another great gold key comic book!

Mr. Miller knows you PopCereal flakes love your comic books, so he keeps a hard lookout for any copies online.
I ran into this little nugget today -- a downloadable copy of a hard-to-find Gold Key edition of the Twilight Zone from February 1963. Go have a look!!

Lazar's Corner of Lounge Music: The Twilight Zone Comic - Gold Key

it couldn't have been tori?

Well, if that don't beat all!! Not a good year for keeping my entertainment idols around. Don Knotts, Darren McGavin, Buck Owens -- Dan Curtis!! And now Aaron Spelling. Can the weekend for a kid from the Saturday Morning generation get any more lousy?

I don't know if you've seen any of the other posts here at PopCereal, but yours truly Mr. Miller, here, is a big fan of 70s TV. Especially the Made For TV Movie. Like many other kids of my day, I was great friends with the family TV set. Good pals we were. Still are. Oh, we had some good times, we did. Loads of laughs, plenty of thrills, and yes -- some tears, as well.

One of the shows that my ol' pal introduced me to, back in 1968, was The Mod Squad.



Spelling's name in the producer slot didn't mean much to me then, but this show was just the beginning for me. The Made for TV Movie soon came into my life -- movies like Crowhaven Farm, The House That Would Not Die, A Taste of Evil. It was love at first fright. Funny thing was, the more of these movies I watched, the more I started noticing this weird name.

Aaron Spelling.

Of course, as a teenage boy springing through puberty in the mid-70s, Mr. Spelling fast became a real true hero. Whenever in need of some shapely bodies to drool over, or an extraordinary face to fall in love with, my man Aaron came through, time and time again.



Shows like Charlie's Angels, Love Boat and Fantasy Island had enough T&A imagery to fill my hormone cluttered mind for years. I had not a clue to who this Spelling guy was -- TV producers didn't have much celeb cred as they do these days -- but, I was indebted to him.



So, thank you Mr. Spelling for filling my life with gluttonous amounts of trivial fun, T&A, and pop culture trinkets -- for all this we forgive you for introducing the boob tube world to your daughter (pun intended).

Good-bye Mr. Spelling.

Mr. Miller

more gold key comics online!

It looks like we have some other Gold Key comic book fans out there!

Check out Senses Working Overtime for two great titles. They have 2 PDFs up for downloads

"hey good lookin'..."

A PopCereal pop quiz for you. Off the top of your noggin, rattle me off a line of dialogue from any TV commercial from 30 years ago. No fair chanting "Where's the beef?" or "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" 'cause, well, by design those taglines and slogans were made to stay locked within your brain matter for a half life of a million years.

There's one line that I know of that's been stained on my brain since my youth:

"Hey good lookin'! I'll be back to pick you up later."

No doubt that if you're a Saturday Morning kid like I was, then you'll remember that familiar and hammy refrain, along with the images of the black dude jive-turkeyin' his way down the street and the "professional entertainer" precticing her guitar while singing into their Mr. Microphones.

Mister Microphone has got to be the cheesiest commercial I've ever seen. And that's a good thing! How else would Mr. Miller have remembered Mr. Microphone unless it had a cheez factor of 108? Leave it to Ron Popeil to hotwire our memory, once again, with one of his pop culture inventions. I don't know that I knew one person who actually owned a Mr. Microphone, but damned if it wasn't on many a top 10 list come Christmastime. Right along with the Pocket Fisherman!

shalalalalalala! let's dance!!

Fans of the incredibly poppy bubblegum songs sung by their favorite Saturday morning cartoon characters are gonna flip their cans when they see this site. Mondo Daddykin has only been up and at 'em for a few days shy of a month, but man do they have a cereal box load of goodies already!

The mysterious Daddykin has amassed a trunkload of mp3 files of everything from the all-too-common Archie songs to the jeez-I-forgot-about-those-guys collections of songs from The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, The Incredibles and The Groovie Goolies (just to name a thimbleful). He's also given us a little insight into the background of some of the artists who created the bubblegum juice.

