Rocketship Weird Retro Captain's Blog - Weird Retro

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup: Or... Opium and Booze For Babies.

29/6/2015

Mrs. Charlotte N. Winslow started making her infamous Soothing Syrup sometime in the mid-1800s. Designed primarily for teething babies, and as a general cure-all for infants, it was advertised as "The Mother's Best Friend", but eventually got the reputation, and the name of "Baby killer". The lethal concoction contained some ingredients, that even in the mid to late 1800s, should have rung some alarm bells among parents, who must have been utterly ignorant to have given it to their babies.

The formula consisted of Morphine Sulphate (an opiate analgesic related to heroin), sodium carbonate (water softener), spirits foeniculi (an alcohol that seems to be only associated with this product), and aqua ammonia (a cleaning agent). Yup! As if an opiate and alcohol weren't bad enough on their own.

The syrup was widely sold both in the UK and the United States. It wasn't until 1911, when the American Medical Association published a book, naming and shaming quack remedies and snake-oils. In a section called "Baby Killers", Mrs. Winslow and her syrup were rightly named and shamed. However, the syrup remained on sale in the UK until 1930. Which means that the parents were still spoon feeding this laudanum for kids, to their children, long after the dangers of opium and alcohol being mixed, were considered dangerous for adults.

Retro Gaming: Pepsi Invaders (Coke Wins!)

8/6/2015

One of the most unusual and rarest games produced for the Atari 2600, in 1983, was Space invaders inspired Pepsi Invaders or otherwise known as Coke Wins! Coca-Cola commissioned Atari to create the game, which was essentially a direct redesign of the Space Invaders ROM. Instead of aliens coming down the screen, they had the word PEPSI.

Only 125 cartridges were produced, which were packaged unlabelled in plain white disposable packaging, and handed out to delegates at a Coca-Cola convention in Atlanta, along with a Atari 2600 console. When original copies do come up for sale, they can fetch up to $2000 at auction.

Due to the rarity and highly collectable nature of Pepsi Invaders, recently retro gaming enthusiasts have reproduced cartridges of the game, and gone as far as designing retro-style packaging, as it could have looked if the game had ever been commercially sold.

The game is thought to be the rarest and most collectible games, in gaming history.

Oi! Don't Forget your Umbrella! Good Manners Subway Posters From Japan.

30/4/2015

In the north east Asian countries of Japan and South Korea, the carrying of an umbrella is a vital tool come rain or shine. Either to keep the rain off, or the sun from beating down on you, umbrellas are carried everywhere. So the idea of reminding people to take their umbrellas isn't such a strange thing. Despite the message that these posters give off. Looking into them more deeply, explains that maybe Japanese culture isn't quite as weird as it may appear on the surface. For example, the random Marilyn Monroe poster, is a play on words. The text in the top right corner "Kaerazaru kasa" (umbrella of no return) is a play on "Kaerazaru Kawa," the Japanese title for "River of No Return," the 1954 movie starring Monroe. The Jesus image, reads at the top "Wishing to God again and again". The poster makes a play on the words "kasa" (umbrella) and "kasane-gasane" (again and again). A little bit of insight into graphic design choices and public information posters? Do you really care?

Medical Madness: Rectal Dilators

13/4/2015

A quack doctor medical device that appeared in the late 1800s, these painful looking instruments made all kinds of claims for their curative properties. Apparently sticking a large rubber dildo up your rear-end could cure anything from constipation, piles, and prostate prostate trouble, to nervousness, improve acne and aid restful sleep. Seriously! You'd think the last thing you'd have is a restful sleep after someone had shoved one of those bad boys up your bum.

These things were marketed right into the late 1930s. Then in 1938, a new Federal Law in the United States covered such quack devices, and they became outlawed.

In 1940, a shipment of rectal dilators, was seized at New York and the US Attorney filed libel cases against the company, alleging that they were misbranded. The misbranding allegations related to the claims that the dilators would "permanently" cure constipation and piles, that they had many other benefits including promoting refreshing sleep and improving acne, etc... Also that the instructions advised "you need have no fear of using them too much." The dilators disappeared as medical devices, only to reappear it would seem in adult shops as... Well you know what!

Vintage ads for rectal dilators. At least the "Recto Rotor" a particularly painful looking instrument of torture, has lube vents.

The painful sounding "Recto Rotor" claimed it's, "the only device that reaches the Vital Spot effectively." (What's the "Vital Spot"?) And that, "This picture tells its own story." Yes, yes it does.

