It’s more than a camera, it’s almost alive. It’s only nineteen dollars, and ninety-five!
Polaroid instant cameras had been around for years, but they were expensive gadgets that our PARENTS owned. In 1965, the camera company saw the obvious: there was a huge number of youngsters out there who needed to buy their product. So they came up with an ultra-modern (and inexpensive) design that was aimed straight at the face of youth.
Now, to top it off, we need a beautiful babe on the beach (Ali McGraw, if I’m not mistaken) as well as the catchiest tune of 1968’s commercials to make this a cultural icon. Mission accomplished.
Of course, I was an eight-year-old kid in 1968 (although I fondly remember that babe on the beach), so I didn’t get my mitts on a Swinger until a couple of years later, a gift from my oldest brother after he upgraded to a better camera.
It was a pretty cool item. The film was a bit pricey (hey, you can’t make money selling cameras at cost!), and gave black-and-white images about three inches square, as I recall. Not studio quality, but perfect for a generation that was always on the go.
And yes, it really did say YES when the light was right.
Here’s to a piece of Boomer culture that will live forever in our minds. Just TRY to get that song out of your head!
We Boomer kids were used to seeing “Made in Japan” on the bottoms of our various toys. Japan was the cheap place to make everything back in the 50’s and 60’s. But we were also used to seeing “Made in England” on one of our most beloved playthings: Matchbox miniatures.
It all began with a couple of unrelated Brits by the name of Leslie Smith and Rodney Smith on January 19, 1947. They founded Lesney Products in London, and began producing die-cast steel stuff. By the end of the year, the stuff included toys.
British kids grabbed them up from local stores as fast as Lesney could make them, so they kept it up.
By 1953, Lesney realized that they could make a very nice living concentrating on toys exclusively, and began looking at new product lines. Partner Jack Odell had a daughter whose school would allow kids to bring toys with the restriction that they be able to fit into a matchbox. So he took an existing Lesney toy, a green and red road roller, and miniaturized it so that it would be school-legal.
Lesney decided to sell the miniature vehicle in a replica matchbox. Thus was born a Boomer memory.
50’s era Matchbox car
More models followed, and they were soon designated as the I-75 series. The implications were obvious: ALL must be collected! While some kids with generous parents were able to accomplish that, most of us had to merely settle for as many Matchbox cars as we could cajole from mom and dad.
Matchbox miniatures had no rhyme or reason as far as scale was concerned. They were all roughly the same size, whether a VW Bug or a dump truck. This caused derisive comments by some collectors who insisted on a particular scale. Whatever. The world in general didn’t care, and sales skyrocketed.
Kids loved the sturdy, detailed vehicles. While they were pricey compared to lower-quality toys, they were faithfully manufactured as authentic miniaturized versions of their bigger cousins, even original blueprints being used in many cases to get everything just right.
As the 50’s transformed into the 60’s, miniaturized cars were very, very hot. Two other British companies, Corgi and Dinky, got in on the act with their own accurately scaled, larger incarnations, and everybody sold lots and lots of cars, both in England and all over the rest of the world, particularly the USA.
Matchbox created other series, including airplanes, ships, and car/trailer combos. In 1968. Mattel turned up the heat with the introduction of Hot Wheels. Suddenly Matchbox had a real rival.
Matchbox Superfast, 1969
Hot Wheels were built with speed in mind. They had those cool spring-loaded wheels, too. Matchbox soon responded with their own Superfast series, and practically every American middle-class boy had either Matchbox, Hot Wheels, or both brands of cars in their bedrooms.
Matchbox cars seemed to appeal to more serious kids who appreciated their accuracy. Hot Wheels were more for us happy-go-lucky types. Some would take the rivalry so far as to shun one brand or another, but not me. I loved them all.
The bad economic air of the 70’s doomed Lesney, as it did so many other successful companies who couldn’t cope with the tight times. In 1982, they went into receivership, and the Matchbox brand name was sold for the first time. By 1992, rival Mattel owned Matchbox. This distressed collectors, who feared that the line would either disappear or become Hot Wheels clones.
But Mattel has for the most part kept Matchbox a more serious, accurate line of miniatures. Of course, they’re no longer made in England. However, they are still around, unlike many of our treasured toys that we grew up with. And they still exist pretty much as we remember them. In fact, many of us middle-aged businessmen have a few kicking around our offices or cubicles as stress relief.
Sometimes, a brief trip down memory lane with a toy is what it takes to deal with corporate stupidity.
The world was full of budding keyboardists in the 1960’s. However, that didn’t mean homes were full of pianos. Pianos were big, heavy, and expensive. Having one in your home meant that you were committed to playing it, otherwise it just took up space.