Sadly, for PopCerealites across the continent, there has been no official collection of the terrific pop songs we all heard on those Saturday mornings programs of yore. But Mondo Daddykins has done us all a huge amazing service by copying the songs off of his old VHS tapes (old school) and transferring them to the digital universe (new school) for all of us to once again dance to (school's out for summer). I had been wanting to do just what Daddykins has been doing, but now I don't gotta. Thanks to our new PopCereal hero -- Mr. Mondo Daddykins!

Now, go enjoy yerselves!
~Mr. Miller

mark evanier and the chan clan

Wow! I feel like I've found the niftiest prize ever at the bottom of a box of Quaker Quisps! I checked out the comments section and found a link to my Charlie Chan comic book article: Goodbye, Charlie! It's at a blog/website of Mark Evanier.

Now, maybe yer wondering, just who is Mark Evanier? It's an understandable question, unless you're an avid comic book nut. And I don't claim to be one of those, myself. I'm just a reader. Anyway... the name Mark Evanier is very importante to me because he is the very guy who wrote the Charlie Chan and the Chan Clan comic book that I featured here! Very cool.
Gold Key comics didn't really take to crediting their writers and artists much, so I was fortunate that Mr. Evanier came across my article and was able to give us all a heads up. Here is some of the Mr. Evanier's background and a bunch of insight into his work on the Chan comic (as well as a little flogging for the cumbersome download)-- all straight form his blog:

"A website called PopCereal likes to scan old Gold Key comics and offer them for your downloading pleasure. They're currently featuring The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan #1 from 1972 and I'm going to suggest two reasons why you should not download it. One is that the way they have it set up, it'll take you an awfully long time. Secondly, it's not a very good comic...and I oughta know. I wrote it.

It was, in fact, the first comic book script of mine to see print in this country. Previously, I'd written lots of comics published overseas and about a dozen scripts for Gold Key. As you may know, comics are not always published in the order they're written and if you're working on a book that's in no danger of cancellation, it's not uncommon to try and get way ahead. The first things I did for Gold Key were Disney comics that didn't come out until more than a year after I wrote them.

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan was a TV show that Hanna-Barbera produced for the CBS Saturday morning season that commenced in September of '72. As I later learned when I worked for H-B, there was always at least one "trouble" show that Joe Barbera would sell to one of the networks and then no one, including Joe, could figure out what to do with. Some years, they had way more than one...

So the show was in trouble before it even debuted. Gold Key was then doing the comics based on H-B properties and had first refusal on the new ones. When they were offered The Chan Clan, they refused. The editor there, Chase Craig, was in close touch with writers and artists who worked at H-B and he'd heard about the problems the show was having and how those working on it didn't have much hope for its success. But the studio put some kind of pressure on Gold Key and one day, Chase was ordered to hurriedly get a first issue written and drawn. I got the assignment because I was, he felt, his fastest writer...and I also happened to walk into the office that day.

The show was still a few months from debuting on TV. Chase handed me a pile of storyboards and told me to read them all to get a feel for the property but to write an adaptation of one in particular. I don't think this was an episode by Jamie Farr [yes, the MASH guy. ed.] and his then-partner, Eddie Carroll. My recollection, which may be faulty, is that Norman Maurer wrote it. Anyway, I was assigned to adapt it and later on if the comic continued, there would be original stories conceived fresh for the comics. As Chase explained to me, he preferred to launch a new H-B book in this manner. The studio had approval rights and the people there could get pointlessly picky about the material...but they rarely bothered looking at any issue after the first few. Therefore, it simplified the procedure to do the first issue as an adaptation and maybe the second. They couldn't very well complain that a plot taken from the show was inappropriate.
I wrote the script in one day, as I recall. It was drawn by a wonderful artist named Warren Tufts who is probably best known for his long-ago newspaper strip, Casey Ruggles. Tufts was much admired as an adventure artist but he was a slow, meticulous worker who never felt that the financial rewards matched the hours he put into his art.... Tufts accepted the assignment without seeing the property because he figured it would go fast. When you drew a Hanna-Barbera comic book, you got a packet of model sheets with key poses of the characters and you could usually trace a lot of drawings right off the model sheets. Wherever possible in Chan Clan, Warren did that. I picked a panel at random to post above next to the cover image, then realized they both have the same pose of the honorable Mr. Chan, certainly copied right off the models. But the comic had so many characters in it and they had to be in so many poses that weren't in the model packet that Warren hated the job...though he did stick with it for all four issues of the comic book. I was luckier: I only did the first issue before Chase decided my services were needed more on Bugs Bunny.

