Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (10 page)

E
VERYBODY knows G.I. Joe; since invading toyboxes in 1962, the twelve-inch action figure has gained worldwide fame and a foxhole full of military accessories, outfits, and vehicles. But in 1975, toward the end of the Vietnam War, Hasbro relaunched Joe as part of an “Adventure Team” that captured pygmy gorillas, wore pith helmets, and battled aliens instead of acting out scenes from
Apocalypse Now
.

Joe now had a new job and a new look. Some of the changes weren't exactly upgrades: His new fuzzy hairdo and scruffy beard made him seem a little like a plastic middle-school art teacher. His Eagle Eyes, which moved from side to side with a lever on his neck, just made him look shifty. But we all fell for his impressively named Kung Fu Grip, even though all it did was replace his hard-sculpted hands with soft rubber. It didn't exactly give him any martial arts skills, but he could hold things (including hands with another G.I. Joe if he wanted to—nobody asked, nobody told).

G
IRLS' bathrooms the nation over reeked of two scents in 1982: cigarette smoke and Giorgio Beverly Hills. Just looking at the perfume's name now, decades after its heyday, sets off a massive headache that starts right behind the eyes and soon has your whole head throbbing.

As with Audrey II, the man-eating plant in
Little Shop of Horrors
, the takeover was silent but sudden. One day no one had heard of Giorgio, the next day it had ruthlessly jammed its tendrils into every dressing table and bathroom counter in all fifty states and Canada. Girls who'd been content to spritz on Avon were suddenly pooling their babysitting money and forking over an unheard-of $40-plus for a seductively hourglass-figured bottle of Giorgio. Then there was the decision: to throw away the distinctive yellow-and-white striped box or to keep it, further lording your purchase over your poorer friends.

And once you had the holy grail, there was no sense being judicious about its usage. Other perfumes were for spraying; Giorgio was for
drenching
. The scent reportedly has 450 ingredients, and on a clear day at high school, you could smell every last one of 'em.

T
HIS 1985 flick had everything an '80s kid found totally awesome: bats, water-filled caves, pirate ships, treasure maps, and skeletons with beetles crawling out of their eyes.
The Goonies
even had a little romance, which was, for many of us, the grossest part of the flick. Regardless, it was a two-hour amusement-park ride, and kids in the audience easily imagined themselves as part of the adventure—right along with Martha Plimpton, Corey Feldman, and the kid who played Short Round—swooshing down a water slide, swashbuckling on a pirate ship, or befriending a freakish monster.

Fast-paced and funny, the film was
Indiana Jones
for the middle-school set, introducing a generation of kids to deformed-ogre-with-a-heart-of-gold Sloth, legendary pirate One-Eyed Willy, the toupeed antics of Soprano-to-be Joe Pantoliano, and the Truffle Shuffle—fat kid Chunk's blubber-shaking dance. Most important, though, it proved that underdogs and misfits—the chubby kid, the asthmatic, the brain, the geek—could sometimes save the day, goony or not.

H
ALLOWEEN was scary enough to a kid, what with teens out to steal your candy, peeled grapes that felt like eyeballs, and that one creepy neighbor who played the spooky-sound-effects record all night long. But that was nothing compared to tales of real-life psychos passing out poisoned candy and sticking sharp objects into fruit.

Sparked in part by the all-too-real Tylenol tampering deaths in 1982, authority-figure freak-outs slammed the brakes on the good old days of biking for miles to unfamiliar neighborhoods. Instead, parents now instructed us to go only to homes we knew and even then picked through our loot suspiciously. No matter how good that homemade popcorn ball looked, Mom wouldn't even let us sniff it if it wasn't commercially wrapped. Dads drove us to hospitals and police stations, where we joined other deflated kids waiting to get their bags of candy X-rayed. Some super-cruel parents actually put the kibosh on door-to-door trick-or-treating and instead dragged their kids to wimpy parties and malls.

Today, most instances of tampered-with treats have been written off as hoaxes, but the urban legend persists. Hey, son, that Milky Way looks suspicious. Better let me take a couple bites first.

I
T'S basic physiology: People need to breathe. Somehow, Halloween costume companies of the 1970s didn't comprehend that concept, churning out plastic masks with airholes so small that oxygen molecules had to line up single-file to squeeze through.

Breathing wasn't the only vital bodily function the masks inhibited—they also neglected to let kids see. It was as if the guy in charge of cutting eye holes had never actually met a real child and assumed their eyeballs were the size of BBs. More than one kid stumbled around his neighborhood in an oxygen-starved, half-blind haze, trying to gnaw on a tree he was convinced was a giant Snickers bar. Remove the mask, and the elastic band that held it on would crack like a bullwhip into your face.

Forget today's flammability standards.The pajama-like costumes that accompanied the masks were made of some synthetic material that looked as if it might burst into flames if someone shined a flashlight in a kid's general direction. But the point was pretty much moot in northern climes, where the costumes were hidden by jackets that made kids resemble superheroes with overprotective moms. There's nothing like having to explain to all your neighbors that you were supposed to be the Six Million Dollar Man and not an Eskimo with a bionic eye.

H
OW many kids have you seen playing with a Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese action figure? None many, that's how many. So why, in 1979, was there a plastic representation of B-movie director Hal Needham, known for directing flicks like
Smokey and
the Bandit
and
The Cannonball Run
? The dude had mad falling skillz, that's why. Before stepping behind the camera, Need-ham had firmly established himself as one of Hollywood's top cowboy stuntmen, so Gabriel Toys released an action figure and movie stunt set, complete with breakaway table and chair, bottles to smash, and a railing for the miniature Hal to crash through.

The coolest part of the set was the catapult designed to propel Needham through the air or jerk him backwards, as if he'd taken a shotgun blast to the chest. The catapult was powerful enough to launch heavier dolls, too, letting budding aerospace engineers fling Barbie or a Weeble into the stratosphere—or at least at the family cat. The cardboard cutout cowboys that populated the saloon were lame, but kids could always set them aside and invite other toys over for a drink with Hal instead. What really happened the night Curious George got goofy on sarsaparilla and smashed Raggedy Andy over the head with a table? They'll never tell.What happens in the toy box stays in the toy box.

L
ARRY Bird and Magic Johnson may have inspired a generation to take to the basketball courts, but let's see those guys challenge Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal in a pulling-down-the-ref's-pants contest.Winner? Harlem Globetrotters.