The same wasn’t true for a musical instrument that was inexpensive, lightweight, and small enough to tuck away into a closet when not in use.
Chord organs were found in lots of homes during this time. The most common brand was Magnus. Magnus chord organs were made of various shades of plastic. They were made to sit on a tabletop, or there were also models that came on legs. They would necessitate benches with built-in compartments for the sheet music that was also a familiar sight.
We never had a chord organ in our home. I guess that’s a comment on the Enderlands’ musical talent. But lots of my friends had them.
The Magnus chord organ had a fan, which you could hear spin up when you switched it on. When you pressed the keys, you allowed air to blow over certain reeds. The resultant sound was similar to that of a harmonica, which works the same way.
Magnus sheet music
There were also chord buttons on the left side, which could be used to provide nice background sound to your expertly played keys.
Of course, expertly played keys did not necessarily accompany the organs. The sheet music showed you how to play the right notes, but the music actually required talent to be done well, something which I, and many of my friends, sadly lacked.
However, many successful musicians did start out with a humble Magnus chord organ, and used it to propel them on to bigger and better things. A likely upgrade for such a prodigy might be a Hammond organ, capable of all sorts of cool stuff. Its electronically-produced sound made for imitation of different instruments like the trumpet, the clarinet, or the piano.
Most of the time, when I write about old toys and gadgets, I can find a good deal of information on the subjects. That’s not the case with the Magnus organs. Lots of folks remember having them, but nobody seems to know the origin of the toy/musical instrument itself.
I did find one website that stated that Magnus organs originated during the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps they did, but the plastic/electric models we had in our homes more likely arose sometime in the 50’s.
Some households proudly owned nicer wooden Magnuses. They coughed up three-figure prices for the organs, which would then be considered considered real furniture, not to be placed in the closet when not being played..
Nowadays, you can buy nice Casio keyboards capable of some amazing electronic sounds for around a hundred bucks (considerably cheaper than the Hammonds that cost over a hundred 1966 bucks). They will pipe music into your computer, where you can save it as a midi file. While not nearly as commonplace as the Magnuses of the 60’s, many aspiring musicians are discovering their talent by playing with them at a young age, much as we did with our plastic, air-driven chord organs.
They were magic, indeed. Place some colored rocks in a clear glass container. Mix up some solution and pour it over them. Let the magic begin.
Boomer kids were all about stuff like mixing up chemicals. And we REALLY liked stuff like growing rocks. That’s why two brothers, James and Arthur Ingoldbsy, made a peck of money with their 1940 invention: Magic Rocks.
I remember these bad boys being advertised in comic books. The thing is, I don’t remember seeing them for sale anywhere in my hometown of Miami, Oklahoma. I got my paws on Magic Rocks for the first time while on vacation in 1967. We traveled up to Montreal that year for the world’s fair which was called Expo 67.
Somewhere on the way up or back down, we stopped into a roadside restaurant/gift shop (probably a Howard Johnson’s) and there sat the magical minerals. I convinced my parents that they were something I could not live without, and became a proud owner.
I waited until we returned home to grow the Magic Rocks. I had forgotten the exact procedure, but this site reminded me.
You mixed up the chemical solution with tap water at room temperature. You put half of the rocks into a glass container (a goldfish bowl, in case you wanted to create an weird underwater scene with a fish swimming around it) and poured in your solution. After six hours, you poured off the solution, mixed it up, and poured it back in. You added the rest of the rocks. Six hours later, or more likely the next morning, you poured the solution down the drain and rinsed off your now towering rocks. Once well rinsed, they were to be kept submerged. You could now add your goldfish if you grew them in a bowl.
The Magic Rocks were one of the coolest things a kid of the 60’s could produce in his bedroom. Their surreal towers submerged in clear water could take you on a journey in your mind to a kingdom far away, where dragons ruled the air and brave knights kept them at bay.
They would last for as long as months. Generally, they would be forgotten and the water would evaporate. They would quickly disintegrate in the open air. They would last longer under water, but would still start breaking down after a while.
But the cool thing about Magic Rocks was that they were cheap, and easy to grow again.
Magic Rocks are still cheap, and readily found online. So perhaps one rainy afternoon you might choose to revisit your childhood by growing the magnificent little towers out of colored rubble. It might do your psyche some good
“Made in Japan.” Our fathers, who may well have fought in the Pacific theater in WWII, would derisively roll their eyes when reading this out loud from a label on a cheap piece of junk. “Serves them right” they might have mused, recalling fallen comrades in arms, “to be the lowly producers of the world’s cheap junk.”
