Nostalgia Trip: Oldies Unlimited

Today's post is a tribute of sorts to an 80's pop music institution - at least in Britain. Who else remembers Oldies Unlimited? Here's a reminder:


Not very visual, is it? Anyway, let me set the scene for you. First, I will get my pipe and slippers and mutter something like, "You kids today, you don't know how lucky you are...".

Let's say it's the mid-eighties and you want to hear an Ultravox B-Side. No downloads, no file sharing, you have to actually buy the real record the track was on. So you go down to the local record shop and say, would I be able to order "We Came To Dance" by Ultravox? Then the hippie looking bloke (some things have not changed that much) would pull out a book the size of Cardiff and look for the catalogue number. I think those books still exist - most libraries seem to have hidden racks of them in the reference sections. Then, you would wait. About a week later you would check back and they would look at their order book - all handwritten in biro - and shake their head, nah mate sorry, couldn't get it.

Oldies Unlimited was great precisely because they had all kinds of records, you just had to go through the whole mail-order experience. This starts with them sending you a booklet with a list of their records, which they would send every month or so. When you ordered records, you had to put some extras down so you never knew exactly what you were going to get (Hey, wasn't that also how you ordered Panini stickers for your albums? I'd forgotten about the whole "provide alternatives" approach). No scans, no digital photos, just writing to some place called Telford which could have been the moon for all I knew. No credit card - just send a check or a postal order. This was while I was still at school, so placing an order was a rare treat.

On one occasion I took a chance and bought a box of 100 singles for about ten pounds, it was one of those grab-bag deals. When they came, of course they were all rubbish and I'd never heard of any of them. The only one I remember at all was "I Never Go Out In The Rain" by High Society. For some reason I've always had a soft spot for tunes that hark back to Vaudeville and the roaring twenties.

High Society - I Never Go Out In The Rain (7" Single, 1980)

What Do You Mean, Flash Gordon Approaching?

Nostalgia Trip: Top Trumps

Flying into Gatwick airport recently, and subsequently nosing around a W.H. Smith, I was reminded of the old maxim: 'Great Britain and the USA are two nations divided by a common language. And Top Trumps.'

In fact, I'm quite sure the only reason it's taken this long for me to blog about one of my favourite playground pastimes in the '70's is because the phenomenon is very alien to almost everyone on this side of the pond. Let me explain in simple terms: starting in the mid '70's, kids played a game called Top Trumps. The game consisted of (usually) 32 cards similar to normal playing cards in size. Each card would feature a photograph or illustration, and below would be listed several statistics about the subject. If it was a car, it might list the top speed, or the number of cylinders; for a soccer player, it might be the number of caps (international appearances) or his age. Players would divide out the cards and then face off with one person selecting a statistic and the others (most often it was a two player game, head to head) would compare, with the best one winning. The object was to collect all the cards. It was simple enough, and portable enough, to be played anywhere, at anytime, for a few minutes or a couple of hours.

Most of all (and I'm facetiously wondering if this is why it never caught on in the States) the cards were a form of education. After playing for a while, you could point out a Vauxhall Viva to your uncle and tell him the horsepower and engine capacity. You knew what year the Luftwaffe introduced the Bachem Natter (1945) or how many times Gordon McQueen had scored for Scotland (3, at the time the card was printed).

Initially the sets were quite predictable: cars, boats, planes, etc. Then, more interesting designs came out, such as horror cards (with stats such as "killing power") and cars of the future, and perhaps most controversially, Stars of Cricket. Collecting the packs became quite a hobby.

They died out in the '80's once Atari and Commodore has brought all the kids indoors. But then, strangely enough, the Top Trumps brand was revived 1in 1999 and since then many new packs have been issued, featuring TV shows (24, Doctor Who, Postman Pat), movies (Shrek, Lord of the Rings, X-Men), sports (soccer, for the most part) and quirky (Bratz, FHM Covergirls, Famous Marmelades, etc).

