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Vintage Toys & Tech Photos
savetz writes "Here's a fun site: Consumer Reports magazine's vintage photo gallery, in which you can see photos from when the magazine reviewed electric toasters in 1956, in-car record players in 1961, radio sunglasses in 1966, and other good stuff. Don't forget about the flaming Nerf ball."
is this just me or do all these new products seem a bit dated?
transmission_err
Which would actually be great for listening to talk shows. Those glasses and a cell phone would be a talk show junkie on the go's dream! I can hear it now though: "Hello, you're on the air (dead air)...Hello, (sound of breathing) Hello, can you turn down your glasses please, we're on 7 second delay!"
My favorite is the Mattel Agent Zero M Sonic Blaster 5530. What the picture fails to show is the little boy wetting his pants with excitement and joy when he opened his Christmas Present and saw that monster air bazooka. I know I would have!
Anybody remember Capsella? That stuff was the shit! It included mechanics, gears, electronics, even if you were lucky infra-red remote control.
This brings to mind that classic SNL sketch...Consumer Reporter: Well, let's try this one. What about this little foam play ball? I mean, even you, Mr. Mainway, can't find anything dangerous about this. Huh? Irwin Mainway: [ takes ball, bounces it on table, then shoves it in his throat and feigns choking ]
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Gaylord, the pup
I wonder where the etymology happened to change that word so much. Still more, I wonder if the original taker of that name really wanted to be known as the master of happyness at the time or not.
Ryan Fenton
Ah those were the days, boy does that make me fell old.
:o
Ah crap nevermind, im only 17 years old.
The first electric vibrator?? I thought that would be the most important vintage appliance in their history. It put me out of business...
Yeah, that's right
My god, I really want a turkey club sandwich.
The scary part is... I think my parents own a few of the items on this list =\
Gaylord the pup, that thing looks like the droopy detective cartoon dog, also gay, IIRC.
Gaylord the pup...pure gold!
Those old blurbs are pretty interesting, but it would have been nice to have a little more info, or even the original articles, rather than just a photo and a paragraph of text. Still, browsing their archive is a cool way to waste a half hour or so... ;)
DennyK
--Yer Sex while flying
Sex - Find It
The Bag O Broken Glass (tm) or
Johnny Lighter Fluid (tm)
w3rd.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And I play their video game.
Read the comic books.
And enjoy their iced coffee.
If you want to see some truely vintage toys google for "Buddy-L Trucks." My Grandfather developed a collection which my mother no has, that dates back to pre WW2, consisting of Buddy L trucks and old train collections. To put it in perspective, afer his death, my grandmother was offered sever hundred thousand dollars for a chunck of the collection by mulotiple museums.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals."
I remember seeing those pictures from consumer reports at least 4 years ago. Finally, I've beaten the Slashdot curve!
The nerf ball failed because it caught fire after being exposed to a lit match?
I guess they also condemned:
1. coloring books
2. jigsaw puzzles
3. the hair on childrens heads
Why didn't they just condemn matches?
Lawn darts and Merlin! How could they ? Actually they should have thrown in the Atari 2600 (Christmas 1977) in the 1970-1980 archive. Where would we be without the 2600?
This guy has the worst job ever...
Boss: Hey Jones, put this superglue on your hand and touch stuff...
Guy: It works..
Boss: Hmm... works too well... we don't like it!
?Who controls the past now, controls the future.
Who controls the present now controls the past.?
http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv2.jsp?C ONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=2547&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2311 &bmUID=1039242319459
(not counting the Bazooka one)
How the hell did you get a camera in a Slinky? The R and D for that must have been a real bitch.
War the Spy Wars!
This looks real similiar to what we used to call a "Polish cannon." You take 5 or 6 empty tin cans (you know, the ones with real seams, not the extruded stuff), cut the bottoms out, and tape them together -- tightly -- with duct tape. Take an empty coke can and poke a small hole dead-center in the bottom, and tape this to one end of your tube (the small hole is outside, the side you drink from is inside). Break out the Ronco lighter fluid, and squeeze a healthy dose into the small hole at the end. Hold the cannon facing the ground and swing in several wide arcs. Grab with both hands and have a brave friend hold a lighter to the little hole (not the big hole!). The resulting explosion would lob a tennis ball several hundred yards. If you were unfortunate enough to be standing in front of it, you were assured of a temporary hearing loss.
Oh, to be a kid again...
I love it. My 1954 Maytag A-504 washing machine. It's been cleaning dirty underwear for 48 years, and all it's ever asked for is a drivebelt.
Carrying on the tradition:
The moral?
If you buy good quality stuff once, it will last you your lifetime. And just because something may be old (ie, most of this stuff is older than I am), it doesn't make it irrelevent. What does a new dishwasher do that my old Maytag won't? Nothing. And the old Maytag looks really cool installed in a modern kitchen!
So, when my washing machine's 48-year-old rubber belt finally broke, I went to the local Maytag store and bought a new belt at the parts counter. Spent $10 on the belt, then the manager came running out after me. He rented my washing machine from me - paid me good money, provided me with a new washer while mine was there, and tried to buy it outright - so that he could stick it in the showroom that fall.
Unfortunately, you can only try so long to continue to use your desktop computer...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Reading through the article I couldn't help but think that if all this proves one thing, its that Microsoft really does destroy innovation. I mean think about it, how many wacky inventions like this do you see in the computing industry? When was the last time you saw a sysop wearing a pair of sunglasses hooked up via 802.11 to a server, listening to internet radio? Personally, its been at least 3 weeks since I did, which is far too long to be acceptable if we really want computing to be taken seriously in the modern world of high tech industry. The fact is, as long as Microsoft is able to maintain its stranglehold on the worlds economy of intelluctal stimulation and creativity, then we will never get to wear radio sunglasses, nor get to eat heated bread from our electric toasters without the long arm of the microsoft innovation police beating down upon us repeatedly until we simply collapse onto the floor and curl up into a foetal position screaming "Make it stop! Make the pain go away I beg of you!"