When we grew up, probably 90% of our toys bore the label claiming Japan as their place of origin. Long before we became so dependent on foreign oil, our first serious trade deficit arose thanks to huge ships loaded with every sort of plastic or tin gewgaw which was assembled in that Asian island nation half a world away.
And that label implied cheapness, shoddiness, disposability, lack of quality. One would NEVER give someone else a meaningful gift that was made in Japan.
How times have changed.
Made in Japan
At presstime, the economic roller-coastering of late has put many American companies in a state of crisis. General Motors in particular is in serious trouble, the very continued existence of this industrial giant being in real jeopardy.
Yet, Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, Mitsubishi, Mazda, and Honda are all doing very well, thank you. And the reason they are doing so well is that “made in Japan” has come to mean something very, very different than it did when we Boomers were kids.
Where did it all begin? When did the “Made in Japan” label go from something to be derided to a stamp of the highest quality?
A date would be hard to pick. But by the mid 1970’s, Japanese-made items like cameras were recognized by the rest of the world as being sophisticated instruments manufactured to extremely high standards.
There was nothing shoddy about a Nikon. Or a Pentax, a Canon, or an Olympus, for that matter.
The elder members of the Boomer generation were coming home from Vietnam loaded with goodies picked up very cheaply overseas. These goodies included Pioneer stereos, Seiko watches, and Nikon cameras.
Vintage Nikon camera
The same kids who played with toys that their fathers sneered at now viewed items made in Japan in a very new light.
What Japanese-manufactured items would be the next hot tickets?
During the Korean conflict, Japanese automakers, who had been around since the early 20th century, were commissioned to manufacture army trucks. The much-needed business from the nation’s conquerors was just the ticket to revive an industry that had been driven to near-extinction by the loss of WWII.
After the Korean armistice, the manufacturers cranked out tiny cars perfect for Japan’s crowded roads and expensive fuel prices. Occasionally, one of these miniature vehicles would show up on American highways, to the amusement of WWII vets driving massive tailfinned land-boats.
By the 1970’s, when all of those Vietnam vets were arriving back home, Japanese cars had gotten a bit larger and more powerful. They also had developed a reputation for dependability and durability. And they got good gas mileage when fuel prices began going haywire.
That leads to today. When my kids began looking at the possibility of purchasing their first cars (which would be affordable on a minimum-wage budget), I told them that dad would work on them for free as long as they were (a) Japanese and (b) fuel-injected. They kept up their end of the bargain, so did I.
Now, China is the world’s laughingstock when it comes to cheap junk. Sometimes, it’s not so funny when things like poisons get into foodstuffs.
But look for the world’s most populous nation to sooner or later learn the lesson so effectively demonstrated by Japan: Quality is much, much more valuable than quantity.
It recently occurred to me that I came by my geekish (and I use the term with great honor and reverance) nature naturally. My father was a B-29 mechanic in WWII. Not only did that keep him from getting killed on some south Pacific island, he was also involved in state-of-the-art technology of the time. The B-29 was a monstrously huge, powerful, beautiful airplane that required highly skilled personnel to keep flying. I’m very proud of my father for qualifying for such exalted, technically challenging, honest duty.
Dad show his geeky side in another way as well. He was passionate about fancy radios.
Dad would play with the shortwave band from time to time. He would tune in a station from Denver that would broadcast coordinated universal time (At the tone, the time will be 9 hours, eleven minutes coordinated universal time.”). My brother the Air Force pilot would give him beautiful Seiko watches in the 70’s he obtained cheaply overseas. Dad reveled in knowing that his watch was accurate to the second, and knowing that 24 hours later, the amazing Seiko would only be a few seconds off.
Of course, I used the time station to set my LED watch as well. That way I could count down to the exact second the classroom bell would ring.
That was the extent of his interest in shortwave, to my knowledge. But I would borrow his big fancy radio and spend hours searching for strange radio broadcasts that were literally coming from all over the world. In fact, I’m getting goose bumps just thinking about how thrilling it was to stumble onto the BBC, Radio Moscow, the Voice of America, and weird Morse code signals.
It was pretty wild hearing the Russian side (in English) of how the Vietnam War was going.
Vintage Telex machine
But I had just as much fun finding stations that just broadcast electronic noise. Much of the noise, I later learned, was telex data. Telex was a precursor to the internet that allowed the transmission of typed words among businesses and government organizations. The signals would be translated by telex machines into messages. The system was fast, cheap, reliable, and decidedly cool.
The Morse code broadcasts were lots of fun, too. I would transform myself into a secret agent who was getting his encrypted instructions via shortwave from some strange, exotic place.