We didn't really do it at the time but it occurs to me that there was a great potential for mixing the packs up. You could have had the Death Star Vs an Austin Metro, Joe Jordan Vs Godzilla, or a Norwegian fire engine (I'm not making that up) Vs the USS Nimitz.

Naturally, there are many people who have devoted a lot more time on the net to the subject. A good starting point would be The Ultimate Reference Site. Then there's the wikipedia entry and the official Top Trumps website. You can also find complete sets in various places, such as Horror, Rally Cars (do Americans know what a 'Rally' is?), World Cup 1978, Fabulous Buggies, and I'm sure plenty more if you look around.

Here is a montage of some cards I remember from the seventies. Obviously, we didn't have cards like this.



Oh yeah, and this being the age of empowerment, there are several places you can make your own cards, such as:

Nostalgia Trip: Action Transfers

Anyone remember these things? Minutes of fun guaranteed, thanks to Action Transfers or Letraset, as I seem to remember they were also called.

You could relive the best moments from movies by carefully rubbing your transfer onto a generic background using a ballpoint pen. I remember this because it was about the only time a ballpoint pen would find it's way into my grubby little mitt.

Inevitably, the transfers would go wrong, and Obi-Wan Kenobi would get cut in half - without a lightsaber. They were permanent, so if you accidentally rubbed on a stormtrooper upside down, you had to claim that the force had thrown him against the wall or something.

It wasn't just Star Wars, either. At one time you could get rub-on transfers for anything. There's a website devoted to the subject here.

Well folks I looked for more exciting websites devoted to the subject, but I guess that's your lot.

Nostalgia Trip: Comics of the 70's (Part 1)

Here are some comics I remember from the 1970's.

"Look out for Look-In!"
I mainly remember Look -In because it was the magazine my sister got every week. It had something for everyone - pin up posters of Barry Sheene and David Essex for the girls, comic strips of Space 1999, Sapphire & Steel and The Six Million Dollar Man for the boys. Lots of TV shows. Movies. Sport. Music. A bit of everything. I remember looking at the TV listings which were quite complicated because many different regional networks showed different shows - for example, everyone raved about Tiswas but we never got to see it. There was Grampian, Thames, Anglia and our local channel, Channel TV. There are two websites devoted to the magazine - John's Look-Out [now defunct] (which has a large selection of covers and other info) and the Look-In Picture Strip Archive.

Similarly titled, but quite different, was Look And Learn. This was a comic I would read while visiting the dentist or find at a jumble sale. The magazine had quite an old-fashioned, 1950's look. There were a lot of historical stories, which I don't really remember (I wasn't much of history fan back then) but there was also The Trigan Empire, a very ambitious and fantastically illustrated comic strip. The strips I remember were drawn by Oliver Frey, who went on to produce the covers for computer magazines Crash! and Zzap64! in the mid-80's.

The rights to the magazine are now owned by Look And Learn Ltd, and they have a comprehensive website here.

Who doesn't remember Desperate Dan and his cowpies, or Korky the Cat, or even Bully Beef and Chips? Did you know that The Dandy is the world's longest running comic, and still exists today? Bet it costs more than 4p though!

Between this and The Beano, there were always chortles to be had. Now, where did the chortles go? Sometimes, I feel like I'm a frickin' pensioner, man. What do six year old boys read these days? Maybe it was a British thing. Anyone else care to comment on what they read when they were kids?

Some basic Dandy information here, and the official website is here.

I've run out of steam for now. Next week In eight years' time I'll post Part 2.

Nostalgia Trip: The X-Files

I wasn't born yet when JFK was assassinated, but I can tell you exactly where I was on January 12, 1997 when I saw my first episode of The X-Files. I was at a Holiday Inn in Seattle, on my very first USA trip, when I saw the Season 4 episode El Mundo Gira, about a mythical mexican beast. I then started following the adventures of FBI agents Mulder and Scully with keen interest.

