Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (16 page)

Mr. Yuk actually had kids' best interests at heart. The creepy character was developed by the Pittsburgh Poison Center in 1971 and distributed nationwide in the form of stickers parents were supposed to affix to dangerous stuff.

But perhaps the anti-poison contingent did their job a little too well. The PSA was so disturbing, it scared the bejeebers out of every kid with a mouth, making us think that our houses were poison troves, where danger lurked behind every door and bleach, drain cleaner, and laundry detergent were just waiting to leap down our throats the second we dropped our guard.

It kept kids away from poison but left behind a terrible taste in our brains.

I
T'S hard to reinvent the potato chip, but damned if Frito-Lay didn't almost manage it with Munchos. The chip started gaining real vending-machine territory in the 1980s. We sought them out because they were bubbly and almost futuristic, nothing like the chips Mom bought. You could almost envision Judy Jetson snacking on these after a tough day at Orbit High School.

If you drew a snack food family tree, Munchos would probably be close cousins of Bugles and vaguely related to Pringles. There may even be some pork rinds in the family.When sucked on, they collapsed inward in your mouth, pulling you into a black hole of salty snack goodness. They seemed to have about the same non-relationship to potatoes that Funyuns have to real onions.

We must have consumed garbage bags full of these things, washing them down with Sharkleberry Fin Kool-Aid while rocking out to Dexy's Midnight Runners and flipping through
Sassy
magazine. They were so '80s, they should have had popped collars.

C
ALL it
Crocodile Hunter
, 1970s-style.
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
took families around the globe, as unflappable naturalist Marlin Perkins and his team tried to stuff wriggling anacondas into bags and pull snarling jaguars from rivers.The show was an adrenaline rush for kids, delivering plenty of wildlife action and dramatic music but little blood.

Marlin would introduce segments while wearing a suit, complete with pocket square, and then change into a snappy khaki number when he went into the field. When he got to Africa or South America, Marlin mostly stayed safe in the Jeep, letting sidekick Jim Fowler jump from a helicopter and tackle an elk, or hang from a rope two hundred feet in the air and yank a flailing condor from a rocky crevice. In other words, Marlin was us, and Jim was the equivalent of the little brother we forced to do all our dirty work.

It was death-defying stuff like that that made us kids dig our fingers into the arms of our sofa and count the seconds until the next episode. With its snapping crocodiles, barking sea lions, and hissing water monitor lizards,
Wild Kingdom
always seemed one uncertain second away from turning into
When Animals Attack.

D
ON'T you hate when this happens?You're wearing a bathing suit when your date shows up and wants to go skiing. Or you're wearing shorts when your sideburned Adonis appears in a purple velvet tuxedo. Or you're all gussied up in an evening gown when a bespectacled Poindexter dubbed the Dud arrives, all set for a date of Heavy Reading or Mainframe Punch-Card Feeding, or whatever nerds did before D&D. Such was life inside Mystery Date, a game that felt delightfully dated even by the time the 1960s version was modernized in 1972.

Players tried to collect the three cards required for each themed date. Apparently without a green-and-white checked hat and knee-socks, you couldn't embark on a successful picnic—who knew? Then you spun the doorknob in the center of the board and opened it. If your dorky date wasn't prepared for the same enchanted evening, you slammed the door in his face.That'll teach him to pay attention the next time you make plans!

If you found the Dud, you were apparently so traumatized that you also punished yourself by giving up your matched set of cards. Milton Bradley was oblivious to the fact that in just three years, the Dud would found Microsoft and could buy his date enough kneesocks and checked hats to outfit the entire cast of
That Girl
.

T
HINGS Nancy Drew didn't have: School. A real job. A curfew. Things Nancy did have: Her own convertible.A never-ending stash of money.A boyfriend (Ned Nickerson) and two best girlfriends (Bess and George).A housekeeper. Name recognition in every police department in the land.

Thing Nancy had that we never quite understood: Titian hair. Titian? Hair color aside, Nancy's never-ending series of detective books helped create a generation of wannabe girl sleuths, not to mention book collectors.

