Gadgets – Page 10 – I Remember JFK: A Baby Boomer's Pleasant Reminiscing Spot

It’s Slinky! It’s Slinky!

It’s a pleasure to offer today’s I Remember JFK memory as a currently available toy, and NOT as something that disappeared while you weren’t looking! Indeed, Slinky, and its manufacturer, Poof-Slinky, Inc.(a company owned by the family of Slinky’s inventor) stand tall as triumphant survivors which have weathered harsh economic times, changing public tastes, and the relocation of American manufacturing jobs to third world countries.

That Slinky TV commercial was replayed thousands of times in the 60’s, and the tune is instantly recognizable to anyone who was there, particularly if you happened to be a child. Our parents were used to being hounded for money to purchase Slinkys at the dime store. And many times they would give in, recognizing that the durable toy had been around since WWII was still raging, and seeing it as a good investment.

The year, in fact, was 1943. According to the official Slinky website,

(Richard) James, a naval engineer, was conducting an experiment with tension springs. During the experiment, one of the springs fell to the floor and began to “walk.” James took the spring home to his wife, Betty, and asked her if she thought it was something they could pursue. Betty had a vision for a toy and scoured the dictionary, looking for an appropriate name. She came across the word “slinky,” a Swedish word meaning stealthy, sleek and sinuous. Toy history was made.

James borrowed $500 and designed a machine that would coil flat wire. He created 400 Slinkys and offered therm for sale at Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia. Fearing embarrassment from no sales, he gave a friend a dollar to make the first purchase. He needn’t have bothered. Demonstrating the Slinky’s ability to “walk” down an inclined board with no battery power required, the 400 units sold out in less than two hours.

James expanded operations, and soon ended up at Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, where Slinkys continue to be manufactured today.

The Slinky quickly became an ubiquitous part of American culture. The durable toy could theoretically last forever. However, throwing it into a toy box sometimes resulted in the coil becoming bent and deformed. Like Humpty-Dumpty, all the king’s horses and men couldn’t fix it at that point.

Some time in the early 50’s, the Slinky Dog appeared. As the YouTube commercial shows, by the 60’s, there was a menagerie of Slinky critters.

Many of them still survive, as do miniature models and plastic versions painted bright colors. My coworkers are used to hearing the “slink-slink” sound of my own classic metal Slinky as I take a break from programming to reset my brain cells.

And Slinkys have proven beneficial for more than just play. During the Vietnam war, grunts discovered that attaching a Slinky to a radio’s antenna and stretching it out greatly enhanced their communications range. Slinkys have also been put to work in various industries where an inexpensive, flexible spring is needed. And Slinkys have long been used by teachers and scientists to demonstrate wave forms and centripetal force.

But that’s not what impresses us Boomers who grew up with Slinkys. No, it was the absolutely bonzer ability they had to walk down the stairs.

So a big hats off to Slinky, and the James family who continue to make them in Pennsylvania. We Boomers love survivors.

Introducing…the Nerf Ball!

“Stop throwing that ball around in the house! You’re going to break something!”

How many of us heard that sound repeatedly by our impatient mothers? it was enough to make mom go for another cigarette, the stress of worrying about her good lamps!

On July 3, 1929, Dunlop Latex Development Laboratories created the first foam rubber. Why it took another 41 years for someone to figure out that it would make for a great indoor ball is beyond me.

The Nerf ball’s history is short and sweet enough. According to the Parker Brothers website:

Original Nerf ball

In 1969, a games inventor came to the company with a volleyball game that was safe for indoor play. After studying the game carefully, PARKER BROTHERS executives decided to eliminate everything but the foam ball. In 1970 the NERF Ball was introduced as the “world’s first official indoor ball.” It didn’t harm furniture, windows or people.

With that, one of the most popular toys ever was created. Indeed, there are few people in the civilized world who aren’t familiar with the Nerf ball.

The space program was in full assault mode in 1970, and the ball was nearly released as the “Moon Ball.” While that might have made for even more brisk sales that year, the name is quite lacking in the timelessness of the Nerf moniker.