Like I said, don't bother downloading the comic. It'll take you forever and you won't see either Tufts or me at our best. But having it online got me to thinking about what went into it. And I also recall the day when I was up in the office and someone handed me a printed copy -- the first comic book script of mine to make it to print in English. You never forget your first time...even if it's The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan."

I want to thank Mr. Evanier for giving us this insight to his wonderful work (even if he doesn't think it's so great himself).

Please check out his site: News From ME to read the complete thoughts of Mr. Evanier.

the amazing chan and the chan clan

Here's another Gold Key comic book for you PopCereal kiddies.

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan was a Saturday Morning favorite of Mr. Miller's. The show premiered in 1973, featuring not only the popular literary detective Charlie Chan, but his entire Chan brood. It was the first time that Chan was animated, but more importantly, it was the first time that Chan -- who is Chinese -- was was ever portrayed by an Asian actor. The previous film versions featured white actors with make-up. Keye Luke, who you may recognize as Master Po from the King Fu series, played the voice of Chan. And joining him was another popular 70s name, Jodie Foster as Anne Chan the baseball cap wearing tomboy.

In 1973 Gold Key started printing the exploits of the junior sleuth. Here you have your own pdf version of the #1 issue of The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan

robert culp the super dad

Mr. Miller just loves him some old 70s TV Movies of the Week. If you were a kid in the 70s, no doubt you'll remember this kinda stuff:

The ABC Movie of the Week trailer (linked from TV Party)

One of Mr. Miller's favorite childhood pasttimes was watching every TVMOW (TV movie of the week) that he could fix his eyes to. For years and years Mr. Miller had a burning memory of one particular TV flick with some angry dad trying to defend his wife and kids from a gang of muscle car riding punks who had invaded their neighborhood and nearly ran over the family pooch. And with the help of the trusty Wayback Machine (otherwise known as the book Movies Made for Television: The Telepicture and the Mini-Series 1964-1979 by Alvin H. Marill) PopCereal was able to figure out just what that movie was.

It was titled Outrage, and it featured the smotth and volatile Robert Culp as a regular old Joe just trying to bring up a family in a nice quiet suburban 'hood. The movie originally aired on Wednesday night, Novcember 28, 1973. The story was written for TV (based on real life events) by William Wood, and was directed by Richard Heffron. Other notable cast members, besides Culp, were Marlyn Mason playing Culp's wife, Nicholas Hammond as one of the punks, and the familiar droopy-faced character actor Ivor Francis as Judge Cox.

By the time 70s television had gotten a hold of the “scare film” they’d brought it full circle from propagandized civic “lessons” to exploitative social studies. What was once a tool used to scare the crap outta the masses and keep them in step with the idealized suburban image (especially during War time and throughout the burgeoning era of the middle class) the scare film had now evolved into something more of an over exaggerated social lesson rather than a social rule.

In Outrage, chisel-chested Robert Culp plays an upper middle class family man who is just trying to give his family a safe and easy lifestyle in the hills of California. When a gang of local punks start wrecking havoc with the neighborhood, Culp tries to take the civil high road and implores the parents of the kids to keep them in line. Naturally the mothers only see their children as angels, and the fathers chalk it all up to boys being boys. When the authorities are called in to help, Culp finds that their hands are tied by the usual bureaucratic red tape. But when the punk’s shenanigans turn violent, and the lives of his family are threatened, Culp has to take action himself, turning into a one-man vigilante.

