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Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Fad Toys


When I was growing up, I think I ended up playing with a wide variety of different toys. And what was interesting about it was the fact that most of the toys that I played with were popular at least a decade before I was born!

And it got me thinking about toys that were insanely popular in certain time periods. I suppose one could say that they were “fads” of the time.

And, that's what I have decided to make this blog about. Fad toys.

Certainly, I was around for several of these fad toys, and I even played with some of them at the time they were at their peak of popularity.



Right off the bat, I can think of three fad toys that all the kids played with during the wonderful decade known as the 1990s. In 1990, I remember every kid having something called a “Skip-It”. It was first sold in stores in the late 1980s, and by my third grade year, everyone had one...including yours truly. It was just a plastic thing that you hooked around your ankle, and swung around in a circle as you skipped over it. There was even a counter attached onto the Skip-It that allowed you to count just how many times you could skip...but I was so terrible at it that I barely made it past ten skips. I think I ended up selling the blasted Skip-It at a garage sale just a couple of years later.

Another fad that I remember from the 1990s was a little game that a few of us used to play in the school playground circa 1993, 1994-ish.



Have you ever heard of a game known as Pogs? Pogs were little cardboard discs that had a variety of different designs all over them. Some were based on cartoon characters and television shows, some just had generic designs that were holographic, or were in 3-D, and some were even offered as toys in Happy Meals at fast food places.

MINI CONFESSION: Not only did I play with Pogs when I was twelve, but I still have all the ones that I managed to collect during the time when they were most popular!



The way that the game was played was very simple. Each player would stack up their Pogs into a giant tower. After that was completed, each player would take out something called a “Slammer”, which was a piece that was similar in shape to a Pog, but a much heavier weight. Usually, slammers were made out of thick plastic, metal, or rubber.

Each player would take their “Slammer” piece and hurl it towards the stack of Pogs. Doing this would cause the stack to flip over and collapse. If any of the Pogs landed face down, the player could claim those Pogs as their own. The others were restacked for the next player. The game ended when all the Pogs were claimed.



Now, if one were playing a friendly game, it was a nice distraction, and people just kept the Pogs that they brought to the game. But some games played for keeps, and I remember many kids in my school losing their entire collection of Pogs to some of the others who were the Pog champions of the playground. I suppose that was the main reason why my school (and many others in North America) banned Pogs. I suppose in some ways, it did seem like we were running a gambling operation right next to the monkey bars.

(For the record, I never played for keeps, and I only ever traded Pogs with other kids.)



Fortunately, I was a bit too old when the next fad of the 1990s came out. Do any of you ever remember having such a thing as a virtual pet? I believe that around my high school, they were known as Tamagotchis. First created in Japan in 1996, the electronic toys were all the rage in North America just two years later. Tamagotchis allowed people to raise an electronic pet right from the moment that the pet was “born” (when the device was switched on). But owners of a Tamagotchi soon found that taking care of a virtual pet was almost as tough as taking care of a real pet. Over the course of the life of your Tamagotchi, certain icons would pop up that detailed what your pet needed. You'd have to feed your pet, give your pet medicine, clean up after your pet, play with your pet, and even have to scold your pet for mischief it happens to cause.



Of course, not all Tamagotchi pets lasted forever. Neglect and poor care could cause the death clock to tick prematurely for your virtual pet, but in almost all cases, the pet simply died of old age. Fear not though, your game won't quit working. You could simply restart the game again with a brand new virtual pet.

That said, I never owned a Tamagotchi. I found it too time-consuming to deal with.

But fad toys aren't just limited to the 1990s. In the 1990s, people played with virtual pets, but back in 1975, a different virtual pet of sorts hit the marketplace.



I imagine quite a few people owned something called a “Pet Rock”. Pet rocks were the brainchild of California businessman Gary Dahl, who had joked that a pet rock was the perfect pet because they didn't need to be walked, fed, or cleaned up after. It was a rock. What could rocks do other than sit there and be admired?



What was amazing about the pet rock was how much of an impact it really had in the world of pop culture. In 1975 alone, Dahl ended up selling 1,500,000 pet rocks, alone, and for six months, everyone wanted a pet rock. By 1976, the fad had died a quick death, but Dahl still ended up becoming a millionaire with the sales accumulated from the pet rock. Imagine taking a rock and turning it into enough money to buy several rocks...of the shinier, glass-cutting kind. Now, that's business smarts right there!



