifically Season 2, Episode 16, Cherie Lifesaver. In the episode, Henry gets a new fridge but fails to remove the door from the old one, which has an exterior latch. Punky’s friend Cherie hides inside and nearly suffocates. It was a terrifying lesson in the importance of CPR—and in making sure to remove the doors from old refrigerators.

What made it so frightening was how unexpectedly the danger unfolded, especially if you weren’t fully aware of the risk. My mom had warned me about this dozens of times, yet I still didn’t see it coming.

Fortunately for future generations, these type of deathtraps became rare. In 1958, they passed legislation that switched most fridges to a magnetic latching system. This is a much safer system and accidents related to the old locking method plunged, although incidents are still happening in other parts of the world.

This episode’s story was actually chosen in a contest. It was submitted by a kid named, Jeremy Reams. Way to go, Jeremy!

The Punky episode was very scary and haunts a lot of people who saw it at the time. Its a bold choice to have a likable main character almost die, and while it had a happy ending, you couldn’t help but feel the panic and helplessness in the episode. This episode might be a little overly dramatic, but as far as Very Special Episodes go, I think it is very well done.

Punky wasn’t the only one to feature this terrifying and dangerous risk to kids. GI Joe did a PSA that tried to warn kids from hiding in old trunks or refrigerators. Not sure how I missed this, it would have been a little earlier than the Punky Brewster episode.

(If you have retro finds you would like for me to share, I want to hear them. What old useful website are still lurking on the web? Some old TV show streaming online? Old tech being brought back? Let me know.)

ONE COOL VIDEO

Punky Brewster wasn’t the only show that tried to draw attention to this danger. Almost two decades earlier, Dragnet had an episode where Joe Friday comes down pretty hard on a guy who didn’t take the door off his refrigerator.

TEN THINGS RETRO

🎥 Movies - Movies can be subjective, but a large amount of people will agree that certain films are timeless classics. But are they right? What does “timeless” mean and is it even a real thing?

⚓ Cartoons - They have been making Popeye cartoons for a long time. While the versions they made in the 70s and 80s might not be as well-remembered as the earlier versions, for many it was their first exposure to Popeye. Looking back, the logic of those decade’s Popeyes is a little odd.

📺 Television - I tend to like to watch older TV shows in the lower resolutions to have a more authentic experience. Still, I am always interested in remastered versions of the movies and shows that I love. With technology allowing upscaling, some, like Upscaled Nostalgia, have taken it upon themselves to play with converting older shows HD and beyond. The results can be mixed, but its always interesting.

🚗 Cars - You know what it is missing from your vehicle? A built-in Nintendo 64. It seems like a great reason to start loving traffic.

🎨 Art - Did you have Pee-Chee folders when you were a kid? Were yours pristine or like many did you use yours as a canvas for expression? In his recent video, Scott Serkland, gives Pee-Chee a monster makeover and in his newsletter, he makes the template available so you can do your own makeover.

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📻 Home Audio - In 1987, Sony introduced kids to the world of portable audio devices with their “My First Sony” line of products. For many, this was how they enjoyed some of the first music that would come to define them. Obsolete Sony takes a look at the history of Sony’s leap into children's electronics.

🎸 Music- As you probably know, a lot of people make new music for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Linus Åkesson, like many, enjoys the sound that the NES makes and decided to not just emulate, but build a cartridge to play music on the NES as the “Family Bass.” Its was an interesting journey and the results are impressive.

🛸 Video Games - UFO 50 is a collection of 50 retro-styled single and multiplayer games from the creators of Spelunky, Downwell, Air, Land & Sea, Skorpulac, Catacomb Kids, and Madhouse. They have very effectively merged more modern gameplay into 8-bit styling. It is a blast.

🚗 Cars - Jay Leno loves cars and in this episode of Jay Leno's Garage he drives the legendary 1977 Pontiac Firebird Formula, the actual car driven by James Garner in the hit series The Rockford Files.

📺 History - A history of the color bars, the most common television test pattern out there, and what they actually do.

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I drank so much Nestle’s Quik as a kid and still tend to keep a container of it around for when I want a childhood favorite. Two things, I don’t like that they changed the name to Nesquik and I miss the metal can it came in. Here is a coupon with no expiration date that is probably from 1985 or 1986 based on the Statue of Liberty sponsorship.

SUBSTACK RECOMMENDATION

While people had been tinkering with and playing video games in Canada for much longer, the first documented commercial Canadian video game release was Les Têtards (The Tadpoles) published by Logidisque in 1982. Its an interesting story of young kids who wrote a video game and made it into the history books.

FROM THE RETROIST ARCHIVE

Let's take a moment to look back at four posts from the Retroist's past. I have been at this a long time.

