Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (6 page)

W
E were freaks for tic-tac-toe, playing it everywhere—on scrap paper, on chalkboards, on frosty school-bus windows. So in 1974, when Connect Four came along, we immediately recognized it as three-dimensional tic-tac-toe and couldn't get enough.We spent hours dropping checkers into the stand with a satisfying
thwock
, trying to line up four in a row while preventing a pal from doing the same.

Talk about tension.You'd nonchalantly try to distract your friend from figuring out her one remaining block, blabbing about nothing, tapping the checkers on the table, impatiently convinced you were about to slam down Checker #4. Then out of nowhere, she'd swoop in and finish off her own row in a spot you hadn't even seen coming. AAUGH! Damn your powers of misdirection, Jeannine!

It was a feeling perfectly exemplified in the game's infamous commercial, in which bowl-haircutted brother gets beat by his crafty sibling. You remember it. “Here, diagonally!” she crows, as he sinks into defeat and delivers the classic line: “Pret-ty sneak-y, sis.”

Thankfully, the game had an ideal built-in way to let off steam: its quick-release latch. The crashing sound of all the checkers hitting the table at once was almost as satisfying as “accidentally” kicking over your sister's Lincoln Log tower. It was as close as kids could come to giving a family member the finger. Pretty sneaky is right.

B
REAKER one-nine, you got your ears on? Kids had no idea what CB chatter meant, but it sure was fun to pretend, holding a Romper Stomper to your mouth like it was a microphone and blabbing about “putting the hammer down” and “bears in the air.”

We discovered the citizen's-band phenomenon when C.W. McCall recorded the 1976 hit “Convoy.” You didn't have to understand the exotic new language (what in the world was a “cab-over Pete with a reefer on”?) to immediately fall in love with the romance of the eighteen-wheel lifestyle. “Convoy” told a classic tale of fighting authority, with the truckers crashing roadblocks and flaunting toll bridges.

Kids weren't the only ones who loved it. Adults started buying CBs for their Dodge Darts at such a frantic pace, the FCC doubled the number of available channels. Of course, no one knew any real CB lingo outside of the song lyrics, so real truckers had to suffer through listening to kids, desk jockeys, and housewives calling them “good buddy” until we grew sick of the craze and moved on to the next fad.

Today, the closest kids come to talking to truckers is when they pull an imaginary cord to try and get passing drivers to honk their horns. Still awesome? That's a big 10-4.

Y
OU'D get grounded if you pulled your sister's hair, but Crissy's glossy red tresses were specifically designed to be yanked. Pushing on the doll's stomach freed up her locks so you could then pull them to exorbitant lengths.To shorten the hair, you turned a dial in her back—which was only done for the satisfaction of making it Crystal Gayle length once again.

The first 1969 Crissy doll had the full Cousin It look, with hair going all the way to her feet. Disappointingly, that was later shortened to only hip length, but it was still longer than any little girl's mom would let her grow her own hair.

That was Crissy's charm. Rapunzel hair has always fascinated girls, even if they themselves were sporting the Dorothy Hamill look. Long locks were princessy, they were glamorous, they were . . . a real pain to keep untangled and styled, which is why even those girls who had long hair were generally forced to keep it locked in braids or ponytails.

Eventually, there was a talking Crissy, and there were plenty of accessories, including curlers and ribbons. But most of us didn't care about those extras. All we wanted to do was to grow and regrow her hair, over and over again. The only way you could change Barbie's hair length was with scissors, and that was always a one-way trip.

I
F clothes make the man, then Dapper Dan was a jarring juxtaposition of style over substance, sizzle over steak. Born in the early'70s, Dan taught kids how to buckle, button, tie, and zip, all while indulging his rather, uh, unconventional sense of fashion. From the tip of his yellow vinyl shoes to the top of his caramel-colored head, Dan marched to the beat of his own sartorial drummer.

Dan had his cotton-stuffed finger on the fashion pulse of the '70s. With navy-and-white checked tights, jean shorts, a blue-and-yellow striped shirt, and a bright red vest, his outfit clashed with every possible fabric and color scheme. Dapper? Not so much.

