The Hot Wheels Freight Yard was one of the several Sto and Go playsets that were so popular in the ’80s. It was also the largest of the bunch as it not only opened up vertically into a playest but had train tracks that folded out horizontally as well.
And unlike Hot Wheel’s other Sto and Go sets, the Freight Yard came with vehicles in the form of a locomotive, 2 freight cars, and a caboose. Item B pictured in the shot with the Freight Yard was an additional Freight Master Train Set that could be added to your Freight Yard fun.
Notice that the ad states that no electricity or batteries are needed. Since this was 1984, electric train sets were still sort of en-vogue, and no one wanted market confusion with this playset.
The 1984 price tag of $34.99 on this Freight Yard translates to $101.65 in 2023 dollars, making it quite an expensive playset. Other Sto and Go playsets of the time retailed for $23.99, or $69.69 in today’s dollars. Back when I had a couple of Sto and Go playsets in the mid-’80s, I never knew how expensive of a toy I was playing with.
But as I’ve documented before, I loved train toys when I was young. The trains that Matchbox produced, the Micro Machines train sets, and even an old series of Happy Meal boxes that were train cars in vacuum form. I loved them all, and I pined over this Sto and Go for years. Heck I still pine for it today.
I’m a lifelong fan of pro wrestling, so naturally, I have a lot of memories from years gone by that jump out at me. One of the memories that came flooding back to me recently was the night that Hulk Hogan fought Paul Orndorff in a cage on NBC’s Saturday Night’s Main Event. Thanks to the guys of TRN’s House Show Podcast reviewing the show, I felt like a kid again.
Saturday Night’s Main Event was at one time THE biggest wrestling show on television. Pay-per-view was in its infancy for most of the series run, the NWA had yet to launch their Clash of the Champions series and the regular wrestling shows on television were still filled with non-competitive matches for the most part. Yeah, they’d throw us a bone every now and then and give us a decent main event match, but even that usually was just to set up something for later, and would often end in a non-finish.
So when a Saturday Night’s Main Event show would roll around on NBC about once a month, it was must-see TV for young wrestling fans. Or must-record-TV in my case. Even being the weekend, my mom wouldn’t let me stay up to watch it as it happened. Instead, I would set the timer on the VCR, record it, and then watch it the next morning as soon as I got up.
The match I’m going to be talking about here took place on the January 3rd, 1987 Saturday Night’s Main Event. The “main event” of the show pitted World Wrestling Federation champion Hulk Hogan against his one-time friend turned bitter rival, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff. And this wouldn’t be just another match. No sir. This match was going to take place inside the walls of a 15-foot-high steel cage! The only way to win one of these cage matches was to put your opponent down to the point that you could leave through the door, or climb over the top. The important thing is that your feet must touch the floor.
So I’m watching the tape the following morning after the live event, and the Hogan-Orndorff match was up first. It was a good back-and-forth affair, but nine-year-old me really had no reason to think that Orndorff would actually beat Hogan. But it got to a point in the match when both men were a little groggy, and they started to climb out on opposite sides of the ring. Jesse “The Body” Ventura on commentary exclaimed that it was a race! I kinda got on the edge of my seat. It was neck and neck as they both started down the outside. Vince McMahon was yelling for Hogan to drop down! Then it happened. Both men hit the floor at the same time! The theme song “Real American” started playing, which after the bout a winner’s music is played, but in this case, it didn’t really tell you who won since both men used the same theme song!
Wait…who just won the match? There was confusion at ringside as both men were claiming victory. McMahon and Ventura were each arguing the case for a different competitor. Referees Joey Marella and Danny Davis were each declaring a different winner. Multiple replays of the finish were shown, but no official announcement had been made. It was Saturday night suspense at its finest! The show went to a commercial break, leaving everyone pondering what the outcome was! When the show returned, an announcement was made that this match had been declared a tie. But since a tie is like kissing your sister (my words, not theirs), the referee ordered the match to be restarted!
So after we had just witnessed an incredible battle, with an incredible ending, we were about to get even more! Unfortunately, the rest of the bout was not as exciting as the first half. Hogan went on to soundly defeat Orndorff once they were back in the cage. He even gave Bobby Heenan a good thrashing for good measure after the match was over.
Hogan would go on to an even bigger moment just a month later that I’m sure I’ll be covering at some point soon, while Orndorff would start to fall off in his importance as the rest of 1987 rolled on. But none of that could take away from the flat-out excitement of their cage match on that Saturday night so long ago. I still get goosebumps re-watching it today. You can watch the full match below and re-live the excitement, or live it for the first time.
It’s funny how some things can just pop into your head that you haven’t thought about in many years. This is one of those things.
Peanut butter is a staple in most American homes. You can find it in cabinets, in lunch boxes, and in lunch pails all across this great country. It’s patriotic….right behind apple pie. And you know what else is patriotic? Superman by gosh! If you slap Superman’s name and image on a jar of peanut butter, you have the ultimate weapon against communism.
At least that’s what a lot of us kids growing up in the ’80s in the rural area I lived in thought anyway. We’d spend a lot of our time at recess after lunch playing Superman vs The Russians on the school playground. No joke. We had our bellies full of Superman peanut butter and were battling the red menace to keep our playgrounds safe…just like in Red Dawn. It was serious business. I even started a super-secret spy club in school to help combat the threat that we were exposed to on the news every night. But I digress.
Anyway, I’m not sure Superman peanut butter tasted any better than Skippy, Peter Pan, or Jif. Actually, from what I’ve read online, Superman may have even been a cheaper variety than those others listed. No matter the cost, that brand of peanut butter with Superman on the label is what I still identify as the epitome of peanut butter from my childhood.
