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Things You Don't See Anymore Part 3
- Thread starter Richland123
- Start date
Ha!
Ok, since you asked :
I actually really enjoy Christmas shopping in central London (or used to, when there were actual shops on high streets). It's easy to get swept up in the whole Christmas spirit, during late night shopping : the lights, the big department stores window displays, and almost everyone is just more positive, open, and friendly.
Anyway, I was looking for gift ideas amongst the books. The store was having a closing down sale, and as it also comprised the remaining stock from the Oxford street store, it was total chaos - nothing was sorted, or categorised anymore - I must have spent well over an hour, in total, in there.
At some point, rummaging through the shelves, I cross paths with a stunning young woman, who must have been 6ft tall, as we both reach for the same book.
She's blushing, and I'm trying to look galant, and we're smiling, and chatting, and then bashfully go our separate ways.
About 20 minutes later, we happen to catch each other's eye, from opposite ends of the busy shop floor - smiles of acknowledgement.
5 minutes later, I'm looking at my feet, as I ride the escalator to the top floor, when I happen to look up, and she's smiling at me, and says 'Hi', as she whizzes by in the opposite direction - Dammit!
So I decide I'm going to go back downstairs, find her, and get talking.
The escalators go one floor at a time, with a big dogleg - so I quickly walk each floor, in case she stopped anywhere along the way.
Get to the ground floor, can't see her - I check the queue to the checkouts, but there's no sign of her.
Furious with myself, for not taking the initiative sooner, I get in the queue to buy my books.
What I hadn't realised, in my rush, was that the queue snaked round a hidden corner - so, just as I'm about to arrive at one of the checkouts, I look up, and see she is in the middle of paying for her books.
Rather than dumping my books, and leaving the queue, I stupidly / brilliantly calculated that I could complete my transaction, and catch her, before she disappeared out of view (I'm an idiot, and queues during Christmas shopping make one act irrationally).
Anyway, she's getting away faster than I anticipated, and I'm only just getting served...
Then this comes over the store's sound system :
I hurriedly pay, and set off in hot pursuit, but I can't see her out the window. On my way to the exit, I round a corner, and there she is, leaning against a bookshelf, reading.
She looks up from the book.
Looks right at me.
Her eyes light up, and this indescribable look of... well, love, takes over her whole being.
She launches herself right at me.
Even though a part of me is thinking 'this is a bit too full on', what with the music, the girl, and the whole Christmas vibe, my heart skips a beat.
At my right elbow, this impossibly cute girl, all of about 4'10" of her, suddenly appears out of nowhere, and launches herself at the tall girl.
They fall in to each other's arms, and the short girl says "I thought I'd never see you again."
The tall girl says something like "I know, I thought I'd lost you."
And they start passionately kissing.
I left, laughing at myself, and buzzing from having witnessed a Christmas miracle.
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These ads take me right back to being a kid in the '70s!
Wow, I remember ALL of these! Nice finds!
What's ironic is that I was just reminiscing about the Charles Atlas course with a coworker recently. We both could recite the entire comic strip, except the guy's name was Mac instead of Joe. We even laughed about the "Darn it!" while kicking over the chair. Classic stuff.
One of my friends ordered that submarine. $6.98 wasn't chump change back in those days so he'd saved up for a while. IIRC, it turned out to be a cardboard box with some cut-outs and markings. (Nope, not a real sub after all!
)
This stuff all takes me back to being a young'n in the 60s-70s and the back pages of comic books having a page of ads for stuff like this. The catalog was listed as the "Johnson-Smith Company", and included spud guns, x-ray specs, onion gum, and my personal favorite, the "7 foot monster ghost", which turned out to be a balloon with a face drawn on it and a large sheet of white plastic that hung down from it.
Stupid as it was, it DID manage to scare the crap out of my little brother when i first sprang it on him.
This stuff all takes me back to being a young'n in the 60s-70s and the back pages of comic books having a page of ads for stuff like this. The catalog was listed as the "Johnson-Smith Company", and included spud guns, x-ray specs, onion gum, and my personal favorite, the "7 foot monster ghost", which turned out to be a balloon with a face drawn on it and a large sheet of white plastic that hung down from it.
View attachment 3085704
Stupid as it was, it DID manage to scare the crap out of my little brother when i first sprang it on him.
Indeed!
I ordered the Monster Ghost when I was a kid. Probably 1970 or so. For the weeks and weeks it took for it to arrive I constantly wondered exactly how cool it would be. It was an amazing thing in my mind. And then it arrived; it was just like you said, a balloon with a face drawn on it and a piece of white plastic. A total piece of crap!
That experience taught me a bunch about commerce in the modern age.
Along with the Sea Monkeys in the late 60's there were Magic Rocks. Have we looked at those yet on this thread?
https://www.amazon.com/The-Original-Magic-Rocks-Octopus/dp/B001L1KFK2
https://www.amazon.com/The-Original-Magic-Rocks-Octopus/dp/B001L1KFK2
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Found this.This stuff all takes me back to being a young'n in the 60s-70s and the back pages of comic books having a page of ads for stuff like this. The catalog was listed as the "Johnson-Smith Company", and included spud guns, x-ray specs, onion gum, and my personal favorite, the "7 foot monster ghost", which turned out to be a balloon with a face drawn on it and a large sheet of white plastic that hung down from it.
View attachment 3085704
Stupid as it was, it DID manage to scare the crap out of my little brother when i first sprang it on him.
I love what this place wrote about it.
To get the image bigger to read better click>http://media.boingboing.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Mail-order-mysteries-3.jpg it will zoom in.
A friend and I saved up for the sub... it was a pile of cardboard boxes and tubes.
Yeah, but was it cool? The closest thing i could seem to find online was this picture. Something like this?
Barley toy candy. When I was a kid in the late 50’s/early 60’s we always got these at Christmas. I never really liked them. English, I think.
Very much like that, if not exact. I don’t remember ours being quite that swoopy, but it’s been a few years. I do remember the torpedos were launched from cardboard tubes using rubber bands.
(I'm trying to remember if the Alfster was brought up previously in this thread. I didn't feel like perusing 231 pages to confirm it though.)