What exactly is a “nerf,” anyhow? The longstanding rumor is that it is an acronym for non-expanding recreational foam. However, nobody has ever confirmed that. Another explanation, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is that it’s simply a made-up name that means nothing. One further theory attributes the term “nerf” to the act of bumping another car in stock car racing. Hmm, not sure what THAT has to do with an indoor-safe ball of foam.

Whatever, a Nerf ball is a pretty amazing invention. Its uses are myriad. If you’re a kid, it’s perfect for rainy-day indoor play, as long as your flying body doesn’t break the very lamp that the foam projectile failed to harm. In the summer, its description of “harmless” becomes dubious down at the swimming pool, where a well-aimed waterlogged Nerf ball can cause you to see stars. And for adults, what better cubicle stress reliever than a squeezable ball that can be tossed at a hoop, whose invention closely followed that of the Nerf ball itself?

The Nerf ball, and its many other variations, have been one of the most successful toy lines in history, much to the delight of Parker Brothers, which has managed to maintain its independent entity in the business world while so many other toy manufacturers have been absorbed by others.

Soon after the release of the original Nerf ball, a football came out that was denser than the superlight foam, so that it could be hurled (outdoors, presumably) for distance. The addition of tailfins make 75-yard perfect spirals feasible for a teenaged kid.

Nowadays, there are more Nerf products than you can shake a stick at, including lightweight video game controllers. No matter how high-tech Nerf toys get, though, we Boomers can recall when it all started with a small orange foam ball that mom DID allow us to play with indoors.

I Want My Color TV!

The 1950’s was the TV Age. When the decade began, most US households didn’t have televisions. Entertainment consisted of listening to the radio. By the end of the decade, the trend had reversed. Televisions were found in a majority of homes, and radio shows had gone the way of hand-cranked cars.

Televisions revolutionized households. Teenagers of ten years earlier listened to Fibber Magee and Molly on the radio. Now, they watched Wally and the Beav on the idiot box.

That was a pretty profound change. But the next big change was already in the air.

I remember the first time I saw HDTV. It was a golf tournament, and I was astounded to see every blade of grass, and the little dimples on the golf ball itself.

Regular television would never look good again. It was two long years of misery before I could finally afford my own HDTV.

The same feelings befell those who saw color television in the 50’s.

There wasn’t much color television to watch back then. NBC took the lead in providing color programming, but the local affiliates had to upgrade their own equipment before viewers across America could actually see color television shows.

But if the local station was broadcasting in color, a sure-fire way to see it was to drop into the local television store. They would have a color model in its full glory circa 1959.

And, of course, once you had seen the magical NBC Peacock in full color, black and white would never be the same.

But what was a black and white television owner of limited means to do? Easy. You dropped twenty bucks on a color filter that would magically give you a “color” television!

Stick-on color TV filter for black and white TV’s

The filter was blue at the top, green at the bottom, and red in the middle. That meant that, at least in theory, grass would be green, the sky would be blue, and faces would be flesh-colored (if your flesh was as red as strawberry licorice).

After several hours, you would get used to it. Then, one day, you would take the plastic filter off and rediscover black and white television. By then, your painful memories of how gorgeous color television looked had likely faded to the point that good old crisp B&W looked watchable once again.

Now all you had to do was wait until 1967 or so, when color TV finally got affordable enough to purchase in its genuine incarnation.

And thrifty Boomers, if HDTV is still beyond your financial pain threshold, just pop a DVD into your computer. You’ll be getting full HD on your monitor.

Hula Hoops

Hula hoops were a two-time fad. The first was before my birth. The second was when I was seven years old. Needless to say, I only recall the second explosion. But you earlier Boomers will, I hope, feel familiar with today’s column, provided with lots of research.

It began, as did a number of Boomer crazes, with the minds at the Wham-O company.

In 1957, an Australian visiting California told founders Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin that in his home country, children twirled bamboo hoops around their waists in gym class.

At least one light bulb appeared over a head, possibly two.

Wham-O began manufacturing hoops out of Marlex, a cheap, durable plastic that had been recently invented.

Within two years 100 million hula hoops had been sold.

Poster advertising the Shoop Shoop hula hoop

The fad was the hottest thing around during that time, and beach movies showed California teens enjoying hula hooping on the big screen. But, like all fads, hula hoops became passe.

