1980's Toys & TV Pt 1: When being a kid rawked

If you were a kid in the 1980's, it's my opinion that you were one of the luckiest damn kids in the world. Why? Because our toys were awesome. We were pre computers and Internet but post tin cans and wooden dolls. Toys were what fueled our imaginations. It was the age of five inch thick, glorious toy catalogs that every kid drooled over before Christmas. There were toys that were starting to talk, walk and take on a "life" of their own with the help of batteries and electricity. Teddy Ruxpin could tell you a bed time story, you didn't need your parents for that! And screw TV! The drama that was going on between your Barbie dolls or GI Joes was way more exciting. The dark wasn't so scary with your Glow Worm or your Light Bright. Care Bears reminded you to stay positive. The bottom of the breakfast cereal meant a toy was at hand (unless your parents let you dump it all in a big bowl first.) Saturday morning cartoons were still in existence and were actually good.
   Simply put, the 80's were an amazing time to be a kid. I'm going to use this series of blogs to take a break from paranormal & creepy topics to share my love of the 80's. I'm going to dive into some of my favorite memories and toys from that bygone era many of us miss and still love to get lost in the forgotten nostalgia.

Toy #1 - Hello Kitty

I can see ones I owned in this pic. Source 

   This freakishly adorable cat with its assortment of equally cute friends was a solid obsession of mine and of many other kids out there. If I had anything Hello Kitty, it was lovingly taken care off and kept in a special place. I had pens, erasers, stamp kits, mini pencil kits and stationary. These would all be stored neatly in a drawer or be on display. If I took any of these items to school, I wouldn't use them. They would just be artfully placed inside my desk somewhere or in my room with other designer erasers and pens that were just for looks.
 

This was it! The Hello Color! I found this pic
on www.hellokittyjunkie.co

But my favorite Hello Kitty toy was my beloved Hello Color. Hello Color was the ultimate bath toy. It was a plush doll you could dunk underwater and it would change color! It was incredible. It started out pink and purple and when the hot water touched it, bam! It turned to lighter colors. Now as a kid, I wasn't just content to dunk the doll underwater once and watch the colors change. It needed to happen again, and again. So on the cold water would go and I'd hold the doll under it and watch the dark colors come back. Then it would go back into the hot bath water...then the cold...then the hot...and after some time lapsed, I would find myself sitting in lukewarm bathwater with the start of chattering teeth. But playtime would continue until my parents would rip me from the tub and hang the doll up to dry. Until tomorrow night Hello Color! 
 
   Then one day, the unthinkable happened. Our large Husky decided to get his hands on my Hello Color and destroy it. When I found her, she was torn open, her fluffy insides spilling out. I cried. My grandma did her best to sew the doll back up, but it was never the same after that. The face was sewn up like Frankenstein and it was obvious to me that the soul of the doll I bonded with over bath time had left its body when it was attacked by our heartless dog.
   At some point, like all bath toys, the doll was getting a little rank and had seen its last days and made its exit to toy heaven. But I never forgot Hello Color and our short time together on this planet and I have often done Ebay searches looking for another one just for the hell of it. In fact, it was my searches that reminded me it was even called "Hello Color." I just remembered the awesome Hello Kitty doll that changed colors in the tub. A few key word searches later and thanks to YouTube and other nostalgic 80's toy nuts, the commercial below popped up and I was instantly reconnected with my long lost toy again through 31 seconds of streaming bliss. I found this commercial actually disturbing seeing the children in the tub seem really exposed for TV. Something tells me we wouldn't see this on the television today.

Toy #2 - She-Ra = Awesome

   There are no words that can really describe my fondness for these toys. I have been slowly getting rid of some of my toy's from the 80's as they have been gaining some collectibility, but I will never, ever, ever part with my She-Ra dolls. The one thing I regret was selling off all of my He-Man dolls at a garage sale back in the late 80's. I had tons of them all in mint condition and I cringe every time I think about it. 

