Shakey’s, Shaun Cassidy, and The Sunshine Family
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Well, the sunshine family was super popular, but alas, Mattel canceled them in 1978 I don't know, Steve must have said something offensive to Ken, or like offered him a doobie or something, because they were canceled.
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Hello, there's a song like we're singing.
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Come on. Get
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happy. Holy.
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Me
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will make you happy.
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Welcome to the pop culture Preservation Society, the podcast for people born in the big wheel generation who thought there was nothing more romantic than a long distance dedication
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we believe our Gen X childhoods gave us unforgettable songs, stories, characters and images, and if we don't talk about them, they'll disappear, like Marshall will and Holly on a routine expedition. And today, we're saving some of the most couscous inducing Gen X memories we've shared on social media as determined by all of the people whose minds we blew. I'm Carolyn, I'm Kristen, and I'm Michelle, and we are your pop culture preservationists, popular. You're gonna be popular.
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You guys, season 15 out.
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I can't believe it. How did this happen? Listeners, this is our last episode before we drop some really great encores for you to listen to for the first time or again. Because if you're like us, you have menopause brain, and you've totally forgotten everything we said if you listen to it, you know a couple years ago, right? Everything is new again, I know. But while we're dropping our encores, we'll be hard at work researching and writing and recording season 16, and we're going to do some traveling to meet up with a lot of listeners, which we love. This is always such a fun thing for us to do. We're going to be in Amherst, Massachusetts, as well as Downers Grove, Illinois, which is right outside Chicago in April, and we're going to be planning and producing more fun content, but don't worry, we'll still be posting daily Gen X memories and stories on social media. Did you guys like that? Segue nicely done, because today is a bit of a departure from our typical conversations, where we dive deep into one pop culture nugget from our Gen X childhoods and examine all sides of it. Today we're taking on about 10 pop culture nuggets. This is going to be so much fun you guys. I'm just going to say it. I love our social media pages. Honestly, for me, scrolling our grid, it's a huge dose of serotonin. It's pure happiness. When I see all those toys and records and images from our childhood, it's like joy on my screen. Yeah, 100%
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and those who do inducing moments that those posts give us are just incredible. Like, here's a theory I have. I wish we had started when we started this podcast, like we had a brain scan of what our brains looked like and how we did some tasks, and then we experience all of these hoosker Do moments where we uncovered something that we had long forgotten, and they're all getting dusted off. I think we're getting smarter. I think, like we said, we're warding off dementia. We're doing all these things, and then we could do like another scan halfway through, and another scan. Now I think we'd have more parts of our brain lighting up since we've done this podcast than I would have had before we started. Because I cannot believe some of the memories that have been uncovered, particularly as we talk in today's episode. I mean, it was Husker do out the wazoo, as I like to say. And I think the reason that the word that you just said was uncovered, and I think that's really important, because quite often the things that get so much attention on social media in our posts are things that are so small and so minor. I mean, everybody remembers happy days. We don't have to remind you about happy days. But what if there is, like something from your dinner table, like some a brand of silverware or a napkin that you use, and you're like, Oh, my God, these things that were truly trapped way back in the folds of your brain, and we're bringing them forward. We're excavating. Yeah, I totally agree. Before we had this podcast, I used to you remember when Pinterest started and it was all the rage? Yeah, I would go on Pinterest and I would search for, I don't know, something 70s related, and sometimes a whole bunch of other stuff comes up, like, you might also like this. And it would be those things I didn't know the term Husker do at the time, but that's what was happening to me. I was and I was filled with such joy. It was, it was truly just like this dopamine hit when I would see something, and it could have just been, you know, the playground equipment from the McDonald's playground lands, your play lands, you know, like the big one mayor, you know, the thing you crawl.
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Listeners, today, we're gonna be chatting about a handful of our social media posts that have gotten the most attention from all of you.
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Yeah, now these are the posts with the most likes, comments, shares, etc, and while a few of them absolutely warrant their own entire episodes, our list is already way, way too long for that, so we thought we'd give them some air time all together today, since so many of you have feelings about these things and have commented by the hundreds and liked by the 1000s and shared with everyone else in the world you think needs their synapse is fired and a little bit of joy in their day. But social media is really fickle. We can post something that we just know is going to hit hard and go viral, and we're all cocky about it, and only 100 people even see it in their feet, and then we can post something totally random. I'm looking at you, seaweeds, mermaids, and in one week, it can have 10s of 1000s of views and likes. And we gave up trying to figure it out a long time ago, and now we just post things that make us smile and hope they find their way to you somehow. Yeah, there's no cracking the code. You just do what you do and see what happens exactly. I think when we post something that dusts off some of those memories, for people, they're more inclined to share our posts, because that's another thing I noticed was how many shares a lot of these posts got, which meant they were going from our page to someone else to someone else's page, if that makes sense. And so it's those were so interesting to me. It's like, what about this made it worthy for you to share it on your page like you want exactly people to see it, or some of the comments are just a person's name that's tagged. So I would maybe tag, you know, a high school friend, because this thing that we posted about brings up a high school memory. And I love that. I love that. I love, love, love it. And I can't wait to share my post today, because these were shared hundreds of hundreds of times, and I think, oh my gosh, who knew it makes it truly communal. It's like a communal experience, yes, yeah, and it's, I know that there's probably social media people and other podcasters out there that hire people to look into all these stats and to figure it out and to try to make sense of it, and to this is how you can grow your page and whatever. And, you know, we don't do that just so, you know, Oh God no, there's no winning time for that, and I don't have that bandwidth. And also, we just have always, we go back to our first why it's all about just connecting through joy. And so if, if randomly, 18,000 of you want to share something great, we're just like, we shrug our shoulders and move on. We don't then analyze it and try to figure it out, because we just can't. We're just like, Oh, that's so fun. That made so many people happy. So what we're gonna do today is we'll each choose just a few of the things that we've shared on social media that have made the biggest splash. See
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you guys like that, and we're going to just chat about them, our memories of them, why we think they resonated with so many of you, and we're going to share some of the comments on these posts that made us giggle. I have to start with the thing I've already mentioned twice, because you alluded to several times. Yeah, just so damn random to me, the seaweeds mermaids. Did you guys even know what these were when we posted them? No, I think we may have been too old. So we're the older Gen Xers, but there are a lot of people younger than us who were like, yes, yes, totally agree with you at the time of this recording, the seaweeds, mermaid post has about 140,000
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views, almost 7000 likes, 5000 shares and over 300 comments,
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over 5000 people were like, I need to share that on my story or with someone else. So the seaweeds mermaids and babies were released by Kenner in 1979 and rose to popularity in the early 80s. They're these tiny plastic mermaids with, like a Barbie ish head, kind of a bigger head than body. It's real hair that you can brush, and it came with, like this spongy lily pad, which I think that with holes in it that the mermaid and the baby could float in. They also even had little pets. According to Etsy, you can buy the little pets anyway. They're absolutely adorable. And yes, Kristen, to your point, had I been a bit younger in 1979
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I know that I'd have loved them, but in 1979 I'm 10, you might be showering. You're starting to shower, graduating into a shower, though it's big. They're adorable. I'm right with all of you guys who loved them. Some fun comments we got about the seaweeds.