Culp just can’t go wrong doing his usual charming-guy macho act as he takes on TVs original Spider Man, Nicholas Hammond as the head rich-boy punk. There’s a lot of generational gap “those kids these days” attitude in 70s television, as well. But these made-for-TV lessons became a lot less conservative than their “duck and cover” predecessors. In the hands of the more liberal-minded Hollywood producers, subjects like the teenage delinquent became more humanized. They weren’t just troublemakers who needed to be whipped into submissiveness by their dutiful parents. No, in the made-for-TV land of movies, the kids were merely the end result of a community that had failed them. Maybe the kid’s parents didn’t love them enough, or maybe their teacher didn’t listen to them, or maybe it was peer pressure and all that brain-rotting rock music… or maybe they just needed a good old fashioned ass kicking from the likes of Robert Culp.
Check out adifferentsity.com to find more of these fantastically kitchy 70s TV movies.
Check out A Different City to find more of these fantastically kitchy 70s TV movies.

keep the Gold Key thing going

Nice!

Mr. Miller wants to keep the Gold Key thing going, so he wanted to drop a link to a fan-franken-tastic website called Hunter's Planet of the Ape Archive. Mr. Miller nearly spit his King Vitamin's all over the computer screen when he ran into this site. It's unbelievable!! This guy has got more POTA crud than anyone I've seen -- and it's all there for us fans to download.

One of the many kazillion treats that Mr. Miller found on Hunter's site (including scripts, a Power Record gallery, magazines... it just goes on!!) was a .pdf version of the Gold Key comic: Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Mr. Miller thought you popcereal kiddies would love to get a look, so he's giving you this link-a-doo to check out the fabulous ish.

So, git-along over to Hunter's Planet of the Ape Archive an enjoy yerselves.

gold key was like saturday morning comic books

Any good PopCereal kid worth his Sugar Smacks will surely recognize that familiar Gold Key comic book logo. For Mr. Miller here, those Gold Key treasures were like Saturday morning comic books, with all the bubblicious goodness of your favorite retro-cartoons. To sweeten the cereal bowl, many of the titles put out under Gold Key in the 70s were from the Saturday morning stable of cartoons, such as The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, Wacky Races, and of course Scooby Doo.

the gold key story

The Western Printing and Lithographing Co. -- headed up by Disney marketing genius Herman "Kay" Kamen -- built a solid reputation putting out comic book versions of familiar newspaper comic strips. Using his pull at his former employee Walt Disney Studios, Kamen acquired the rights to characters from Disney cartoons in 1939. Soon he snatched up the rights to characters from Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera and Walter Lantz, as well, and, along with adaptations of popular movies and TV shows, released them all in comic book form through Dell. These comic books experienced tremendous sales, but when the contract with Dell expired in 1962, the WPLC launched their own imprint -- Gold Key.
Throughout the 60s and early 70s, Dell grew in popularity, and with sales in the millions they created their own original charactersand titles, such as Turok, Son of Stone; Wacky Witch; and Space Family Robinson (which was to be the pre-cursor and inspiration to Lost in Space). But by the 80s the comic book biz, in general, was in a slump, and Gold Key couldn't keep sales up. They made a last ditch attempt to increase the visibility of their titles by marketing themselves in non-traditional outlets, like toy stores. But by 1981, Gold Key was done. What titles were left over from Gold Key were put out under the Whitman imprint (mostly known for coloring books), and Gold Key became a thing of PopCereal past. Ironically, with a licensing genius like Kay Kamen as the company's creator, Gold Key failed to license their own original characters. So with the eventual demise of Whitman comics in 1984, kooky characters like Baby Snoots and The Little Monsters were gone forever.

the little monsters

With the 60s monster craze in full force, Mr. Miller took to everything creature related like Dracula to a blood bank. And to add more voltage to his neck bolts came the Gold Key comic book The Little Monsters, a gruesome clan of monster misfits who lived in a creepy castle and who slept on beds of nails. Following on the rotted heels of cartoons like Milton the Monster and Melvin Monster, but knocking on the crypt door before such TV notables as The Addams Family and The Munsters, The Little Monsters were unleashed upon the public within an issue of The Three Stooges (#17 to be exact). From then on Mr. Miller here was hooked on the misadventures of the monster kiddies 'Orrible Orvie and Awful Annie Monster, and their monstrous parents Mildew and Demonica.

