Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (11 page)

The Globetrotters have been around since 1926, blending basketball with goofy shenanigans, acrobatics, and trick shots. But sweet Georgia Brown, it was in the 1970s when they really slam-dunked their way into our childhood memory books. Kids turned out in droves when the Globetrotters mopped the court with the incompetent Washington Generals, showing off their high-flying moves and messing with the half-blind refs.

The Globetrotters starred in multiple TV shows, but none was weirder than 1979's
Super Globetrotters
cartoon. Curly Neal turned into a freak with a giant basketball for a head, Twiggy Sanders transformed into Spaghetti Man, and Sweet Lou Dunbar was able to pull a bomb, a net, or even a couple of chickens from his massive Afro—all to fight a giant gorilla, a mummy, or a super-villain who stole people's faces. Let's see you do that, Larry Bird.

Then, in 1981, the team cemented its pop-culture cred in the made-for-TV movie
The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island
. It's awesome enough that the Globetrotters and Gilligan met at all, but once the Trotters took on a team of hoops-playing robots, you had yourself the makings of a TV classic that was terribly entertaining—and also just plain terrible.

H
ERE'S yet another lesson TV taught us: If someone asks you, “Hey, how about a nice Hawaiian Punch?” it's a trap. You're very likely not going to get a fruity drink, and in fact, you may get a trip to the hospital thanks to a feisty beverage mascot named Punchy.

Punchy wore a striped shirt, no pants, and a grass hat that looked like he found it in a city dump. The first clue that he had a few anger-management issues? His hand was permanently clenched into a fist. He'd approach a doltish tourist who looked a little like a cartoon Mr. Howell, ask that fateful question, then deliver a fruit-flavored knuckle sandwich to the face. The tourist never learned, and the joke never grew old to kids who had already been long schooled in the Hertz Donut and Slug Bug school of punch-out punch lines.

What the commercials never showed was what happened next. Our guess is that Punchy was eventually booked for battery and sent to mascot prison, along with other commercial troublemakers, like the Cavity Creeps, the Frito Bandito, and the Noid.

T
HE world of retro cereal commercials was a strange, often dangerous place. Lucky the leprechaun, the Trix rabbit, and Sonny the Cocoa Puffs cuckoo bird could all starve to death for all the kids in the ads cared. No one was parting with even one teeny marshmallow. It was a world that bordered on breakfast apocalypse.

Perhaps most terrifying were the commercials for Honeycomb. A group of kids met in the Honeycomb Hideout, a simple wooden shack that was sometimes on the ground, sometimes in a tree. Also, they somehow had a robot. But their supposedly pleasant suburb must have bordered Charles Manson's Spahn Ranch. Circus strongmen, Viking berserkers on motorcycles, and, once, Andre the Giant just burst into the Hideout demanding cereal. But they never slaughtered and skinned the kids; instead, they all shared breakfast and everyone was happy. Hopefully one of the kids' dads later came by and fixed the smashed-down door. And moved their family to some safer place, like Beirut.

L
OOKING at photos from a 1980s high-school prom, you can't help but wonder: Is this the 1980s or the 1880s? All we know is: Girls' gowns stuck out so far that schools needed bigger gyms. It's like there was a meeting in which Gen X females all came together, burned their older sisters' polyester doubleknit leisure suits, and then settled in for an inspirational double-feature of
Cinderella
and Princess Diana's wedding.

Jessica McClintock and Laura Ashley were among the popular dress brands, but whatever the designer, it was cool to poof the skirt out so far that it had to pay taxes in a neighboring state. Hoopskirts were the choice in the early 1980s, but once a girl experienced the airy thrill of sitting down and having her hoop hula its way up around her eyebrows, she learned of the magic of crinolines. Like hoops, crinolines gave the desired fluff; unlike hoops, when the wearers sat down, they didn't offer up so much of I See London, France, and the North Paris Suburbs.

H
OSTESS still rules the junk-food galaxy, but some of its lesser-known lights have twinkled out.

What's a Hostess Choco-Dile? They solved the one problem that was preventing Twinkies from reaching perfection—the lack of chocolate. Think Twinkies that were driven through a chocolate-spewing car wash, emerging securely enrobed in a waxy choco coating. Grown-up kids with sugariffic Choco-Dile memories still email and call Hostess, sobbing Choco-Dile tears and begging for their fix. And some are lucky—Choco-Diles still exist, but they're made in only a few West Coast factories.