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Nola redhead 13, said my mom bribed me with these. If I ate my breakfast before school for a month, she would buy me one. I had the whole collection.
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No, he's just like, gobbling up anything her mom puts in front of her.
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That's actually a really good way to get someone to eat the burgers, right? Yeah, Jenny Gen X, too. Oh, I love that name. Jenny Gen X, I know I love.
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Okay, and it's, but it's Jenny, J E n n y, j e n, x, oh, you know me. That's a little word play going on. I love that. Jenny Gen X, well, she even remembers their names. Her comment just said, coral. Sandy. Store me into Shelly. I had them all Shelly.
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Funny.
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Sandy, you
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guys want to know the funniest thing once I taught at Vacation Bible School, and the theme was, these are surfing through the Scriptures, and I wore,
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I wore this blonde wig, and I was sandy beach. My name was sandy beach. Wasn't I
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fun? I do have to say Vacation Bible School always was, like, the maybe twice, the two times I ever went. It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, okay. Can I tell you that is, like, one of the hallmarks of my coming of age was when my dad came in my room. He said, It's time to get up for vacation Bible school. VBS. It's time for VBS. Yeah, VBS. And I just looked at my dad, and I said, I'm not going, of course.
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And he closed
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again, he closed the door and walked away. Yeah, Christians like, I've got to watch mod and crochet
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myself. Yeah? Okay, a couple more fun comments. Dahlia obscura said I had the red haired one. Ah, the floating sponge. Didn't matter how her hair looked dry underwater, it looked like magic. And I had to share this comment because it even though I didn't play with seaweeds. I played with Barbies in the trouble lot. And so maybe this is relatable to a lot of you too. You know their hair could just be hot fresh hell out when they're dry, but if you put the Barbies with the long hair under the water and like, sway, swayed her back and forth, her hair just like, like, beautiful. Yeah. So that's that made me remember that. And then our friend, it's me, Regina D told us I had one. I bought it with my paper route money at Ben Franklin's.
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Sorry, I couldn't say it without almost laughing, because it's so good. Yes, quintessential Gen X. How do you say your Gen X without saying your Gen X.
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I love Ben Franklin seaweed.
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And babies are here's Sandy seaweed. And she's not alone. She has a cute little baby named star who rides along right on her mommy's lily pad. You can collect all the seaweeds, Sandy Carl and Shelly and little babies too seaweed
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and babies for you.
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Okay, you guys, I'm gonna start with the viral post that actually gave me the idea for this episode. Okay? Because blown away does not even begin to describe how I felt when I saw the incredible love that are shaky pizza. Post from February 9 of this year.
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Yes, you guys heard me right. Shaky pizza, that quintessential Gen X pizza parlor that you all have some big feelings about. So our post, if you didn't see it, it featured four photos. One was the exterior of shakey with that iconic sign that said shakey pizza parlor, and underneath it said, Ye public house.
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Ye public house, like it was going for some kind of British tavern feel. It was just kind of crazy. And so the next photo was an interior shot of shakys with those thick, long wooden tables and the benches, if you remember, and the tables were covered with red checkered tablecloths, and there were like these Tiffany lamps hanging from the ceiling.
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Yes, I feel like those lamps, they also the type of lamp that should be over a pool table, right?
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Exactly. Yeah, yes. And they're not also giving me a British cavity. A lot going on here at shakys. Okay, the third photo was probably my favorite and a bit of one of my main who screwed dude moments with this post, it was a picture of those Styrofoam straw shakes hats, like the ones that like somebody in a barber quartet would wear. But yet, how did that has to do with Yi public house or shaky pizza, I don't know, not giving really tavern vibes to me, but so quintessential shapes. And then the last photo was of a shaky menu, and so many people commented on the prices. So listen to this. You could get a 17 inch that was the large family size Shanky special for $4.75
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Wow. You could pair it with a tossed salad for 35 cents with 1000 island dressing. Yes, crotons, yes, just like Bakos. And what about Bakos? You.
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Oh gosh, talk about scary. And you could wash all that down with a 50 cent bottle of Heineken. How is that picture of root beer? Exactly? You had to have root beer. Pictures of root beer is exactly one of the things that people mention a lot. So get this, you guys. This is how loved this post was on Instagram. That post had 1862
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likes, 99 comments and 893
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shares. Okay, that's pretty impressive. Oh my god, it's the shares. It's the shares that are so incredible. Get this on Facebook, we had 4000 likes on this post, 317
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comments and 639
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shares. And yes, you guys to get ready for this episode. I proved every one of those 317 comments on Facebook and 99 on Instagram, and you guys had some really special, shaky memories. Oh my gosh. So I'm just going to kind of tell you what a lot of you mentioned and then share a few comments that really struck a chord with me. So a lot of people commented that they had their birthday party there. So raising my hand. There of you, I am too. Lots of memories. We'll put a picture of my birthday party in the Weekly Reader with our Styrofoam hats, with our Styrofoam hats on. Well, speaking of pictures and photos, you guys on Facebook, you know you can do things a little differently than on Instagram in terms of content. Terms of comments. People shared shaky photos. They found their shaky birthday party photos. I was so touched that they had actually stop what they were doing go somewhere to find this shaky photo and take the time to take a photo of it and upload it to Facebook. It was really spent. It probably wasn't handy. They probably had to go dig for it in the attic or the basement. They had to go through a couple of tubs and, you know what else. And I'm going to be really sexist here and stereotyping, but a lot of those photos came from men. And I thought, God, do you know? I don't know that. Andy could tell you where, a lot of I could tell you where photos were from when he was a kid or whatever. But right? That's very that is interesting. I feel, I feel the same. Yeah, stereotypes. Carolyn, that is exactly what I was talking about earlier, how we don't like to get so caught up in the numbers. But what you just described that these people had to go find the picture, take the picture, post. The picture shows us how much joy that image of shaky pizza brought to them. And that's what we're here for. Y'all, that's why, that's why we do this. Again, I found it so interesting that this was the thing. Because, like you just said earlier, Michelle, we post all the time, and sometimes we think, Oh, this is going to be the thing. Like, we get so excited about it. It does okay. But then we get, you know, a John Sebastian or a shaky pizza, and we're just like, whip like, where is this coming from? And then you read these meaningful memories, and you're like, Well, of course, because these places especially meant something to people, and special things happen there. So a couple of comments regarding birthdays, one of our followers shared that his mom brought shaky's pizza to his high school to celebrate his 16th birthday, and everybody was so excited. And I thought, huh, shaky's pizza made a guy when he turned 16, not be embarrassed that his mom came to school with shake his pizza. That's how much everyone loved shake his pizza. Everyone was so excited. You know what Shannon's pizza reminds me of? When you get pepperoni and pizza, and they're the small pepperonis, and they make like little grease boats, little cups, you know, where they curl up and the edges get super crispy, and there's a little bit of grease full of oil, yeah, full of oil that I always take my napkin and dip it in. But some people have that giant pepperoni that just lays flat. You gotta love it. Pepperoni. Brownie comes up, and that was shaky. You guys. Honestly, we have probably made this whole episode about shaky, because I'm just starting. Another woman shared that every year for her birthday, her husband drives 40 minutes to the nearest shaky. Okay, and I'm guessing this is in California. We'll talk about the fact that there are not really any shakys anymore, but there are a handful in California and over 300 in the Philippines. Don't ask me what I know, but so I'm guessing going to the Philippines. I'm guessing this follower lives in California, so her husband drives 40 minutes every year on her birthday to the nearest shaky and brings home pizza and Mojo. So many people mentioned Mojos. Those are the potatoes. Do you guys have any memory of those? They were like, you know, almost thick potato chips. So if you imagine, if you like, sliced a potato up, and then they were, like, deep fried and really, really crispy. Okay, I think this was their only nod to, like, the tavern. Feel those guys like the chips. But I cannot tell you how many memories people shared about Mojo's potatoes, like nobody remember the word. And they came in those like, red bath plastic baskets with like, yeah, we probably weren't allowed to get them.