Greatly appreciating the submision on flaming nerf balls.
I love to see what the temperature tolerances are of certain objects.
As an amature pyrotechnician I have built things that are suposed to catch fire, but never anything that wasn't suposed to catch fire and did. The good thing about that is It's easy to get good results. 8')
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
one of the funniest sketches they ever did!
Accept no Substitutes!
Discontinue use of Happy Fun Ball if any of the following occurs:
* Itching
* Vertigo
* Dizziness
* Tingling in extremities
* Loss of balance or coordination
* Slurred speech
* Temporary blindness
* Profuse Sweating
and my favorite...
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I don't care of the years gone past, the idea of puttting a RECORD PLAYER in your car was a sign of vanity and ultimate display of the most basic common sensical technical illeteracy (uhm, even if you own a stationary record player, you may have an idea of how easily the needles skip) if you bought one of these in the early sixties you were orobably a southern californian porn producer with a Velvet Elvis on the wall, and a card in your wallet stating your permanent membership in the purgatory of the commonsensical illiterate booboisie.
Damn! And I wanted to copy some +5s for free Karma... oh well...
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I guess one can't really be insightfull when talking about flaiming nerf balls then, eh? Oh and AS I was posting the parent got unfairly modded down, so I'd better click that Post Anonumously box then!
I actually suspected that I would get modded down, so I posted it (as well as this) as an AC. The next time I see a repeat, I'll post it with my username and see how that goes...
This hasn't been funny for a hell of a long time. Repeating jokes over and over and over is NOT funny, it's stupid.
Really cool.
~S
Wasn't there a troll or some other critter in the old Broom-Hilda cartoon named Gaylord? There was Hilda, that fuzzy guy, and then, IIRC, Gaylord.
May we never see th
well....
All your base are belong to us!!!
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
ROXORS!!!!!
nt
Tennis ball, soaked in gasoline, lit on fire--midnight street hockey.
I still remember the demonic banshee sound the flaming ball made as it whizzed past our faces....
{Phil Hartman} Good times, good times. {/Phil Hartman}
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
....us all belong to Russia!!!!
Have a look at this. Down near the bottom, there are two successive entries, the first about a car, the second about pens. The car in the picture is described as the cheapest American-made car, and cost $1000. The line below that, dated a year later states that the price of ballpoint pens just fell from $9 to $1. So, at the earlier price point, for the price of just slightly more than 100 pens, you could have yourself a new car! Today, of course, you can't get a new car for less than $8,000, but you can have yourself 100 Bics for, what, $2? It really is a striking illustration of how inflation is merely an average, prices on individual items increase or decrease at vastly different rates.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
<0)
( \
x
8===D
Yes, the ball is burning. And yes, that guy is indeed putting it into his mouth. Quick! Everybody take cover!
A nerf gatling gun that shoots flaming nerf balls? Would be even cooler if the gatling gun had a little piezo speaker built-in that belched out sound effects (" I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" or a cheesy electronic version of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries) as you sprayed your friends with glowing fireballs of death.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I read something great in an old radio mag from 1961.
They were talking about Japan. The article said that sure, Japan can make $50 television sets, and consumers might like that, but they will be upset if that TV breaks, right? And then the article said sure, those Japanese can make cheap stuff and can manufacture it inexpensively - but where they will never catch up is in being able to engineer quality products that appeal to western consumers!
Ha h, hah. I guess they read that article and sent all their kids to engineering school.
Juln
..but they'd only hear it _once_...
Why did this man glue himself to a hammer?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I'd hate to be this guy.
One drop of this instant glue formed a bond between man and hammer in five seconds. We called it an instant hazard--and rated it Not Acceptable.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
But what about products that actually are better than their predecessors?
Many of the products you mention may do the job as well as they did when new, but their replacements do the job *better* -- either directly (like cleaner clothes) or have a lower impact (use less power/fuel/water, are quieter, less polluting), or offer more features (delayed start, surround sound, more inputs/outputs).
Your snowblower is likely 2-cycle -- loads of pollution (noise & particulate). Your cars are far more dangerous in accident, pollute, get terrible fuel economy and require far more maintenance, not to mention being less enjoyable to drive (vinyl bench seats, AM radios).
Your washing machines undoubtedly are too loud and use too much electricity and water and don't wash as good as their modern counterparts.
Your stereo, while perhaps providing a good output signal, doesn't have enough inputs or outputs for conemporary usage and probably uses more electricity. Your speakers probably have paper cones and can't last forever.
I agree that too much of what is made is crap designed to be thrown out far earlier than it could be designed for. But carefully replacing some stuff every 10 or so years isn't a bad idea, simply to get the improvements in quality and environmental impact.
Gaylord the Pup
It would be twenty years before someone came up with a format to make that idea work. 72 minutes, on one side, and no frickin' needle either.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I wonder if those in-car record players had 45 second ESP...
Who didn't like the Mistubishi Eclipse AWD because (and I'm not making this up)
"The trunk isn't big enough to hold a wheelchair."
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Did new tires really use to be this bald? There's no way you could get me to drive today with those things on my car.
Anyways, from the photo it looks like you could probably feed it records while driving; perhaps with a box of records on the floor where we now have "center consoles".
I was shocked to see this.
"What shall we do?" said Twoflower.
"Panic?" said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was
the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people
faced with hungry sabretoothed tigers could be divided very simply into
those who panicked and those who stood there saying "What a magnificent
brute!" and "Here, pussy."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
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