Trivial Pursuits

I'll start by admitting that his whole blog entry is just an excuse to post a clip of me using a Hula Hoop :-)

The mid to late 50's were when television 'took over'. Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, The Friendly Giant - they were all central to my life. And that made it ridiculously easy for advertisers to manipulate me. :-)

First, there was Maypo - a maple flavored oatmeal marketed to children. The ads featured this adorable little cartoon kid in a cowboy outfit saying "I want my Maypo!". So I pestered my mom for weeks (and months) until she finally bought me some.
And when I took the first bite it became clear to me why they used a cartoon kid to advertise it - no real kid who had tasted that stuff would ever claim they wanted it! IMO it was totally foul - we threw the rest of it away... And a distrustful cynic was born :-)

Then there was Silly Putty. I have to admit that the stuff was kind of fun to play with - for a minute or two. It would lift newsprint - that allowed you to read the comics backwards... ??? ... I recall demonstrating that for show-and-tell in kindergarten one day...
Now here's a bit of a mystery - I remember the old commercials claiming that you had to keep it in the original plastic egg or in a bowl or it would "run away". And I left mine sitting on a table in the family room for few days and it totally disappeared! I asked mom if she had seen it and she claimed she hadn't... I suspect that the Silly Putty just kept flowing out until it became a thin film - and my mom probably couldn't figure out what the mess was and cleaned it up...

And finally there was the ubiquitous Hula Hoop. There was nothing funnier than watching someone try it for the first time! For some reason I never had a problem with it - took me less than a minute to figure it out. That really irritated my big sister - she never could quite get it.
Here's a short video clip from when I was 5 years old. It was 1958 and the Hoop had just been introduced:



I tried working one of those things recently and it was hopeless. But back then I could keep it going indefinitely. I could even skip or hop without missing a beat.
And I have no idea what I was doing with my right hand in that clip. Maybe imitating a Hula dancer???

But it was really cool of my stepmother to go through my dad's stuff after he passed away and give me all those 8mm home movies (as well as a lot of other keepsakes). I hadn't seen them in 35 years... And I can't begin to express how much it meant to me...