Now you may get the impression that, yet again, I was showing up late to what had been something of a TV phenomenon for several years. In my defence, this was at a time when most houses in the UK had no access to satellite TV, and the terrestrial station, the BBC, was currently running episodes from the series about two years behind the US schedule. It's hard to believe now, just ten years later, that we used to have to wait so long to see the programs. This was also before TV on DVD became popular, so the best you could get was a VHS tape with two or three episodes, and even then, the options were limited.

It's also true that to an extent I was guilty of dismissing a show that had a central premise of aliens existing, governments involved in shadowy conspiracies, and the weird and horrific were part of everyday life. But by the end of 1996 I was disillusioned enough with life to begin to enjoy the more sinister aspects of these kinds of shows.

What attracted me initially to the series was the production values. Each episode screened like a short movie. It was also the first show I had seen in a long time where you had to see the opening scene, and watch the mystery unfolding. It was like a magic trick.

As a twenty-something, I have to say I also had a fanboy crush on Gillian Anderson, whose character Scully was so measured, so scientific, and yet also quite feminine, with that gorgeous hair. I liked the fact that she was short ( in one episode Mulder sarcastically tells her, "I'm surprised your feet reach the pedals!") but always seemed to handle the weirdest situations.

Like a lot of other people, I think the show peaked in seasons 3 and 4 and never really cared for the ongoing conspiracy plot. I kept thinking that there was no good way to resolve the ever-increasingly convoluted threads that would make sense and be a satisfactory payoff - and so it proved. I did like the Cigarette Smoking Man, though.

Now of course, the new movie is about to be released, which I'm sure will renew interest in the show again.

How about a couple of related mp3's?

Catatonia - Mulder & Scully
Mike Oldfield - Tubular X
Mark Snow - The X-Files Theme

I was going to post Gillian Anderson's CD Single until I remembered I had already posted it here.

Nostalgia Trip: Radio Times

I was going to mention a couple of British TV shows from the '90's before I came across a spread of Radio Times covers, which really takes me back. In our global cross-pollination and instant information overload age, it is hard to describe the attraction of a thin, incomplete, fragile TV magazine which, if nothing else, was ludicrously mis-named for the television age.

Yet back in the day, when there were only two BBC channels (and the ITV listings were, if my memory is correct, only available in another listings magazine) it seemed very important to consult the RT (as it was affectionately known) before planning a night's TV viewing. This was, of course, also before the widespread availability of VHS, and many years before inventions such as DVD and TIVO. Back then, if you missed a show, it was gone for good. Fortunately, the magazine also served as an Entertainment Weekly of sorts, including snippets about new productions, what the actors were up to, and radio listings to boot.

There was no TV at all between midnight and 6 a.m., and BBC 2 was usually stuffed with arty, "educational" programs and the odd documentary. Therefore, viewing was usually concentrated on BBC 1 and whatever shows were being broadcast throughout the day or evening. Many of my TV memories were shows that it was impossible to avoid - and I'm sure my US born friends would have been appalled at the lack of choice, of freedom, of TV democracy back in those heady days - but now I can only look back fondly on Saturdays with Dusty Bin (That's 3-2-1, folks) or The Generation Game, Dallas on Wednesday nights, Panorama on Tuesdays, Tomorrow's World on Thursdays and Eastenders every bloody day of the week.

Next time I hear a child complain that there is nothing on the TV that they like, I will feel sorry for them. Perhaps, choice is sometimes overrated.

The Radio Times is still going strong, although I'm sure it is now wonderfully interactive and modern. There is an official web site. Like me, you can discover a wonderful gallery of all the old magazine covers here. There is, of course, a wikipedia entry as well.

One other interesting memory is this. In our house we did not have any air conditioning or central heating system. When my parents laid out some carpet mum would always use old magazines for insulation, usually the Radio Times or the other TV Guide. Years later, when we pulled up the carpet, I'd always find some old thing to read underneath. Even today, there are some things you just can't do with the internet.