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Pizza place. My parents would have said.
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That Red Lobster. We were never allowed to order a hamburger. We are at Red Lobster when we go to the potato restaurant, you can give Mojo.
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So I was hoosker dude over and over again, as people mentioned things that really were quintessential shaky. So I'm just going to list them and see what you guys might remember. Okay, Christine, you've already mentioned the pictures of root beer. We had so many people talk about the silent movies that would play like Laurel and
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Hardy, yes. And then there was, this was one of my favorite things, was the elevated ledge that you could stand on, and you could look into the kitchen, where you could watch the guys tossing the pizza dough. And then, like, your parents would have to call you over, like, pizza's here, because you were just mesmerized of watching those guys and your parents are like, thank God. Just have those children do something. Leave us alone. I think I just added, like, three years to my life with just with all the synapses firing right now, you just get ready. I mean, okay, we've talked about the Straw Hats. Okay. Do you guys remember this? Because I was who screwed dude. When I looked it up, there was a shaky balloon man that you could blow up, and he had feet. And so I will, well maybe post a photo of this in the Weekly Reader. He was the one I remember. He was pink, so you blew him up, and he almost looked like a snowman, but it looked like a pizza chef. And then there were these cardboard feet that you could put him into so it looked like he had feet. I think when you see him, you'll remember them, and they might have been like a birthday party favor, too, if you had your party there, but you will remember those. Of course, the player piano. I mean, who can forget the piano? Or it played by itself, but sometimes there would actually be a piano man there playing, and you could give her a piano woman, because my mom made friends with the piano woman.
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That's so Linda. I can't even tell you how Linda that is. Like every time you go to shakeies, Linda has to say hello to the piano woman, and then they strike up a conversation. Now they're friends, and they're having to eat. I think there are a lot of friendships were made at shaky it was just it was like the cheers of our generation. Yeah, it was the old public house. Yes, there you go. Okay. And one comment we got from Terry, she who screwed dude me when she remembered that kids could go up to that piano and there would be symbols and rhythm sticks and tambourine and you could play alongside, I mean, those rhythm sticks, remember, those were good, or you could click them, yes, they're like, corduroy, they're like, they're like, ribbed the stick for your pleasure. Yeah, right. Okay. Several people shared that this is where they experienced their first, you might say, their first. What? Well, one person shared that this was the first time she learned what Canadian bacon was because Canadian bacon was on one of the pizza, Hawaiian pizza, yes. And she remembers, like, oh my gosh, and it didn't quite gel, of course, because it was like a piece of ham, like a small piece of ham, but yet it was called Bacon. Totally could relate to that. Totally could relate to that someone else. It was the first place where they played a video game and somebody else shared it was the first place that they had pizza.
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There they lost their pizza virginity at because you didn't make pizza at home, no, unless I made it out of that box. Remember the box that it was
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like, yeah, and basically the pizza sauce was just like tomato paste in a little bag. I wish I could go back and remember, like, Where was the first place I had pizza? Maybe it was shakys. It was it's a good shot. It was shit, good shot. I also remember at first, I just have to say that when I get a craving for pizza. This is a conundrum. In my house. We're like, Let's go out for pizza. I don't want fancy pizza. I want a pizza parlor. I want a pizza parlor. So many people said that I am so surrounded by fancy pizza. No, I want to get a red plastic cup that's kind of pebbly on the side, yes, yes, heavily red plastic cup. That's the litmus test. And that picture of root beer, it just felt like you died and gone to heaven, or, I think you could get coke and other pops and, oh my gosh, that was such an incredible treat. But to your point, Kristen, I think the reason that this post resonated so much with our followers was exactly what you said. It was this experience that they had at shaky and how good the pizza tasted because of what was happening all around them, that sense of, you know, community and family. You're up next to some girl you don't know, but you're doing the rhythm sticks, and she's got the tambourine, and all of a sudden you're like the Partridge Family, I mean, truly, it was like, I don't know that's kind of the memories that I have. And I feel like, you're right, because when I think of shakys, I get this feeling in my body. It's not like, Oh, delicious pizza. I have like a like an experience feeling, I don't even know that it's a place memory.
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I almost feel like I can smell it, and I can feel how I felt when I walked in. It's not like me just going, Oh, shaky. They had good pizza. I get this weird, this weird, like vibe in my body, and it's, you're right. It's because of everything you just described that I had kind of forgotten about there, you know? And so this is one of those memories that it wasn't just a local pizza joy. I mean, we had a communal experience. It was a universal experience, and it touched so many of our senses, like we've talked, the taste, the smell, the music, the sounds, all of that stuff. You're with your family, you were with your friends, and I know I made friends standing on that little step stool watching them make make pizza, right? You're my height, like, we just say the same age and like, the same things. Okay, we've got some more things to share. I'll try to go through this quickly, you guys, because it was so fun and it was again, like I felt like I was getting slapped, like, who's Purdue? Every time I thought I couldn't get screwed another time I did. Lots of people wanted to talk about the bunch of lunch okay, this was the afternoon pizza buffet that shakeies would have, and it was just the epitome of heaven for a lot of people, so much so that several of our followers who worked there shared that they remember a line out the door and around shakes to get in for lunch, a bunch for a bunch of lunch. Rather, I think it works either way. It works. Yeah, a few of our followers actually worked at shakeies and shared the little bunch of lunch hack that they did as workers. They would actually put their favorite pizzas out right toward the end of the buffet when it was about to close. So when they had to take down the buffet, oh my gosh, look the Hawaiian pizza. There's almost a whole one here. What am I going to do with that? Yeah, I can't. Yeah, you can't throw it out. Or you could pretend, as one of our followers did, that you were going to throw it out, and you go back to the dumpsters, and guess what? A group of your buddies would be out there, and you would hand that to them, and they'd go to the park across the street, and they would get to munch a bunch of pizza.