In the 1950s, the toy that every girl, boy, and chipmunk apparently had to have was the hula hoop (Yes, in that Chipmunks Christmas song, Alvin had to have a hula hoop). Although the toy was not technically invented in the 1950s (apparently its origins come from 5th century Greece), it became extremely popular during that decade. The Wham-O toy company released a plastic version of the hula hoop in the late 1950s, and by the summer of 1958, it became a fad in the United States through promotions, radio giveaways, and hula hooping contests. By the time the 1960s arrived, over 100 million hula hoops had been sold, and at the peak of their popularity, toy companies were producing fifty thousand hula hoops a DAY!



Hula hoops are still being made today, though their sales and popularity aren't quite as high as they were back in the late 1950s. But the hula hoop was officially inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999, forever immortalizing it as one of the most loved fad toys ever.

That's a look at some of the fad toys of the last few decades. Now, I have a question for all of you.

BONUS QUESTION: What were some of your favourite fad toys?

I'll leave you now with this video of another fad toy...the Rubik's Cube of the 1980s...and watch in awe as this person solves the puzzle in under six seconds!



Did you miss that? Here it is again in slow motion...I am officially in awe!



See you soon, fellow Pop Culture Addicts!!!

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

August 7, 2005


Welcome to Tuesday, August 7, 2012!  It’s time for another look back through time with the always popular Tuesday Timeline feature.

I’m not going to waste any time here.  Let’s just get right to it.  Would you like to know some of the major events in world history that took place on August 7?  Well, have a look!

1420 – Construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Flore begins in Florence, Italy

1714 – The Battle of Gangut; becomes the first important victory of the Russian Navy

1782 – George Washington orders the creation of a military award known as the “Badge of Military Merit” to honour soldiers who have been wounded in battle...today, the award is known at the “Purple Heart”

1789 – The United States War Department is established

1794 – George Washington invokes Militia Law of 1792 to suppress Western Pennsylvania’s “Whiskey Rebellion”

1890 – Anna Mansdotter becomes the final woman to be executed in Sweden for the 1889 Yngsjo murder

1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three of her friends became the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York City to San Francisco

1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie, Ontario and Buffalo, New York

1930 – The last confirmed lynching of black people in the Northern United States take place in Marion, Indiana

1933 – Iraqi government slaughters over 3,000 Asyrians in the village of Sumail

1938 – The building of Mauthausen concentration camp begins

1944 – IBM dedicates the invention of the Harvard Mark I, the first program-controlled calculator

1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (which later became Sony) begins selling the first transistor radios in Japan

1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design starts appearing on the American penny

1964 – Prometheus, the world’s oldest tree, is cut down

1965 – Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters meets up with the Hell’s Angels at Kesey’s estate, linking the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang with the hippie movement

1970 – California judge Harold Haley is taken hostage in his own courtroom and killed in an effort to free George Jackson from police custody

1974 – Philippe Petit performs a high wire act in New York City between the twin towers of the World Trade Center

1978 – Jimmy Carter issues a state of emergency at Love Canal following the negligent disposal of toxic waste there

1981 – The Washington Star ceases operation after 128 years

1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri, and Chiaki Mukai are chosen to become the first Japanese astronauts

2007 – Barry Bonds hits his 756th home run, breaking the record held by Hank Aaron

We also have a few celebrity birthdays to list here.  Celebrating an August 7th birthday are Stan Freberg, Don Larsen, Tobin Bell, B.J. Thomas, Lana Cantrell, David Rasche, Alan Page, Wayne Knight, Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), David Duchovny, Jacquie O’Sullivan (Bananarama), Bruno Pelletier, Harold Perrineau Jr, Marcus Roberts, Michael Weishan, Jason Grimsley, Sydney Penny, Rachel York, Charlize Theron,  Samantha Ronson, Eric Johnson, Tina O’Brien, Sidney Crosby, and Helen Flanagan.

For today’s look back through time, we’re going to take a look at what ended up being the final day of life for one man.


August 7, 2005.

That was the day that ABC News lost one of their own, and the day in which millions mourned the loss of a true professional in the world of journalism.


