Tag Archives: Collectibles

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Spin Again Sunday: Emily Post Popularity Game

Today’s Game: Emily Post Popularity Game

Copyright Date: 1970

Object: “Players learn of the rewards that come from good manners while going to parties, sports events, dinners and other activities with their friends.”

Game Board: Wispy cartoons show wholesome scenes of teenage life.

An all-too-typical teen problem

Game Pieces: Players move regular colored pegs and draw “Emily Post says…” cards that give points for good manners and issue penalties for etiquette violations.

This nice young lesbian couple uses good manners while gathering psychedelic mushrooms.

Recommended Ages: “For girls 8 to 14.” I guess boys don’t need “the rewards that come from good manners.”

Game Play: Players compete to attract the largest circle of friends. You can’t

win if you’re holding the dog card in your hand. Personally, I’d rather befriend the dog than these humans. I mean, Cathy looks like a smug know-it-all, and Tony is clearly up to no good.

I hope this boy and girl can find a polite way to deal with the blonde girl who’s stalking them.

Final Fun Facts: Elizabeth Post, addressing players from the inside of the box lid, makes no pretense that fine inner qualities create social success. “What is it that makes a person popular?” she asks. “Is it good looks, smart clothes, or attractive manners? It is, of course, a combination of all three, but the last is surely the most important.”

The dog is the undesirable one? Really?

Elizabeth Post, the wife of Emily Post’s only grandson, assumed leadership of the Emily Post Institute after the original etiquette maven died. Several Post descendants still write about etiquette, including her great-great-grandaughter Lizzie Post.

Previous Entries in this Series:

Charlie’s Angels

Laverne & Shirley

H.R. Pufnstuf

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Spin Again Sunday: H.R. Pufnstuf

Another week, another cardboard-and-plastic journey to the past.

Today’s Game: H.R. Pufnstuf Game

Copyright Date: 1971

Object: Be first to collect cards completing picture of PufnStuf characters.

Game Board: Colorful and cartoony, though the cartoon likenesses leave a lot to be desired.

Game Pieces: None. Cards and a spinner are all you need to play this game.

Recommended Ages: 6-12. The game box, with its full-color photos, might have attracted kids throughout that age range, but the graphics inside scream little kid.

Game Play: The board is really superfluous in this game; players don’t move around it. They just spin and collect cards and try to complete a puzzle. (It’s nice that Freddy the Flute gets his own puzzle; on the show, he just squeaked “Jimmy” and got stolen a lot.

Personal Notes: I never had this game as a child—I would’ve been too young to play it in 1971. I did watch H.R. Pufnstuf, though, and still have the disturbing, hallucinatory memories to prove it.

About the Show: H.R. Pufnstuf premiered on September 6, 1969, as part of NBC’s Saturday morning lineup. Popular with kids, it aired for two years on NBC, one year on ABC, and two and a half years in widespread syndication—an amazing feat considering that Sid and Marty Krofft only produced 17 episodes.

Final Fun Fact: Jack Wild, who starred as Jimmy, got to keep one of the original Freddy the Flutes as a souvenir after the show wrapped, according to the book Pufnstuf and Other Stuff.

Previous Entries in this Series:

Charlie’s Angels

Laverne & Shirley

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The Trapper Keeper’s Forgotten Older Sibling

Second grade–we had book bags, not backpacks

Blogging about lunch boxes yesterday got me thinking about school supplies and how they’ve changed through the years. My daughter’s school provides lengthy, specific supply lists to parents each summer. On the first day of school, her backpack contains a spine-disfiguring load of tissues, hand sanitizer, spiral notebooks, folders, loose-leaf paper, and glue sticks.

School-supply shopping was simpler in the 1970s. My teachers rarely required anything specific—as long as you had paper and pencils, you could organize your work any way you wanted. Once, in seventh grade, I tried a complicated system of color-coded folders and spiral notebooks for each class.  The more common organizational tool, however,  was a binder. (Strangely, this is one supply my daughter’s school bans.)

Many people have fond memories of their Trapper Keepers. You can find tributes to them across the web, and people snap up vintage ones on Ebay. The Trapper Keeper even inspired a South Park episode.

