The Christmas season is also fudge season for a lot of people. One of the many things I learned in my years working at a grocery store is that a lot of people make fudge for Christmas, and just as many people are always searching for that perfect fudge recipe. I don’t know if a perfect recipe exists, but I do know that an easy and tasty recipe exists and it’s this one from Jello. How much easier could it get than using a box of Jello for fudge?
So if you’re one of those people who like to give fudge at Christmas, or if you’re just one of us who loves to eat the stuff, try out this old recipe this year.
Now that we’re past Thanksgiving, I’m all in on Christmas, and that means features like this. We’re going to look at a few things that really caught my eye while browsing through the 1991 Sears Christmas Wishbook.
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
I’m going to kick things off with the main event…the SNES! As I’ll be describing in an upcoming feature, the SNES was all I wanted for Christmas in 1991. Being a Nintendo kid, seeing that an upgraded system with better graphics was coming out just kept me on the edge of excitement all through the fall. The 1991 Sears catalog didn’t have a very big spread for the SNES but I guess that was because it was so close to press time when it came out. At the bottom of the listing, it listed just a few games with a note that said more games would be available on Nov. 1st, but you had to call and inquire about those.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Action Figures
TMNT was the hot property in 1991. The catalog had a couple of pages of just the toys, but the book was filled from front to back with licensed Turtle merchandise. Pajamas, clocks, roller skates, skateboards, and just about anything else you could think of were available with the Turtles emblazoned on them. But I like these action figures. I had a couple of the main Turtles roster, but I was at that age where I was transitioning from playing with action figures to more “grown-up” toys, so I didn’t go all in on the line. Looking back now, I wish I had. The figures were just so vibrant, and the well was deep when it came to unique characters.
Nintendo Game Watches
As I said above, in 1991 I was in a transition period when it came to the things I was buying. These game watches are a great example of the kinds of things I was spending my money on at the time. A watch is a “grown up” thing, but being a game watch, they were also fun enough to still be a toy in a way. I don’t know how fun the Super Mario 3 watch could have been with the limited graphics and gameplay ability, but Tetris is a game that is perfectly suited to this kind of offering. Being the big fan of Tetris that I’ve always been, I’m surprised I never had the watch.
Baseball Card Collector Kit
1991 would have been right near the beginning of my obsession with trading cards. My friends and I spent every afternoon trading cards, and whole summer days were taken up with the hobby amongst us. A set like this would have been something I probably actually circled in the catalog back in the day. I mean, it comes with random cards, sleeves, 9-card pages, an album, and a price guide. What more could a budding collector ask for?
Canyon of Doom Slot Car Track
I was bin into slot car tracks from an early age. My older brother had them, and he and my dad used to race them as a way of spending time together. I had several tracks of my own through the years, but nothing quite like this Canyon of Doom track. It’s pretty much just a basic track with a corkscrew in it, but it’s the theme elements that make this one stand out. Racing across the rickety bridge and through the volcano is pretty badass. Not to mention racing behind the waterfall. My cousin Tim and I could have killed many an afternoon with this track.
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves Toys
I was all in on the Robin Hood movie back in 1991. Hell, I’ve always loved the stories of Robin Hood in all their forms. So when these toys came out, I was almost compelled to revert back to the childhood ways that I was desperately trying to shake at this point in life just to play with these things. And it’s not really the action figures themselves that I salivate over today, it’s the playsets. The re-purposed Ewok village that is the “base” for the Merry Men, and the net launcher and boulder slinger really grab my attention. Especially since the net launcher and boulder thrower were re-purposed from the Bone Age toy line that I never had but always wanted.
Mini Golf Set
Oh man, this set of mini golf toys may look cheesy, but let me set the stage for you. Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, I was doing all kinds of stuff to mimic things I was seeing on TV. Like, I would see bowling on Wide World of Sports, and I would then go and make a “ball” out of Construx, set up empty soda bottles as pins in the hallways, and I would spend the rest of the afternoon bowling. Stuff like that. So to get a set like this that I could set up a 9-hole course through the house and play some mini golf would have been right up my alley.
