Tag Archives: Feature

Five of My Favorite Matchbox Toys

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Growing up in the ’80s and early ’90s, Hot Wheels, and Matchbox cars were a big part of my playtime.  Both lines produced a lot of really fun cars and playsets, and in this edition of Retro Ramblings, I’m sharing a few of my favorite toys from the Matchbox side of things through the years.  

Matchbox Super Spin Car Wash

After a long day of play in the dirt and mud of the hills around our house, a good car wash was just what the cars and trucks needed.  This car wash was kind of automatic…as in you had to get the car in the wash and then turn a crank and it would go all the way through.  It featured real water jets, a foam roller “scrub” brush, and a spin dry feature.  The perfect play set for getting all of your cars clean before packing them away for another day.

Watch the commercial for the Matchbox Super Spin Car Wash HERE

Days of Thunder Cars from Hardees

In 1990, Jerry Bruckheimer’s Days of Thunder movie starring Tom Cruise hit theaters to a great reaction, and merchandise based on the movie started to flow.  One of the better pieces of merchandise to come along were the replica cars from Hardees based on the stock cars from the movie.  The five main cars featured in the movie were in the set, which allowed us younger viewers of the film to recreate all the action at home.

Matchbox Cars Based on the Code Red Television Show

In 1981, CBS debuted the little-remembered Code Red TV Show.  It featured Lorne Green as the Father of a firefighting family in Los Angeles and the Chief of one of the many stations in the city.  The show only lasted one season, but Matchbox produced a series of cars featuring the iconic vehicles from the show.  There were two fire trucks, the Chief’s car, motorcycle, fireboat, helicopter, ambulance, and police car.  As a kid whose Dad was a fireman, this set was one of my absolute favorite toys to play with in the ’80s.

Matchbox Connectables

One of the cooler concepts that came along in the 80’s toy landscape were these Connectables cars from Matchbox.  Each car was in at least two pieces and connected in the middle.  This allowed you to interchange parts of different vehicles to create all new cars and trucks to play with.  There were also packs of other car parts available so you could even extend the new cars into total monstrosities if you wanted to!  You could make a big rig limo or a drag car with tank treads!  With these cars, you could take your imagination and play to a whole other level.

Check out the commercial for Matchbox Connectables here.

Matchbox Trains

Matchbox released a series of train cars in the early ’80s to go along with all of their already awesome car collection. There were various engines in different colors, along with box cars, passenger cars, flat cars, and cabooses.  The really fun aspect of this series was you could hook any of the cars to any of the other cars, meaning you could make many different configurations with varying train cars.  They weren’t exactly in scale with the rest of the line, as they were each about the size of one of their normal cars.  I used to love these things!  My brother and I would hook all of ours together and make an imaginary track all through the house.  We could get hours and hours of fun out of these trains.

So what about you?  Did you have any of these awesome Matchbox toys?  Did I leave out your favorite Matchbox toy?  Tell me in the comments!

How I Remember Christmas

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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.

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Christmas Specials as Presented in Old TV Guides

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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!

1979
1981
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Halloween at McDonald’s

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Halloween is one of the “big 3” nostalgic holidays for me, waffling back and forth between second and third place with Thanksgiving on my list, and Christmas being firmly in the number one spot.  There has always been so much to love about Halloween.  From the costumes to the candy, memories of harvest festivals, the scary movies, and the fall weather.  But one thing that sometimes gets overlooked is just how wonderful a lot of the promotions that companies run are tied to Halloween.  One of the best examples of this has been McDonald’s, and that’s what we’re looking at in today’s Retro Ramblings.

As I related before, one of my favorite things to find in my trick-or-treat bag at the end of the night were gift certificates in general, but McDonald’s gift certificates in particular.  They made them available to purchase in little booklets and featured coupons entitling the bearer to a free small ice cream cone, or free small french fries, a small soft drink, or at times, a small Sundae.  These little certificates were like some kind of savings bond for a kid.  You knew it didn’t hold much value when you were holding it on Halloween night, but you also knew that in the future, that thing was worth something.  For me, I would fold them up and put them in my Velcro wallet and eagerly await the next trip to town where I would pester my mom to no end about stopping at McDonald’s to cash in my certificate.  The fries, or a cone, or soft drink always tasted better when they were gotten with those Halloween gift certificates.