Issue #12 (1970) finds our frightening fiends in all sorts of monster sitcom-like trouble. The generation gap hits the Monster household when Scarella, the cute "scream-aged" ghost next door starts dating, then a robotic witch comes to life to stir up trouble, and finally little 'Orrible Orvie comes up with a perfectly demented solution to help his Dad, Mildew, build a moat around the castle. Also, there's the dimwitted tale of a criminal Bat, named Batty, as well as some jokes, riddles and scary tales... Oh, and some really cool 70s style comic book ads.

Download and read issue #12

thank you mr. curtis

My my! What a year it's been, so far, for Mr. Miller losing some of his most favorite 70s-style celebs.

First, one of Mr. Miller's favorite female stars Shelly Winters took her final plunge to that great boat in the sky. She was followed shortly thereafter by Grandpa Al Lewis. Then there was the one/two punch of Darren McGavin and Don Knotts, two of my all-time favorite TV (and movie) stars -- McGavin starring in one of my top-five favorite TV shows Kolchak: The Night Stalker; and Knotts starring in one of my most favorite sitcoms The Andy Griffith Show.

Jack Wild as the Artful Dodger in Oliver!.

I guess I should add a sad three to that one/two punch for Jack Wild, who died after suffering a miserable illness. I became a big fan of his when I first saw him play the Artful Dodger in Oliver!, and then grew to love him even more when he starred in the Saturday morning PopCereal fav, HR Puffenstuff. Last week brought news that the world of Honky Tonk had lost another cowboy of high distinction -- Buck Owens. Next to Johnny Cash and George Jones, this puckered-face hillbilly had the most spins on Mr. Miller's country-fried turntables. Now that Buck is gone "who's gonna mow yer grass?" (Hear Buck done Moog style)

And then....

This weekend Mr. Miller was floored to hear that his ultimate TV hero had passed away.

Mr. Dan Curtis.
Sure, Curtis was strictly a behind-the-scenes kinda guy, producing and directing and stuff like that. But, to Mr. Miller here, he was the man who almost single-handedly shaped yours truly into the creep-lovin', monster-huggin', spook movie freak horror fan than he is today (the rest of the credit goes to Vincent Price and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine). Yep, Mr. Miller here was one of those little varmints who ran home from school to watch the weirdest of weird daytime TV programs Dark Shadows. I was just turning five when the show started and I've been hooked ever since. Curtis further compounded my jittery nature by producing and directing some of the creepiest TV movies EVER: The Norliss Tapes, Scream of the Wolf, Turn of the Screw, just to name a few.

Dark Shadows trailer

But the real damage came when his Trilogy of Terror premiered.

My older sister and twin brother and I were like a little gruesome trio. We'd head down to the corner store to buy whatever candy our meager allowance would allow us, and then head home to park are carcasses in front of the TV to watch the Saturday afternoon Monster Movies (that was the actual name of the broadcasts on our local station). On the weeknights, though, my Mom would join the mix to watch the TV Movie of the Week. We loved all the mysteries and suspense stuff, but the night Trilogy came on, we were all riveted.

Karen Black in Trilogy of Terror

Karen Black had been a favorite of ours, since my sister bore a slight resemblance, so to see her get her creep on was amazing. But the topper of the night came during the final scene of the third story in the trilogy, when Ms. Black, after being chased by the maniacal killer Tiki doll around her apartment, suddenly became possessed by the dolls savageness. She coolly calls her nagging mother on the phone to invite her over for a visit, then turns towards the camera, hunkers down in a crouch and then repeatedly plunges a huge butcher knife into the floor in anticipation. Brrrr! For months after that our older sister would torment my brother and I by greeting us in the kitchen in that exact same crouched position -- knife in hand. Needless to say, when she was the babysitter, we were well behaved.

Kolchak has a stake well done

Two other Curtis-helmed TV Movies were also held in high regard by yours, Mr. Miller. The Night Stalker and The Night Strangler have been tops on my list, so you could well imagine how flipped out Mr. Miller was when they made a TV series out of the main character in those two movies -- Kolchak; The Night Stalker. By then I was creeping into my teenage years, so this weekly dose of monster shows simply put the nail in the coffin, making Mr. Miller an official creepy kid.