Then, in 1967, a bright mind at the aforementioned Wham-O placed a half dozen ¼-in.-diameter ball bearings inside a hollow hoop to give it a whirry sound. The noisy hoop’s colors were brightened, and the Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop was born.

The brilliance of the move was that the kids who played with the 1958 vintage hoops were now entering young adulthood. But Boomers being Boomers, they had plenty of younger siblings too young to recall the original fad who were suddenly exposed to many hours of commercials on Saturday morning TV advertising “The Shoop Shoop, Hula Hoop, Hoop!”

Once again, sales exploded, although nothing like those of the previous decade.

But the Shoop Shoop Hula Hoop has proven to be a steady seller over the years that passed by all too quickly afterwards. Even today, it can be spotted at discount stores all over the world.

And Wham-O, which seemed to somehow know the pulse of the millions and millions of Boomer kids, and knew just what they would beg their parents to buy them, scored yet another pair of coups in marketing. They also gave us lots of other wonderful memories from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.

How Did Our Dads Play Golf With That Equipment?

One of my dad’s spare time passions, and, by extension, one of mine, was golf.

His preferred course was the Miami Country Club (not a member, BTW). It was a nine hole layout that I never played. However, I did earn many a quarter (worth approximately $200 in kid bucks of the 60’s) for dutifully pulling his clubs around and staying (mostly) quiet.

I was too short to effectively take a real swing. However, he did allow me to take putts when there was nobody behind us to get irritated at a kid messing around on the green ahead of them.

Dad had an Acushnet Bull’s Eye putter, a classic design that is still manufactured and still popular. He also had a McGregor Tommy Armour Ironmaster, nowadays a valued collectible which I am proud to still own.

He was a bogey golfer who once shot a nine hole round at even par. What makes that feat all the more remarkable is that he did it with 60’s vintage equipment.

Golf equipment evolution had remained pretty stagnant since the quantum leap of replacing the old torque-plagued hickory shafts of the Bobby Jones era with steel versions that didn’t force you to close the club face at setup in order to achieve squareness at impact.

By the time our fathers went to war, the golf clubs they left in their garages back home had the newfangled steel shafts.

60’s era golf ball, out of round out of the box, and prone to getting cut by a topped swing

So when dad headed for Baxter Springs, KS to play the course there (another favorite haunt of his), he took along his trusty state-of-the-art Wilson Staff blades and laminated woods. He also had a bunch of Titleists in the bag, which set him back about a dollar apiece at the pro shop.

I would head for the rough and pick up lost golf balls at every opportunity. Dad would pay me a dime apiece for mint-condition examples of top-end brands like Spalding Dots, MaxFlis, or Tourneys. And a primo still-shiny Titleist might fetch as much as a quarter! That bought a lot of candy.

However, most of the orphaned balls I located had big “smiles” on them. Those were nasty cuts that were caused by “cold-topping”, i.e. swinging too high and striking the ball with the sharp lower edge of the iron.

Those laminated woods would make the ball fly, but they had the same basic flaw as did the blade irons: a sweet spot approximately half the size of a gnat’s wazoo.

Dad had sprung for a Kenneth Smith customized driver made of a block of pure persimmon. That was the same material that Arnold Palmer used in his woods. Of course, Arnie could also afford his own jet.

Persimmon woods, with a sweet spot the size of a gnat’s rear end

The persimmon was inherently harder than the cheaper laminated wood, and theoretically made the ball fly farther. It definitely had a different feel that was worth the extra bucks, in the opinion of 60’s golfers.

Dad had a pretty pure swing for a weekend golfer. He played a natural draw, an accomplishment in itself. When he connected, he could send the ball out as far as 240 yards.

Nowadays, we Boomers play with cavity backed irons that allow badly mis-hit shots to still travel a respectable distance and fly pretty straight. We swing feather-light metallic woods the size of travel trailers that routinely allow us to pop cut-proof balls with scientifically-enhanced spin 270 yards with ease. Steel shafts? How passe. We use graphite models that have various inherent properties that cause them to flex exactly the right amount at exactly the proper locations to cause the ball to fly as far and as straight as possible.

If you’re lucky enough to still be able to enjoy a round of golf with your old man, ask him if he misses the equipment he played with back when LBJ was in the White House.