Nostalgia Trip: Zzap! 64

For this week's nostalgia trip, I knew I wanted to do something about computers. I've been playing some flash games while browsing the net and it reminded me of how much fun we used to have back in the days of the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad 464. In 1985 64k seemed like a lot of memory - now even one small picture holds more information than that.

My difficulty was in choosing what to blog about. One game, or several? One platform, or all of them? In the end I decided that the subject was far too large to be covered properly in one post. So I'm going to start by reminiscing about the one constant element that I remember throughout my game playing days, the Commodore 64 magazine, Zzap!64. Zzap! was a special magazine in many ways. Firstly, the covers were all gorgeous, designed by Oliver Frey, a well-known fantasy artist and cartoonist. Nothing else on the racks looked as good.

Secondly, while some magazines tried to include games for different computers, Zzap! was specific to the C64, and therefore every word was relevant. Third was the magazine's style. The reviewers were much more than names at the bottom of the page, they were shown as real people, celebrities in themselves, with differing opinions and a lot of personality. When all the reviewers praised a game, you knew it was going to be good. There were also a lot of in-jokes and unusual features. The first 16 or so issues featured a unique comic strip, you could order games, magazines, and T-Shirts (now where did my Eidolon T-Shirt go?) and many of the programmers dropped in for competitions or to talk about their latest games.

Fortunately, there is an excellent internet site dedicated to the magazine. The Def Guide to Zzap!64 includes scans of many of the issues (running from 1985 into the 90's) and lots of other articles, photographs and such. The website also produced a unique anniversary issue (issue 107) which can be downloaded in a PDF document).

Looking through these magazines again certainly brings back a lot of memories for me. Like I said, I'm not going to get into all the games we used to play in this post, but suffice it to say all my friends used to spend a lot of time in front of the TV set, twiddling on a joystick.

One other interesting facet of the computer magazine layouts back in those days was the question of advertising. Ads took up a lot of space in the magazines, and because the actual games had very poor graphics, companies used interesting methods to sell their products, often having very little to do with what you were actually buying. (It's nice to know that in twenty years, some things haven't changed that much). Often, the ads would appear two to three months before the game was released, and all the excitement generated by the ads would fizzle out once the (generally) poor review appeared.

Most of the ads were designed to appeal to young teenage boys, featuring lasers, spaceships, explosions, monsters, and such. But when the fighting game Barbarian came out, instead of featuring a cartoon warrior swinging an axe or sword, the ad-men chose a picture of a non-very-convincing caveman with the current Page 3 lovely, Maria Whittaker, wearing a skimpy costume. Over the next year or two, publishers used increasingly risque tactics to attract sales.

It was during this period that the (other) infamous 'nipplegate' happened. Imagine Software tried to slip (ahem!) the outline of a female nipple into one of its ads, actually based on an existing fantasy art print. The outcry was immediate and vociferous. The offending ad was hastily re-designed for fear of scarring teenagers for life. Obviously the damage was done, because twenty years later, I can still remember it! You can read all about it here. Those were the days.

Purely in the interests of academic research, you can see another Maria Whittaker poster given away with copies of Barbarian 2 here.

A collection of Oliver Frey's artwork is available here.

Nostalgia Trip: Scooby Doo

Well, I promised that my Nostagia Trip posts would return at some point, and this week's entry was a no-brainer.

My five year old daughter started watching cartoons on the Boomerang TV channel about three weeks ago, which features classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Hair Bear Bunch, and, of course, Scooby Doo, Where Are You (to give the show the correct title). She was immediately hooked on the adventures of the cowardly canine and his partnership with the irrepressible Shaggy. These are the original cartoons from 1969-1970, so they are as old as I am. Thankfully, there's no trace of (ugh!) Scrappy Doo. Judging by the amount of Scooby-related paraphernalia in our local stores, either Scooby is enjoying a comeback, or he really never went away and I didn't notice.