Today we’re going to look at the life of Canadian-born journalist Peter Jennings, who spent decades reporting the news at various television and radio stations (including a stint in my own hometown!).

Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on July 29, 1938.  He and his sister Sarah were born to Elizabeth and Charles Jennings.  Peter was always surrounded by radio at an early age.  After all, his father did work for CBC Radio as a broadcaster when Peter was born.

Would you believe that Peter Jennings’ first radio gig was in 1947 at the age of nine?  How’s that for starting early in life?  The name of the show he hosted was “Peter’s People”, and it ran on CBC Radio every Saturday morning.  The 30-minute program debuted while his father was out of the country on business, and when Charles came back to Canada and found out what happened, he was furious.  Charles Jennings did not like the concept of nepotism, and was outraged that the network allowed Peter to host his own show.

Two years later, when Jennings was eleven, he began attending school in Port Hope, Ontario, where he excelled in school sports.  When his father was transferred to the Ottawa headquarters in the 1950s, he began attending high school in Ottawa.  But Peter didn’t exactly like high school very much.  By his own admission, he was a lazy student who only cared about comic books and girls.  He ended up dropping out of high school in the tenth grade.  At some point, Peter attended Carleton University, but dropped out.

Despite dropping out of school, Peter dreamed of following in his father’s footsteps, and had the goal of becoming a famous broadcaster.  It took a bit of time for him to get there though.  At first, he started off as a bank teller at the Royal Bank of Canada.  He hoped to get transferred to the bank’s Havana branch, but instead he ended up working at the branch in Prescott, Ontario (current population 4,284).  Shortly after, he began working at the nearby Brockville, Ontario branch (current population 21,870), where in between shifts at the bank, acted in various musicals put on by the Orpheus Musical Theatre Society such as “Damn Yankees” and “South Pacific”.


While Jennings was in Brockville, he started working at the town’s local radio station, CFJR.  He was only 21 years old.  CFJR hired him to be a part of their news team, and over the next year, Jennings covered several stories, including one of a local train wreck which were picked up by the CBC.  In 1961, Jennings left CFJR to work at CJOH-TV in Ottawa, where he worked as an interviewer and co-producer for the show “Vue”, and shortly after that began hosting a show called “Club Thirteen”, a show similar to American Bandstand.


In 1964, CTV hired Jennings as the co-anchor of its national late-night newscast.  During his time with CTV, Peter Jennings was thrown into several high-profile news stories.  He was the first Canadian journalist to arrive in Dallas after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  He also attended the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, where he would meet a man by the name of Elmer Lower, who at the time was president of ABC News.  Elmer offered Jennings a job with ABC to become a correspondent, but initially, Jennings turned down the offer.  After three months had passed, he changed his mind, and moved to New York City to take on the job.



At the time that Jennings took on the job, ABC was in third place behind NBC and CBS as far as news coverage went, and ABC decided to try and add a more youthful presence to the network in hopes of attracting younger viewers (more than likely the coveted 18-49 demographic).  On February 1, 1965, Peter Jennings took over the anchor desk at ABC News, and began hosting “Peter Jennings with the News”.  At the time, the program only ran for 15-minutes, but Jennings ended up making history.  Being only 26 years old at the time, he became the youngest person ever to anchor a news program in the United States, a record that has yet to be broken as of August 2012.

That’s not to say that everything transitioned smoothly at first.  Peter Jennings may have been the youngest of the anchors, but at the time, he was also very much inexperienced when compared to the likes of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, and Chet Huntley.  The viewing audience found it hard to relate to Jennings, and some even made fun of his Canadian accent!  However, Jennings admitted that he was out of his league at that time, and three years after anchoring the news, he left the position to become a foreign correspondent for ABC.


This decision was beneficial in helping Peter Jennings build up his name and his reputation.  In 1968, he established ABC’s Middle East bureau in Lebanon, the first American news bureau in the Arab world.  Four years later, he covered his first major news story, the “Black September” massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.  He hid with his camera crew near the building where the Israeli athletes were being held hostage, and ended up providing ABC with clear video of the hostage-takers.  The piece was well-received, although Jennings was criticized over referring to the hostage-takers as “guerillas” and “commandos”.

