I was having a deep email discussion with someone who reads this blog, and somehow we got on the subject of Flickr razors.
Well, no. First we were talking about Flickr accounts, and how I would like to get one because I need to look at MORE pictures of myself and my stupid life, and then I said, "Wasn't there a razor called Flickr?"
Yeah, no. They were called Flicker. As in my friend Flicker. See how the stupid Internet is ruining us? I PURPOSELY misspelled it thinking it was right.
Oh, English. Where have you gone?
This model was Jayne Modean. I remember her being in every ad on earth in the late '70s. She also did Noxema ads. I think we were supposed to find her accessible. But she was never my type. I always liked Karen Graham. If I am looking at a model, I want her to be impossibly prettier than me.
Karen Graham was the Estee Lauder model in the '70s and oh, I wanted to look just like her. Look at her perfect nose. Why does my nose look like someone globbed a mashed potato on it?
Anyway. I have, stunningly, digressed, and models of the '70s were not why I gathered you all here today.
Because if you recall, this post started with me talking about the Flicker razor, which I said reminded me of a McDonald's toy I had when I was a kid. Similar in shape to the round Flicker razor, it was in the shape of a cheeseburger with a bite taken out of it. But it wasn't a cheeseburger (it wasn't a rock. Was a rock LOBSTER!), it was a whistle. A McDonald's brand whistle shaped like a cheeseburger with a bite taken out of it.
Okay.
Would you not think that SOMEWHERE, somewhere, on this vast Internet of ours, I could find a photo of that ding-dang whistle? Everyone I asked who is my age (479) does not recall the cheeseburger whistle. But I SWEAR I had one! I swear it!
And that is what led me to today's Pieces of Wisdom Wednesday question. Which isn't so much about gleaning wisdom this week and just getting a charge out of everything. I guess it's Pieces of Whimsy Wednesday. See what I did there?
Is there some odd toy you recall from your childhood? A toy that in retrospect, you say, "Shut the front door. How the foxtrot was that even a toy I had that I went around and played with like it was normal?"
I remember this guy from my old job said his wife had this weird trippy doll that was clearly invented by someone addled by drugs in the '60s, because it -- well, you know what? I can no longer remember what it did. Maybe it went from a girl to a monster, or it turned into an animal or a mushroom or something from Lidsville. I can no longer recall. But I'm saying, do you have a toy like that?
Because who went around thinking, "Oh! I have a good marketing idea! What say we make a whistle that looks like a cheeseburger with a bite taken out of it, and incidentally it also looks like this popular razor, so really dumb kids will get in the bathtub and try to blow their mom's razor!"
Similarly odd? I THINK this was my toy, but every time I played with it my father did all the work because it was so dangerous, and so maybe I am wrong and it was his toy, even though he was a grownup with a kid. I mean, as grown up as you can be when you're TWENTY-ONE and have a three-year-old already.
I'm pretty sure this was it. The POINT is, you plugged in that metal box, there, and put those plastic pieces in the molds, and then that monster-maker would get HOT ENOUGH TO MELT CHEMICAL-LADEN PLASTIC, and oh, was that a cool toy. And safe? Absolutely.
Parents won't even let their kids play in the FRONT YARD anymore. Even with helmets. And cell phones. And knee pads. And contracts saying, "I will never ever do anything dangerous or bad in the front yard." And yet we were given these MOLTEN CHEMICALS to play with.
Hells yeah.
Okay, you go. What odd toy do you recall?