A new Nancy mystery (ours were the yellow-spined picture covers) came out every few months, and rabid readers bought them all. They had great titles and even better covers, although
The Crooked Bannister
should really be renamed
The Sad Robot Made Out of Tinfoil and Random Car Parts. Oh, and He's Standing Near a Bannister
. But they all offered a satisfying if not exactly mind-boggling mystery that wrapped up cleanly in a neat two hundred pages.And the mystery of titian? Turned out it's pretty much red. Nancy could have told us that.

W
HEN Willy Wonka introduced Nerds in 1983, the new treat hit the playground community with all the force of an F5 tornado. They were candy! But they looked like aquarium rocks! Had a daringly uncool name! Boasted slightly scary handless mascots wearing tennis shoes! Were small enough to sneak into your mouth during math class!

Best of all,Wonka managed to shove two distinctly different flavors into every teeny little divided box. So even if one side was boring (cherry) or nasty (banana), the other side might offer redemption (cherry cola). Nerds helped us realize that not everyone's taste buds were the same, and for good reason. You might haaate the green apple flavor, but your best friend might love it so much she'd be dying to swap you for her blueberry ones.

The product creativity division for Nerds never stopped coming out with cool variations. Hot and Cold Nerds featured spicy cinnamon on one side and the cool relief of wintergreen on the other. Sour Nerds made you pucker like old Grandma Walton. Rainbow Nerds mixed all flavors together.

The 1980s may have been the Decade of Nerds—Bill Gates, the
Revenge of the Nerds
movie, Steve Urkel, everyone Anthony Michael Hall ever played—but none of them were as universally beloved as the candy.

E
VER have one of those world-mixing dreams, where people you knew from grade school suddenly show up at your workplace and it just seems natural that everyone knows everyone else? Such was the world of
The New Scooby-Doo Movies
, which aired from 1972 to 1973 and eternally ever after in reruns. Each episode featured a truly bizarre real-life or fellow cartoon guest star who just happened to show up to help the gang pull the latest rubber mask off the latest criminal gardener. It was like the All-Star Game of cartoons.

Guests who were already dead in real life? Laurel and Hardy. Guests who just wouldn't go away? The Harlem Globetrotters showed up three times. Most awkward guests? Sonny and Cher were just as mean to each other in cartoon form as they were in real life. But perhaps no guest put up with more than Mama Cass Elliot, who was the target of fat jokes from Shaggy and was drawn with a double chin and orange-and-magenta muumuu. Zoinks!

O
NE, two, Freddy's coming for you.Three, four, better lock your door.” Five, six, those were some disturbing flicks. Beginning in 1984, the
Nightmare on Elm Street
movies introduced us to Freddy Krueger, wise-cracking slasher with razor-sharp fingers; a ratty, red-and-green-striped sweater; and a complexion not even Stridex could help.

At least Freddy enjoyed his job.We applauded when he sucked Johnny Depp into his bed and spit him back out as a geyser of future-Oscar-nominee blood.The cheesy one-liners didn't hurt, either. “This is it, Jennifer: Your big break in TV,” Freddy sneered, as he smashed a girl's head into a television screen.

Freddy eventually overdid the stand-up and became a cuddly, schlocky parody of his former self, with toys like talking dolls, Matchbox cars, and even a squirt gun in the shape of his hideous head.Why would a kid want to play with a scarred mass murderer? Not exactly family-friendly entertainment. Unless you're part of the Manson family.

O
H, Idaho. You and your oh-so-easily mocked state name (“That's right, you da ho”) and embarrassing license plate slogan (“Famous Potatoes!”). But your capital city and your famous taters lent themselves to one of our favorite 1980s snack foods, O'Boisies potato chips.

Ever seen a tortilla being made, how the dough blisters and pops on the griddle? That's how O'Boisies looked, slightly resembling photos of the lunar surface, dotted with bubbles on both sides. Some thought the resulting product always tasted stale; others thought the bubbles held in the salt and that the earthy, potatoey flavor was a plus.