Nerf Bow
As I mentioned earlier, I was overly into Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves at this time in life, and as I just mentioned above, I was usually into re-creating stuff I was watching. So here comes this bow and arrow from Nerf that would just have made my playtime a whole lot easier. This Bow could easily make one of my lists of toys I always wanted but never had because I never did get my hands on one.
Days of Thunder Go Kart
Besides the Super Nintendo, this Days of Thunder Go Kart is the best thing I found browsing through the catalog. Days of Thunder was another movie that I was overly into back in the day, and I had a lot of merchandise surrounding the movie but I never had something as cool as this. While I would rather have a replica of the green and yellow City Chevrolet, I would still take this pink and white Superflo car. Do you realize how cool it would have been to cruise this thing up and down the road to trade cards with my friends instead of riding my bike? I would have been able to dazzle them so much I could have talked them into any trade I wanted.
Those are just a small snippet of highlights from the 1991 Sears Wish Book. Considering there are over 700 pages in that book, I could easily do a list of a hundred things I want from it, but we’re stopping at these nine. You can check out the full catalog, and many more, over at WishBookWeb.com. And if this kind of post is your thing, check out these other highlights posts here on Retro Ramblings:
TBS was one of my favorite TV channels in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, so I like to go back in time and talk about the things that made me love it so much. I’ve even given this stuff its own category…TBS Time Machine!
Am I the only one who fondly remembers TBS back in the days before it was a self-branded comedy channel? The days before the two-hour binge blocks of semi-modern sitcoms dominated their time slots?
The good old days of TBS were filled with off-beat movies from the expansive Turner library, and the programmers behind the channel used to come up with any and all reasons to group movies together and put them on the air. Like this special day of programming for Christmas in 1992. All it took was a little alliteration combining the words “Christmas” and “Creatures” and they had a theme. Then, they just had to search their library for movies that fit that theme.
The movies featured on Christmas Day 1992 were At the Earth’s Core, The Last Dinosaur, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Three movies that probably haven’t been shown on television since. But that was the beauty of TBS back then. Where else would something like The Beastmaster get played at least once a month, and get promoted in bumpers as a “can’t miss” event?
If I could go back in time to 1992, my TV would certainly be tuned to TBS at 10:05 eastern, and that’s where the dial would have stayed until the end of the marathon. I actually looked into making this come to life this year for Christmas by purchasing the three movies, but I had two problems with that. One, I would have had to put out a little more money than I wanted to recreate this, and two, I realized that part of the magic would be missing, as my marathon wouldn’t be filled with those glorious old TBS bumpers for other movies coming throughout the week and would have felt flat as a result.
It wasn’t necessarily the movies themselves that made it special, it was the whole package. And that’s why I lament the loss of the old TBS.
Like I’m sure it was for most kids, December 25th has always been one of those benchmark dates on the calendar. Alongside my birthday, and the last day of school, it has always been a measuring point for the year. And for good reason, as I’m sure I’m not alone in enjoying the gift-giving, gift-getting, food, and fellowship that the magical holiday brings. So in this special edition of Retro Ramblings, I want to share some of the things I think of when I think about Christmas.
For me, the highlight has always been about the time I get to spend with family. Especially my Dad. All through my years of growing up, my Dad traveled. He would be gone for roughly 300 out of the 365 days of a year. But his work always slowed down in December and he had a lot of time at home that lined up so well with our Christmas break from school. And while he himself never got overly excited about Christmas, he did so many little things to make it special for me. Things that most would not think are overly special but so special to me, that I’ve tried to do the exact same things for my daughters every year now.
There is so much nostalgia built into the holiday season for me. So many different things about the holiday that trigger vibrant memories of some of the happiest times of my life. So here in this article, I want to share with you a lot of the little things that I enjoy during the Christmas season, their origins in the past, and some of the strong memories associated with them.
(In no particular order)
MY COUSIN TIM COMING OVER ON CHRISTMAS MORNING TO SEE WHAT I HAD GOTTEN
Every year around mid-morning, my cousin and his parents would stop by to see what Santa had brought, and to show off some new toy he had gotten as well. He and I would play with whatever new things we had while the parents sat and talked, drank coffee, and just enjoyed each other’s company. The fireplace would have a nice crackling fire in it while some low Christmas music played in the background. It was just a wonderful setting for enjoying the mid part of the day.