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Okay, I just had, when you talked about the buffet, the pizza buffet, I had a memory come back, and I think I had a first at shaky I think it was my first salad bar. Oh, they didn't have a salad bar the whole time. But I feel like toward the end, there was this thing you could go up and get your own salad Yes. Well, salad bars were all the rage like, you know, don't in the late 70s. Don't think about having a restaurant without a salad bar. That's right. Stone faith seven on Instagram shared that her sister signed their dad up for the talent show at shaky, and he won.
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He got a t shirt and he gave it to her sister for entering him. Don't you love that? He probably saying, like, why don't you come home? Bill Bailey, and
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as we've said, a lot of people have chimed in with how much they miss shaky and that vibe that you were talking about Kristen, the vibe of a pizza parlor, and Sally O'Byrne, this might be a controversial statement. She said this, this was, and still remains, the best pizza ever, in my opinion. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is just really a sampling of the comments and love that that shaky pizza post got, and that is a perfect example of something that we unearthed. I mean, I'm not taking credit for it, I'm just saying it's a small thing that everybody forgot about until they didn't right
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when happy days seemed very far you're greater
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than you think
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you are. Yeah, Okay, our next post is from this January. It's very recent. We posted a picture with a caption that read, on this day in 1977
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we all became a lot more interested in solving crimes.
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And in the photo, we see Sean Cassidy and Parker Stevenson, aka The Hardy Boys.
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This post had over 200 very enthusiastic comments from people saying, basically some form of, OMG. This was my first crush in all caps, over and over and over and over again. It doesn't matter that we're all saying the same thing. This is not a game of who can say something singular that gets people's attention? No, that's not what this is. This is a perfect example of people needing to add their voice to a very special club like me too. Oh my God, we are together. We are the same. Of course, there were variations of Team Sean and team Parker, but the point was the same. Do.
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Gen Xers were showing up on mass for these two with stars in their eyes then and now. I don't think that we can underestimate the importance of the Hardy Boys in the sexual awakening of Gen Xers.
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Well, was there another show in those two years that had that type of pull for us. I mean, right, it was so many of us. I was a little young, but it was my sister, and she had some pretty funny comments on that post, because she still has her Hardy Boys fan club card, but for that age, you know, to be crushing on them. I don't think there was another show out at that time that was that appealing. So that's why, I think it's it resonated so much with so many of Gen Xers that were of that certain age. You know? Yeah, it captured so many of us so quickly. I mean, it happened overnight. After that first episode aired, we were all in and then, of course, Sean Cassidy starts releasing albums, and we're like, Well, I guess we're gonna get married. They have him start singing on the show, and that's when his singing career took off. And so you not only had the fun stories and you had them to look at you then also had Sean Cassidy singing. And so is there anything more teen idol ish about not just someone who looks, you know, like that, but then who sings, and singing that always makes you more attractive.
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Renaissance man, yes, he is a true Renaissance man. Somebody commented It was so funny that it was so frustrating that Frank Hardy left the restaurant or the venue, or whenever, whenever Sean Cassidy started to sing, and it was just like snaphill up against and Frank Hardy would come back. And Joe Hardy would be like, Dude, I just, I just performed for the group.
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I don't know where I'm a real singer. And Frank is like, what you sing songs? It's just like, synophigus, well, you'll appreciate this really fast Kristin and Michelle. One of our shakys comments, believe it or not, because it all comes back to shaky all the commenter wrote was shaky, plus Sean S, A, J, U N, like that summarized their their their Gen X youth experience. All they needed was shaky. And Sean alliteration would be so happy to hear that that it's not like the love of your family. It's shaky all the books I'm getting, yeah, no, and think about it. I mean, this phenomenon, like you said, Michelle, it was only two years but this phenomenon that grew out of this show became the basis for a middle grade novel 45 years later called worldwide crush. We can make jokes all day long, but it is that's a very serious cultural impact that these two had on these little girls, boys and boys too. They always do. They just couldn't say it. So some people, of course, had some really cute things to say about this post. Chestnut Hill cabin said, so is this where my Dateline obsession began?
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And I thought it's possible in a way, right? Yeah. Crystal Eyes said, I love this pic so much. When are we getting the 50 year reunion episode where they're still solving crimes, oh my God, and they still are. So they're both still look great, and they're both in the business and, yeah, yeah, doing great. I want this. I want this show. I want the hardcores to come back even it doesn't even have to be a series, just have one show a TV in a week of the week, yes, just a Christmas movie or something. So yeah, let's reach out to Sean and see make it as silly as you want. We'll laugh. We'll laugh along with you. And in this carousel of pictures, Michelle had included a picture of her sister Melanie's Hardy Boys fan club membership card, which looks like a legit credit card. It's for real. It has like it's plastic. Her name is embossed on it. It is the real thing. And Melanie commented, thanks for including my fan club card. I still carry it in my wallet.
Unknown Speaker 33:56
She's not lying.
Unknown Speaker 33:59
I know. Isn't that great. Michelle said something like, Yeah, you get card and you pull out your hard voice card.
Unknown Speaker 34:08
Here's my ID. Well, that would say how old we were, for sure. That's true. I'm definitely old enough to drink. Yeah,
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that's true. You.
Unknown Speaker 34:25
Okay, this next post is a little bit of a divisive post every time we share, which I cannot for the life of me, understand, but it's always a crowd pleaser. So I do try to post this about twice a year, and I'm talking about that granola eating, Birkenstock wearing craft making, hippie doll family that goes by the last name sunshine, share that sunshine country feeling with the sunshine family. Share it happy times and fun times, living natural and free. Share true love and emotion. Sunshine country style, baby and daddy and mommy too. We're.