   I can honestly say that I still have dreams once in a while that She-Ra comes back into stores and there I am, (adult me), walking through the toy aisle when I see brand new She-Ra dolls hanging there ready to collect all over again. But then I wake up, and it just angers me that they came out with He-Man a second time a few years back but not She-Ra. Of course, Mattel learned that it wasn't the kids picking up all of these new He-Man toys, it was actually adults who played with the originals in the 80's and still wanted to collect this new version of their favorite toy. Today's kids didn't know what to do with them. They didn't do anything or come with a screen. They didn't have buttons or a microchip,so the toys didn't catch on with the new generation of kids.

After digging on the Internet, I was able
to find this old ad showing the actual
pajamas on the kid on the right.

  Two of the coolest She-Ra items I owned were my She-Ra pajamas and the actual (plastic) armor of She-Ra. First, the pajamas were pretty sweet seeing they came with knee length yellow-gold footies that were supposed to resemble her boots. The actual pajamas were made to look like her mini skirt. She-Ra and her horse were printed on the front of the shirt and then there was the coolest part of the whole ensemble: the red cape. The cape was a piece of red fabric that attached via Velcro onto the shoulders. It wouldn't always stay, especially after it had been washed a few times, but when I went to bed, I didn't go to bed as Amberrose...I went to bed as She-Ra, and there was nothing cooler than that. I would slide down our long wooden hallway in my slippers, trying to get the cape to somewhat blow upwards as if I were flying. It was never too successful but I'm sure it was good exercise and annoying to my grandparents.

   My She-Ra armor is still sought after by my friends who beg me to locate all the parts so they can try it on and wear it. This set included bracers, a necklace, the shield, a belt, the sword of power and the most magical piece of them all...the She-Ra mask. Combine these items with my pajamas, and there was no stopping me as a little kid. (Note: I looked cooler than the kid featured in this picture. The white leotard and Keds just don't make a powerful super hero statement.)

Who was your favorite?

   My friends and I have often talked about getting together and trying to pull off She-Ra characters for Halloween but we have come to the conclusion that in our 30's, it would take many months of intense physical training and strict dietary habits to even remotely come close to portraying a Princess of Power figurine. 

I came across this on the Internet and just had to put this on here in reference
to the small conversation below regarding Halloween.

::Me to my cousin:: "You could be She-Ra for Halloween! You have blonde hair and blue eyes! You could pull it off! I could be Frosta or something!" 

::My cousin:: "No one wants to see a fat She-Ra."

::Me:: big sigh. 

And who could forget those mighty words, "I HAVE THE POWER!!!"

Don't Stop...Believin'

   Proof and belief. Those two frustrating words that are the crux of the paranormal enthusiast and skeptic alike. "Show us the proof!" the skeptic's all demand, while shaking their fists in the air for added emphasis. And while this may grate at the minds of the paranormal believers out there, we'd all love to be able to show them that proof. Someday. Maybe. Hopefully. Until then, all we have is our good old fashioned faith.
   There's not another holiday out there that evokes as much emotion, nostalgia and raw belief as Christmas. Every adult has memories of presents under the tree in the morning, believing in Santa Claus or... the moment they found out Santa Claus wasn't real. I didn't have that moment of shock and horror such as finding my presents under my parent's bed. I just stopped believing one year. My cousin on the other hand, gripped onto the idea of Santa Claus as if she were hanging over a dark chasm filled with hungry wolves. She refused...absolutely refused...to believe that Santa wasn't real and we were getting a little too old to truly believe Santa was anything more than a metaphor. 
   On Christmas day, we had the family get together at her house. As soon as I arrived, she would rush me upstairs to her bedroom and show me what "Santa" got for her. This day, she proudly pointed to a new stereo set up in the corner of her bedroom, complete with two tape decks for recording and "high speed dubbing," an AM/FM radio, and a record player on top. Two tower speakers were on each side of it. It was around 1991 and that stereo was pretty damn awesome.
   "Look what Santa got me!" she exclaimed, proudly standing next to the stereo as if it was her son on the first day of school. I looked at her and was shocked she had just said that to me.
   "Santa didn't get that for you...your parents did," I said bluntly. She looked at me, unblinking.
   "No...Santa got it for me," she said defiantly.
   "Santa isn't real," I retorted back. But she didn't say anything more to defend herself and I decided it wasn't worth it. If she wanted to still believe in Santa, I wasn't going to fight her on it.
   The following Christmas she discovered a Barbie toothbrush in her parents attic space. She then received said toothbrush in her stocking from "Santa" on Christmas day. The cover was blown. Her belief in Santa went straight out the chimney he used to come down and she joined the millions of kids who have to go through the crushing realization that Santa isn't real. As we grow up, we are told a lot of things are not real that we used was just as real as the sun rising everyday.
  As I grew up and became more and more obsessed with paranormal topics, I found myself starting to believe in the unbelievable again, or the things we are encouraged not to believe in because they cannot be proven under a microscope or in a testing lab somewhere. Belief in the magical and miraculous around Christmas time is a little more tolerated and even encouraged. In fact, Christmas used to be the time when ghost stories were shared! Go figure!

