Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (4 page)

But other than numbers, television's big families and the real ones didn't share much in common. On TV, brothers and sisters formed singing groups and acted out Pilgrim plays in the backyard. In actual big families, if you weren't babysitting your younger siblings, you were babysitting the kids of your older siblings.You never got to pick the TV channel, dawdle in the tub, or choose the pizza toppings. But there was always someone up to play Barbies or Connect Four, or to smack the school bully and steal back your lunch. It was a family affair.

I
N 1969, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper roared across America on low-slung chopper-style motorcycles. That same year, kids of America roared across their playgrounds on the grade-school equivalent: Big Wheels. “Born to Be Wild,” meet “Born to Be Mild.” Get yer motor runnin', head out on the driveway.

With their bright primary color schemes and unique asphalt rumble, Big Wheels were as modern as the moon landing. Owners joined up into grade-school gangs, pedaling through the neighborhood as fast as their scrawny legs would go—at least until the giant, rock-embedded tires wore down to nothing, a regular Big Wheel hazard.

You could jump curbs, pop wheelies, or race down a steep driveway. In those carefree helmetless days, Big Wheels were responsible for more scabs than chicken pox, and not one kid cared.With a taste of the
Easy Rider
life so early on, it's a wonder more of us didn't go into motorcycle racing. Or traction.

Y
OU know those horror movies where demonic dolls terrify their owners? Blythe dolls would have Chucky wetting his pants in five seconds. Talk about the evil eye; Blythe had eight of them.

Kids pulled a string in the back of Blythe's head to change her eyes to one of four different colors. Cool concept, yes? But something in the execution was memorably disturbing.

When the doll was released in 1972,TV ads touted her eye-color choices as “Beautiful Blue, Bouncy Brown, Groovy Green and Pretty Purple.” Apparently someone at Kenner possessed the world's weirdest case of color blindness. On dolls we played with, “Bouncy Brown” eyes were the brilliant orange of NBA basketballs. And purple? These were not the wistful lilac eyes of Liz Taylor; instead, they were the bright pink of Liz Taylor's lipstick. Some kids loved having a doll with semipermanent pinkeye; others were unnerved. And while the orange and pink eyes stared straight ahead, the only two normal eye colors, blue and green, were slid way over to the side. Either Blythe was coyly incapable of meeting your gaze, or she was always checking to see if a better owner was sneaking up on her from another angle.

W
HAT is it about lions that made kids sob like crazy people? Whether it was the Christ-like Aslan in
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
, or the nearly toothless Major defending
Napoleon and Samantha
from a grizzly bear, lions rode a good PR buzz that hyenas would have paid big bucks for. Realistically, we knew lions would rather digest us than protect us, but in the movies, they were as loyal as Lassie.

No lion movie made kids bawl more than
Born Free
, based on Joy Adamson's book about raising orphaned lioness Elsa from cubhood and then training her to live in the wild again. The scene in the movie where Joy and George Adamson attempt to leave Elsa, and the confused lioness lopes after their Jeep, is a guaranteed sobfest. But there's a happy ending, as Elsa adapts and eventually shows off her three cubs. All hail the queen of the jungle.

I
T was an odd choice, really, to make candy in the shape of bottle caps. Teeth-breaking metal choking hazards? Let's teach kids to put'em in their mouths!

But someone at Wonka had obviously stumbled upon a batch of sugary chemical combinations that vaguely resembled soda-pop flavors, and BottleCaps was the name they went with.And then again, who would have thought that there would be a call for Wax Lips or Gummi Worms? BottleCaps seems normal by comparison.

Buying a package of BottleCaps eliminated the option paralysis that came with ordering a real soda. Can't decide between grape and orange, cola and root beer? With a package of BottleCaps, you get them all! The prodigal son of the BottleCaps family used to be lemon-lime, but that was about as popular as lemon-lime soda itself. It's since been replaced by cherry, which makes even less sense, since when's the last time you downed a fizzy glass of cherry soda?