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And with the sunshine family smile doing things together with sunshine
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family makes the sunshine on and on in sunshine country, the sunshine family dolls come with an idea book of things to make from Mattel. I loved my sunshine family. I still have my my mine sitting on a shelf in my childhood museum. And after my sister played with them, I played with them. My own girls played with them. Let me tell you, they look like they've been smoking a lot of weed. They're missing like a clothing item. I should put a picture on social their pupils are huge. Yeah, they look real they look real rough. They've been ridden hard and put away wet. So to remind you, the sunshine family was released by Mattel in 1974 hot on the heels of the Age of Aquarius, and were made to be a socially responsible alternative to Barbie so instead of giant dream homes and race cars, the sunshine family lived a much simpler life. Steve Steffie and baby sweets owned a craft store. They rode a story bicycle. They were clothes that looked like they were made out of hemp, right
Unknown Speaker 36:06
flowers that came with patterns like that. Because a lot of people share how their grandmothers would sew the sunshine family clothes for their their dolls. Because they could have just taken a little bit of burlap and a little bit of wine and tied it around them, and it would they would have fit right in with Yeah. So Mattel used this craft angle throughout the initial line, and it's in its expansion. So the original trio, like I said, if you didn't ever know there Steve stuffy and baby sweets, and they were packaged together with a little paper booklet that outlines craft activities that you could make from items found in your own home, like you could make them a little table from an empty tuna can and things like that. And activity booklets were included in almost all of the play sets that came that were also sold, and a series of real wood craft kits were also released that encouraged the kids to assemble the add ons for the family. That's such a cute idea. I think it's very girl Scouty, isn't it? Like, very Girl Scout Yeah. Like, there should have been a sunshine family badge that you got for assembling, like, one of cookies. And a lot of people that comment, remember specifically the craft aspect of the sunshine family. There were also paper dolls and coloring books. Well, the sunshine family was super popular, but alas, Mattel canceled them in 1978 I don't know, Steve must have said something offensive to Ken or like offered him a doobie or something, because they were canceled. So anytime we post pictures of any of the dolls or the sets, it's roughly about an 8020 split on who loved them and who was creeped out by them. However, anytime we post a picture of Steve and stuffy split screened with a picture of Mary Ingalls and her husband, Adam, because they are double gangers. People go crazy. And I think it's about time for this post to happen again, so I'm going to do it in the next week or two.
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And if you guys have never seen that post, just right now, just go look at a picture of Mary Ingalls and her husband, Adam. They look exactly like Steven Stacy. Sunshine, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 38:07
So here are some comments from the latest sunshine family post one of the happiest memories of my childhood, Rita says the grandpa vibes Will Ferrell. She's wrong.
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Current Will Ferrell, the guys creeped me out. Creeped me out.
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Rita also says their eyeballs came out. I used to pot and mix them so everyone looked like David Bowie,
Unknown Speaker 38:37
because Steffi has blue eyes, and Steve, I think, has brown eyes so you could give up. This
Unknown Speaker 38:44
is not okay. Why would they even make them like that? Why someone said I loved playing with the sunshine family in their cool house while listening to my favorite John Denver album. It was my vibe all day, or that was Kath who said that. I mean, come on, how can you not listen to John
Unknown Speaker 39:02
family. Gosh, we lived in such a great
Unknown Speaker 39:06
it's so true. Yeah. And many people tell us how they recently, recently found sunshine family dolls on eBay and bought them for themselves like now. And you know what? It's just, it's just, I we love that. And you guys know, people will comment a lot too, almost apologetically, like, oh, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I just bought myself that on eBay. And I always respond. Make yourself respond and say, we completely support that. Like, I mean, look at right now, listeners, we're all sitting in our childhood museums right now. We're all behind us.
Unknown Speaker 39:46
Let's just say that to our listeners, like, here's your prescription. This is your call to action this week. Yes, you go on eBay, go to a thrift store and find one toy or book or
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cassette or Bucha.
Unknown Speaker 40:00
11
Unknown Speaker 40:01
you master make you happy. Yes, got it. Yeah, that dopamine hit is worth it. You guys, we know from experience for sure.
Unknown Speaker 40:10
Okay, well, speaking about dopamine hits, you guys, I'm going to share with you our next viral post that probably, I don't know, shook me more than any except for maybe John Sebastian. This would be our post from January 29 of this year, featuring a reel of the opening sequence to the life Garrett variety show that aired in May 1979
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oh my gosh, you guys, is all I can say. Hold your horses when you hear these stats. Okay, so on Instagram, we had 6400 likes, 289 comments, and 3705
Unknown Speaker 40:47
shares. Okay, I think somehow this might have gotten in the algorithm somewhere. I don't know, but somehow this got shown to a lot of people, and a lot of people had feelings about it. Okay? Because on Facebook, we had 10,000 likes, 501,000
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views, of that. Wow, 2000 shares and 762
Unknown Speaker 41:08
comments. Okay. Now to refresh your memory, if you didn't see this post or you missed the life Garret special when it originally aired in 1979 the video that Michelle posted starts with, first of all, a huge throwback for many of us, that iconic CBS special presentation logo and music that do talk about dopamine hit. Yes, you see that wear, that sound, life is good. Okay, then it goes right into the introduction to this variety special
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you late Garrett special
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with place guests, Bob Hope.
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I've never been on a show hosted by someone so young I didn't know whether to applaud or Griffin
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and Marie Osmond. What
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I like about Lafe is that he's young and handsome and very, very talented, and with all that going for him, I can't believe he's not one of my brothers.
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Brooke Shields, I like man, like faith, because he's older than I. Of course, there aren't many men younger than
Unknown Speaker 42:27
I. Special guest star Flip Wilson. I've always found late to have a good head on the shoulders, long brunette or redhead. He doesn't care.
Unknown Speaker 42:39
Introducing Pink Lady, this special might just take the cake on the craziest combination of guests. So much so that our follower and listener, Mary rice, commented that she wanted to know if my being Carolyn's head was exploding when she saw all of these disparate guests coming together on this screen. To me, it's like, it's like that question, Who do you want at a dinner party, dead or alive? Right? These This is my dinner party.
Unknown Speaker 43:07
Oh, I remember pink lady. Oh, a lot of other people do too. I think we had just as many comments in this thread about Pink Lady as we did. Leif Garrett, okay, the after we see the guest stars roll across, and our jaws are on the floor, of course, because we're thinking, How in the heck did this happen? We then we see some footage of girls screaming at a concert, life singing at a concert, and then him riding a horse while carrying the Texas state flag in the Houston rodeo, which I've been to, those concerts at rodeo. And, yeah, that's the people that can do that. Because you have to be whole, and the flag is big, and then you're holding the horse reins with the other hand. It's like you have to be excited, literally. So Leif is actually doing that, he is actually doing that. Wow. It was a lot. Granted, this is just the introduction to the special. This isn't the special itself or anything that people are reacting to. People loved this special. Well, yes, they either loved or thought it was super disturbing kind of a thing because but it was so 1979 and one of our commenters said, and I thought this was so, so true, is that these were the times when we as kids were fully aware of our parents, generations, actors and comedians like we knew who our parents liked, so that we knew Bob Hope and we knew Glen Campbell, and we knew Flip Wilson and today, like, I'm not sure, Grace, maybe, you know, when she was in middle school, could have told you all the people that I held up as, like funny comedians or singers that I listened to, but We knew. I knew Steve and Edie gourmet. We knew who Frank Sinatra was, who our grandparents listened to and watched. We knew who Milton Berle was. My grandma loved Milton Berle, Lawrence Welk, for Lawrence Welk, oh my gosh, yes, yeah. Those were the days my friends.
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I loved this comment that some.
Unknown Speaker 45:00
One wrote, he said, Where's Ruth buzzy? And then someone replied to that comment, well, I guess shields and Yarnell had a prior gig as well.
