Vintage Dr. Pepper Commercial

Why is it that pop always tasted so much better out of those glass bottles? Of course, the bad thing about glass bottles was that when they were dropped on any hard surface, such as concrete or asphalt, they would break. Nothing was more heartbreaking than making a long walk to the local market on a hot day, looking forward to those icy bubbles hitting the back of your throat with every step, and then dropping that icy bottle in the parking lot before you got to take so much as a sip. Oh, the humanity!

Well, as you may have guessed I've still got that hankerin' for pop that I mentioned yesterday, so I think will continue with the vintage soda theme, but this time featuring Dr. Pepper. I've heard, and I don't know if this is true or not, but Dr. P is prune flavored. Hey, I'm giving you something to think about.

Have a great weekend.
Cheers!

Nifty Pepsi Commercial

Las Vegas Strip 1957

Welcome to Las Vegas Sign Turns 50!

Okay, this one is a little late, but on May 14th there was a big celebration in Las Vegas because the Welcome to Las Vegas Sign turned 50 years old. This is no small feat in a town that tears down its historic icons more frequently than the average person changes their underwear. You can read a bit more about the history of the sign and so forth right here.
-Cheers!


Image Dr. Al. K. Lisch GFDL

Happy Memorial Day!

I hope you're all having a great Memorial Day Weekend. Originally called Decoration Day, because people would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers, Memorial Day has become little more than an excuse for a three day weekend, or a reason for tire and mattress sales, and of course its the official marker of the start of Barbecue Season.

The Portland Memorial Coliseum, as the name suggests, was built as a memorial to our war dead. In case you're not from around these parts, or you've somehow missed it, the PMC has recently escaped the wrecking ball—at least, for now. Aside from being a memorial, there are many arguments, both architectural and cultural, to save this marvelous building, and I had planned on writing about some of them, as well as the greed/corruption factor in Portland politics which lead to it being threatened in the first place. Basically the reason boils down to Jim Morrison's theory: money beats soul every time—but I decided that would be an unnecessary digression, so I think I'll save all of this for a later post, and for now I'll just say that, I hope you'll remember the original spirit of the holiday, and take a few minutes to honor those who have sacrificed so much for our country.

-Cheers!

The Palms Motel

It seems that most of my past posts have featured old commercials, so just for the record I do plan to vary things a bit more, actually quite a bit more. For example, here is a scan (courtesy of Lowly Tootle over at Flickr) of a vintage post card featuring the Palms Motel on Interstate Avenue in Portland, Oregon. I haven't been in that area in quite some time, but as far as I know the motel is still there, as is that spectacular sign, although I don't think the monkey goes up and down the tree anymore, but I think it still lights up, and it is really something to see at night. So there you have it, a wonderful piece of Americana from the days when US highways were exciting and new, and held the promise of adventure.

Have a great weekend.

-Cheers!

Shasta Cherry Cola Commercial

When I was about 5 or 6, my best friend, *Botty Bermo and I would re-enact this very commercial using a pair of those big Tonka dump trucks—I don't know how I ended up with two of them. Anyway, Botty and I would sit on top of them and ride down an incline in my back yard and plow into a big old fir tree that my mom's clothes line was tied to. We'd laugh like idiots and untangle ourselves from the wreckage. Of course, this is back when it was more fun to be a kid, certainly not as safe, but a lot more fun.

As a point of interest, check out the detachable pull tabs on the cans. Somewhere along the line so many people accidentally swallowed these tabs that the industry finally had to come out with a safer version, first a kind of push in button, and a little later the version we now have. And if you got the really cheap brands of pop there were no tabs at all, you had to use one of those pointy can openers.

-Cheers!
*Names have been changed to protect the identities.

The End of the Road For Pontiac

You would have to live in an absolute vacuum not to have heard about the recent financial woes and bailouts of the auto makers. So, I'm sure you know that as part of its restructuring, GM is pulling the plug on the Pontiac brand. For old time's sake I found this swingin' commercial for the 1965 Pontiac GTO. This was back in the days when gas was about 32 cents a gallon, I think we pay twice that much just in taxes now!

-Cheers!

Flintstones Cigarette Commercial

Hey kids! How about we kick off this ol' blog of mine with a little something out of the ordinary, a little unbelievable, almost to the point of surreal. I found this old black & white commercial of The Flintstones hawking Winston cigarettes. Can you imagine the outrage and astronomical lawsuits if a tobacco company were to try and sponsor a cartoon television program in this day and age? Well, way back—before it was common knowledge that smoking will kill you, or at least before anyone would admit to it—no one seemed to think much about it. When I was a kid you could find candy cigarettes in the penny candy section of almost any grocery store. And just for the record, in my day only a very few items were actually sold for a mere penny, most were 2¢ or 3¢, but the really good stuff was a nickle. Anyway, I remember going with my mom in her 1957 Cadillac, Old Betsey, every Friday afternoon to take my grandmother shopping, and Grandma always smoked in the store, or pretty much anywhere else she wanted. As I recall, she smoked Pall Malls unfiltered coffin nails, truly a foul cigarette, and I've got news for you, Winstons aren't much better. Incidentally, a ban on commercials for cigarettes went into effect on my 5th birthday, January 2nd, 1971 for both television and radio . You can read more about it here if you're so inclined. And now, without further adieu, the Flintstones.

Retro on the Half Shell

Hello, and welcome to ThrillsVille Deluxe. As of this writing things are pretty sparse, but that will change soon, and while I still haven't hammered out all the details, as far as what will be posted when, this will be one cool blog when I get things up and running. Retro on the Half Shell?!— you may be saying to yourself. What does that mean, for Pete's sake? Well, plenty my friend, some of the coolest retro stuff mined from the almighty internet: old commercials, swell products that are long gone, pictures of neat stuff from back in the day. And it's all included in the price of admission, I might add. So, if you have stumbled across this blog, come back from time to time for all the swell offerings.

-Cheers.