Sadly, Hostess Choco-Bliss met a sadder fate. It's a shame it's gone because it was a chocoholic's dream. We can only imagine it was introduced at a time when Hostess mistakenly ordered a kajillion tons of extra chocolate and had no idea what to do with it. The resulting treat was a tiny chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on top and layered with fluffy chocolate cream. Even the guy in the commercial went stark raving nutters, shrieking that the treat was “chocolatey, on top of chocolatey, with chocolatey in between!”

But all the repeat use of “chocolatey” in the world couldn't save the Choco-Bliss. Too bad. For chocoholics, even licking Augustus Gloop after his chocolate-river bath couldn't have tasted this good.

P
ART Billy Barty, part Lon Chaney Jr., and all creepy, Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces, has to be one of the single most terrifying toys ever created. Not only was he hairless and wee, but he was literally half a man, with his body ending at the cuff of his oddly dainty blue blouse.

Still, the freaky, follicularly challenged Hugo was good for hours of fun, the male equivalent to the equally unsettling Barbie Styling Head.You could affix any combination of disguises with the provided glue stick—either on Hugo or on yourself. Hugo's arsenal of prosthetics included everything from a nylon wig and glasses to a goatee and fake nose. But they all made him look like a bald, angry puppet wearing a nylon wig, glasses, goatee, and fake nose—and also exactly like James Lipton from
Inside the Actors Studio
.

Now-grown kids are still fretting about running into Hugo. Which would be more horrific: waking up in the middle of the night to find the bullet-headed Mini-Me perched on your chest like a cat, or the nightmarish image of Hugo dragging himself across your bedroom floor with his puppet elbows, on his way to the nest he built under your bed? There's no real winner in either of those scenarios, so let's just call it a tie. A horrible, horrible tie.

O
NCE figure-skating Olympians have posed for a Wheaties box and put their gold medals on ice, what happens to their careers? From 1940 to 1996, there was the Ice Capades, a glorious and often completely insane bit of frozen kitsch that gave some skaters' careers a second life and gave some kids Technicolor nightmares.

Awe-inducing gold medalists and random community-theater types mixed in a live spectacle that was like a goony 1970s variety show on ice. Skating Ewoks! Clowns riding bikes! The Pink Panther and Snow White on blades! “Hey Kids, Meet the Snorks!” No, thank you.We've met the Snorks, and they don't usually skate. Plus, they're terrible.

The arenas were so arctic, kids would shove the glossy, overpriced programs under their butts so they wouldn't freeze to the bleachers. Millions endured the vaudeville-meets-frozen-water action, all the while hoping a hockey fight would break out between the ice dancers.

The concept hit a new low with a 1989 Ice Capades ABC special hosted by Alyssa Milano and a
Hogan Family
–era Jason Bateman that imagined what would happen if the characters from Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers came to life—and skated. Mr. Belvedere played King Koopa.

Dear You Tube, thank you. Love, everybody—except Jason Bateman and Alyssa Milano.

T
HERE are forgettable commercial jingles, and then there are those that force their way into your brain and sign a thirty-year lease. Few took up residence faster than “I'm a Pepper,” the catchy, repetitive, and altogether maddening tune that ran in Dr Pepper commercials from 1977 to '85.

In the ads, actor David Naughton—wearing a white shirt and sweet vest—suddenly broke into song and led a crowd in a musical tribute to the only soda we're aware of that has a medical degree. They may have been Peppers, but they were also nuts. The characters would dive into a choreographed number on the street, on a boat, on a farm, at a wedding, on a mountaintop. An animated Popeye even showed up in one commercial.

“I'm a Pepper, he's a Pepper, she's a Pepper, we're a Pepper. Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper, too?” Definitely. But, for the love of God, only if you stop singing.

C
HOCKA-CHOCKA-BLIPPITY-BLOOPITY-
THWACK!
That's a decent approximation of the futuristic, kinda spooky synthesizer sound that accompanied the spinning
In the News
globe as it announced another of the made-for-kids news segments.