So, thank you Mr. Curtis for making this boy happy.

i heaerby award you the "boodle"

Hey folks, I just wanted to share this note with you. The man, the myth, the silly-one -- Mr. Stoo Hample, himself, stopped by PopCereal and saw how much fun we were having with his old LP. He left some kind words behind in the comment section of Mr. Miller's Silly Record post...

"DEAR MILLER-TYPE PERSON: IT IS I, STOO HAMPLE, HIS OWN PERSONAL SILLY SELF, REOPORTING IN AFTER HAVING STUMBLED SERENDIPITOUSLY UPON YOUR SITE THIS AYEM WHILE SEEKING WAYS TO AVOID THE DEPRESSINGLY SILLY NEWS IN THE SUNDAY NEW WORK TIMES. ZOWIE KAPOWIE! IT MAKES MY PLUPPY HEART GO PITTYPAT WHEN I COME ACROSS SILLY RECORD PASSION. AS A MATTER OF FACT, BECAUSE OF YOUR ARTICLE & THOSE ON KIDIDDLES PLUS NEW ONES ON MY AMAZON PROFILE, I'M GONNA SEE IF I CAN FIGURE OUT A WAY TO CONVINCE A RECORD COMPANY TO REISSUE THE SR IN CD FORM. MEANWHILE, I HEREBY AWARD YOU THE "BOODLE" FOR MAKING ME FEEL LESS SILLY FOR HAVING CREATED ALL THIS NUTTINESS. STAY SILLY! "

He musta been awful excited, 'cause he wrote it all in caps! Thanks for stopping by Stoo. And thanks for being so stupendously silly!

bide your time

Just a quick one to keep things fresh here. Mr. Miller, here, has lost someone very important in his life, so he's had to take some time off. In the meantime, though, he wants you to bide your time by checking out this amazing site full of The Avengers stuff.

http://theavengers.tv/index.htm

When you get there, click on the Avengers on the Radio to hear some terrific original broadcasts of the South African produced radio shows. It doesn't have Patrick Macnee or Diana Rigg in them, but Donald Monat and Diane Appleby do a smashing good job. Creep-out fans will love the episode titled The Joker for its spooky old mansion and sadistic killer appeal.

someone get the lights

Mr. Miller here is gonna take you back for a spell, to a time long past. Hop in the Long Gone Machine and set the dials for the 3rd Grade.

“Someone get the lights,” the Teacher says. The classroom goes dark. You flick the chrome toggle switch and the fan whooshes on. Then the powerful light beams across the room onto the large white screen pulled down over the chalkboard by the Teacher. The heat from the lamp sends a rush of warm air on your face, cutting some of the chill in the winter air.

The screen lights up with satin whiteness, awaiting what is to come next. Then you hear it. Like a siren call it beckons you…

BEEP!

… start the filmstrip!


Yeah, remember filmstrips? I don’t know about you, but for Mr. Miller, here, these junior still frame not-quite-movies were the highlight of his Grammar School years. Other than Battle Ball (that’s what we called Dodgeball in my nape of the woods) those hours spent in the dark, listening to the hum of the projector and taking in the audio and visual delights were simply a beloved slice of adolescent heaven. Actual movies – moving pictures – were great mind you, but something about the frame by frame viewing of a filmstrip, the narrator's deep-voiced recounting of a chapter in History or his whimsical telling of a storybook tale seemed to spark Mr. Miller’s kid-sized imagination.

But let me add that, though I love the filmstrip (worship it on certain days) you simply need the audio part of the whole shebang to have a truly complete filmstrip experience. Mr. Miller hated it when the filmstrip only came with a little booklet from which the teacher had to read aloud from. He felt, well… cheated. It was like it was same old daily drag, listening to Teacher prattle on with her lesson of the day in front of the classroom.