Weird Japan: Anti-Smoking Signs

24/3/2015

The pressure to stop smoking is everywhere these days. As the net tightens on smokers, and the list of places they can't smoke becomes longer and longer, the Japanese have are taking smoking awareness to a whole new level. The politeness and good social manners obsessed culture, have produced a series of bewildering public information signs, informing smokers of the impact their habit has on the rest of Japanese society. From sensibly reminding people of how far smoke spreads, to warning of burning children in the face and reminding you that snowmen are not ashtrays.

Must remember not to stub my cigarette out on my own child's snowman, make sure it's someone else's snowman. And I must carry my cigarette above child head height, like an Olympic torch, while looking behind me, all the while looking for people waving at me and avoiding the possibility of burning an expensive coat. Oh and to make sure I'm in an old movie when I don't throw my butt down the drain. Phew! After all that hardcore social pressure to be aware of others when I smoke, I need a cigarette.

Here's a load more, that I have just come across.

The Future Of The Internet (1981)

17/2/2015

In my head 1981 doesn't seem that long ago, but in computing terms it was just the beginning of the modern technological age we all accept as normal today. IBM released their first home computer (PC), with Apple congratulating them in a famously sardonic advert in the August of that year. The Osbourne 1 was released to market, considered the first affordable "laptop". Affordable at $1725, and 24lb behemoth my have been a bit uncomfortable on your lap, but all that same.

The Osbourne 1 was doomed, and with the introduction of the IBM PC and it's MS-Dos operation system, the Osbourne was obsolete by 1983. That same year saw the introduction of the two home computers, the predecessors of computing giants that would revolutionise home computing only a year later. Commodore introduced the VIC-20, and Sinclair the ZX-81. By 1982, they would bring out the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Also 1981, KRON news did a little report about a small revolution happening in San Francisco, where people with a "modem" could read their daily newspapers via their home computer. "It's not as far fetched as it may seem", says the news anchor. You have to love the bit when the tech-guy from the San Francisco Examiner says they won't make any money from it, and the tag-line to the consumer/reader Richard Halloran, that simply states "Owns Home Computer".

And how Mr. Halloran goes on to say, that you can copy the information off the computer onto "paper" to "save it". Oh how wonderfully naive things were back then. Now we're plugged into that "Internet" 24/7, on multiple devices with more computing power than the massive mainframe in Ohio, that Mr. Halloran was calling-up on his dial-up modem to read the newspaper.

Retro Gaming: Poster Paster (1984)

25/11/2014

Poster Paster was a Commodore 64 game by Taskset from 1984. You play Bill Stickers as he tries to paste poster advertisement to billboards under more and more difficult conditions. The game was a notoriously pixel perfect one. Essentially it was one long advert for other Taskset games and other computer companies. It even included one scene where you had to paste a poster for the Apple Macintosh.

Taskset had previously scored a big hit with their 1983 game Super Pipeline. The main reason I remember Poster Paster is that the company market tested the game in a local independent computer store near to my house as a kid. Taskset were based in a seaside town only a short drive from my home city. I got to test play Poster Paster and finding it mind-numbingly dull and somewhat off put by the game being a a vehicle for Taskset to sell advertising space, I do recall telling them I thought the game was "crap!" Although I did also end up owning a copy of the game.

At the same time as Poster Paster came out Taskset also released Seaside Special. Seaside Special was a controversial little game, because it involved the main character Radium Rodney visiting 10 Downing Street and throwing radioactive seaweed at top UK politicians! The reason the game had a seaside theme, was that every year the main political parties have conferences at seaside resorts. The game developers wanted to send an political and environment message, and even wanted some of the profits to go to Green Peace. Making political statements through computer games was an unusual thing at the time, and appeared unpopular with gamers. That and the repetitive and ultimately boring game-play of Seaside Special.

Taskset were an innovative and interesting part of computer gaming history, that has been lost to time. Their games did push the boundaries of what could be done with the C64 graphically and with sound. However their political ambitions may have been their undoing.

A Catalogue Of Fun For Boys!

4/11/2014

Back before the World Wide Web spread porn across the world, and into every feverish adolescent boys bedroom, we who are old enough to remember had the mail-order catalogues that would land on our doorsteps very summer and winter. The unbridled excitement of waiting for your parents to go out, so you could sneak it upstairs so you could flick through the underwear section was more than many boys in the 70s and 80s could bear.