One Year Ago…

🦛 The Forgotten Hungry Hungry Hippos Craze

Five Years Ago…

🎥 Dick Tracy Special (2010)

Ten Years Ago…

🐊 The First and Last Time my family bought Powdered Gatorade

Fifteen Years Ago…

🛁 I Still Want Me some Crazy Foam

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Streets of Fire is a rock n roll fantasy film that crossed genres and had music at its center. Unfortunately, even though it was wildly creative, when it hit theaters in 1984, the reception to the film was underwhelming. Fortunately though, when the film made its way to home video and cable TV, it started to develop a following. Nowadays its has a high-level cult status and many critics have looking more kindly on it.

While mediocre reviews were certainly one reason it didn’t do very well, one cannot overlooks its competition. This movies was released in the summer of 1984, a pretty hot summer for movies. To stand out it would have to defeat some behemoths and it just wasn’t up for the task.

On today’s show, I talk all about this wonderful film. I start by talking about a game we used to play at the video store, where Streets of Fire was my go-to film. Then I move onto the movie itself, discussing the people in front of and behind the camera, its style, music, planned sequels, and much more.

This film filled me with optimism for films at the time. It showed that creative people were trying new things and while I couldn’t explain all of the decisions they made in the film, I continue to find them all very intriguing. This is a cult film that is a very easy watch and will have you singing along and ready to watch it again and again.

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• This is the 337th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 12 of the new season.

• I get a few requests for this movie each year. Its a great film and I am glad to finally have an episode about it.

• I have been making some changes to the show slowly, but surely. I hope people enjoy them.

• The soundtrack for this movie is amazing, I especially enjoy Nowhere Fast. Jim Steinman knows what he is doing.

• Every time I do anything where I need to mention Willem Dafoe I am reminded that his birthname is William. Willem, the Dutch version of Willem was his nickname, I wonder if he corrects people often or he just rolls with it.

• The unofficial sequel is interesting, but I don’t feel like I can recommend it.

• Sledgehammer fight!!

• Bonus Clipping should be up on Patreon tomorrow.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

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At some time in the 1960s, toymakers realized that they could capitalize on a solo jump-roping toy. The toy probably preceded the sixties, but records around toys become even spottier the further back you go. The concept is relatively simple—it's a skipping or solo jump rope-style toy where you tether a ball to your ankle and attempt to spin it while jumping over it. So, anyone with a ball, string, and something to make a rigid ring could create one.

Small toy manufacturers started making them, but its big introduction to the North American market came via two Canadian companies in the late sixties. As you might guess, because I said two companies, controversy and a lawsuit were involved in the toy’s release.

Twinpak, a Montreal-based package maker threw its toymaking hat into the ring in 1968 when it released a skipping toy called Footsie. Retailing for just 98 cents, it was a classic solo jump rope toy that, in just a few weeks, had sold over 300,000 units. Many were comparing its success to that of the Hula Hoop, which had been a huge hit a decade earlier.

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The president of Twinpak, Bob Asche, said he spotted a child using a wood-and-rope version of the toy when he visited Jerusalem in 1967. He thought it would be a big hit, and as soon as he got back to Canada, he applied for a patent for a plastic model. A few weeks later, a mold was made, and they started to produce the toy and get it to market. They couldn’t keep up with demand—it was so popular—and that was when Reliable’s version of the toy began to show up in stores with plenty of inventory. Their toy was called Skip-it—note the lowercase "i."

While Twinpak had just the one mold, Reliable made two, which allowed them to crank out their version of the toy. The dispute revolved around the patent claim made by Twinpak. Reliable Toys’ president, Mannie Grossman, said he had received a manufactured version of the toy from an associate in Israel in July of 1967. This toy was unpatented, and they made their molds from that version. The fact that other similar toys had been around for a while was their basis for rejecting Twinpak’s sole rights to it.

Fortunately for both parties, they were able to come to an agreement. After just one day of legal arguments, they negotiated a settlement that cleared the way for both of them to sell their toy. And sell them they did—by the next year, Twinpak had sold over 3,000,000 Footsies.

The United States already had a version of the toy on the market a few years earlier. The Jingle Jump had the same concept, but as you can see the process for attaching it to your foot was a bit more involved. A cool toy, but I do not think it was a big seller, which opened the door for the Canadian version of the toy to descend from the north.

They would eventually start selling both the Footsie and the Ski-it in the U.S. and they sold well, although my favorite was a version, called the Lemon Twist, put out by Chemtoy, in which the ball was replaced by a plastic lemon.

Two decades later, in 1988, Tiger Electronics acquired the rights to the Skip-it from its American rights holder, the Paul E. Price Company. They gave their version a bit of a redesign, and this Americanized Skip-It (now with a capital "I") was quite the rage from 1990 to 1992. It was a well-designed toy that came in bright, different colors and now had a counter so you could continue to challenge yourself to become a Skip-It champion.

Released in late 1989, Skip-It is probably best remembered as an early 1990s toy, perhaps because of a big promotional push that year at various National Tiger Challenge Events.

