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| Cover art © Isle O'Foam© Department Of Art Dept. - ain't it swell? |
This is a Prune protein shake. Not a complete archive, but the Greatest Hits are present, plus, minus the filler. The R.S.D. cover (printed on clear vinyl with a light show silver Mylar inner sleeve) lacks taste and restraint, but there's no room for either on Planet Prune - everything amped to the max and shuddering in hallucinogenic haze. There's a bitter, dark edge to their pop, sometimes snarly, sometimes sinister, so what's with the jokey name? Prunes are what old guys eat to help them shit. Did nobody mention this? Suggest, I dunno, rutabaga instead? These guys were plagued by fried logic and bad business advice, but at their best, as here, their psychedelia is as real as it gets. Be here now, and wake up where you are.
This most made feasible by grants from the Fly Me, I'm A Banana Foundation, Cucamonga.
I'm still fine-tuning the running order, so until I have that fixed, let's talk about toys (taking our cue from a couple of tracks on the album). I had a gorgeous translucent Yo-Yo with gilt lettering I can still see if I close my eyes. Die-cast cars I remember with granular detail, even down to the metallic smell.
ReplyDeleteFarquhar, is going to have a field day with this.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite toy was the Pogo Stick, which was a large pole with a spring that I could bounce up and down on.
Moving along, two toys I had, that were totally bizarre were:
Mr. Potato Head
In my day, you had to actually use a real potato.
American parents used to tell their kids "Eat all your food, there are children starving in Africa and Europe". Imagine tying to explain the concept of Mr. Potato Head to starving children.
"Here's a toy for you, it has plastic eyes, ears, nose, mouth and a mustache, that you press into a real potato!"
Starving European or African Child: "Then can we eat it"
"No, you play with it."
Betsy Wetsy
Was a doll that came with a bottle and a supply of diapers. You would fill the bottle with water (most of the time), put it in Betsy's open mouth, and the water via a plastic tube came out of a small hole between her legs.
Boys in the 50s had much better toys.
I had a genuine tuber Mr Potato Head, too. Not much toy value in that. Rubber sucker-tipped dart guns, had a few of them - running house battles with similarly-armed pals.
DeleteSaid Santa to a girl child, "What would please you most to get?"
Delete"A little baby doll that can cry, sleep, drink and wet"
And then away went Rudolph, whizzin' like a Saber jet
No question in my mind, world's greatest toy in my collection was the Mattel Vacu-Form (which also doubled as a Thingmaker). I'm sure the fumes did something or other to me . . . but the hours spent cooking up my own toys (quite literally). This toy couldn't even be MADE today. Also, Cadaco tabletop baseball.
ReplyDelete--Muzak McMusics
Oh man, the Thingmaker! Speaking of fumes, did anyone have Super Elastic Bubble Plastic? https://youtu.be/8pErbVm-LGI
DeleteAnd speaking of prunes, has anyone heard from Clarence Prune?
I used to love my collection of lead soldiers and one Christmas I was given a huge castle made of plywood that my father had made. He was handy with a fretsaw.
ReplyDeleteThen there was Meccano, which got added to every Christmas and birthday.
I also got a microscope, which I loved.
I used to buy toy cars with my pocket money - Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky.
Johnny Seven OMA. The "one many army" weapon. If I had one with the box, I could sell it and buy an actual assault rifle here in Oakland, and have money left over for a nice dinner.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/159563/did-anyone-else-want-this-toy-as-a-kid
DeleteA friend had one, and I remember beiing seriously unimpressed by its "fire power", especially the grenade launcher, which had barely eough power to fall off the muzzle.
My brother and I loved our Johnny Seven. Our Dad took the star off the top of the tree that Christmas with the grenade launcher.
DeleteSpudIslander
I reckon my friend's Johnny Seven must have suffered from something.
DeleteMy favorite toy when I was a yout was a model battleship called the Fighting Lady. You could shot depth charges off the sides and a plane from the back. Hours of fun. It was from one of these great no-longer-in-bidness toy companies, Remco.
ReplyDeleteI had that big boy myself...remember taking it for show-and-tell in 2nd grade or so. The guys loved it; the girls not so much...
Deletehttps://kraftauctions.hibid.com/lot/25205-172331-521393/remco-fighting-lady-battleship/
DeleteTri-ang Princess Elizabeth electric train set. Engine, tender, 2 custard and cream coaches and an oval of track. had a heavy duty Meccano transformer/controller with it, which made an awesome noise when you shorted it out. The engine smelt of warm plastic once it had run for a while. You could hasten that process by putting a book on the track!