The following year, Jennings covered the Yom Kippur War, and in 1974, he served as chief correspondent and co-producer of a biographical piece of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.  The piece established Jennings as Sadat’s favourite journalist, and Jennings won the first of two Peabody Awards for his coverage.

Over the next few years, Jennings would become a Washington correspondent, anchor a short-lived morning show, served as a foreign anchor for “World News Tonight”, and became a father to two children, Elizabeth and Christopher, born to him and his third wife, Kati Marton.


In 1983, Washington World News Anchor Frank Reynolds fell ill with multiple myeloma, and was forced to leave the anchor desk that April.  Peter Jennings was asked to take over the Washington anchor desk expecting Reynolds to return...but sadly, Reynolds passed away in July 1983.  Three months later, Peter Jennings became the permanent sole anchor of World News Tonight, after the show relocated to New York.  Over the next few years, Jennings proved to the world that he had learned a lot since his first stint as an anchorman back in 1965, and the ratings for ABC News certainly reflected this.  With his extended coverage of the 1986 Challenger explosion, his prompt response to the October 1989 Lorna Prieta earthquake, and being the first of the big three news networks to report the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, by the beginning of the 1990s, World News Tonight was ranked #1, beating CBS for the first time.


Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Jennings continued to become a huge presence at ABC News.  He garnered a lot of attention for his marathon reporting stints, often staying on the air for 12 hours or more.  Some of these stories included the Gulf War in 1991, the millennium celebrations of 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.  And Jennings received praise from viewers in 1995 when he made the decision to backburner the coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial to report on the unrest in Bosnia and Herzegovina.  But on the flipside, Jennings also received criticism for what some called a “liberal bias”, as well as his contribution to a news documentary regarding the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.  Some people were so angered at what they called a “revisionist look” at the history of the decision to drop the bomb that they mailed bus fare to Jennings, telling him to go back to Canada.

But, Jennings persevered and rose above the controversy, becoming an American citizen in 2003, and continued anchoring World News Tonight.

By December 2004, however, something would happen that marked the beginning of the end.  He was sidelined with a respiratory infection that month, and as a result, he was unable to fly out to cover the December 26, 2004 tsunami that struck several Asian countries.  Three months later, viewers noticed that Jennings’ voice was beginning to sound different.  It wouldn’t be until April 5, 2005 that the viewers understood why.


Peter Jennings was diagnosed with lung cancer.  He had told viewers that he would do his best to come back to the anchor chair, but this would end up being his final appearance.  Charles Gibson and Elizabeth Vargas would serve as temporary anchors of World News Tonight as Jennings underwent treatment.

Sadly, on August 7, 2005, just after 11:30pm, Peter Jennings succumbed to cancer at his home, at the age of 67.  Just minutes after his death, Charles Gibson interrupted programming to announce the sad news.  Over the next few days, many in the news industry remembered their friend and colleague.  His ABC colleagues Diane Sawyer, Charles Gibson, Ted Koppel, and Barbara Walters all shared their memories of Jennings as did Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw, who competed with Jennings as the anchors of CBS and NBC’s news broadcasts respectively.  Canadian anchors Kevin Newman, Lloyd Robertson, and Peter Mansbridge offered up their condolences, as did George W. Bush and Paul Martin.

Although Peter Jennings may be gone, his legacy continues to live on, and his career was celebrated.  He ended up winning sixteen Emmy Awards, and two Peabody awards for his work with ABC News.  He was named Best Anchor by the Washington Journalism Review in 1988, 1989, 1990, and 1992.  He was awarded the Paul White Award in 1995 in honour of his work in journalism, and in 2004 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Broadcasting.

On July 30, 2005, just eight days before he passed away, Jennings received word that he would be inducted into the Order of Canada, an honour that his daughter Elizabeth accepted in his honour.  New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that a block of West 66th Street would be renamed Peter Jennings Way.  And in January 2011, Jennings was posthumously inducted into the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Television Hall of Fame.

Not bad for a high school dropout, huh?  But Peter Jennings proved to be much more than that.  He was a journalist and a professional to the end, and he will forever be known as one of ABC’s finest anchors.


And that was our look back on August 7, 2005.

Monday, August 06, 2012

Disaster Feature #1 - Earthquake!


Some of the most popular films that have ever been released are disaster films, and we here at the Pop Culture Addict's Guide To Life wanted to take the opportunity to salute some of these films for the the Monday Matinee entries during the whole month of August.

