Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? (9 page)

Once you'd started a Little People collection, it was easy to integrate your family with other, sometimes competing, creatures. It was not unusual for a household to consist of Fisher-Price Mom, who was married to a Playskool McDonald's crew member, and together they were happily raising
Sesame Street
's Bert, a smiley blond princess, three mongrel dogs, and an Indian chief in full feather headdress. Even the Bradys' blended bunch was nothing by comparison: “somehow form a family” indeed.

Y
OU know how when something's so bad, you say it's good? Yeah,
Flash Gordon
isn't that. And yet the 1980 flick, an homage to the comic strip and classic Buster Crabbe serials of the '30s, is so unapologetically silly and entertaining, it wriggled its way into millions of kids' memories like a handful of bore worms. Was it the pulsing score by Queen? (
“Flash, aah-aaaah, savior of the universe!”
) The hammy dialogue? (“I'm not your enemy. Ming is! Let's all team up and fight him.”) The scantily dressed—and, due to her thick accent, scantly understood—Princess Aura? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

How do you apply contemporary film criticism techniques to a movie that features a flock of hawk-men spelling out words with their bodies? That's an easy one:You don't.While we kids recognized a treasure when we saw one, most adults dismissed
Flash
as a campy lark. Pathetic Earthlings.

M
ARS'S Forever Yours is the only candy bar we know of that successfully went into witness protection. It's still around, but with a different name and wrapper, and even its fans from the 1970s may not recognize it.

Forever Yours was a Milky Way with two differences: The nougat was vanilla-flavored, not chocolate malt–flavored, as with Milky Ways, and the bar was coated in a darker chocolate. And with that name, it made for great romantic gift-giving. Slipping your sweetie a Forever Yours bar delivered an emotional message that just wasn't there if you slapped down a Chunky.

Apparently “Forever” had a limited shelf life—the candy was no longer “Yours,” mine, or ours by 1979. But then, a sweet miracle. Mars brought it back—with the exact same recipe—in 1989, first as Milky Way Dark, then Milky Way Midnight. It's safe to assume that many fans of Forever Yours have no idea their old fave has been back for so long. It's a candy Lazarus.

I
F you market it correctly, you could put sugared sawdust in a box, call it “breakfast cereal,” and watch it fly off the shelves. Exhibit A? Freakies, made by Ralston Purina in the 1970s, with a short reappearance in 1986.

Freakies looked like Cheerios and kinda tasted like stale Quisp, but that didn't matter. Kids were enraptured by the whole magical world depicted on the box and in memorable commercials. In a cereal-shedding tree lived a friendly gang of seven Freakies, with names ranging from BossMoss to Hamhose to Cowmumble.

Were the Freakies monsters? Aliens? Pencil erasers? It was unclear, but they lived up to the “freak” in their name—BossMoss looked like a clump of broccoli with feet, and the others were so lumpy and melty it was possible the Freakies Tree was located on the banks of Love Canal.

They were ugly, but they sure sang a mean jingle. Sure, it was a little annoying that they rhymed “meal” with “cereal,” but who really expects alien monster pencil erasers to understand rhythm and meter? If only Freakies' taste had lived up to their goofy backstory, they might have stuck around longer. As it is, it's a shocker they didn't get their own cartoon.

A
BOY who loved his doll, a girl getting chomped by tigers, and a dog fixing a sink? Where do we sign up?

A record album, illustrated songbook, and 1974 TV special, triple-threat media powerhouse
Free to Be . . .You and Me
was created when
That Girl
star Marlo Thomas wanted to teach her young niece that it was OK to break gender roles, in careers and life. And looking at today's world, with its stay-at-home dads and doctor moms, there's little doubt that she helped make that happen.

Kids who got this book or album had probably never heard of women's lib except as a punch line on
Maude
. Many of the major points sailed over our heads; other parts seemed “no-DOY” obvious. No one likes housework. It's all right to cry. Boys can bake cakes, girls can bait hooks, and whatever gender you are, divorce sucks.

But the songs were darn catchy, and the book engrossing, featuring dreamy pencil sketches, snappy cartoons, and one story told in handwritten notes on torn notebook paper. Its most memorable song? “William Wants a Doll,” sung by Alan “Hawkeye Pierce” Alda. Its best story? Shel Silverstein's hilarious “Ladies First,” in which a demanding little girl is eaten up by tigers.