Unknown Speaker 45:09
And somebody in our comments did mention, and I don't remember this because I wasn't a huge chips fan, although I did watch the disco episode, but Leif Garrett had a episode that he starred in, in on ships. Oh, I don't remember that, but somebody Okay, put that in our comments before I get into this anymore. I wanted to start by recognizing that this might be a little hard for Kristen, because, you know, we learned about her feelings toward life when she discussed his needs in the very special episode of family. But Kristen, you will be so glad to know that you're not alone in those feelings. Okay, we had Laura deal, who commented, I never liked him after he made buddy cry,
Unknown Speaker 45:47
and that comment got 100 likes. So, I mean, for a comment to get that many likes, that's huge. He gave her a tummy feeling a tummy they did. So some people wrote off life right after that episode of Family and never looked back. A lot of our commenters that said it was their crush also said that, along with Lafe hanging on their walls, they also had posters of Peter Frampton, oh, and I thought, oh, I can see that
Unknown Speaker 46:15
I never put that together before, like their older sister had. Peter Frampton. They have life Garrett. They bring them together. Got the hair and two peas in a pod, right? But Lisa LeMay, one of our followers, actually took her crush to the next level. She named her first son life, and she wrote it was a blood prick pinky swear and solemn oath with my next door neighbor and best friend when we were 12 and I had the first son.
Unknown Speaker 46:43
She, how about has a lot of integrity. She sticks to her promises. One really funny story that a follower shared was when he was 16, he was a doppelganger of four life Garrett and Leif. Garrett was going to the Washington State Fair. Was going to be there, and that's where this follower lived. And he convinced his friend to go to the fair with him, and they were going to pretend that he was late Garrett or Leif Garrett's brother. And they did okay, and they got braver each time, like people would like be whispering, and then he'd say, you know, well, I'm life Garrett's brother, and all these girls were coming up to him. They got, basically, I'm gonna fast forward behind, like, three levels of security, where they got right up to, like a bodyguard person, and they were saying, Oh, we were, I'm late. Garrett's brother, I want to say hi to him. And they like, where's your pass? Oh, I left it in the car. Okay. So he got through several levels of security, and then finally, they said, Hold on, okay, and they brought out life Garrett's manager to these guys, and life Garrett's manager said, Lake doesn't have any brothers, and with that, security came and got them, but because security, and I guess the police eventually were escorting them out of the state park or out of the state fair, because life's manager was like, get these guys out of here. They're like trouble. And so he the security and then police walk them out through the State Fair. Oh, what do you think people are going to think that they might be actually,
Unknown Speaker 48:15
so, you know, they get escorted out, and the police officer says, Get out of here. I don't want to see you back here again? Well, he said, I'm, you know, 1516, what do you think we're gonna do? We're gonna go right back there and go in there again.
Unknown Speaker 48:27
They went in again. And, you know, hoopla, or whatever. But it was so funny, and then this was so crazy, serendipitous. He shares in the story that he was in a photography class with his crush, okay? And they're in the dark room, and she's developing photos, and she had been at that concert, and she has a photo that she's developing in there, and he and his friend are in the background of the photo. They're like, talking to one of the security guards. It's crazy. I mean, it was so crazy. Wow. I love that story, okay, but I'm not done yet, everybody, because I think the funniest comments weren't even about life, you guys, they were about Pink Lady. Okay, now I'm going to just do a quick refresh for everyone, because I'd forgotten about Pink Lady until I did a little deep dive. Okay, Pink Lady was a pop duo from Japan, so they were very popular in Japan. I think had one, maybe two hits here, but this was on, like, the rise of their career. But so many comments were saying, Where's Jeff? Like, I see pink lady, but where's Jeff? I had no idea what they were talking about, so I had to look it up. Well, evidently Pink Lady and Jeff was a very short lived Variety Show on NBC. Okay? Jeff Altman was a comedian, Fred Silverman, who was the NBC guy at the time, thought that these two cute girls who couldn't really speak English, it would be kind of entertaining to watch them try to fumble their way through with the comedian, right. God, but they would also cover some very, some of the, you know, top 10 hits of the day in the right.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
Show, and so they got this variety show, and Sid and Marty Croft actually produced it. Okay, so we've got, you know, the party bunch, our Donnie and Marie, and now we've got pink lady and Jeff and
Unknown Speaker 50:13
Sid and Marty Croft were kind of disappointed when they found out that Pink Lady really could speak no English, so it was going to be really hard to figure out how they were going to weave them into the show. So basically, they were in a few sketches, but mostly they were covering this pop song. This is my recollection of like I remember watching it and feeling awkward and and it was because nobody could speak English. And I, my feeling is that they were on, they were on TV a lot, but they never got traction, right? Like the machine was working to launch them, but they couldn't quite get them off the ground right? And there were a lot of reasons that this up. This series did not go past five episodes, okay, because they were so popular in Japan, so they had to be like, flying back to Japan for concerts. So filming, you know, having them on site to film, and they never really took off here, but with all of that said rabbit hole digging, do you guys just have to hear if we thought that the life Garrett special had crazy guests, nothing, and I mean, nothing compares to the lineup that pink lady and Jeff had for their five episodes. So I'm going to just read you who the guests were, and I might tell you a little bit about what they did. But in our very first episode, we had Bert parks,
Unknown Speaker 51:31
Sherman, Hemsley and blondie. Blondie actually was not physically there. They played blondie's video. So they played a music video. This was March 1, 1980 Okay, so life had them on right when they were starting to rise. And I guess Fred Silverman saw them on CBS and said, I'm bringing Pink Lady over to NBC, and I'm going to pair them with bird parks. And if you guys don't remember, all I remember was from Miss America. Miss America, Sherman, Hensley and blondies video then for episode two, hold your horses. We've got Larry Hagman, Sid Caesar, Donny Osmond and Teddy Pendergrass, okay. I mean, come on here. So we've
Unknown Speaker 52:13
got Donny Osmond and Pink Lady actually collaborate, and they sing together. We are family and Teddy better not
Unknown Speaker 52:22
Teddy Pendergrass and Pink Lady sing on Broadway, and they have a few other little skits they do Okay? And can we top the guests we had on episode two? Well, maybe we'll try with Greg, avigin, Hugh Hefner and cheap trick.