In recent years, my daughters had the pleasure of being visited every Christmas morning by their great grandparents, who would come see what they had gotten for Christmas and join us for a simple breakfast of orange cinnamon rolls and ham…..just like we always enjoyed on those Christmas mornings so long ago.
THE TOWN CHRISTMAS PARADE
One of my favorite days of the year…seeing the vehicles decorated for Christmas, seeing Santa Claus riding into town high atop a town fire truck, and then following him to the local grocery store to get a treat bag. That bag usually consisted of an apple, an orange, a few pieces of strawberry candy, and a full-size candy bar. The whole town would usually show up for the parade and treats, even though that number was roughly only about 600 people. It was a day that I can think back on and not really remember anyone being anything but happy.
Back when I was young and being jealous of my friends who had cable television, one of the channels I drooled over the most was The Disney Channel. It seemed so cool that Disney had its own channel! But what I didn’t know at that time was that they released their own Disney Channel magazine too. In it, would be details on everything that was coming to the channel that month so folks could set their watches and not miss any of the great programming that was being offered.
So what we have here is the guide section from The Disney Channel Magazine from December of 1984…the year they were debuting Mickey’s Christmas Carol on the channel. So enjoy this look back at what was coming to the channel that month long ago, and let yourself drift away to the days before streaming and on-demand viewing!
In today’s Retro Ramblings, I’m supplying you with a full-length Christmas movie to watch. It’s a made-for-TV Christmas movie from 1987. And it stars Bo and Luke Duke (well, the actors anyway) driving a big rig full of presents to Alaska. Can you think of any Christmas movie that sounds cooler than this? Well, with the exception of Rocky IV.
Somehow I went almost all of my life without knowledge of this movie’s existence. Then a couple of years ago I was browsing through a TV Guide from 1987 and saw an ad for it. That ad stopped me in my tracks. I immediately went on a hunt for the movie. IT wasn’t on YouTube or any streaming service, and I couldn’t even rent it from Amazon. So I turned to some pirate services and I found it. They say the best things in life are worth waiting for, and in this case, they may be right. I thoroughly enjoyed it when I finally got to watch it.
Here is the synopsis from Google:
Two feuding brothers and one’s teenage son spend four days in an 18-wheeler taking toys from California all the way to Alaska, facing blizzards and their own complicated history together.
Looking at the time this came out, it seems logical that this was the first project that either John Schneider or Tom Wopat worked on after wrapping up their hit TV series The Dukes of Hazzard. And it caught both of them at a great time. The dynamic of their characters in this is unique. While Tom Wopat’s character seems very much in line with his Luke Duke character, John Schneider’s character is a 180 degree flip from Bo Duke…at least at the beginning of the film. But that just adds to the allure of this movie. It may seem cheesy at times, but at the end of the day, I was certainly glad I discovered it and it has worked its way into my Christmas movie rotation. Not quite on a yearly basis yet, but every other year.
I thought I would share this with you this year in case you’ve never heard of it, or have heard of it but didn’t know how available it was now. So when you have some time on your hands this holiday season, give it a watch.
TBS was one of my favorite TV channels in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, so I like to go back in time and talk about the things that made me love it so much.
A Christmas Story hasn’t always aired as a 24-hour marathon on Christmas on TBS. That tradition didn’t begin until 1997. Before that though, TBS did show the movie at various times throughout the holiday season. The ad pictured above is from 1992 and was from the time that TBS was running the TBS Award Theater movie most days at 10:35 am. The criteria for the award feature was pretty simple I think, in that as long as a movie had won any kind of award, that was all the excuse they needed to run a movie in that block.
This ad in particular is one I come across advertising a TBS Award Theater showing of A Christmas Story from an issue of TV Guide from the week of Christmas in December of 1992. I can’t remember the date of the showing though, because I didn’t think to write it down or keep up with it, but it was almost certainly on a weekday. Being out of school on Christmas break that week every year means that I may have very well watched this exact airing in 1992.
The as is a good one as it features Ralphie in his cowboy get up from his dream sequence of ridding the neighborhood of Black Bart and his gang with his trusty Red Ryder B.B. Gun. While I’m a huge fan of the thought of this movie airing in its now traditional 24-hour marathon on Christmas Eve, I also like the idea of it being destination viewing on random days in the month of December.