And by we...I mean, me.



Let's face it, disaster movies are always a lot of fun to watch. Many of them employ realistic special effects that can turn New York City into New York Rubble, and I can attest that a lot of the people in the audience of a disaster film are gripped to their seats during the whole film, wondering if their favourite characters will survive the catastrophe, or die under the most bizarre circumstances.

There are some disaster films that are quite good, filled with a gripping plotline intertwined between falling buildings, exploding cars, and deadly diseases wiping out entire groups of people. On the flipside, there are also disaster films that tend to skip over plot and character development to focus on explosions and nothing more.

Today's film discussion is widely considered to be the granddaddy of all modern day disaster films, as it ended up having a lot of firsts associated with it.



The first film up for discussion in what I like to call “Monday Matinee Destruction Month” is 1974's “Earthquake”.

Earthquake” was released on November 15, 1974, and was directed by Mark Robson. Back in the 1970s, disaster movies were big at the box office, and previous disaster films like 1970's Airport and 1972's The Poseidon Adventure had done well when they were screened at movie theaters, and after the success of Airport, Universal Studios began working with Jennings Lang to come up with an innovative new idea that fit within the disaster-suspense genre that was dominating the box office at the time. And the idea for “Earthquake” came to both of them, ironically enough after a real-life earthquake struck the Los Angeles area in February 1971.



Development for the film began in 1972, and that summer, Lang signed on screenwriter Mario Puzo to write the first draft (Puzo, of course being linked to another widely successful film, “The Godfather”) of “Earthquake”. When Puzo delivered his screenplay, it was quite detailed. In fact, some would say that it was too detailed, as Puzo's version of the script would have required a much larger budget for the film (which was set at seven million dollars). Universal was forced to make a difficult decision...either increase the budget, or cut the script down to fit the budget.

As it turned out, it didn't really matter too much, as Puzo was forced to leave the project after his first draft was completed, due to his commitment to the Godfather sequel. The script for “Earthquake” was put on hiatus until Christmas 1972, right around the time “The Poseidon Adventure” was released. After the success of that movie, “Earthquake” was put into pre-production by Universal Studios, and writer George Fox was hired to retool Puzo's first draft. After eleven re-writes, the film was finally ready to being filming by February 1974.

There was another potential problem. Due to the delays caused with the writing of the script, the film found itself competing against a higher-budget disaster film that was being made by Irwin Allen, “The Towering Inferno”.

When it came to casting for the film, dozens of huge named stars were considered for the various roles in the film. Of course, we all know some of the big names that ended up getting cast for the movie. There was Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, Lorne Greene, Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree, Marjoe Gortner, Barry Sullivan, Lloyd Nolan, and Victoria Principal.

TRIVIA: Walter Matthau also made an appearance in the movie, albeit under a different name.

But what's even more spectacular is the list of names that were also initially considered.

Did you know that both Paul Newman and Steve McQueen were considered for roles in “Earthquake”? They were considered for Heston's role, but both of them ended up signing on to “The Towering Inferno” instead. Other actors and actresses that were considered for other roles within the film included Jon Voight, James Caan, Burt Reynolds, James Brolin, Jessica Walter, Elizabeth Montgomery, Meredith Baxter, Beau Bridges, Alan Alda, Stacy Keach, Kate Jackson, Susan St. James, Ernest Borgnine, James Stewart, Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, Kay Lenz, Robert Black, Michael J. Pollard, Sharon Gless, Candice Bergen, and believe it or not, Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers!


Of course, a film about an earthquake laying siege to a large city like Los Angeles, California needed to have a lot of special effects, and a lot of destruction. In fact, in order to make the film realistic, the entire Universal Studios backlot was completely demolished to simulate the earthquake. Other methods were used to make the earthquake scenes appear realistic, including miniature models of actual buildings, matte paintings, and full-scale sets. The film also employed several stunt people to perform the many stunts that involved falling and dodging debris. The film used a total of 141 stunt people (a record at that time), and many of the stunt people were paid $500 to fall onto large air bags from a height of 60 feet!

The film also used a new technology known as “Sensurround” for the film's release. By using a series of large speakers and a 1,500 watt amplifier, the process pumped in sub-audible “infra bass” sound waves at 120 decibels, which in turn gave the people in the audience of the movie theater the sensation of an earthquake.