Ghosts and Goblins at Christmas?

   The history of Christmas is fascinating and actually has its roots in ancient Pagan celebrations such as the winter solstice and Yule. Because December is the darkest time of the year, our ancestors used to believe that that was the time of the year to be scared of ghosts and goblins. It was dark and cold outside and obviously that made it easier for the dead to return and torment the living (as if cold and darkness weren't enough already.) The winter solstice symbolically celebrated the death of the Earth and it's coming rebirth with the returning sunlight and spring season ahead. So for the ancients, death was a central theme in the month of December. It was the perfect month for ghosts and December 24 used to be the time when the veil was thinnest and the dead could easily pass from their world into ours.
   The English Victorian's used to tell ghost stories around the hearth in the cold winter months and around Christmas as a way to pass the time. Ghost stories were immensely popular in the mid 19th century and onward. Most everyone is familiar on some level (unless you live under a rock) with Charles Dicken's, "A Christmas Carol" from 1843, where Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present and future. We can actually thank Victorian England for many of our current holiday traditions we still celebrate such as Christmas cards. For whatever reason, telling ghost stories at Christmas become a tradition long forgotten and left for the month of October. But really, what a perfect time for a ghost story...when we are actually encouraged to believe in magic and unseen forces working behind the scenes in our great, big world.
 

"Ghost of Christmas Future" original illustration by John
 Leech from the 1843 first edition of "A Christmas Carol." 

Fun Christmas Superstitions

If you are born on Christmas, you can not die by drowning or hanging. Lucky you!

If you are born on Christmas, you are more prone to seeing the dead. Other versions say the dead will never bother you if born on this day. So I guess you'll have to talk to someone born on Christmas and get their opinion on this one.

Think a few evil spirits are lurking around your home? Open the doors of your house on Christmas Eve at midnight and let those wild spirits fly out into the night sky! Or the first to open the door on Christmas needs to yell "Welcome Father Christmas!" and then the bad spirits will be let out.

Candle's left to burn over night in the window or windows of a house ensured good luck. If the candle is blown out in the morning...well...it's just not good. Not good at all for you.

If you deny someone a kiss under the mistletoe, bad luck is sure to find you and don't replace the mistletoe until next year with new mistletoe, or more bad luck will find you.

The Weirdest Christmas Fact You Will Read Today

How terrifying would this be to show your
if they weren't behaving for "Santa."