Here in the UK the top catalogues were Kays, Grattans, and Littlewoods. In the US, I understand it was Sears or J.C. Penney's, I guess Victoria Secret's was a bit to racy for most home. Boys would furtively flick through, hoping for a bit of nipple peaking through a bra. They were much more innocent times, and paradise of nylon and polyester. Quickly flicking over the "older ladies" support and gusseted underwear section of course.

Getting caught with a mail-order catalogue in your bedroom wasn't so embarrassing either, as you could always claim your were looking at the "toy section". Obviously your parents didn't believe you for a minute, but it kept the mutual embarrassment of the truth unsaid. The semi-clad models, who looked like ordinary ladies kept the dirty young minds of 70s and 80s kids imaginative and grounded in some kind of perverse reality. Rather than the all-out-there porn that the availability Internet porn brought youngsters of the 90s and 2000s. Obviously the catalogues days didn't last long for us guys that grew-up in that era, as eventually we all came across our parents porn stash, and moved onto the likes of Playboy, Penthouse and the equivalent of the times. Then as VHS video players became more and more accessible in homes, we moved onto grainy copies of Swedish Erotica and Electric Blue. After all one absolute fact of life as a teenage boy was, you learned how to become an expert hunter of jerk-off materials. These days it's literally handed to them on a plate. And they are missing out on the joys of discovering that post-Internet gem, that anyone growing up in the pre-Internet age had as an key rite-of-passage in their adolescence.

Chuck Norris Kickin' Action Jeans

1/11/2014

The last known ads for Action Jeans from 1989.

Back in the summer of 1977, Century Martial Arts released their Kickin' Jeans jeans on an unsuspecting world, and later endorsed by none other than Chuck Norris. The secret to these jeans was the special gusset. As an advertising blurb said at the time they were, "Developed for stunt fighting in the movies. These look and wear like regular western jeans but have a hidden-gusset and stretch in the fabric so they won't bind your legs or rip out."

The jeans were regularly advertised in specialist martial arts magazines like Black Belt, from when they appeared in 1977 through to around 1991. Various names in martial arts endorsed the jeans in the first few years, but it was in 1982 when they hit the high-spot by getting the one and only Chuck Norris to put his name to them. They even changed the name to Action Jeans. Another famous martial arts practitioner that also endorsed the jeans along with Chuck was Ernie Reyes Jr. in the mid-80s.

The son of stunt man and actor Ernie Reyes Sr., Ernie Jr., was a minor star in the mid-80s, starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen in the 1985 sword and sorcery action movie Red Sonja. He also appeared in a episode of MacGyver, and was Donatello's stunt double in the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990) movie. So well placed to be a poster boy for the newly branded Action Jeans.

Back in 1981, Ernie Jr., has actually endorsed the then still called Kickin' Jeans alongside his father. But it's the co-endorsement with the legendary Chuck Norris all moustached and smiling behind little Ernie that makes for a classic advert.

Kickin' or Action Jeans are no longer available sadly, although Century Martial Arts is still on the go. Although there was an attempt to reignite a love for jeans with that special gusset, when in 2002 Diamond Gusset Clothing relaunched a version of the jeans.

Chuck and Ernie selling Action Jeans in 1983.

Pimpin' It Up, Superfly Style

2/10/2014

Weird Retro's facebook page has an album of Pimpin' It Up fashion adverts from the 70s and 80s. As well as other mind boggling fashion disasters of the past.

If you were a dude who was going to hit the streets and strut your funky stuff in the United States in the 1970s, then you would couldn't go far wrong by flicking through a copy of Ebony magazine or ordering a catalogue from one one of the gentlemen's outfitters that specialized in some truly superfly threads. Bill the Hatter based in Chicago was established as a gentlemen's outfitters in 1949. Specializing in (obvious by the name) hats, the necessary finishing peacock flourish for any man about town. But also sold those big collared, wide-flared gaudy outfits that are synonymous with the pimped-up street style fashions of the 70s.

Things happen when you wear Eleganza was the advertising a tag-line for the well known outfitters who based there mail-order business out of Brockton, Massachusetts. Their adverts featured some of the most outrageous fashions, even for the time. This was the go to place for the players and the hustlers, who had the cash to splash on dog-ear collars that reached half-way down to your waist. Lapels so wide, you would be in fear of taking off in a strong wind, and of course the platform shoes to match.

For those who couldn't stretch to the bold styling of Eleganza, there was Flagg Bros. The superfly super-saver, for brothers on a budget. Eleganza may have been the mack-daddy of mail-order pimped-out out-fits, Flagg Bros., supplied "rise on fashions", who said they had "more ways to put you out front without setting you back".

Coming soon... More freaky than funky fashion failures.