The Sensurround gimmick attracted the crowds to the theaters, and it certainly proved to be a hit...but it didn't all go off without a few hitches. In some theaters, some moviegoers ended up with bleeding noses as a result of Sensurround. In Chicago, Illinois, the Sensurround was turned down for fear that the vibrations would actually cause structural damage. And, in Billings, Montana, a store that happened to be located next to a movie theater actually ended up having several pieces of merchandise broken due to the vibrations caused by the Sensurround technology.


But, I'm sure that you will all agree that everything came together in the end, as “Earthquake” shook up the box office in a big way, figuratively and financially. The film ended up making almost eighty million dollars total.

I suppose that's really all that I have to say about “Earthquake” at this time. I think that it's almost better to end the blog entry off with the “Big One” shown in the film, just so you can see how the special effects, Sensurround technology, and stunt people all came together to make a rather believable film, even for the 1970s!

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Summer Girls



The summer of 1999 was a memorable one for me in some ways. 

I had turned eighteen years old a couple of months prior, and it was the first summer where I was officially considered an adult.  I had just graduated from the twelfth grade, and to be perfectly honest, I had accumulated enough credits to graduate from high school that summer.

I’m not exactly sure why I opted to take my OAC year given my feelings towards high school in general now that I have typed that out and I am now reading it over again.  I think it was probably because I wanted to be the Class of 2000. 

But, anyway, back to the summer of 1999, it was quite good.  I didn’t have any summer flings, or go anywhere exotic that year, but I did have fun swimming at the river, and working various odd jobs that summer. 

Really, the only terrible thing that happened to me during the summer of 1999 was that I had contracted a nasty case of pneumonia.

Only I could catch pneumonia the final week of August...sigh.  I spent the last week of summer vacation in bed, only feeling better on the first day of school.  How fun.


Perhaps the most memorable part about the summer of 1999 was the music playing on the radio at that time.  I know that a lot of people slag off of the music from the late 1990s, but I actually thought that 1999 was a fantastic year for music.  Yes, you had your typical boy band fluff, but there was also some decent stuff out at the time.  Jennifer Lopez and Christina Aguilera had just come out on the music scene with “If You Had My Love” and “Genie In A Bottle” respectively, both of which were (and are) great songs.  I remember listening to “Sour Girl” by the Stone Temple Pilots on my CD player over and over again.  The same deal went for The Cranberries’ “Promises”.  I’ll admit to listening to quite a bit of Beastie Boys and Sugar Ray back in the summer of 1999.  And, yes, even Britney Spears had a song release that I can honestly say that I enjoyed with “Sometimes”.

I think that the summer of 1999 was one of those summers in which there really was something for everyone.  There were rock, pop, dance, R&B, and I think even a country song or two on the mainstream Top 40 charts back then.  It was very eclectic...much like my personality was back in 1999.

So, I thought to myself, which song was the best representation of the wonderful summer of 1999?  And, I think that I came up with the answer.  Yes, the song might be from a boy band, but there’s a lot to talk about in regards to this song, as well as the fate of the band who sang it.


ARTIST:  Lyte Funky Ones
SONG:  Summer Girls
ALBUM:  LFO
DATE RELEASED:  June 29, 1999
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #3

Would you like to know something I found neat?  Had I graduated from high school in 1999, the same date this song was released would have been the date that I would have graduated!


But, we’re not here to talk about my high school graduation.  We’re here to talk about the band Lyte Funky Ones, or LFO for short. 

The band was made up of three members.  Originally, the band featured Rich Cronin, Brad Fischetti, and Brian Gillis.  The band formed in the city of Fall River, Massachusetts in 1995.  Cronin met with Gillis, and together with Fischetti formed the three man pop/rap group, Lyte Funky Ones.  Try as they might though, they had difficulty getting their name out there.

Part of it, I suppose, could have been the timing of it all.  The band was trying to get their big break between 1995-1997, the same time period in which boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and Take That were dominating the charts.  And, it also didn’t help that their first few singles didn’t exactly do so hot on the charts.


TRIVIA:  Believe it or not, the band’s first single release sampled Yvonne Elliman’s “If I Can’t Have You”!  It managed to chart at #54 on the UK Charts, but failed to see an American release.

