Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[LizzieMaine]

And of course, there was Garry Moore's announcer-sidekick Durwood Kirby, who was not at all amused by the search for the legendary "Kurwood Derby."

 

[tonyb]

“Allow me to introduce myself — Boris Badenov, world’s greatest no-goodnik.”

It was an era of comically conniving TV characters, bunglers all — Boris Badenov, Wile E. Coyote, Colonel Klink.

 

[tonyb]

Lest we lose sight, it was writers and other “creatives” from the “greatest generation” (the members thereof whom I knew would likely have scoffed at such a description) who gave us indulged baby-boomers that “hip” humor.

 

[Zombie_61]

The genius of Rocky and Bullwinkle was that even with the sophisticated humor it was still a children’s show...

One day years ago a friend and I had the good fortune of meeting Jay Ward's daughter Tiffany at the Dudley Do-Right Emporium. During our conversation she told us that, sophisticated or not, Mr. Ward and his writing staff had one simple rule they adhered to--if they thought a joke was funny, they used it. Even the studio's janitor contributed occasionally because it didn't matter to them where the jokes came from; "Funny is funny."

 

[ChiTownScion]

Rocky<upon viewing Wassamotta U's upcoming football challengers, the Mud City Manglers>: "Bullwinkle, they're just GIRLS! What kind of games can you play with GIRLS??"

Bullwinkle: "Boy this really is a children's show, isn't it? <pause> Why, PARCHESI, of course."

 

[3fingers]

I seem to remember Rocky and Bullwinkle airing, at least in later years, with Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Commander McBragg among others. Were these cartoons connected or was it just how they were scheduled?

 

[tonyb]

Rocky<upon viewing Wassamotta U's upcoming football challengers, the Mud City Manglers>: "Bullwinkle, they're just GIRLS! What kind of games can you play with GIRLS??"

Bullwinkle: "Boy this really is a children's show, isn't it? <pause> Why, PARCHESI, of course."

Now *that’s* a hoot.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I seem to remember Rocky and Bullwinkle airing, at least in later years, with Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Commander McBragg among others. Were these cartoons connected or was it just how they were scheduled?

THey were sort-of connected - the Tuxedo/Underdog/McBragg cartoons were done by a company called "Total Television," which also did the Go-Go Gophers, Klondike Kat, King Leonardo, and various others. This company hired a Mexican-based animation studio called Gamma Productions to do the actual production work -- and Jay Ward Productions also used this studio, at least for a time, for such cartoons as Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody, and "Fractured Fairy Tales." Both the Total TV cartoons and the Jay Ward cartoons were financed by the Dancer-Fitzgerald advertising agency, on behalf of General Mills, and Dancer-Fitzgerald also controlled the syndication rights after the programs all finished their network runs.

Dancer-Fitzgerald sold the cartoons to a syndication distributor in the late sixties, but rather than show them in their original network configurations, they were cut up and pasted together into an assortment of packages. Some of these packages were used on hosted kiddie shows of the "Willie Whistle" type, and some were patched together into "Tennessee Tuxedo and Friends" catch-all formats where Total TV and Ward product were thrown together without regard for how they were originally shown. The original "Tennessee Tuxedo" and "Underdog" formats, as shown on network TV in the early-mid sixties, haven't been seen since, and quite possibly those original versions no longer even exist. The Ward material has fared slightly better, but the syndicated "Bullwinkle Show" likewise is very different from the way the cartoons were originally shown on ABC.

As memorable as they were to the kids who watched them, all these cartoons were just so much product so far as distributors were concerned, and they haven't been well served by those who've owned the rights over the years. Someday someone will try to sort out exactly what goes where with these cartoons, but it hasn't happened yet.

 

[EngProf]

"Here comes Leonardo, Leonardo Lion,
King of Bongo Congo,
and hero Lion of iron..." (watch out Biggy Rat and Itchy Brother...)
I guess that "Super Chicken" was among that herd of cartoon characters, also.
"Super Chicken" was a super hero (obviously) who had an idiot comical-sidekick lion, named Fred, I think.
Super Chicken: "With my super vision I just saw the crooks duck into a cave several miles away."
Fred (wistfully): "Gee, I wish I had super vision."
Super Chicken: "Well, Fred, I try to take care of you as best I can."