The book even addressed issues kids didn't know were issues, such as how you shouldn't dress your cat in an apron but should, if he so desires, let your dog be a plumber.
Heather Has Two Mommies
gots nothing on this.

N
OTHING says “nutritious breakfast” like a bloodthirsty creature of the night. Or so it must have seemed to the morning-meal wizards at General Mills when they came up with Dracula- and Frankenstein's monster–themed cereals. Count Chocula and Franken Berry made their debut in 1971. Fruit-loving, bow tie–wearing dead person Boo Berry followed a year later. Then, in 1974, cartoon werewolf Fruit Brute bounded onto the scene with frosted fruit-flavored nuggets and vaguely limeish marshmallows.

Today he's nothing more than a pointy-toothed, lycanthropic, and fairly disturbing memory.What happened? The official company line is that the concept simply ran its course. But conspiracy theorists maintain that the hairy, tortured, possibly rabid creature finally found the sweet relief of death. Did King Vitaman and Cap'n Crunch team up to have Fruit Brute whacked? Or is he still out there, baying at the moon, flicking at fleas, and recalling the glory days when the breakfast cereal aisle was an even scarier place to roam?

B
ACK in 1964, when companies still thought they could knock the morbidly obese pitcher that is Kool-Aid off his pedestal, Pills-bury came out with powdered drink mixes known as Funny Face. Some of the original six flavors were gleefully politically incorrect. Chinese Cherry and Injun Orange

were yanked and quickly reintroduced as Choo-Choo Cherry and Jolly Olly Orange.

Other flavors came later. The delightfully hippieish face of With-It Watermelon, who had sideburns and John Lennon glasses, was later reused for Choco-American soul brother Chug-A-Lug Chocolate.At one point, Tart n' Tangy Lemon was renamed Tart Lil' Imitation Lemonade, in a move that could have only been lawyer mandated.

In the battle of the beverages, Funny Face was almost knocked out early.The drink mix first used calcium cyclamate as a sweetener. When the FDA nixed the controversial ingredient's use in food in 1969, the mix came back fighting with two new formulations, one without sweetener, one with saccharine. Yep, saccharine. Good ol' saccharine! Can't go wrong with—Oh, wait.

L
IKE real life, the Game of Life had a mix of fun moments and maybe-we-should-have-played-Atari-instead moments. Its number one lesson? Don't have more kids than you can cram into your overlong 1960s-era convertible. It is also, apparently, a good idea to take the time to go through something called “College,” even though the board-game version was fairly deficient in binge drinking, debt acquisition, and drop-adding.

It was unclear who decided to put insurance policies, stock certificates, and promissory notes in a kids' game. Between this and Monopoly, it's like Ferris Bueller's economics teacher was put in charge of kids' game play. Still, few things in Life, and life, were as satisfying as retiring as a doctor to Millionaire Acres while your dopey brother landed in the Poor Farm. Shoulda gone to college, bro.

I
N 1972, kids broke free of the fashion dictator: Mom. Thanks to Garanimals, we could now cobble together a decent ensemble all by ourselves, just by matching the animals on the tags. Even a fashion-ignorant four-year-old could do it. Does this turtleneck go with these plaid pants? Pair up a couple of pandas, and your dressing duty was done: Fashion clash averted.

It was a foolproof system—until you started to experiment.What could possibly go wrong if you paired a monkey with a bear? Plenty. Interspecies mingling doesn't go well in nature (good luck with that relationship, monkey), and it was an even greater disaster in our closets.

Today, though, the simplicity of the idea makes a lot of sense, even for adults. More than one coordination-disabled person, facing a closetful of options, has wished desperately for the good old days, when the only decision necessary was whether to don hippo or zebra.

S
HAMPOO really let its hair down in the 1970s and '80s. Body on Tap incorporated beer! Lemon Up had a lemon-shaped top! Fabergé Organic wanted its users to tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. But the crowning glory of the shampoo aisle was Gee,Your Hair Smells Terrific.

The name sucked you in. Few products made an entire sentence their name, and such a goofy one to boot.There was no Gee, I Think Your Butt Looks Smaller for jeans, or Gee, Your Breath Doesn't Smell Quite So Rank for mouthwash. The pop-art packaging, with its deep-pink bottle and chubby multicolored letters, further encouraged the purchase. And the scent sealed the deal. It smelled kind of like a combination of your sister's perfume, an opium den, and the hanging air freshener in your older brother's Chevy van. Put together, it smelled of the '70s.