Most importante! Filmstrips must always have an accompanying record or tape!!

check out my filmstrip find of the story of Georgie

If you want some more filmstrip fun, check out Get LoFi

And if anyone out there is a fan of filmstrips, let Mr. Miller know who you are. I'd sure like to see what you've got.

it's a mad house

I lost my Planet of the Apes cherry when I was just 7 years-old, to a 75 foot wide movie screen down at the local Central Drive-In. It was the summer of ’68 and I had seen enough trailers and TV ads, magazine covers, comic book spreads, and an endless supply of Apes cameos on TV to set my imagination spinning into overdrive. My little brain was on fire with the thought of a planet full of monkeys who acted and spoke just like humans did. I had to see this movie! And there’s no better place to watch Planet of the Apes than at a drive-in. At that same drive-in was the place I saw all the subsequent Apes flicks, as well (all except for Battle for the Planet of the Apes, which I saw at the matinee in East Aurora, NY while visiting cousins).

After seeing the flick, I was hooked for life. I tried to get a hold of as many POTA knick knacks as I could. I never had the chance of owning or listening to the Power Records audio versions of the hit movies, but a couple years back at the WFMU Record Fair in NYC I had the great luck of coming across an LP that contained four tracks of Apes plays that were previously used as Little Power Record 45s.

Sure, they're not the masterpieces that the films were, but for fans who go apeshit over Apes, they're well worth a listen... oh yeah, I guess they're supposed to be fun for kids, too, on account 'a that they're made for them.

If you're really into POTA, check out this site.

download the Power Record LP that you've been eyeballin' up there (along with the cool cover art) here: http://www.yourfilelink.com/get.php?fid=25857

if saturday morning was the buffet, then friday night was the appetizer

For yours truly Mr. Miller, here, there were three events throughout the year that would absolutely flip his can when he was a kid:
1.) Christmastime
2.) Halloween Night
3.) The new Fall Season of cartoons

scan from DCs Ghosts issue #44 (December, 1975)

For kids growing up in the 60s and 70s (and even into the 80s) Saturday mornings were king. It wasn’t even that you got a break from the slavery of school and homework. Man, it was the cartoons! Yeah, remember when Saturday mornings meant cartoons? None of this Good Morning America leftover stuff, or 30 minute infomercials (hell, the Popeil Pocket Fisherman only needed 30 seconds to get your can to the local Big N). Back then, Saturday mornings belonged to kids!

The first taste of Fall Season on TV would come in the last couple of weeks of summer, when the latest comic books would hit the stands. There in the center spread would be a two page ad that listed the Network’s new Fall cartoon lineup.

scan from DCs Ghosts issue #32 (November 1974)

A kid couldn’t wait until September rolled around after reading these ads. Sure, the ninth month inevitably meant that school was back in session, but those are the lumps you had to take in order to get to the new cartoons on Saturdays. And if Saturday was the buffet, then Friday night was the appetizer.

The Networks knew that cartoons meant millions of cereal loving, toy building, candy munching kiddies were at the disposal of their advertisers, so they did all they could to make sure they were watching. So when the new Fall Season was set to roll, the kiddies were treated to a sneak peek look at the coming Saturday schedule on a special Friday night show. These Friday night previews were plain mint! Imagine watching cartoons at night time. Man!!

These shows would have catchy names like ABC Funshine Saturday Sneak Peek or maybe just something plain like the CBS Saturday Preview Special. Most likely, they’d be jam packed with the Primetime stars of the moment, from shows with high kid-recognition – like Lee Majors from The Six Million Dollar Man, or Dukes of Hazard’s baddie Boss Hog. Sometimes they’d go for the pretty boy hearth throbs like Scott Baio, or old stand-bys like the perennial teenager Dick Clark.

ABC Saturday pix from X-entertainment

Yeah, nothing said kids more than Saturday mornings. Now, with cartoons on the tube nonstop for 24 hours a day with their own blessed channels, who needs Saturday mornings? And for that matter, who needs the Friday night Saturday Sneak Peeks? These folks seem to think that Saturday’s need to be returned to the kids.

If you want a sneak peek at a Sneak Peek, check out this article. Or if you want a good look at a bunch of comic book cartoon ads, check these out at toyadz.

i am silly

Like Bit-O-Honey to teeth, there are some things in your childhood bag of goodies that stick to the pop culture capsule of your mind. Whether it’s a song, a show, the taste of a certain pizzeria pizza that you can’t get anymore… there are just some things that are destined to remain only in the back recesses of your brain. For yours truly, Mr. Miller, that bit o’ popcereal* stickiness was The Silly Record.