   While researching a few fun facts about the history of Christmas, I found the devilish figure of Black Peter. Now in old postcards such as the one featured in this post on the right, Black Peter pretty much looks like the Devil. Metaphorically speaking, he was the complete opposite of Santa Claus. Sort of like God and the Devil. While it was Santa's job to give presents to the good little boys and girls, it was Black Peter's job to dish out the punishments and drop the lumps of coal in the stockings of the bad children.
   Black Peter got his start in 15th century Holland. First appearances of him don't actually portray him as a devilish figure, rather a Spaniard! Gasp! At the time Black Peter surfaced, the Spanish were occupying the Netherlands and they weren't all that happy about it. Other people suggest his origins are Moorish due to his dark skin and manner of dress in depictions of him. Peter's outward appearance would continue to change through the centuries and in Holland today, Black Peter is more like Santa's sidekick and is usually portrayed by a white man with his face painted black (that ticks off a few people over there), rather than some evil monster with horns and a hairy body. Santa and Black Peter arrive in a parade on December 5 in Holland and has been a holiday tradition for a long time that has also become controversial due to the stereotypes Black Peter embodies.

   Hopefully you've been slightly enlightened now with some strange facts about Christmas to share with the family this holiday. Now go listen to that song by Journey "Don't Stop Believin," and yell the chorus over the rooftops. Because when we stop believing in things, this world becomes a pretty dull place to live in.

Looking Backwards Towards Death Pt. 2: Widow's Weeds & Victorian Funerals

Queen Victoria on the left in her mourning garb
 admiring a bust of her late husband.  

Some of the most elaborate and extravagant funerary practices come from our Victorian ancestors. Enjoy the below historical oddities and relish in the fact you are alive now, and not then.
   So what were "Widow's Weeds?" It was another name for mourning attire popularized after Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert died in 1861. She never stopped morning until her death in 1901 and all of the world seemed to mourn with her. The Civil War also started in 1861, bringing on wide scale death and mourning in the United States with the southern states being hit the worst.
   If you were a fairly well-to-do woman during this time period in England or the United States, here were some basic guidelines of mourning to go by should you find yourself a widow, have a death in the family or find yourself planning a funeral.

Mourning Rules for Women

1. You are not allowed to leave the house unless you are wearing all black and a mourning veil. Do this for one year if it's the death of your child. Two years if you have lost your husband. Oh...and if you found you were left with some breathing problems, it was just from the veil you had to wear. The crepe material had a toxic glue in it that just messed with your respiratory system. No worries though! You're still alive right?

1860 "Mrs. Howe" 

2. If you can't afford a new, black mourning dress, just dye one you have black. It can always be bleached and dyed again later. Make sure the material has no luster or shine to it. It must be dull as dirt.


3. After one year, feel free to add some jewelry and maybe a few frills to your black wardrobe for the next nine months. You are now in what is called, "half mourning" mode. Purple is usually the acceptable color, maybe some mauve. After nine months is up, you can start adding some other color back into your life. 

4. A little confused as to all these rules? No fear! Just pick up some of the well liked magazines of the time. Magazines like Cassell's or The Queen will steer you in the right direction so you don't make a mistake in the mourning process. How embarrassing if you did! There are different levels of mourning if it's your parents, or just a distant cousin. Here's a basic list to go by. Husband or wife is two to two and a half years mourning. If your kid dies and they were over 10 years old, mourning is six months to a  year. The same time goes for your parents. If your child was under 10, just mourn for three to six months. If your baby died, just mourn for six weeks and you should be fine. Your aunt and uncle should be mourned for three to six months. Grandparents should be six months and if it was a distant relative, three weeks should suffice.

5. Don't leave home without your mourning jewelry! These pieces were typically made out of jet for its black color but other, cheaper materials dark in color also worked. Hair jewelry became very popular during this time. What's hair jewelry? Take a lock of your dead loved one's hair and use it in a broach or weave it into a fancy design. Sometimes hair would be braided and made into a necklace or bracelet with a locket on it to put the dead one's photo inside of.

The flowers in this piece are actually made out of hair. Notice the center picture of the two grave side mourners .