Hot Lather Machines

What a happy coincidence. The younger members of the Boomer generation began shaving at roughly the same time that a formerly familiar device began appearing in our bathrooms: the hot lather machine.

Shaving is a rite which few of us guys enjoy. I’m sure you ladies enjoy it even less. But if you could replace that ice-cold lather with deliciously warm stuff, that would certainly make things more bearable, right?

Well, for a stretch in the 70’s, much of the world thought so. Thus, millions of hot lather machines, the most famous a model by Shick, were sold in drug stores and the like to those of us looking to make the daily shaving rite a bit less dreary.

My own first experience with hot lather started at the barber shop. The barber I used would finish up my haircut by getting hot lather from a big chrome machine and spreading it just over my ears, then taking a straight razor to remove all traces of hair about a quarter inch above them. That hot lather felt wonderful, but only for a moment. It quickly reached room temperature, but not before filling me with a feeling of temporary delight.

There were a variety of hot lather machines available during the Decade of Polyester, but Shick was by far the most popular and familiar to us. It used a lather manufactured especially to be heated up. It reached a higher temperature than the generic models which would accept almost any can of shaving cream. And it certainly received more advertising time than its competitors. I remember many a TV commercial extolling the benefits of using the Shick Hot Lather Machine.

But there certainly were others. One was a little ball that snapped on top of a standard can. I believe it was called the Shick Hot Top. There really isn’t a whole lot of info out there about hot lather machines sold in the 70’s.

GE made a machine that let you put almost any brand you preferred into it to be heated up for your pleasure. I believe that it was the machine that I once owned.

I enjoyed my hot lather machine, to be sure. But one day, I stopped using it. I’m really not sure why. Perhaps I had grown impatient with waiting for it to warm up. Eventually, it was relegated to the garage shelf, where it sat until sold at a yard sale, as were most of the other machines that were eagerly snatched up by us in the 70’s.

A hot shave is still a delightful experience, well, it’s better than a cold shave, let’s put it that way. But the days of fierce competition among manufacturers of hot lather machines are definitely over.

One thing I DID discover in researching this piece is that some men are quite passionate about the shaving experience. One blog went into a lot of detail as to the proper technique to get a perfect shave, including using a genuine Badger brush to apply the hot lather and letting it set for a while before actually shaving.

Yes, you can still obtain a Conair hot lather machine. They make models that range from a spiffy chrome model that eats up the better part of a c-note to a more basic black version that goes for less than twenty bucks.

Hmm, I’m tempted. But then again, that would mean that this wired type A would have to wait around for that lather to get hot, all over again.

Maybe I need to cut back a bit on the coffee? 😉

Stereos of the 70’s!

The 70’s was a decade known for lots of wild and crazy stuff that came and went in a flurry. I mean, what was hotter, then colder, than disco music? Other uniquely 70’s crazes that appeared for a bit, shined brightly, than vanished included fondue pots, macrame, and CB radios.

Another 70’s debut, but one that didn’t vanish as much as it evolved into smaller, lighter incarnations, was hi-fi stereo systems.

When we were kids of the 50’s and 60’s, we got along fine listening to transistor radios and portable record players. But as we became teenagers and young adults in the 70’s, why, it was time for some serious musical upgrading to take place! And manufacturers of huge wooden-encased components were more than happy to help us out.

One of the first things that I became aware of early in the 70’s was that sound could be heard in absolutely amazing stereo. My mom had a venerable record player console that sounded pretty darned good, with its 12″ woofer providing bass thump that was very impressive despite its its 50’s vintage. But even though it had the word “stereo” on a plastic label on its front panel, it was most assuredly a monophonic system.

I listened to Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run (still one of my favorite albums) on my oldest brother’s headphones about 1972. The stereo sound made me determined that I would have my own sweet sound system as soon as possible.

I began with a Radio Shack FM/cassette deck with satellite speakers in 1975, shortly after I landed my first job sacking groceries. It set me back $199, and a component turntable was another 50 or so bucks.

It sounded great, but lacked deep bass. So two years later, having graduated high school and begun working full time, I sent a check for $1200 to an outfit called Illinois Audio for a Pioneer system.