Unknown Speaker 52:37
It's like they always have an old guy, a new guy, and amuse me, isn't that like a theme that we found? It's like a game kill. All these, all these are somebody out there is gonna be like, who's F Marry, Kill. No,
Unknown Speaker 52:52
we can't say that word make, whoopee. Yeah, Mary or kill. And that lineup. It's I know exactly who I'm going to be making Whoopie with Hugh Hefner, well, how about this lineup? Lauren green, Sid, Caesar, Florence Henderson, and we got Blondie again, coming back. That's an older crowd. Last episode that aired had Jerry Lewis, red buttons and Alice Cooper, no, that's
Unknown Speaker 53:19
terrible. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 53:23
actually, I'm gonna attract what I said. I'd probably marry Alice Cooper, because we know from Sean's interview with him, he's that super nice guy. And he when I was grew up and lived in Arizona all those years, he is local, I think, Arizona, but that's all we ever heard. Is like, what a just generally nice guy. He is, his his stage persona wasn't my thing, but so I'm gonna retract what I just said, and I'll go with Mary. I'm gonna go with Mary. Alice Cooper, oh, and a very good offer. I've heard that is true. Okay, that's all I gotta say about that. So cool. So I know you guys, I had so much fun with that. I got it, Lady man bringing it back. Okay, here's another post that went viral. This was also in January. Just recently, we posted a picture of a true icon from the quintessential 70s home. And this is the bunch of glass grapes sitting on your coffee table
Unknown Speaker 54:22
that are coated in like a quarter inch of dust,
Unknown Speaker 54:25
and they're super heavy. Do not drop them. They will break a toe. They're so dangerous. This is it's amazing how you take this one artifact that has literally no meaning, and you can have 1000s of people going, me too, me too, me too, me too. Who knew, right? Here's just a little description of what I'm talking about from a woman named Molly Young who just says it perfectly. She has a blog called winezine.co here's what she said, consider the decorative glass table grape. But.
Unknown Speaker 55:00
Perhaps you have spotted one at an aunt's house or languishing in a garage sale. Okay, first, I can't tell you how many people said they were at their aunt's house. It was always at their aunt's house. The decorative table grape is a paradigm of something objectively beautiful, colorful nature inspired, but functionally useless and bankrupt of meaning.
Unknown Speaker 55:19
They're an aged fad as obsolescent as a paperweight or a rotary phone, but without even the defense of bygone purpose. When did table grapes become a thing and when did they cease to be one? Yeah, I want to know too. What is that all about? So here's what I learned. Oh, yay. Fake Food has always been popular,
Unknown Speaker 55:42
but fake fruit was the fake food darling from like the 1940s to the 1970s and the glass grapes were really at their peak during the early 70s, which is why we all remember them. And it may have started with blown glass fruit, which was super popular in the 50s and the 60s, especially after World War Two, when it was more affordable for middle class people to travel abroad, to Europe and American tourists would often return home from Europe, especially Italy, with glass apples or pears as souvenirs. And look what I have to show you. It is a Glass Blown blue apple. Okay, everybody's going through this right now where you're moving your parents from their home into what, you know, Senior Living, or whatever it is, and it's just a lot of things in the house that have to go somewhere. And at the end, your mom's like, Here. Take this. Please take this. I'm like, fine, fine. Just give it to me. Move, go, go, go. And so the blue Glass Blown Apple, my mom was like, please take the apple. Take the apple. I don't care about the apple. I didn't give a shit about the apple. I'm like, fine. I'll take the apple. And she's like, You have to take it. It was your grandmother's she got it from her best friend, may Mont morancy. So I'm like, fine. I know I'm I remember may mom ranci, I'll take the glass apple. But now I know, because of this, that may mom Ramsay must have gone to Italy, and she must have brought my grandma home a souvenir from Italy. How sweet that may was. Now I woke my glass blowing apple. Look out, pretty soon, pretty soon, your mom's gonna be going take
Unknown Speaker 57:23
the apple, okay, but where did the grapes in particular come from? Because the because the table grapes were in every home, mostly, or ants, apparently. And so this is from Molly young again. This is where we find out about the glass grapes. She says, One study of the mid century phenomenon describes a Mormon woman named Ruby swallow finding herself in a crafty mood and collecting a pile of old Christmas ornaments. She filled the holiday globes with plastic resin and strung them with wire into a grape like cluster. Her friends admired her ingenuity and urged her to display the creation in a homemaking exhibit. And this ignited local interest. A craft shop hired her to give lessons on DIY graping,
Unknown Speaker 58:15
and the hobby went viral. DIY graping went viral, so table grapes became a 1960s Utah meme. This was something that every Utah home had in the 1960s and then it went nationwide. That's where we get it in the early 70s. And she says this gift aligned nicely with Mormon ideals. The grapes had a store bought looking sparkle, but could be produced in a spirit of modesty by hand. Oh, sure. And there were some really hilarious comments about the table grapes. Of course, nobody knows this obscure origin story of table grapes. All they know is that they had them or their aunt had them. So first, Dax rule says my grandmothers were orange, orange grapes.
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And it's true, these came in a variety of colors. Why?
Unknown Speaker 59:07
I don't understand. Somebody says, Oh, you were nobody if you didn't have the damn grapes.
Unknown Speaker 59:14
And then somebody else says, how about a bowl of wax fruit on the dining room table? And then we had, right there, was also that kind of rubbery, the great, yeah, rubbery, and almost like sticky, like they, you could pull them off the branch, and then I have, like, a little, a little opening that I was putting my tongue, yeah, yes, you squeeze it and suction it on.
Unknown Speaker 59:38
That's right, yes, oh my god. I tried to do it on my nose too. Like, yeah, you know, yeah, a clown nose, but yeah, it didn't stick. And then Alfred Michelle says we only had the wooden fruit in the wooden fruit bowl. Wooden fruit in your wooden bowl. She's, I really feel like I missed out it. But this is the best. This is, this is gold.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
Comes from our friend Colleen, and she says those grapes were next to the small loaf of bread that my mom covered in shellac and called Art, the macrame owl hung on the adjacent wall.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:11
I think I responded to that, yes, my mother did that too. It was like a craft thing. It was, it was, and I was Hooper, dude, so smart, I even responded to that. And it was like, real, like, my mom actually made it wasn't a loaf of bread, like, Wonder Bread, oh yeah, made bread, which, by the way, I don't think she ever did for us to eat. It was like a real thing of like, she baked it in a loaf pan and then took the loaf pan out and then the hell out of it. I guess we had the glass grapes. Ours were like a deep ruby red glass grapes. Yeah, the icon of the 1970s coffee table. There you have it. I love that, Kristen, don't you have a set? We just buy a set. I was so excited. I'd never really seen them in a vintage shop before. And when we yeah, we were with you. We were looking for things for this photo shoot that we were going to be in for a local magazine, and they were going to do it at my house, and they wanted it to be like a 70 set. So we just went to all these vintage shops and bought things up. And when I saw those orange glass grapes, orange again, there are no orange grapes. Why are they orange? Oh, I took those home, and they're, they still sit on my coffee table. I know they're gonna start looking for something to put on a shelf. I really like those.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:31
Well, in an episode about our most viewed and liked social media posts, we'd be remiss not to mention basically every post we've done featuring all the Fisher Price toys we grew up with, particularly the Play Family sets, like the yellow house, the castle, the A frame farm, school, school, bus, airplane, airport, town, garage, camper, house, boat, all of those play family Little People sets. And as most of you know, we feature a fisher price toy every Friday in a post we call Fisher Price Friday. Get this, you guys, I did some math.