As anyone with young children will tell you, there is nothing worse than being forced to sit through repetitive kid's shows that keep them entertained while sucking the jelly out of your brain. So I'm quite content that she seems to be addicted to this show, because watching them again is a nostalgia blast. It's actually relaxing to watch a show where no one has a cellphone, or jumps on the internet, and everyone is down to earth and not looking to become the next wannabe celebrity. Yes, there's a formula. I could describe every script using five fingers. (1. Kids get stuck. 2. There's a mystery and a spooky legend 3. They find some clues. 4. Shaggy and Scooby get chased around. 5. The baddie is taken out, and proves to be the first guy we met.) But the sum is more than the parts, with the comic interplay and one-liners hitting the spot. For example, Shaggy says something like "Scooby Doo, you found a shoe!" and my daughter laughs so much she turns to me and repeats the line, adding her own variations. Good times.

I love the fashions (poo-poo to the designers who tried to "update" them in the later series) and the appealing naivety of the kids.

When I was growing up, I never thought of them as teenagers, more like young twenty-somethings who did this for a living. Now, it's easier to pin the gang as High School misfits who find a common bond. Nowadays, I'm afraid the preppie kids would just sneer and leave Shaggy and his strange dog alone. And the girl with glasses would stay at home listening to Sara Bareilles and Jaymay on her i-Pod.

There's a lot of myths (and some truths) about the show and the in-jokes. Daphne still radiates that hottie vibe but, on reflection, her helplessness and ability to find a (ahem!) booby trap anywhere and fall in it let her off the hook.

Leaving aside the tragic tale of the Christmas ornament that (mysteriously) vanished, which I will recount another time, some of the more interesting collectibles available include a set of grape jellies going for $25, some russian nesting dolls, and a waffle iron.

Here's the famous opening theme:

Nostalgia Trip: Fighting Fantasy

Over the last few weeks I have discussed comic books, collecting things and computers, so this week I am going to further enhance my geek credentials by talking about the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks which were very popular back in the 1980's.

The idea behind the books was very simple and at the same time quite revolutionary. As a way of cashing in on the growth in interest in Dungeons & Dragons games and Games Workshop products, the books were designed to give younger boys the ability to experience a fantasy adventure without having to learn a lot of strange and complicated rules, buy a lot of expensive manuals and equipment, and, most importantly, did not require having similarly obsessive friends that were willing to spend hours sitting at a table with you.

The gamebooks did have some rules, which involved rolling a dice and recording some scores, and also keeping a list of the items you found during the adventure. I'm sure I was similar to many others in that I tended to work through the books under the assumption that I won all my battles, was reasonably lucky and skillful, and kept my finger in the page before in case I suddenly died horribly and had to go back a few moments in time. Even with this liberal approach, the books were usually difficult, and often relied on finding certain objects and presenting them to certain people in a certain order.

The books had a good replay value because it was very hard to remember all the incidents and tricks that came into play. The descriptions and gameplay in the books were always quite detailed, truly immersing the reader in a different world each time. The books had some variety - some were outdoors, some were in a city, some involved fiendish traps and mazes, some were even set in space.

We grew up in a Christian household, and consequently there was quite a lot of debate as to whether the books were appropriate for younger readers, with some graphic and ghoulish images and references to occult practices, wizardry and such. Several times we borrowed a volume or made a trade because our copies had been lost.

Looking back now, the gamebooks still have some appeal. I find they are the right length for a transatlantic flight and are easy to carry around. And they are still hard!

What initially piqued my interest twenty years later was that all the gamebooks were reissued by Wizard Books beginning in 2002, and new stories were forthcoming from the original authors. The internet has spawned a large number of websites devoted to the books and the worlds they created. For example there is a great collector site here and a good overview of the series here.

The original books can usually be found on eBay, and the reissues are currently widely available from online stores such as Amazon.

Wikipedia entry