My dad thought I was nuts. He figured that check would be cashed and I would be ripped off. But within two weeks, a semi-trailer was in Bentonville, Arkansas with a bunch of big boxes inside that belonged to ME!

I’ll never forget the thrill I felt as I unpacked my 40 watt receiver, my Dolby cassette deck, my direct-drive turntable, my gorgeous HPM-40 speakers, and my high-end Koss Pro 4-AAA headphones that I had splurged for.

That stereo turned out to be a whale of an investment. It provided me with an amazing amount of pleasure and entertainment over the years, and a few years later, my brand-new wife was pleased that I had a decent sound system. Lord knows I didn’t have much else in the way of material things!

Nowadays, I do most of my listening to music in the car or on the computer (Carly Simon’s Spy sounds good through my Creative subwoofer system as I pen this piece). But I still have a bonzer home system, too. The last of my original Pioneer components to go were my HPM-40 speakers. They sold in a yard sale five years ago. My kids had managed to push both woofer cones in as they struggled to master the fine art of walking, but they still sounded good.

But as long as I live, I’ll never forget the ecstasy I felt as I unpacked my heavy, wooden-clad Pioneer stereo components and hooked them all together, then listening to that first rush of high-fidelity sound.

Hearing Your Own Voice for the First Time

One of the biggest shocks to hit us Boomer kids was hearing our voices recorded for the first time.

In the 50’s and 60’s, tape recorders were far from common. The devices were costly, and our fathers were too busy spring for pricey essentials like color televisions to consider spending as much as fifty hard-earned dollars on such a useless gadget.

But about 1968, a house guest brought over a gadget that would for the first time reveal to me what I would consider to be my high, pipsqueak voice: a portable tape recorder.

The human skull causes one’s own voice to reverberate and deepen before it reaches the ears of the speaker. Therefore, the untainted product as captured straight form its source invariably sounds higher than what one is used to.

Of course, nowadays, kids are used to hearing their own voices at a very young age. The debut of the camcorder in the early 1980’s saw to that. Plus, cassette decks became cheap and available during the decade previous to that, so that most households had a means to record to tape. And in this day and age of digital video and audio reproduction, it’s difficult to image a kid at the ripe old age of eight being shocked by the sound of his own voice.

But times were slower, simpler, and less technical when the Boomer generation was roaming the planet as children.

I remember that I was very curious as to what my recorded voice sounded like. So when the opportunity finally presented itself, I eagerly grabbed the microphone and started speaking.

I was quite distraught to hear a voice come out of the speakers that sounded like it was coming from a girl!

My fascination with my own voice continued as I grew older. I got my hands on a cassette deck when I was thirteen, and enjoyed reading the dialog from comic books into it, to be followed along later with the comic book in hand.

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

Speaking of recording one’s own voice, I haven’t forgotten about podcasts. I have turned into a Linux user and advocate, but unfortunately i have not yet found a solution to high-quality recordings with my current setup.

So here’s to a simpler day when things that we take for granted now, like cheap digital recording technology, were far off into the future.

Gumball/Novelty Machines

Some things never change. A tried and true idea that works will be recycled from generation to generation.

Thus is the case with the machine that dispenses small items for a price. Ancient Greek engineer and mathematician Hero of Alexandria devised a machine around 215 BC that would dispense holy water in temples for a coin. The concept was such a hit that it appeared again and again throughout human history.

And one such vending machine in particular has proven its historical mettle, so that it exists in essentially the same form today as it did in the 50’s and 60’s, when we saw it as children: the gumball/novelty machine.

Thus, when we take our grandchildren to the grocery store with us, we are likely to be asked for a quarter or two at the entrance, because the store manager has seen fit to plant a toy dispensing machine or two right where the little tykes can spot it as we walk in.

The strategy works. It always has, always will. Thus, each generation grows up with happy memories of feeding coins into a slot and twisting a handle to receive a prize.

We Boomers had a wide variety of machines at our disposal, which accepted amounts from a penny to a quarter.

The machines didn’t just use the idea of getting a prize for a nickel or so to attract our business. No, they would employ slightly nefarious means to get us to part with our precious coinage.