Rules for Men

1. Widowers should consider being in mourning for two years, but if you meet a new girl, do what you want. (Typical.)


2. Tuck a nice black handkerchief in the front pocket of your suit coat or wear your darker suits. Maybe a piece of black crepe tied to your hat. That's all.


The Victorian Funeral Process in Brief


   Before funeral parlors, just about everyone who lost a family member had what was known as a "wake" in their home. A "wake" is actually called that because the body would be monitored at all times, in the event it woke up and tried walking out the door - or in some cases, was never dead to begin with! Being buried alive actually happened to people, especially when they were just in a deep coma and seemed dead, but weren't!
   Usually the front parlor or a living room was used to display the body for a few days at the wake. Flowers would surround the coffin and they weren't just there to look pretty. They also doubled as an old fashioned Febreze to cover up the rotting body in the room. Embalming really didn't come about till after the Civil War. Civil War doctors needed to figure out ways to preserve the bodies of the soldiers while out on the field so they could be shipped home for burial, hence embalming fluids and formaldehyde were eventually developed as a bodily preservative.
   So there the body laid, in the living room, waiting to be buried, sometimes for days at a time. Imagine if your home was small and only had a few rooms? If the person died on a Monday, they sat in the house that much longer as people preferred to bury on Sundays.
   The house also had to be prepared for the wake and to let everyone know there had been a death. Every clock in the house would be stopped at the time of death. The curtains would be drawn on every window and because the Victorians believed in their fair share of superstition, you had to cover every mirror in the house with black crepe material. Why? Because when you turn into a spirit, you may get confused and get sucked into a mirror. Who knows what's behind a mirror! It could just be a medicine cabinet or a wall, but we all know that it's typically a creepy portal to somewhere awful. Yep...
   So continuing on with your home funeral decorating tips, make sure to hang a specific type of wreath with black ribbon on the front door as well. This was another way to alert everyone in the neighborhood that there was a death in the family.
   When it came to the burial day, it was thought best to carry the body out of the house feet first so the "spirit" couldn't look back at the home and take someone down to the grave with them. Dead people are just so mean and vindictive. Mourners during the funeral could also prevent a haunting by the dead person if they were cloaked in the regulation black. As for the popularity of the mourning veil, Hoag Levins writes in his article, "A Lively Look at the History of Death: Exploring the Architecture and Rituals of Civil War-Era Mourning,"another of the superstitions they believed in back then was that spirits of the departed would hover around those they loved. And if a passerby looked directly on the mourner's face, that spirit might attach itself to that person. So, the veil was a protection for the wearer as well as a protection for others."

Old photo of Victorian mutes or professional mourners.

   The Victorian funeral procession was like a grand parade, only depressing beyond belief. There were all sorts of characters with the funeral from the pall bearers to people called "mutes" whose official job title was actually "professional mourner." Their job was to walk with the funeral in silent sorrow in honor of the deceased, usually with exaggerated sadness expressed on their face. Sometimes they would be paid to just stand in front of the house, just looking all sad and creepy. Women professional mourners would cry despondently to get others worked up and crying.
   The hearse was a beautiful glass box on wheels pulled by a team of horses adorned with black ostrich feathers on their heads. (For all of you Haunted Mansion fans at Walt Disney World, remember to check out the nice Victorian hearse reproduction the next time you're standing in front of the mansion.)

In the U.K., you can still have a horse drawn funeral and glass sided hearse take you away to your resting place. 

   The casket would be surrounded by flowers inside the glass hearse. No detail was too small for this event. Many people spent their life savings on an elaborate funeral and whole businesses were developed to meet the needs of every little detail you could possibly need to buy or didn't know you even needed or wanted. Eventually, the extravagant and expensive funeral practices started to die out as people realized how impractical they were. After the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, her rigid reign and strict codes of conduct, especially for women, started to fall away and the world started to brighten up. Mourning practices started to become just another page in history...or a blog.

1894 advertisement from The Times newspaper in London.

Victorian "mourners"