It was great stuff to fuel a kid’s imagination, knowing that some of the signals were coming from lonely towers located in the middle of Siberia, or eastern Europe, or on an African mountain.
Shortwave radio is still around, of course, and bigger than ever. There are websites that are virtual radios, where you can tune to frequencies and listen via streaming audio. And shortwave radios have gotten cheaper and more sophisticated, like all other electronics.
However, the rise of the internet and the fall of communism has made shortwave less cutting-edge than it used to be. I remember feeling a little guilty listening to Russian shortwave! But the medium is still out there, and still heavily used.
Maybe it’s time for ME to buy a fancy multiband radio . . .
Frank Lloyd Wright was possibly the greatest architect the world has ever seen. But he did children another great service: he became father to a son named John.
In 1916, John Lloyd Wright, obviously exposed from a young age to the concepts of designing and building structures, invented a construction toy that might inspire other future architects. He called them Lincoln Logs, one of the most instantly recognizable brand names in history.
Legend has it that he noticed the interlocking beams that his father used in designing the basement of the Imperial Hotel in earthquake-prone Tokyo, and a light bulb went off in his head. True or not, we do have John Wright to thank for one of the most timeless toys ever made.
Not only did WE play with them, our parents may have done so too! But since they probably grew up in the Depression era, they likely made do with building toy cabins out of sticks and slabs of wood. But we were fortunate enough to grow up in Boomer times, and we were indulged with the real deal: genuine Lincoln Logs.
The set I had came in a canister just like I have pictured.
They were simply a perfect design. You could create in a few minutes amazing buildings. Sure, they were always log cabins, but you had tremendous creative room to use your imagination. My G.I.Joe had some bodacious forts, thanks to my creativity and my trusty Lincoln Logs.
The parts were big enough to make them harder to lose, unlike Tinkertoys (which will receive their own article later). The plastic gable ends and chimneys were durable enough to last as long as the wooden logs themselves.
Like everything else, Lincoln Logs have changed with the times. They are still in production, and still very popular.
You can tell yourself you’re getting them for your grandkid. I won’t tell.
Our living rooms in the 1960’s were comfortable places, indeed. Ours had a homey ambiance that made for a wonderful place to spawn memories. I can clearly recall the paneled walls, the sunken floor furnace, the area rug with rectangular shapes with 1 1/2″ wide borders that were PERFECT for driving your Hot Wheels cars on, and a familiar means of illumination of the era: a three-light floor lamp.
I recall the lamps being in all sorts of homes I visited. Ours had metallic shades that directed the light at whatever you wanted to be lit up. It sat by the easy chair, so dad could point the glaring 60-watt bulb directly at his copy of the Tulsa World.
My grandmother in Mason, Texas had one with glass shades that were bright blue and orange. It was something to see, especially when she would festoon it with tinsel, ornaments, and strings of popcorn each year at Christmas time.
Pole lights in a 60’s living room
There are thousands of snapshots like the one to the right that were taken during the 60’s that featured the ubiquitous form of lighting. They were inexpensive, looked modern (today, they look RETRO-modern), and did a great job of lighting up what needed to be seen. They also got very hot, and one of my earliest learning experiences was that you did NOT aim the light by grasping the shade. No, you grabbed the end with the rotary switch to keep from burning the heck out of yourself.
I’m surprised I don’t cower in fear at the sight of the old floor lamps. The one we had also taught me at the age of five that it’s a really BAD idea to stick your finger in the socket!
The lights served an additional function: they were a nice place to drape shirts and such that weren’t quite dry when it started raining and mom had to hurry outside and remove them from the clothesline.
I’m not sure when the multiple light floor lamp became passe. I don’t recall seeing too many of them in the 70’s. I remember mom got rid of ours when we got new living room lamps at an estate auction. She used those lamps for thirty years until her death.
It seemed like everyone else got rid of theirs, too. Nowadays, they are sought after by folks looking for the retro feel (like my wife and myself). But go back about forty years, and they were seen in millions of middle-class homes all over the world.
In a day and age when many of our favorite childhood toys have ridden off into the sunset, either victims of hard financial times, or perhaps, like Kenner, were bought and sold into total obscurity, it’s refreshing to see a treasured childhood memory doing very well, thank you.
Such is the case with today’s subject, Lego.
I remember Legos being a hot new item in the 60’s. But in researching this piece, I was quite surprised to learn that its history is as venerable as that of Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys, going all the way back to early in the 20th century.