ReplyDeleteI had that plus the minic motorway electric car slot system, like scalextric but without the excitement. A big disappointment!
DeleteScalextric was possibly my most played-with toy. Customised my own cars, friends brought track around (my parents' "lounge" was bigger than their front rooms), spent hours building circuits and getting them to work - banking the turns was critical - hill climbs onto coffee table - and further hours having genuinely exciting races. There's Saturday gone. I sold all my Scalextric kit (to an adult who wanted to relive his childhood) and moved on to sex and drugs, some of each taking place in the same room.
DeleteHot-Wheels Cars & plastic racetrack... Love it !
ReplyDeleteToys, huh? I was from a large family, & while I liked toys, of course,I couldn't keep them at all. The other kids "aquired" them quickly.
ReplyDeleteSo, I developed a habit of keeping plastic figures in my pockets. That let me have them for at least 1 day.
I still admire a well-sculpted plastic figure.
Anyone seen the OMFG figures?
Spacehopper (I believe it was known as a hoppity hop in the US) great for charging round the house and smashing your mam's ornaments.
ReplyDeleteSo Manyto choose from... MY first set of Dinosaurs. I was in the hospital to get my tonsils out and I was anemic so they kept me in for a couple of more days. 1959 set was similar to ater sets but the Tyranosaurous was quite different from the latere ones. i LOST MY hADROSAUR ON THE pENNSYLVAINIA tURNPIKE.
ReplyDeletejohn
If there were Iof© t-shirts, "i LOST MY hADROSAUR ON THE pENNSYLVAINIA tURNPIKE" would be among the first. And "endlessly fucking emus".
DeleteBefore I forget, here's yer prunes to keep you regliar!
ReplyDelete"Six finger, six finger, man alive, how'd I ever get along with just five." Also, any Agent 0-M toys.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUucZYD7vGI
DeleteSix Finger. now there's a toy I hadn't thought about in around 50 years. Can't imagine how'd they'd be able to market it these days....
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElVzs0lEULs
DeleteMan, if I were 8 years old, I'd practically kill for Six Finger.
DeleteNo kidding, what with the ability to fire exploding missiles, write and store secret messages and send morse code. Frankly, what adult wouldn't want those sorts of capabilities!
DeleteLike a lot of kids I loved Airfix Models, tanks and aircraft, but a big favorite were a series of horror themed models that had glow in the dark parts, Aurora Monsters. I think I had Frankenstein and the Witch.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.plaidstallions.com/aurora/75monsters.html
Also loved Scalextric - the smell of the transformer, very evocative.
I had dem monster kits! Only Revell, I think. Dracula was the best. Frankenstein scary, too. Wolfman's fur was too coarse to be convincing. Hot rod kits, also by Revell. Brung to me - ECSTASYYYYYYYYY ....
DeleteI had one Revell Hot rod kit called Romels Rod, but I think I had a problem with the assembly, it had a nazi skeleton on the back seat.
DeleteOOH OOH OOH! Monster Model kits!!!
DeleteMy friend Dave and I used to spend hours on those things trying to get them to look like the display case models.
Several years ago I collected a lot of the reissues hoping that my grandson would be interested. Sigh...
I may put them together my self. Still have from those long ago days comkpleted models of FRANKENSTEIN, WOLFMAN, DRACULA, KING KONG, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME AND BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN.
john
I wonder if children now have the patience to assemble these sort of kits? I remember them taking many days, and then with aircraft and tanks, painting them and finally applying the decals - the only time I ever came across that word until Captain Beefheart came into my life.
DeleteI think my neighbour had The Creature from the Black Lagoon, I was very jealous.
A few years back, clearing out my stuff before I moved out here to The Far East (I love saying that - I live somewhere Far), I found a box of my old die-cast toy cars. These things sell for big bucks. They were like old friends, every one saturated with memory - not associations - they didn't bring to mind times I played with them - but their nature, their characteristics (weight, color, texture, scent ...) came alive, burst like flowers. Their essence was, and is, in my mind - the actual thing were like lesser shadows. I closed the box and walked away, carrying the real treasure, unsellable, unbuyable, priceless, eternally wonderful, with me. We never lose it. We cover it up, look the wrong way, but it's there. Essence!
ReplyDeleteLovley.
ReplyDeletejohn
You're a pal, John.
Delete