Nearly-identical vintage toys: compare and contrast

It strikes me, after the fact, that I need to include a BIT of explanation with these ads rather than just throwing them at you. Unlike me, you may not remember them. These are vintage ads for kids' toys that are practically interchangeable. I don't know if Digger the Dog came ahead of Gaylord, but both toys had very catchy jingles. Digger had an adenoidal little boy who, while almost unintelligible, was mighty cute. The men who wrote these (for they were almost surely men) were geniuses in their own small way, for their little ditties plied drill-bits into our brains that screw with our memory to this day.

As a child, I wanted a horse so badly that I'd "ride" anything. I would hang upside down from the railing of a gospel church door and pretend it was a horse. I would pop the legs off one of those tin TV trays, stand inside the legs, and pretend to gallop around. Never did I get anything as impressive as Marvel the Mustang or Blaze, which would probably cost more than most families were willing to pony up.

The pooping dog was not something I experienced or wanted, not being a Barbie afficionado. In my day, it would have been considered horrific, since back than nobody pooped. I mean nobody, not even dogs.

These have only the fact that they're robots in common, but they're cool. Why am I bothered by the thumbnail in the bottom one? Does it remind me of a TNT blast, or something more ominous?

In any case, I remember most of these ads, particularly Digger the Dog and Gaylord, who seemed to be almost the same product. Likewise Marvel the Mustang (who came with the unforgettable slogan, "What horse do?") and Blaze, though unlike Marvel, he didn't really go anywhere. Though boy and horse seemed to be barreling along, it was obvious that only the background was moving, while Blaze just bounced up and down in one spot like those awful horsey-things mounted on springs. Marvel, on the other hand, kind of shuffled along, front and back legs stuck out awkwardly like diagonal table legs. No winding. No batteries. But no horse ever "did" like that. 

(Wasn't there a Romper Room caterpillar that you rode that was something like that? Let me think. . .) 

The pooping dog is quite a bit after my time, but I do remember the stir it caused when Barbie came out with Tanner. The idea was repeated some time in the '80s (?) with Pax, my Poopin' Pup, a much fuzzier, cuter dog who nevertheless produced the same stuff. Put it in one end, and it comes out the other.

SPECIAL BONUS AD! This one may only faintly resemble Marvel the Mustang and Blaze, but it's a mechanical horse, what the hell! This one DOES take batteries. What horse do? This one does.

POST-PONY: Sometimes, it just all comes together. Looking for that Romper Room riding caterpillar (which turned out to be Inchworm, with a jingle too dreadful to repeat here), I found - a riding DOG, so much like a cross between Digger the Dog and Gaylord that it almost made my hair stand on end! Well, not quite. But it's interesting.

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.

Not the worst toy ever made, but prettinear

  


This doll was eventually yanked off the shelves when it was discovered that in addition to those long gumlike strips that spewed out the doll's back (back??), it also "ate" clothing, fingers and hair. There was no "off" switch and no release mechanism: it was tripped off by sticking the gum in its creepy little mouth, so little girls were soon attached (screaming) to the doll's face while it continued to pull and pull and pull.  Presumably, a big hank of hair would have to be cut off to get her free.  I don't know why they didn't test this doll before putting it on the market. But what about the Easy Bake oven? It still exists, and no doubt still has the capacity to cause third degree burns on children's skin.

The other thing is, I think the voiceover at the end of the ad was done by voice actress Yeardley Smith, who plays Lisa Simpson and sometimes shows up in movies and on TV (most recently, on The Big Bang Theory).