It all started with a Danish gentleman by the name of Ole Kirk Christiansen. He was in the business of producing buildings and furniture for the locals when, in 1924, his two young sons set a fire while playing with some wood shavings which destroyed Ole’s workshop.
Ole took it in stride, and looked at the disaster as an opportunity to build a new workshop with greater capabilities. Thus, he began producing miniaturized versions of his furniture and buildings to be used as aids in designing.
At this point, the history gets a bit fuzzy. But the prevailing opinion seems to be that Ole’s carpentry business went downhill, and it was suggested by friends and associates that he spend his time making miniaturized toys instead.
By 1932, he was doing just that. He was barely surviving the Depression, often trading toys and the occasional furniture for food. In 1934, Ole held a contest among his few employees to give his new toy company a name. The prize was a bottle of homemade wine. The winner was Lego, which, in Danish, meant “play well.” It was a further bonus that in Latin it was translated “I put together” or “I assemble.”
The company held on, surviving Nazi occupation of Denmark, and another catastrophic fire, this one in 1942. By the late 40’s, Lego had begin experimenting with plastics. Plastics were pretty primitive back then, but Ole and his son Godtfred saw potential for it.
In 1947, Ole and his son obtained some plastic interlocking bricks made by a company named Kiddicraft. They were impressed with the concept, and sought to build an improved version, with pegs on the top of the brick interlocking with the hollow bottom. In 1953, they released the first recognizable Lego bricks to the European world.
Plastic was by and large considered cheap junk, particularly by the European shopping community, so sales weren’t that great. But soon Godtfred spoke with some international buyers who suggested he expand his vision to include an entire construction system, complete with things like roofs, windows, doors, and perhaps even people.
70’s era Lego space set
But first, the blocks needed improved engineering. In 1958, hollow cylinders were added to the bottom of the brick, which made for stronger interlocking. The Lego brick was ready to explode upon a world of Boomer children.
Yet another major fire destroyed practically all of Lego’s wooden toy stock in 1960, so Godtfred (by now Ole had died) decided to commit the company to the manufacture of plastic building systems. It was a good call.
Lego toys were a smash hit in Europe, and the company cut deals to begin selling them in the US and Canada in 1962. They took the countries by storm, and the company sailed high. The bricks continued to be improved with better quality plastics, and more and more designs were offered. Kids were building Lego cars, airplanes, ships, skyscrapers, the limits being only their imaginations. Instruction sheets were added to kits in the mid 60’s, but many kids freelanced creations even more wonderful than the suggested ones.
In 1968, the Danish version of Disneyland was built in Billund, home of Lego. Legoland eventually grew to a million visitors a year. There are now four Legoland theme parks and five learning centers found all over the world.
And the Lego company has withstood hard financial times, a Nazi invasion, and several catastrophic fires to be one of the most successful toys ever made. Their corporate website lists them as number five in the world, not bad for a little Danish company that survived the Depression by trading toys for food. And best of all, they remain a private company. Being privately owned provides a stability not available with publicly-owned counterparts. I work full time for a private company which has never had a layoff in its long history.
Lego’s future looks good, too. In 2009, a Lego movie was announced, to be filmed as part animation and part live action. The company produces themed toy sets for popular movies with nearly every release. And the best news is that our grandchildren play with Lego sets that are very much like the ones we had, only with more cool stuff that we could only dream about.
I intentionally left out my own memories here because, believe it or not, I never had Legos, although I did play with them over at a buddy’s house. So what are your own Lego memories?
It was the ultimate in cool. James Bond even wore one. It was the light-up LED watch.
Introduced in 1970, it was a very expensive toy for the wealthy. But by 1972, they had gotten affordable and were starting to be popular. I got mine a couple of years later.
Dad used to get Coordinated Universal Time on his shortwave radio to set his watch (at the tone, it will be . . .). I had a wind-up Timex, and it used to lose or gain a couple of minutes a day. Hey, if you had a watch, you had to keep adjusting it. That’s how it was.
But LED watches got us used to knowing EXACTLY what time it was.
One of my favorite tricks was to count down the bell in class. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1!” followed by the bell ringing on cue. Great stuff for a class clown.
The watches were accurate to within a minute or so a year. That was also the most ridiculous advertising claim ever, because you were replacing the battery at intervals that might possibly stretch into three months. Of course, when the watch was new, as you obsessively checked the time, a battery would give out after a month or so.
LED watches were a common sight until 1979. Then, they disappeared almost overnight. That year, the much more efficient LCD came on the market, and you could get a year or more out of the battery (if you didn’t use your light too much to check the time in the dark).
The watches, which cost hundreds of dollars in 1970, were given away in cereal boxes by the end of the decade.