The events were often held at malls and attracted hundreds of participants. They could compete in contests featuring Tiger Toys like Skip-It, Skoots-Kick, and Ribbit Race. You could win toy prizes, but winners of local competitions would also be entered to win a family trip to the Bahamas in a national drawing.

It was a great way to get visibility for their products, with local newspapers and TV stations covering it. This led to a solid Christmas season as we moved into late 1990, with Skip-It becoming a surprise hit in what newspapers referred to as the “girls' toys” category. With its fun coloring, promise of active play, and a price tag under $10, it was easy to see why it ended up under so many trees that holiday season.

It was a novel toy and had a good shelf life, easily found in toy stores until about 1996. After that, I see a lot of clearance mentions, so the big sales wave of the toy was in the past. The toy would linger, Tiger would put out some variations, and even today some versions this skipping toys can be found in stores. Still, in the United States, the nineties were a golden age. Many who were around in this era, even if they didn’t play with a Skip-It, probably still remember the commercial and its jingle.

My experience with Skip-It came when I went to visit my friend, whose younger sister had gotten one. She had grown bored of it, and he had adopted the pink toy and would spend hours trying to beat his own high score. When I first saw him doing it, I thought, “Well, this is just silly.”

Fifteen minutes later, it was my turn, and we spent the rest of the afternoon taking turns using the Skip-It while the other one played Sega. It developed into a weird but short-lived obsession. It might seem like an easy toy, but when you started to get into higher reps, you went into a sort of trance that made you break your concentration and potentially trip. Combine that with the small size of the toy, and you could see the potential challenge. More that a few times we fell over or tripped up. It makes me marvel at the skill of people who could do one Skip-It on each ankle. That sounds like a recipe for doom.

Skip-It and its ilk, may not have had the staying power of some of the all-time great toys, but for multiple brief periods, it was everywhere. It got kids moving, sparked friendly competitions, and left a lasting impression on those who played with it. Even today, just hearing the name can send you right back to a time of neon colors, mall events, and the simple joy of trying to set a new high score in your backyard (or friend’s living room while he played Sega).

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For years I have been considering doing a Monkees podcast. It has always felt like a big subject since I believe the band was very important in the history of pop music. I have tried to record it a couple of times, but was never happy with the direction or the results. This time I decided to mainly focus on the TV show, and I am happy with how it turned out.

On the show, I start by discussing a friend in school who was obsessed with the band and how they hoped to get a part in the reboot of the Monkees. Then I move onto the band. I discuss their casting, music, the tv show, the movie, their tours, reception, rebellion, and much more.

This band matters. Not only were they wildly successful, but at the height of their popularity, they turned a critical eye towards themselves. It is amazing that a band that was constructed to serve as a commercial enterprise, not only played along, but then subversively began tearing down their own image. I am not sure if its unprecedented, but it a big deal and deserves to be remembered.

I am a Monkees fan, and because of their TV antics, they rank pretty high in my lost of bands from that era. Were they more talented than the Beatles? Maybe not musically, but in other ways, like presence and certainly acting ability, they were much better. So if you are not familiar with the band, please give them a try. If you haven’t listened to them in a while, now is a good time to revisit them.

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• This is the 336th episode of the Retroist Podcast and episode 11 of the new season. This is one of the longer episodes of the show. Certainly the longest episode this season, so far.

• For a long time, this was one of the most requested shows. I did try and record it during season 2 and 6, but I couldn’t get it right. My problem was that I don’t really have the proper vocabulary to talk about music in a podcast. For this episode, I decided I would focus on the show, but mention some stuff about their music and their movie, Head.

• At some points in the 80s, if you had cable TV and some decent local channels, you could watch several hours of the Monkees each day. A few times, I just channel jumped watching only Monkees.

• Monkees Screen Tests.

• We only owned their first album. So when the Monkees made their comeback, it was interesting to get to hear just how much music they had made over the years.

• In the episode, I cut out a part where I talked about how my favorite Monkee is. I am not going to explain, why, no one should have to explain their favorite Monkee. I am a Mike Nesmith fan.

• I mention the Epcot Concerts that I saw with Davy Jones. Those concerts were amazing. You could just be walking around the park and see a concert loading in and then get to see a well-know, but maybe slightly dated artist. What a treat!

• I cut out a section about people who would come into the video store trying to find all the episodes of the show. At least once a day, after the show premiered on MTV, this was a question you had to field. I think we started selling some Monkees merchandise and a surprising number of people would buy it once we told them you couldn’t get more of the show on VHS.

• The FBI kept files on the Monkees. Too much monkeying around?

• The Monkees weren’t about music, Marge. They were about rebellion!

• Bonus Clipping should be up on Patreon tomorrow.

• Music on the show is, as always, by Peachy.

Thanks for listening to the show and I hope you have a great weekend.

Thanks for reading The Retroist! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.