I
N the 1970s, bubble gum broke out of the flat-stick, five-to-a-pack mold and punked out—the candy equivalent of the repressed kid who went off to college, shaved her hair into a Mohawk, and got her first tattoo. Suddenly, there was fat gum! Long, skinny gum! Double-flavored gum! Gum with liquid centers! When gum came home for spring break, we didn't even recognize her.

A prime example of the trend was Bub's Daddy, which operated under one simple principle: If kids liked a slender stick of gum, then they'd go bonkers for a mouth-stuffing mega-stick. So Bub's Daddy crammed the equivalent of a whole pack of gum into one fat, rounded, foot-long chewable cane—what better way to assure Mom that you were only having one piece?

Made by Donruss, who also cranked out baseball cards, Bub's Daddy was dusted in that same might-be-sugar-but-we-wouldn't-swear-to-it white powder that coats sports-card gum. But flavorwise, this taste treat stood head and shoulders above those sad pink slabs. Who's your daddy now?

W
E'D like to call this meeting of the “What in the World Was the Deal with
Bugsy Malone
?” support group to order. The oddly popular 1976 all-kids movie musical is our generation's Stonehenge. Will it ever make sense?
Bugsy
was part
High School Musical
, part
The Godfather
—and more than a little disconcerting.

Fourteen-year-old Scott Baio played a mini Michael Corleone in a world populated only by kids. The cars were pedal toys, and the guns shot whipped cream. So far, fine. But then it got weird, '70s-style.

The dark and moody flick crawled into creepy territory with Jodie Foster playing a tarted-up chanteuse and pubescent characters spouting Runyonesque dialogue, like “Put your flaps down, tiger, or else you'll take off.” And the wackiest part: When the kid actors opened their mouths to sing, out came adult voices.

What
was
this movie? Like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

F
AST food wasn't always family-friendly. “Have It Your Way”? Have it our way or the highway, kiddo. Tykes who didn't care for mustard or onions on their burgers were expected to suck it up—starving kids in Africa would have given anything to have some raw onion to chew on.

Into that bleak and grease-spattered world stepped Burger Chef, a chain that offered the “works bar,” where patrons could gussy up plain burgers with onions, pickles, ketchup, mustard, and the chain's own “scrumptious sauce.”Want to deck your burger with a smiley face of ketchup and a teetering ladder of pickle slices? Knock yourself out.

Burger Chef also earned points with kids by inventing the Fun Meal, a concept later borrowed by a certain clown-owned McFranchise. Their own mascots were the portly, bespectacled Burger Chef himself and his freakishly hyperactive . . . son? Life partner? Stunted-growth employee? Irreparably dense young ward? Well, some short guy named Jeff, anyway, possessor of a giant cowlick and prone to shrieking things like “Burger Chef, you're incrediBURGible!” We still miss the franchise, but at least Jeff finally shut up.

T
HE earliest handheld calculators weren't exactly pocket-sized, unless your pocket was the size of a shoe box. They looked like
Star Trek
tricorders and should have come with a doctor's phone number to call when you got the inevitable hernia from lugging them around.

But to kids who'd never seen computers except for room-sized ones in sci-fi movies, calculators were a step into that promised future of hovercraft, robot maids, and talking dogs. And yes, our main goal was to use them to cheat in math class.Take-home tests became a dream, as we aced even the gnarliest extra-credit problem without breaking a sweat. Our only obstacle was those three dreaded words: “Show your work.”

We couldn't take our calculators to class, of course, but soon science found a way around that, too, by inventing calculator watches. You definitely wanted to cheat off the nerd who was wearing one of these honkers—if the teacher didn't make him go put it in his locker before the test.

When models with graphing functions started appearing in the mid-'80s, teachers not only allowed them in school but forced us to spend six months of our allowance on one for class. The only problem? For many of us with no math aptitude, the crazy buttons looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Question: What's seven times twelve times Ra, the sun god? Answer: A whole bunch of unintelligible gibberish and a D in trig.

 

X-TINCTION RATING:
Still going strong, but a heckuva lot smaller and built into everything, including our cell phones.