The struggle for success was incredibly frustrating for the band, and apparently by late 1998, the frustration proved too great for Brian Gillis.  He left the group in early 1999, and was promptly replaced by Devin Lima.  It was Lima’s idea to simplify the band name as LFO, and from 1999 on, that was the name that the band went under.

Well, in most places of the world, LFO was the name they went under.  In the UK, they were forced to use the Lyte Funky Ones name, as the name LFO had been used by a British dance act since 1988.


The band signed a recording contract with Arista Records, and went to work on a new album.  Assisting in the production of the album were Dow Brain and Brad Young of Underground Productions, as well as Danny Wood, who had achieved fame as a member of the “New Kids On The Block” during the late 1980s and early 1990s.  The band cut several demos, one of which was the song “Summer Girls”.  It soon became the lead off single from the band’s album, “LFO”, and by August 1999, it had peaked at #3 on the Billboard Charts.

Of course, part of the song’s success was due to the fact that a New York City based radio station, Z100, played the song constantly and frequently before the song had even hit the Billboard Charts, creating a lot of buzz.


The song itself is a myriad of pop culture references, and could have easily been used in commercials for the retailer “Abercrombie & Fitch”, with the number of times the company was mentioned during the whole song.  Just to give you an idea of how many pop culture references were added in the song (in case you didn’t catch them all when you listened to the song earlier), here’s a list of all the references that were mentioned.

Cherry Coke, Home Alone, Mr. Limpet, New Edition, Alex P. Keaton, Kevin Bacon, Footloose, Fun Dip, The Color Purple, Larry Bird, William Shakespeare, New Kids on the Block, and Chinese food, just to mention a few.


The song helped propel the band to stardom, and the album that the song initially appeared on sold over two million copies.  A second single from the album, “Girl on TV” also did moderately well on the charts, and by 2000, LFO became a hot ticket.  They opened for Britney Spears, they won a Kids Choice Award, and even had dolls in their appearances made of them in 2001!

But sadly, the band’s success was short-lived, and LFO split up in 2003.  They tried to reunite again in the summer of 2009, a decade after their biggest hit was released, but that reunion was also brief, the band breaking up again four months later.

So, what happened to LFO?  Well, Devon Lima ended up forming a new band, The Cadbury Diesel, and released an album in 2008.  Brian Gillis also embarked on a solo career, which ultimately ended up getting him a job in Florida doing radio promotions for BMG.

Rich Cronin ended up doing a reality show entitled “Mission: Man Band” where he teamed up with Chris Kirkpatrick (NSync), Jeff Timmons (98 Degrees) and Bryan Abrams (Color Me Badd) to form a new band, and following that show, Cronin released a solo album entitled “Billion Dollar Sound”.


Tragically, Rich Cronin also battled leukemia during the latter part of the 2000’s.  After being diagnosed with the disease in 2005, Cronin had gone into remission in 2006, and subsequently founded the Rich Cronin Hope Foundation for Leukemia.  Unfortunately, the cancer came back with a vengeance, and on September 8, 2010, Rich Cronin died of a stroke due to complications from leukemia, just a few days after his 36th birthday.

It’s unfathomable to me that someone who had his whole life ahead of him, and someone who looked so full of life in a music video that was only shot eleven years ago is now gone.  But, at least he had a good run while he was alive.  After all, he was all over the radio during the summer of 1999.

Rest in peace, Rich Cronin.

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Saturday Morning Cereal Commercials


I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Saturday mornings are just not the same as an adult as they were when I was a child.

In fact, some of my cherished memories of Saturday mornings involved sitting on the floor of my living room in front of the television watching Saturday morning cartoons. As much as I wish that I could go back in time to those carefree days, I know that I can't.

I mean, yes, there are quite a few cable channels that play hundreds of cartoons that I watched when I was a kid. There's Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Teletoon Retro. But there was just something special about getting up early in the morning and watching the latest adventures of The Smurfs, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Garfield and his friends.

Of course, no Saturday morning would be complete without a complete, nutritious breakfast...well, nutritious through the eyes of a child, that is.



And what could be better fuel for a marathon cartoon session than a big bowl of cereal sweetened with enough sugar to fill a hundred Hershey bars?