As a sidebar, I can explicitly remember one distinct point in time when I was eating Superman peanut butter. It was January 28, 1986. We were out of school that day due to snow. I was sitting on the floor of our basement where I usually played, with a Superman peanut butter sandwich in front of me as I watched the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. It was one of those moments where you always remember where you were and what you were doing….and I had Superman peanut butter to make me feel a little better as I watched those events unfold.
Nintendo Power magazine debuted in 1988. From the beginning, Nintendo Power focused heavily on providing game strategy, reviews, and previews of upcoming games. It was an oasis for young Nintendo games, and here in this Time Capsule, I’m presenting the very first issue in full for your enjoyment.
I never got to get my hands on issues of this magazine except for when someone would bring a copy to school. Even then I would only get to browse through it for a very short time before they took it back. So being able to take my time and immerse myself in every page of this first issue has been a real treat. I hope you enjoy revisiting it as much as I have.
The flipbook below is very easy to use, and I suggest enlarging it to full size for maximum enjoyment.
As I’m writing this, it’s 6:52 AM on Christmas Eve. I’ve got some spreading of Christmas cheer to do later this morning as I’m going to visit Dad, drop off a homemade cobbler to my brother, spend some time with Mom at the nursing home, make a stop at a store for a last-minute item, and drop in on a few friends for a few minutes along the way.
Running around on Christmas Eve is nothing new for me. When I was younger, I would tag along with my dad as he made his usual rounds on that day. He owned his own business, and back then, it seemed like all of his friends owned and operated their own businesses too. And since these were small businessmen, they were generally open on Christmas Eve as their livelihood depended on working as many days a year as possible.
But Dad would go around and visit each of them on Christmas Eve. I remember stopping by Popsicle Sweat’s used car lot, Billy Wayne’s auto part store, going to see Grey Preston at the local bank, stopping by Estel Venable’s gas station, and dropping in at the fire department, the rescue squad, and the police station as well. Some of my favorite memories of Christmas are these yearly trips around time spreading cheer.
Once all of that is done, it’s time to put the finishing touches on things for tonight’s Christmas party. We’ve got some family and friends coming over for what should be a very enjoyable evening/night. This too reminds me of one of my favorite parts of Christmas growing up…the family parties on Christmas Eve.
Growing up I had huge families on both my Mom’s side and my Dad’s. My Mom was one of eight children, and each of those 8 had a couple of kids. My Dad was one of fourteen! And each of those had multiple kids as well. I had tons of cousins and would see various ones of them throughout the year, but the family get-together on Christmas Eve meant that ALL of us would be together at one time. We ranged in ages from 7-17, so there wasn’t a huge disparity there.
On Christmas Eve, we would start by visiting my Mom’s family. It was always a simple dinner menu of Ham, some veggies, mac and cheese, and a plethora of desserts. The folks would sit around in the kitchen while all of us kids would be in the living room. We’d hoop and holler and go through the presents under the tree, waiting for one of the adults to come in and play Santa Claus. Usually, it was my Uncle Ernest who had a booming voice and was quite intimidating. He would walk in and get real loud, telling us all to get away from the tree or he wouldn’t be handing out anything. He’d then torture us by going through and finding all of the adult presents first and having us run them to the various recipients. He’d finally get through with that and move on to us kids.
With both families, there were so many kids that we drew names. You could count on getting one present from whoever got your name, and a little something from the grandparents as well, which was usually a shirt of some kind. Before we would leave for the other party we had to go to, my Uncle Jack would go out on the front porch and start lighting off Jumping Jack fireworks, and that always got all the kids in an uproar. That is a tradition I need to implement in my own family’s Christmas. I remember how much fun that used to be running from the unpredictable fireworks.
Then we would head over to my Dad’s parents for their party. You could always count on plenty of finger foods and desserts there like sausage balls, cocktail wieners, ham biscuits, cakes, pies, and homemade candies. We would draw names there too and that meant a couple of more presents before heading home. A few of the presents I got in those years stick out in my mind, so I must have enjoyed them quite a bit. I remember getting the G.I. Joe S.L.A.M. Tank, a Three Stooges VHS Tape, and a Popeye VHS tape at various times.
As time marched on and I got married, my wife and I settled into the tradition of going to her family’s Christmas Eve party. I’d sit and watch my kids running around with their cousins just like I used to do. And even though I seemed to hate it as a kid, I emulated my uncle Ernest. I’d go in the living room and tell the kids to quiet down and start picking out presents for the adults and have the kids deliver them before they get any of their presents. Life had come full circle.
Over the last five years though, her family has suffered many losses. Several of the older generation of the family have passed on, some of the younger generation have grown up and moved away, and the family Christmas party has shrunk quite a bit. My wife’s aunt hosted the family party for a couple of decades but these days don’t quite have the energy she once did, so she gave it up last year. At that point, my wife and I stepped in. We hosted a small gathering last year, and this year we’re hosting our first full-fledged family Christmas party.
This suits me just fine because now that my daughters are mostly grown, I expect they’ll be leaving home any year now, and I want to have this family Christmas Eve party tradition established with the hopes they’ll return each year with their families, thus carrying on the tradition I’ve known all my life.
Things are mostly set for a big night tonight, minus a few last-minute details I need to attend to. I hope that with all I’ve learned from the Christmas Eve parties of my past, I can create an atmosphere of holiday cheer and fun that the little ones at the party will be writing about thirty to forty years from now like I am this morning. Or at least have memories they fondly look back on one day. I guess that’s all one could ask for.