Am I alone in missing the good old days of TV Guide? Not only for the listings that helped you know what to watch when but for the ads for new episodes or specials peppered throughout its pages. With that kind of thought in mind, in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I’d like to present a collection of old ads TV Guide featured for Christmas specials from through the years. I’m even going to limit my commentary and just let you enjoy all the nostalgic goodness. Here we go!
Back in 1990, handheld gaming systems were the new hotness, and Gamepro provided a handy guide to all of the games that were currently available for both Gameboy and Lynx for the holidays. This way, kids knew exactly what games to bug their parents for, and now you can go back in time and enjoy this awesome look back at the state of handheld gaming in December 1990. Enjoy!
Merry Christmas to all of you out there on the interweb!
I know this year’s Christmas celebrations are probably going to be vastly different for most of us. But I hope we can all still find magic in the season, and that everyone has a safe and happy holiday.
As for me and mine, it’s going to be a low-key Christmas. It’ll just be my little family of four here enjoying each other’s company. We’ll probably open a present tonight, and then save everything else for the main event tomorrow. We’ll be having a small Christmas dinner on the big day, but there will be plenty of my famous Green Christmas Punch and Cousin Eddie’s Egg Nog to enjoy, as well as plenty of Little Debbie Christmas Tree cakes too!
In case you’re having a low-key Christmas at home as well, and you’ve had your fill of A Christmas Story, I’ve got a little something you may consider entertaining yourself with this evening…the Mr. T and Emmanuel Lewis Christmas Special from 1984! Give this forgotten old Christmas special a watch this season. It just might brighten your holiday a little bit. I’m embedding the video at the bottom of this post.
I’ll be taking tomorrow off from posting, but will likely be back on Saturday or Sunday with a recap of whatever cool stuff has found its way under my tree this year. I’m hoping I’ll find some of the Masters of the Universe retro figures hiding in my presents! But until then, have a Merry Christmas, and stay safe.
Way back in 2014, Matt at Dinosaur Dracula unleashed on the world an idea to create a virtual Christmas tree. It was an awesome idea, but I didn’t heed his advice until this year. I’m glad I waited actually. 2020 has been such a year, that making this was a much-needed distraction. While he printed out the blank tree, used crayons to color it, and printed out the ornaments and presents to glue on, I opted to do it all digitally. The end result was still the same in that I probably had as much fun making mine as he did his.
So for my tree, I went with traditional green as the color scheme. I almost chose to go with white as a throwback to the awesome tree my grandmother had for the Christmases of my youth but felt that the green would make a better background for the ornaments. And speaking of the ornaments…when you’re doing a virtual tree like this, you’re not limited to traditional ornaments. So I went with ornaments based on the members of WCW’s Dungeon of Doom! I didn’t feature them all, but the main ones are there.
And then there are the presents. Oh my, what presents are waiting for me under the tree! The only thing featured there that I actually had was the Super Nintendo. All the rest are items from my want list that I never got. The Eternia playset and Horde Slime Pit from the MOTU line, the G.I. Joe USS Flagg aircraft carrier, and the Cobra Silent Castle, the cage for the LJN WWF wrestling ring, a Mad Scientist Monster Lab, the A-Team train set, and one of the pirate ships from LEGO.
Can you even imagine what Christmas day would have been like after finding all of that under your tree as a kid?!? Hell, not just Christmas day, but the entire week…and probably the month of January as well. Every day would have brought awesome playtime!
If you’re looking for some kind of easy and fun activity to squeeze out of this holiday season, I can’t suggest highly enough that you create your own virtual Christmas tree. Matt’s post has the tree image that you need to get started with. You can print it out or do it digitally as I did. Either way, if you do one, I’d love for you to show it off in the comments. Here’s hoping you make the most of the season by making your own!
In an earlier post here on Retro Ramblings, I posted about how 1986 was the year Santa became real for me. I briefly talked about some of the things I got for Christmas that year, but those little snippets just don’t do all those wonderful toys justice. So here, in detail, is what I got for Christmas in 1986!
The big one that Christmas morning in 1986 was the G.I. Joe Cobra Terror Drome. At that time in life, my world revolved around four toys. G.I Joe, Masters of the Universe, Construx, and Legos….with G.I. Joe being at the top of the list. Knowing this, it was no surprise to my parents that the biggest hit of the holiday season would be this huge G.I. Joe playset.