I’m not quite sure who it was in my family that first brought home that side tickling disc of 331/3 vinyl silliness; all I know is that from then on we had it on near permanent loan-out from the local library. The head librarian only allowed one renewal per loan, so we’d have to wait for her to put in back in the record bin before we’d be able to snag it for the third go-around. Don’t know why we never bothered to try and find a copy at the Big N around the bend. Mr. Miller was just a wee one at that time, so I didn’t know consumerism from the Apollo 11. I was just in it for the ride.

In case you’ve never had the pleasure, The Silly Record was the vinyl companion to The Silly Book, written by comedy writer and performer Stuart “Stoo” Hample. Now, Mr. Miller never heard of this The Silly Book until he started researching The Silly Record a few years back. And then, coincidences of all coincidence, he found a copy sitting on a dusty shelf at an antique store in Cold Spring just a couple summers ago. Man, was Mr. Miller one happy cat!

In case you’ve never had the pleasure, The Silly Book was published in 1961. As the Candlewick Press recounts its history: “first-time writer Stuart Hample worked on a manuscript with legendary children's book editor Ursula Nordstrom. Legend has it that at their initial meeting, Stuart Hample said to the editor, ‘You wouldn't be silly enough to publish anything I'd write.’ Ursula Nordstrom returned with the dare, ‘You couldn't write anything silly enough that I'd publish.’ Never one to balk at a challenge, Stuart ("Stoo") Hample surpassed all expectations with THE SILLY BOOK, and the rest is history.”

Following the success of his best selling book (and a best selling Boodleheimer doll – check out the LP cover to see what a Boodleheimer is) Hample teamed up with veteran composer George Kleinsinger and rookie voice-over artist and TV writer Frank Buxton (voice of the Batfink cartoon) to put together an audio version of his silly stories and songs. The rest is popcereal legend.


Mr. Miller, along with his brothers and sister and Mom and Pop, would sit around and listen to this wonderful record, reciting every line with great enthusiasm. It wasn’t long before catch phrases from the LP began creeping into our daily dialogue. “Cheese please, Louise,” “Me too. Me three. Me four. You four what? I four-got,” and of course “You are silly, we are silly, all of us are silly willy. All of us but cousin Milly.”

Ever since I got on the Internet some ten years ago, yours truly Mr. Miller has been searching for a copy of this much admired LP. Copies are very rare, and I’ve only heard of people finding one here and there for sale. I’ve never seen one myself, but I’m still looking. Luckily, though, I was able to score a recording of the LP. On the Kididdles website there used to be a message board where fans of kid’s music would discuss their favs from long past and present. One member (I’d love to give him credit, but have since forgotten his name) owned the LP when he was a kid, and made a cassette recording of it when he went off to college. Since then his mother had – as mothers do when their kids leave the nest – tossed out all the junk in his room. All he had left of his prized memory was a muffled recording of his scratchy record album. And he kindly offered a CD copy of it, free of charge, to anyone who wanted to hear the beloved album once again. Naturally, Mr. Miller here jumped at the chance like a gapped-tooth boy at a candy apple on a stick.

Take a listen and tell me you don’t let out a giggle… “not even a little bittle?”

http://rapidshare.de/files/12394360/sillylp.rar.html

UPDATE!!
Scratch that last link, kiddies. It's a dead one. Try the lovely folks over at Forbidden Ctypts Music:

http://www.forbiddencryptsmusic.com/sillylp/

* popcereal is defined by this website and its curator to be that certain bit of socially transmitted trivial behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought beloved by the generation of the Saturday morning cartoon

What is PopCereal?

PopCereal (pōp sērē el) n. 1. the certain bit of socially transmitted trivial behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought beloved by the generation of the Saturday morning cartoon

let's go!

Hey cats! Not much to look at now, I know. But Mr. Miller will be loading you up with some trivial retro pop culture really soon. In the meantime, lemme tell you what this is all gonna be about. I'd like to share my thoughts with you on retro pop trash, like 70s made for television movie, paperback books, retro fashions, LPs, Mallo Cups and Bottle Caps... all that kinda horse puckie.