Yes, this blog entry isn't so much about a particular Saturday morning cartoon. Instead, this blog entry is about some of the sugary cereals that I used to enjoy as a child...as well as the commercials that aired during Saturday mornings that would inspire many trips to the grocery store with me begging my mom to buy said cereal because I saw it on television.

You see, back in the 1970s and 1980s, cereal commercials were works of art. I remember some kids enjoyed watching the cereal commercials almost as much as some of the cartoons that aired in that time period. So, allow me to use this blog entry for today to talk about some of my favourite cereal commercials.

Shall we begin?



One of my favourite cereals growing up was Cocoa Pebbles. They also made Fruity Pebbles as well, but I didn't like those as much. Looking back on it, Cocoa Pebbles weren't really that spectacular of a cereal, it was just chocolate flavoured bits of grain. The main reason why I had to have it most Saturday mornings was because of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. When I was younger, a particular television station used to air old episodes of The Flintstones during my lunch hour, and I loved them. So, to see Barney constantly stealing Fred's cereal through a variety of tricks and disguises on Saturday were an added bonus. Just take a look at some examples of some of these commercials below to see what I mean.



You see? To some people, they were simply commercials. For me, they were thirty-second cartoons that featured some of my favourite cartoon characters ever.

But cereal commercials have told dozens of stories for several decades. How about the classic Life cereal commercial featuring Mikey that first aired 40 years ago in 1972?



Would you believe that the little kid that played Mikey was at the center of an urban legend where he supposedly died after a deadly combination of pop rocks and Coca-Cola? It was all a hoax, and John Gilchrist (who played Mikey) is still very much alive. But the commercial was very effective, even winning a Clio Award in 1974!

Cereal commercials also made cereal mascots huge stars, and as time passed, these mascots ended up becoming just as popular as the characters who actually had their own 30-minute programs. And, who are some of the most popular cereal mascots?

Well, how about Lucky the leprechaun who has been the official “Lucky Charms” mascot since 1963? His commercials were always magically delicious.



Or, if you wanted something else that was more grrrrrrrreat, how about Tony the Tiger? Thurl Ravenscroft was the voice behind Frosted Flakes' mascot for several decades, and since 1951, this beloved tiger has starred in well over one hundred commercials. Take a look at this one below.



Frosted Flakes are currently made by Kellogg's, which have cereal mascots for every one of their cereals. Take Froot Loops for example. Froot Loops boasted a rather colourful mascot to match the colourful cereal, and that mascot is Toucan Sam. Have a look at a Froot Loops commercial below, though I'll readily admit that it wasn't one of my favourites.



Sticking with the Kellogg's theme, I'd have to say that one of the first cereals that I remember eating was the classic “Rice Krispies”. I used to love the way that the cereal used to make those crackling noises whenever milk was poured over top of it...which likely inspired the names of the trio that appear in its commercials. Can you say, snap, crackle, pop?



Another cereal mascot that was a common fixture during the Saturday morning cartoon block was Cap'n Crunch, which have been on store shelves since 1963. During the 1980s, seeing Cap'n Crunch commercials were always an entertaining experience, because during that time, Cap'n Crunch would launch an all-out assault against the “Soggies”, slimy white blobs (resembling milk) that threatened to make all the cereal in the world soggy. Each commercial was like watching a thrilling cartoon adventure, and I loved the cereal just as much as the commercials. Let's watch a couple right now, shall we?



Finally, I can't end this look back on cereal mascots without listing the one cereal mascot who could never seem to catch a break. A cereal mascot who was always denied the one thing that he wanted to have the most...all because of six simple words.

Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!”



Yes, the Trix rabbit just wanted to have his share of lemony yellow and grapity purple Trix cereal, but was cruelly denied even so much as one measly orangy orange morsel. I would have gladly given him some of my Trix cereal. Truth be told, the one and only time I had Trix, I hated it. I felt bad for the bunny, as evidenced in these commercials.

But wait...would you believe that there were some instances in which the Trix bunny ended up getting his feed of Trix cereal? Apparently there were a couple of contests where kids were encouraged to mail in the ballots included on “box tops”, voting on whether they thought the rabbit should eat Trix. And, well, here's one of the results.



Hey, had to end the blog off with a feel good moment, right?

BONUS QUESTION: Who are some of your favourite cereal mascots, and what cereal commercials do you remember the most?