It had room for plenty of figures, so massive battles were a foregone conclusion. I stockpiled this sucker with every bad guy I had in my collection and then began a full-on assault with all of the good guys I could find. Even Bo & Luke Duke in their 3 3/4″ figure form and the General Lee got in on the action on the side of the Joes!
The initial battle was a stalemate, with Cobra barely able to hold off the tremendous might of the Joes, as they retreated back a little way to regroup and plan for a second assault. Now of course this stalemate was only to ensure that the Terror Drome was intact to play with again the following day. I spent a while Christmas afternoon interacting with various parts of this set. The Cobra vehicles re-fueled at the re-fueling station built into it, while some of the top Cobra brass interrogated a captured Joe down in the holding cell area.
The shine of this toy didn’t wear off anytime soon, but I had gotten quite a few other new toys this Christmas that required my attention, so I had to let the action cool down a little so I could get on to some of the other stuff like…..
Construx Super Set
Even though Construx was probably third on my list of favorite toys, getting a Super Set like this one requires almost immediate attention. I can’t remember exactly what the structure was that this set was designed to build, but I knew from the looks of it that would come in very handy to members of the Joe team on their next assault on the Terror Drome.
Once I had this thing put together, it could drive right up to the Terror Drome and lift several Joes at once to the top of the Drome and unload them right in the heart of the command center! What better way to strike right at the heart of Cobra than a direct assault on Cobra Commander and the Barroness?!?
Once the great battle of the Terror Drome was over, this set of Construx went on to be featured in lots of other playtimes. I used the pieces to create all kinds of new toys. I once built a scaffold to put over the top of my wrestling ring with which to re-create the infamous Scaffold match from Starrcade ’86. Along with building “steel cages” and assorted other wrestling-related toys, Construx seemed to go along with most other toys I played with.
I had a smaller set of Construx, but getting this Super Set for Christmas gave me plenty of pieces for projects all year long.
Tonka Steel Monsters Destroyer
I had plenty of hand-me-down Tonka trucks from my brother through the years, but this may have been the very first one that was mine first. It doesn’t quite look like your normal Tonka truck. This one seems to be more inspired by Mad Max than construction sites which were the norm for Tonka. And I didn’t have any of the other vehicles from this particular line, but that didn’t slow down the playtime.
Now I didn’t take the photo above, but as you can see, it was perfectly sized for G.I. Joe figures, and I made great use of it, as it became the main vehicle for my Dreadnoks figures. They themselves seemed to be inspired by the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max as well, so it seemed a perfect fit. With the bladed grill on this bad boy, it seemed like the perfect counter-offensive to the new Construx weapon that G.I. Joe had in its possession.
G.I. Joe Tomahawk
One thing that Cobra didn’t count on that fateful Christmas day, was G.I. Joe achieving air superiority. And why should they? The Terror Drome had the awesome Firebat that could launch right from the Drome itself. But G.I. Joe had brought a new weapon to the fight in the form of the Tomahawk helicopter.
The Tomahawk held the pilot and a co-pilot in the cockpit, Two more Joes in the back manning machine guns, and room for several more who could repel out of the rear hatch right into the middle of any hot zone on the battlefield! It would go on to play a key role in the battle of the Terror Drome, and many other battles in the years to come.
The Tomahawk was one of my absolute favorite G.I. Joe toys through the years. It probably saw as much playtime as any other toy I ever owned, and I actually still had it years later when I was too dumb to hold onto all that old stuff and sold it off in a mass sale. If anyone is looking for a last-minute Christmas gift for me THIS year, put this on the list!
Masters of the Universe Grizzlor Figure
I had accumulated a nice size collection of Masters of the Universe figures since ’84 but had few Hordak figures. This was okay to me though, since a bad guy is a bad guy, and they could just easily align with Skeletor in his battles with He-Man.
Grizzlor was a cool one though because of all the fur. And as a side note, to anyone who still has this figure, I wouldn’t suggest having him get trapped in the Horde Slime Pit. That stuff is near impossible to get out of his fur.
