What was the marketing guy thinking when he hooked up The Supremes with a bread brand deal? Pumpernickel maybe, but white bread?!
I own the plastic sleeve the bread came in. Made in 1966 by Schafer Bakeries, Inc. of Lansing, Michigan, in partnership with Hitsville Merchandising, where someone should have caught the irony of the bread match.
Please play the film for optimum Kitsch pleasure!
Nothing better than celebrity Kitsch! They have enough money and should know better but that’s when some of the biggest Kitsch gets committed. The killers happen with products that have nothing to do with the person’s name that adorns them like Mohammed Ali shoe polish, products that have all too much to do with the celebrity like a Brigitte Bardot bra, or products that shouldn’t have anything to do with the celebrity like Lucille Ball cigarettes. It’s all here in Film #4 in my “What Is Kitsch?” film fest commemorating the opening of the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch.
Made of super hard plastic, the coins reverberate when they drop inside Mr. T’s cavernous head making this a better percussion instrument than bank. Which is best given how cheap this 10″ lump o’ Mr. T is made… You literally have to cut a hole in the bottom to get the coins out. Which means, of course, you can never use it as a bank again as there’s no way to re-insert the plastic which is surely jagged, sharp and misshapen after using an ice pick or whatever else it might take to puncture the exceedingly super hard plastic.
Made by Ruby-Spears Enterprises in 1983, this is a relatively rare piece of Mr. T. memorabilia with jewelry and other assorted bling, T-shirts, games, coloring books and A-Team vans far more locatable. I pity the fool among Mr. T collectors who doesn’t own this piece of gorgeous super hard plastic molded to a T perfection.
I loved Bobby Darin and I loved Scripto ink cartridge fountain pens, especially when those cartridges were Peacock Blue or Emerald Green. So when this promo came out in conjunction with If A Man Answers, Darin’s 1962 film with then wife Sandra Dee, I was all over it. Four songs, 8 ink cartridges and 1 pen, all for $1.39
To me, Darin was one of the classiest singers of the late 50’s and early 60’s. One of the first to write his own songs, I thought “Splish Splash” and “Dream Lover” were good but I went officially nuts with “Mack The Knife” and “Beyond The Sea”, neither of which he wrote but sang like a Smoooooth Master.
Songs on this Capitol 45 EP include “If A Man Answers”, “True, True Love”, The Sermon Of Samson” and “All By Myself”. The cartridges were plain ol’ Washable Blue.
I’ve never seen one of these that worked properly or where the heads stood up straight but still it’s one of the most prized collectibles of Monkees memorabilia. Although I loved the just-ingested-mushrooms quality of their TV show and the supreme popiness of the records, I never had a favorite Monkee as my head was buried so deeply in Motown.
When I co-wrote The Friends theme song, “I’ll Be There For You”, we were told to write something Monkees-ish. The Last Train To Clarksville definitely pulled into the station during those sessions.
Made by Mattel in 1966, this pull string doll was part of a flood of Monkees merchandising that included small rubber dolls with weird pajama feet, hard and soft lunch boxes, games, Monkee Mobiles, cufflinks, comic books and more. Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones were everywhere that year, not the least of which was on the shelves in my bedroom.
Not sure what the hand stitched surgery was meant to heal but probably involved efforts to restore vocal cords.
I have a bunch of Hoppy memorabilia but none so rare as this 1950’s can of “hybrid yellow” popcorn, actually called Hopalong Cassidy’s Favorite. H. Cassidy lunch boxes, paper plates, comic books, roller skates, wristwatches, guns and jackknives were just some of the products that made this cowboy one of the most successful personality brands from early TV.
William Boyd played Hopalong Cassidy from 1935 in films through the 1950’s on radio and tv and was one of the earliest stars to own the copyright to the character he played.
Hoppy’s favorite kernel kontainer is made of tin by the Maryland Popcorn Cooperative Association, Inc.
Being one of the earliest Hard Rock bands, panned by critics and shunned by radio until they released “We’re An American Band” in 1973, Grand Funk Railroad seems like a strange match for early corporate sponsorship let alone being wrapped around a Slurpee. Which makes this one of my Kitschiest Slurpee Cups as pop acts like Smokey Robinson and The Fifth Dimension, who also snuggled up to 7/11, made more sense as a commercial match. For a moment at least, Grand Funk was singing “We’re An American Brand”.
Titled ‘A Shining Star’, this 24″x18″ Colorforms puzzle, 500+ pieces, allowed you to assemble MJ’s red leather Thriller outfit and face at its best. Ultimately, the biggest puzzle of Michael’s life may be how he died but when this jigsaw puzzle came out in 1984, as again now, there’s no mystery as to why he was the biggest Popstar in the world. R.I. P. M. J.
Though slightly past his prime 70’s days and seemingly a bit more sophisticated than the malt liquor he endorsed, Billy Dee Williams stayed finely oiled by downing the guaranteed-to-make-your-brain-spin Colt 45 in the 1980’s. He took much criticism for his association with the king of malt liquors but made a kwintessential Kitsch komment when he rebuked his kritics with “I drink, you drink. Hell, if marijuana was legal, I’d appear in a commercial for it.” I’ll have 40 ounces now, please.
Anything that took off as fast as Farrah’s hair did when Charlie’s Angels debuted in 1975 – 80% of females on earth immediately sheared their manes into replicas – insured immediate Kitsch Kollection status for all products released in association with the legendary locks. Although no one’s hair could have been further from Farrah’s than mine, I bought this bottle of Farrah Creme Rinse/Condtioner by Faberge the day it hit the shelves in 1978. I never intended to open it but a tragic haircutting mistake forced me to pop the cap and see if its magic powers worked.
This was in 1983. I had finally decided to chop down my middle-of-the-back length hair and the hairdresser, who I had never been to before, chose to give me a Farrah. Unfortunately, this was years past when it was hip to have all the little feathers and wisps that marked that haircut. Appalled that my heretofore trademark long curly hair was replaced with such a dated and and, at that point, conservative look I tried the conditioner praying it would somehow force my hair to match my head as well as Farrah’s matched hers.
When that didn’t work I locked myself in my house for thirty one days and every day cut a little more off one side of my hair thinking I would stumble on the ideal length and then cut the other side to match. As anyone who’s seen me in the 26 years since knows, I never committed and the lopsided experiment became permanent. Sometimes I read where people describe my hair as 80’s asymmetrical but to me it’s Farrah asymmetrical all the way.
Years later I met Farrah at a mutual friend’s house. She was really funny and incredibly nice. When she told me that she loved my hair I regaled her with the story of how it came to be. It made the biggest hair trauma of my life all worth it because I got to discuss The Farrah with Farrah.
R.I.P. Farrah Fawcett.