For instance, there was the classic bait-and-switch. A quarter machine was the high end device of the 60’s, so that’s where you would see the most outrageous examples of luring in the customer with one item, then having them depart with another entirely.

Typical gumball machine as seen everywhere in the 60’s

Take the capsule vending machine at the Miami, Oklahoma Bowling Alley, for instance. Inside its glass front was a piece of cardboard festooned with examples of, presumably, the toys that were contained within the translucent capsules, each available for a quarter. In the upper left corner was attached a real derringer! At least it looked real. It was a tiny firearm, small enough to fit nicely in a six-year-old’s hand. There was nothing about it that implied it was a toy, so naturally the word spread around town that you could obtain a genuine pistol for a quarter!

Of course, it wasn’t a real gun. In fact, it was highly unlikely that the toy, which would have retailed for a dollar or more, was ever found in the machine. Instead, taking a chance with a hard-begged quarter, I breathlessly open a plastic capsule to find a rubber monster’s face, animated by my thumb and index finger which fit into two little tubes in the back.

I remember that incident very clearly. I’m not sure why I recall that one occasion, out of hundreds of experiences with capsule machines, but I do.

Another form of temptation for kids was in putting penny gumballs into a machine that accepted nickels. A kid would willingly buy a penny piece of gum for five times the amount IF there were a few capsules inside with dime-sized items contained therein.

Presumably, truth-in-advertising laws have forced purveyors of machine-dispensed novelties to be more honest about what prizes a child might obtain with his coins. But even if they haven’t, kids can get the opportunity to learn the same lessons that we did at their age:

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Grandma’s Wringer Washer

Today’s column will probably wake up a few long-dormant memory cells. In my case, it was my grandmother who had a wringer washer. But for many of you, it might have been dear old mom herself.

Keeping one’s clothes clean has been a challenge since clothing itself began being worn. The wealthy would have servants do their laundry, or perhaps would take it to a laundry business to be picked up later. The rest of society used rocks at the creek, or perhaps a tub and a washboard.

But in 1907, Maytag began marketing the Pastime. It was a hand-cranked washer, equipped with a flywheel to aid in the agitation of the clothes, which featured a wringer at the top so that the wash water could be extracted before the clothes were fed into a rinsing tub.

The wringer washer was high-tech stuff. No more endless hand-wringing of clothes! How much easier could life get?

Today, of course, wringer washers are largely unseen outside of antique shops. But it turns out that our grandmothers were actually green advocates before there even was such a movement. That’s because wringer washers use a fraction of the water and electricity (or gasoline, in some cases) that modern multi-cycle washers do.

You see, grandma would fill the washer with water and finely-shaved Fels Naphtha soap, them agitate the mixture so the soap would dissolve. Then, she would put the whites in and agitate for ten minutes or so. If the home had electricity, the more well-to-do would have an electric motor to do the job. Out in the country, a gasoline motor did the work. Of course, the less affluent turned a crank on the side.

Once the whites were done, they were wrung out and dropped into the bluing tub. The bluing made them look whiter. Then, another wringing and into the rinse tub.

In the meantime, the lighter colored clothes were being agitated in the same water the whites used! And when they were done, the darker colors went in. That’s three loads of clothing for the price of one load of soap and water!

The rinse water too was reused. So a family’s entire week’s worth of clothes could be laundered with the amount of water used to handle a single load in a modern washer.

No wonder some of our thrifty parents and grandparents were reluctant to give up their wringer washers.

By the 1960’s, few homemakers still used wringers. But it seemed that many of them couldn’t bear to throw away the reliable, economical devices either. Hence, the one I played with at my grandmother’s house in Mason, Texas. And many of my friends had wringer washers stashed in outbuildings, garages, and sometimes sitting outside.

They were fun for a kid to play with, too, although you didn’t want to get an arm caught in the rollers or you would get one ugly blister.

In researching this piece, I found a website (lehmans.com) that will sell you a Saudi Arabian made brand new wringer washer for about 900 bucks. It’s an exact remake of the classic Speed Queen. They also sell reconditioned Maytags with electric or gasoline engines!

So Boomers, if you really want to go green, follow the example of your grandmother. And you’ll have it much easier, too. Just pour in some liquid detergent. You won’t have to shave that Fels Naphtha soap anymore!