Maybe my favorite Halloween tie-in that McDonald’s came up with was their Halloween Happy Meals, where everything came in one of those cool Jack-o-Lantern buckets.  They initially released them in 1985, and they were such a hit, that they kept them going for many years afterward.  Some years, they would make slight changes to the faces on them, but in 1989 they made a major change when they added a ghost bucket and a witch bucket.  Of course, I had to have them all.  They were the perfect size for a Happy Meal, as the burger and fries fit nicely inside.  And they were the perfect size for a lot of other things too.  My mom would go every week and get us each a Happy Meal during the Halloween season so she could get buckets too.  She used them for things like storing clothespins, while I used mine for storing smaller toys like Micro Machines.  The only thing I found they weren’t good for was using them as your candy bucket for trick or treating.  They just weren’t big enough for that.  But dang, they were such a cool concept, and one of my favorite memories of Halloween from through the years.

The last thing that I remember making a big splash with me way back when were the Halloween McNugget Buddies toys that came out in 1992.  Now while getting an animated-looking chicken nugget toy with a face was pretty great on its own, giving it a removable Halloween costume just took things to a whole other level!  The toys were well made, and so much fun to put on display in their costumes.  McDonald’s created seven different McNugget Buddy characters and each had its own costume.  You could even interchange them between the buddies.  There wasn’t much to differentiate the McNugget Buddies from each other except their facial expressions, but it was still fun to mix and match their costumes between them.

McDonald’s has stolen my heart many times through the years in various ways, and their Halloween promotions were always one of the highlights of the season for me.  What about you?  Do you have any fast food Halloween preferences?  Let’s talk about them in the comments.

Five of My Favorite Halloween Treats

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The Halloween season is upon us, and I thought it would be fun to go back in time to the days of trick-or-treating and look at just what were some of my absolute favorite things to find in my treat bag at the end of the night.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it was hard for any treat to be classified as “bad”, but we all had the favorites that we hoped to get a sack full of by the end of the night.  Here in this Retro Ramblings, are five of my favorites!

Nerds Candy

When I was young back in the ’80s, there wasn’t much more revered candy amongst my friends than Nerds.  We all loved these things.  We’d carry the normal-sized boxes of them to school with us and compare flavors.  So when the snack-sized boxes came along, we were all stoked.  It was a big deal for a few years though to get these on Halloween night.  We’d all bring in our Nerds haul to school and see who really hit the jackpot. 

Candy Cigarettes

I know these things aren’t exactly politically correct these days, but back then, people didn’t see anything wrong with them.  A lot of Dads smoked then, and one of the coolest things you could do was to imitate your Dad.  I’d “puff” on these things for a while trying to look cool, but it didn’t take long for that chalky flavor to overcome me and I’d have to gobble them down.  Not only that but in school, we treated candy cigarettes like prisoners do real cigarettes.  You could trade these things for all kinds of stuff between classes. 

Gift Certificates

Now I’m not talking about things like a $10 Starbucks card.  No, I’m talking about the ones for free cones or fries at McDonald’s.  While you couldn’t necessarily enjoy these the night you got them, it was like having money in the bank, and you anxiously waited for the day you got to go cash them in.

Packs of Baseball Cards

At that time, collecting and trading baseball cards was a rite of passage.  All my friends were into it, and so was I, so anytime you could get a pack of cards was great.  On the street where I did all of my trick-or-treating, there was an older fellow who was really into cards, and to pass along the joys of the hobby to the next generation, he gave out wax packs of baseball cards as Halloween treats.  This world needs more folks like that man. 

Treat Bags

While getting all the individual items mentioned above was great, it was always more exciting to get a full little treat bag that held untold treasures inside of it.  Historically for me, these things usually had a mini candy bar in it, with some Tootsie Rolls thrown in, and usually another item like a spider ring.  These treat bags were the epitome of the phrase, “more bang for the buck”, and still would be my favorite thing to find in my treat bag.