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I was holding for applause,
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and we have had 214
Unknown Speaker 1:02:08
Fisher Price Fridays. Oh my god, wow. Our first Fisher Price Friday was in February of 2021 and every single Friday since then, we've showcased a fisher price toy from the late 60s through the mid 80s, and you guys love them. People comment that they look forward to Fridays now for an entirely new reason, like they wait for Fisher Price Fridays. And of course, in the past four years, we do a lot of repeats, but it doesn't matter, because we'll get the same people commenting about the A frame that comment every time it gets posted, because they love it so much. But the most popular Fisher Price Friday by far, far, far, far, has been this short little reel I made with the Fisher Price play family house boat sitting on the dock of our former sad cabin in Minnesota a few years ago with the lake behind it, and it has Christopher Cross' sailing playing over it, and I just kind of ran the camera down the length of the houseboat. That's it. It's not even 30 seconds long, but damn, people love it. The latest time I shared this, which was last May, it had 250,000 views, 11,000 likes, and it was shared over 5000 times. I'm guessing it's the combination of just that cute little houseboat the real Lake, because you can see the water behind moving. It's like song. It's that song. It just, it was that perfect storm of stuff. I don't know. I love making reels with all my old Fisher Price toys. You guys listening, who have been following Fisher Price righties for a long time. Know that the three of us have gotten together and played with Fisher Price many times and made reels. Just a couple weeks ago, we shared the farm with, well, laugh on the farms. Kind of laid back. Ain't nothing but a country boy and and I'll just never forget holding the camera and Kristen like trying to run the tractor like, Oh, your hands are gonna show very serious cinematography. You guys very it's also very therapeutic. Playing with Fisher Price, people, it really is. One of my favorite ones we've ever done is all of three seconds. We have a zoom in at the top of the castle and Kristen's hands, and it's the night, and he just kicks the little boy with the red hat down to that dungeon flap, that dungeon castle, and we slow, we didn't slow. Mo, so it's like,
Unknown Speaker 1:04:31
anyway, some of the fun comments on that Fisher prize, house, boat, sailing, reel. Someone said, I mean, honey, this is everything.
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Roni J, said, one time I was holding on to this, meaning the houseboat, one time I was holding on to this and fell down the stairs and didn't let it go
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like the baby.
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Someone says I used to play Poseidon Adventure with my husband. I.
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You turn it upside down,
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Fisher Price people being like Shelly winters trying to fit through the porthole.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:12
And it's comments like this, last one I'm going to share that make us keep doing silly things like playing with Fisher Price and coming up with all of these ideas for you guys. Anthro chick said, bro, this heals something deep inside.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:28
Bro. We do what we do. We are healing the world. Oh, that's so funny. It is. It's the song with the with our favorite toy. It's just a bomb. It's it's a bomb. It is. It's a bomb. Before we go, I just want to mention one other post quickly, and that is a Judy bloom post. Because whenever we post anything about Judy Blume, it goes viral. People tag their friends like crazy. Our most recent one, which featured just a collage of her book covers, had over 31,000 views. Clearly, we as a generation have feelings about these books we idolize. Judy Blume, this is the woman who stuck her neck out and said the word period in a book for children. The first time ever, we were the first kids to like read about what was happening to our body. Thank you. Judy Blume, oh, thank you. Thank you. And it's very relevant right now, because we three podcasters have been invited to host a very special book club event in the suburbs of Chicago coming up in April. If you live in the Chicagoland area, listen up, because we will be leading. And are you there? God, it's me. Margaret, book discussion at Anderson's book shop in Downers Grove, Illinois, as a part of their band book club. Judy Blume, of course, being one of the most banned authors in history, we would love to see you. The book club is on Thursday, April 17, at 6pm and I do believe you need to RSVP on their website, so we'll include that information in our Weekly Reader. This Book Club is a very active, vocal and engaged book club that focuses on books that are targeted by book banners, and that makes us feel very honored that Anderson's asked us to be a part of it. Thank you to Kathleen and everybody at Anderson's. This has been fun, you guys. This has been really loved it. It's sort of like taking the temperature of the culture, of our culture, in particular, our people, right? What things are important to us, what things were important to us, and sometimes, like I said at the top, the things that were important to us are so small and so silly and so forgotten, they would never be honored in the Hall of Fame for cultural artifacts. Can you imagine someone at the Smithsonian saying, like I, present to you an artifact of cultural significance.
Unknown Speaker 1:07:50
Wait, we should come up with our own little Music Hall of Fame. The PCP is Smithsonian. Okay, yeah, we're doing it. Okay, okay, this would be a fun episode to do every couple of seasons. I think definitely. Yeah, it's an even greener. Yeah, I loved it, and we'd like to give a huge thank you to all of our incredible patrons. Your support means the world to us, obviously and directly, fills up the tanks we need to keep on trucking, and because of your generosity, we're able to keep bringing you new episodes. Invest in equipment and the subscriptions we need to produce this podcast and keep bringing you quality content, we think it's quality content, at least also
Unknown Speaker 1:08:30
so do our patrons, because today we're giving a special thank you to these patrons. Melissa, Julie, Jennifer, Pam, Elizabeth, Melissa, Gail, Nina Natalie, Lisa Erica, Stella, Tracy, Christina and Diane. And if you enjoy this show and you want to help us grow, consider becoming a patron yourself. You can find out more about the different tiers of support and the exclusive perks each offer by visiting our Patreon page@patreon.com
Unknown Speaker 1:09:01
P, A, T, R, E, o, n.com,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:04
and just put pop culture Preservation Society up in the search box. And we want you to know that every contribution, big or small, makes a difference, and we deeply appreciate your support. And can I just say that I get goosebumps, Michelle, every single time that you read a list of our patrons, because I know that's just, first of all, a portion of it, oh, small, small portion of those names, said out loud. It just, we never, ever take that for granted, you guys. It just, it fills our souls. And so thank you so much. A few other things that you can do to help fill our souls is leave us some nice reviews over there, wherever you listen to your podcast, we'd love for you to tell everybody how great we are. Do not tell anyone if you don't like us, just keep on dropping but again, talk about filling our tanks. We we read those you guys. We share them with each other. Those reviews mean everything to us. Thank you so much. In the meantime, let's raise our glass.
Unknown Speaker 1:10:00
Houses for a toast courtesy of the cast of Threes Company, two good times, two Happy Days, Two Little House on the Prairie. Cheers. Bye, bye. The information, opinions and comments expressed on the pop culture Preservation Society podcast belong solely to Carolyn the crushologist and hello Newman, and are in no way representative of our employers or affiliates, and though we truly believe we are always right, there is always a first time the PCPs is written, produced and recorded in Minneapolis, Minnesota, home of the fictional wjm studios and our beloved Mary Richards, Nanu. Nanu, keep on trucking and May the Force Be With You. You.