The flamboyant little dude went through numerous looks over the years, including a relatively hip backwards baseball cap and a jaunty canary-yellow vest. Still, he'll always be remembered as the little doll who could zip, buckle, and snap with the best of them, but who had no idea at all how to dress.

S
OAP operas, with their mushy, complicated relationships, don't normally offer a lot to hold kids' interest. But the star of
Dark Shadows
wasn't a hunky doctor or gorgeous model; instead, he was a 175-year-old vampire named Barnabas Collins. Anything Luke and Laura could do, he could do better, and with bite.

Forget paternity tests and secret identical twins. Your average
Dark Shadows
episode was a full-on Gothic romp of chained coffins, governesses in nightgowns, creepy portraits, crashing waves, foggy cliffs, time travel, and a lot of scenes shot in the Collins family crypt.

Dark Shadows
originally ran from 1966 to 1971, but many kids saw it in reruns years later. A late-afternoon time slot meant plenty of home-from-school kids tuned in with their housewife moms. Tacit parental approval doesn't mean there weren't chilling scenes—Barnabas's little sister, Sarah, made a super-creepy ghost girl, and Angelique, the witch who caused Barnabas's vampirism, had the scariest laugh outside of the Joker. Had
Twilight
's brooding teen vamps shown up at Collinwood, the
Dark Shadows
coven would have scared the sparkles right off their pasty little hides.

D
AWN dolls were about half the size of Barbie, and the originals were made only from 1970 to 1973, but their tiny feet left footprints on many a '70s girl's heart.

Sure, Barbie was great, but like your gym teacher, she was large and rather inflexible. Dawn dolls were terrifically bendy, fit easily in a purse or pencil box, and, best of all, made perfect equestrians for a girl's collection of Breyer horses. Barbie would have squashed them.

Barbie's look changed about once every three minutes, but since Dawn had such a short life span, she stayed forever frozen at the tail end of the go-go era. It was hard to even picture Dawn in jeans or pantsuits; she was a minidress kind of a gal from day one. Austin Powers might have tried to fool around with Barbie, but he'd have moved in with Dawn. Shagadelic, bay-bee!

T
HEY were the Biggie and Tupac of late-'80s bubble-gum pop, if those rappers had carried lip gloss instead of Glocks.Archrivals Tiffany and Debbie Gibson battled it out—both on the record charts and in the pages of
Teen Beat
—for pop-princess supremacy. Who eventually prevailed? Tiffany had the red hair, tough-grrrl attitude, and jean jacket, but it was Gibson's girl-next-door image, confidence, and—yes, we'll say it—talent that sent her over the top. The string of blockbuster hits, like “Lost in Your Eyes,” “Shake Your Love,” “Electric Youth,” and “Only in My Dreams,” didn't hurt either.

Even if you didn't own a Debbie Gibson album, you couldn't escape her reach—high-school hallways were crammed with kids who shared her fashion sense, such as it was. From bowler hats to vests, giant shoulder pads to Shaker sweaters, and skirts over shorts, Gibsonmania rippled through '80s pop culture. Thanks for that, Debbie. There was even an Electric Youth perfume. Because who doesn't want to smell like they just spent two hours sweating under hot stage lights?

Debbie later shifted to Broadway, where she scored roles in
Grease
,
Beauty and the Beast
, and
Les Misérables
. She eventually started going by Deborah (and appeared in
Playboy
in 2005) in a move toward shedding her teen-idol image. But she'll always be Debbie to us, even as she heads into Electric Middle Age.

S
OMEWHERE around the 1970s, everyone in the country went blind at the same time. It's the only way to explain our parents' sudden lust for the hideous hues and patterns that somehow found their way into our homes.Avocado stoves! Dark brown refrigerators! Harvest gold sinks! All of the previously neglected colors that were rejected by the rainbow lined up and demanded we welcome them into our lives. It may have been called avocado green, but we kids knew the color of boogers when we saw it.