 

[ChiTownScion]

"Here comes Leonardo, Leonardo Lion,
King of Bongo Congo,
and hero Lion of iron..." (watch out Biggy Rat and Itchy Brother...)
I guess that "Super Chicken" was among that herd of cartoon characters, also.
"Super Chicken" was a super hero (obviously) who had an idiot comical-sidekick lion, named Fred, I think.
Super Chicken: "With my super vision I just saw the crooks duck into a cave several miles away."
Fred (wistfully): "Gee, I wish I had super vision."
Super Chicken: "Well, Fred, I try to take care of you as best I can."

"You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred...."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

In the early '50s there was a semi-animated series of cartoons called "Crusader Rabbit" that was aired on various kid's programs. I remember it from the Sheriff John show in L.A. I've read that its creators went on to create Rocky and Bullwinkle, and that the characters were inspired by Crusader Rabbit and Rags the Tiger.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Well, in case no one else has mentioned this, TV station sign offs. When I was young enough to stay up that late, TV stations would cease operations about 2:00 or 3:00 am. You'd see an announcement concerning who owned the broadcast license and then a waving Old Glory while the "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, then a test pattern until operations resumed the next morning. While I now go to bed about 9:00, I'm pretty sure that broadcasts continue around the clock.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep, those went away in the '80s, for the most part, when automation systems made it easier for stations to run paid infomercials overnight without having to pay engineers to operate the playback gear. Older tube-based transmitting equipment also benefitted from not being run continuously, but modern equipment doesn't require such coddling.

 

[tonyb]

Well, in case no one else has mentioned this, TV station sign offs. When I was young enough to stay up that late, TV stations would cease operations about 2:00 or 3:00 am. You'd see an announcement concerning who owned the broadcast license and then a waving Old Glory while the "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, then a test pattern until operations resumed the next morning. While I now go to bed about 9:00, I'm pretty sure that broadcasts continue around the clock.

It’s been decades since I’ve seen that test pattern that came on after the national anthem. I still am left to wonder why it included the Indian in headdress.

It’s been a long time ago now, so I wouldn’t bet on my recollections being reliable, but I believe on most nights the TV stations whose signals were receivable in Madison, Wisc. back then signed off around 1 a.m. But then, back then there were few if any all-night anythings. Not legal ones, anyway.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Back to things that have disappeared...what has happened to dental floss? It used to be stout, waxed cord that did an excellent job. You could even use it to truss a chicken if you didn't have butcher's string handy. Now all I can get is this thin, flimsy stuff that shreds and leaves tiny fibers between your teeth that are as annoying as what you were flossing for in the first place.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Indian was there to provide an easy-to-interpret grey scale standard where deviation could be seen at a glance: if the Indian's face looked blurred or washed out, adjustments could be made quickly. RCA engineers developing the project asked the artist to come up with an image that would be instantly and easily recognizable, where errors or inaccuracies would be easy to note. People tend to recognize irregularities in faces easier than anything else, and the artist figured an Indian chief in full gear would be visually arresting enough to make the necessary impression.

Everything else in a test pattern had a purpose too. The horizontal and vertical wedges determined the exact line resolution being passed by the video chain to the transmitter, and could also be used to calibrate the correct width and height of the image on a receiver. The circles were used to check linearity on both ends of the circuit.

The Indian Head test pattern came in two forms -- a large printed art card that sat on an easel for calibrating camera-chain circuits, and a "monoscope tube" that provided a check for the transmitter without the video chain. The monoscope was basically a camera tube with a metal plate fitted on the broad end with the image of the test pattern printed on it -- ensuring an unchanging image source for internal scanning. This system was designed by RCA especially to be laboratory-accurate, unlike many of the test images many stations used which were used as a quick and dirty check on the video chain, and as a courtesy signal for users and repair people calibrating receivers at home.

 

[St.Ignatz]

A clean dust free hat shelf at the coat check in restaurants. Now they are just seen as an available spot for storing napkins and such.

Tom D.

 

[BobHufford]

 

[LizzieMaine]

 

[belfastboy]

The gang would congregate at the ball field in the summer and we would spend the day playing American PingPong...wonder if kids still do that? At the end of the day we would pool our money and buy the big jug of Coca Cola as it offered far better value than if we each bought our small bottle. No one cared about back wash or wiping the rim of the bottle. We just bitched if one of us chugged more than his fair share.