I’ve mentioned before that I used G.I. Joe figures to simulate my wrestling playtime. I would rename them to popular wrestlers of the day like Tully Blanchard, Ric Flair, Wahoo McDaniel, and others. But I had always had a hard time finding any G.I. Joe figures that resembled my favorite tag team of the Rock and Roll Express. That problem was solved on Christmas Day 1986, and when the greatest tag team of all time arrived at my house that Christmas morning, Grizzlor had met his match!
G.I. Joe Tomax & Xamot Figures
This awesome 2-pack of Cobra figures was kinda highly sought after if my memory serves me. And if not on a national scale, it certainly was in the circles I ran in. I know I personally had been asking for them for months on end, and they finally arrived that Christmas morning. With the matching outfits and the silver boots, the minute I opened them, I knew I had finally found my Rock and Roll Express!
Now to this day, I have no idea why I chose this as the first way to play with Tomax and Xamot. I didn’t use them in the great battle of the Terror Drome. No, I held them back, and later in the day, they squared off against Grizzlor on my Dad’s pool table in a weird two-on-one wrestling match with Grizzlor. Come to think of it, I have no idea why I didn’t get out any of the MOTU figures for play with Grizzlor either.
Either way, this Rock and Roll Express went on to defeat their hairy tormentor that day, and for probably at least a year, didn’t lose a tag team match in my wrestling rings either. Still to this day, Tomax and Xamot are in my top five favorite G.I. Joe figures. Whether they were winning tag team gold in a toy wrestling ring, battling hairy beasts from another universe, or being their intended badass selves on the side of Cobra, they were some of the best action figures I ever had.
Hot Wheels Snake Mountain Challenge
I mentioned earlier how the Masters of the Universe was one of my favorite toy lines. Now, what a treat it was on that Christmas morning to find that they had merged that line with another favorite of little boys everywhere…Hot Wheels!
This was one of the cool Hot Wheels sets that featured the orange pieces of track, a launcher for the car, and some kind of obstacle. In this set, the obstacle was a cardboard rendition of Snake Mountain that the car had to jump through at the end to escape, hence the name, Snake Mountain Challenge.
It even came with a cool silver car with the MOTU logo on the sides of it!
My Dad set the short track up on the pool table, and he, my brother, and I took many turns that day trying to escape Snake Mountain with little success. While my Dad and my brother each picked other cars from our Hot Wheels collection to try and make the jump with, I stuck with the great-looking He-Man car for all of my attempts. It was a super fun way to spend part of Christmas afternoon that day. But as the hours wore down, it was time to take a little rest and watch some TV.
G.I. Joe VHS Tape – Satellite Down
The VCR was new in our home, and I hadn’t had anything to watch on it really. That is until Christmas morning when Santa saw fit to leave me my very first VHS tape. It was a single episode of the G.I. Joe series titled Satellite Down.
It told the tale of a G.I. Joe satellite that crashed in the wild, and both Joes and Cobras raced to the scene to recover it. There, they met with a weird group of creatures called the Primords who found it and had taken it as a God. When all was said and done, G.I. Joe came out victorious once more. I had to watch it twice in a row just to be sure they won both times.
After those viewings, it was time for the second offensive on the Terror Drome. The goal was no longer to destroy the Terror Drome, nor to capture Cobra Commander. Now the mission was to retrieve a downed satellite that Cobra had captured and was storing at the top of the Terror Drome!
I won’t bore you with too many details, but the assault was a success. Using the new Construx weapon to lift Joes to the top was a failure since the Dreaknoks new Destroyer dump truck rendered it inoperable. Cobra thought they were going to have the advantage when they launched the Fire Bat, but it was knocked out of the air by the Duke boys jumping the General Lee off a cliff and knocking it out of the air. That left the Joes and their Tomahawk with air superiority, and they used it to lower Joes to the top and hook up to the satellite and fly away. All’s well that ends well I guess.
I’m sure I went to bed that night with a smile on my face and hugging some toy like Ralphie did his B.B. Gun in A Christmas Story. The events and gifts of that Christmas are burned brighter into my memory than any other Christmas, because like I told you in the feature, The Year Santa Became Real, Christmas up to that point was somewhat lacking. But the mega haul of Christmas ’86 solidified my belief in Santa and gave me a lifetime of great memories of that day.