My first and favorite binder, however, was the Trapper Keeper’s forgotten older sibling: The Mead Data Center.

As far as I can tell, Mead introduced the Data Center in 1975, three years before they released the Trapper Keeper. Like that later binder, the Data Center came with a detailed measurement conversion chart. Other features, according to an Etsy listing for vintage 1975 one, were a planner, a place to record your class schedule, a telephone directory, a three-year calendar, a notepad that clipped onto the binder, and a pencil holder.

Now, when I had this model in third grade, almost all these features were useless to me. But I loved the idea of having them. These extras, and the name Data Center itself, suggested a grown-up, businesslike level of organization—a level of organization I’ve never been able to reach as an actual grown up.

This second part of this commercial shows that Data Center lasted into the 1980s.

Final Fun Facts: Mead corporate history is a complicated series of acquisitions and sales. Some trivia:

  • In 1968, Mead spent $6 million to buy an information technology company; this company went on to develop the Lexis Nexis electronic research system, which Mead sold in 1994 for $1.5 billion.
  • In the 1960s, Mead also acquired Westab, the company that invented the spiral notebook and produced Big Chief tablets, a back-to-school staple for mid-century kids.
  • In 1992, Mead sold American Pad and Paper—Ampad—to Bain Capital. Ampad’s subsequent bankruptcy is controversial. But this transaction does allow you to connect Mitt Romney to a Trapper Keeper with only two degrees of separation.
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Let’s Do Lunch Boxes

As an adult, you have many ways to express your tastes—you do it with the clothes you wear, the cars you drive, the home décor you choose, and the statements you spew across social media platforms.

But as child anticipating the first day of school and wanting to make a strong impression, your options were limited. Your mom was still buying your clothes. School supplies were mostly bland. Only one back-to-school purchase was both an expression of your individuality and a totem connecting you to your peers: The lunch box.

The National Museum of American History is hosting a small exhibit of vintage lunchboxes. (To celebrate the exhibit’s opening, the Museum enticed ancient celebrities to pose with their younger, immortalized-in-tin representations.) 

The Lunch Box Museum in Columbus, Georgia, displays a much larger selection (and has now earned a spot on my bucket list). Lunch box collecting is a bustling business online, and many web sites offer photo galleries of the best and worst lunch box specimens. (I’m pretty sure one of my schoolmates had that Exciting World of Metrics box.)

I grew up in the 1970s, the pinnacle of lunch box history. I remember my male classmates toting NFL, superhero, Six Million Dollar Man, and Star Wars boxes. Girls’ boxes offered the full gamut of 1970s female images, from Holly Hobbie to Charlie’s Angels. Disney, the Muppets, and Peanuts were always popular. All these boxes were metal, of course, with lithographed designs on every side. (This interview with a graphic designer who collects vintage lunch boxes provides some interesting insights on the design process.)

Though I remember other people’s lunchboxes, I can’t remember having one of my own in either first or second grade. I must have eaten hot lunch every day.

I do remember my third grade lunchbox—a yellow plastic dome-shaped Snoopy box. To my best friend and me, this box seemed innovative and different. Plastic! Domed, with a Thermos that fit in the top! We both bought them; I think hers was red.

That innovative plastic, sadly, signaled the beginning of the end for the lunch box heyday. Today, my daughter takes a cloth Vera Bradley lunch bag to school. It’s pretty and easy to carry, but I don’t think it will ever grace the Smithsonian.

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Flea Market Finds

For all of $3 at a local flea market on Sunday, I got two cute Whitman items from the 1970s.

I like this Barbie frame-tray puzzle from 1972 because it includes Skipper and because Barbie is a redhead. In the two decades following the debut of Superstar Barbie in 1977, white Barbie dolls were almost invariably blond.

This puzzle also suggests an interesting story–Skipper’s horse is sporting a first-place ribbon, and Skipper is beaming with pride. Barbie, who’s clutching a third-place ribbon, is responding with a pretty cold stare.

The Calico Cathy paper dolls are from 1976, the height of the “prairie” trend in 1970s fashion. I remember my fellow first-grade girls wearing sunbonnets and long skirts and Little-House braids around this time. Calico Cathy takes things further–even her pantsuits are calico. Well, I guess that’s how she earned the name Calico Cathy.