IT'S COLORFORMS!

Happy freakin' New Year. I'm sitting here right now listening to what sounds like a war zone outside my window, while I sit dolefully at my computer thinking, jeez, I should be in bed by now. But it's 2015, it must be, or my computer wouldn't be telling me so.

This is one of those big muddy messy compilations of old TV toy ads. I wouldn't even throw this at you - and for God's sake, don't watch all of it, it's a whole hour of your time that you'll never get back! No, start at about 5:30 and go to about 16:00. Almost all the ads in this segment are for Colorforms, which for the uninitiated were little pieces of vinyl that stuck to each other with a static charge. Started off as dolls with clothes that clung to them, and went from there. A few of these ads are just headspinningly bizarre, including one where a roomful of people drunkenly laugh at nothing. In another spot, someone makes ludicrous "breeeeeep!" noises while abstract shapes move all over the place, seemingly by themselves. But my favorite is the Popeye one, in which some adult putting on a kid's voice tries to sound convincingly natural. The Dad sounds equally brain-damaged, and the Popeye Colorforms are so poor I could cut out better shapes freehand with dull left-handed scissors. 

It was a different world then, vastly different.  Better, worse? I'm not too fond of the one I'm in, but it's the one I'm in. Happy 2015. Or at least, I hope it will be.