Toys I Never Had: Hit Stix

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Now while I don’t remember very much about this toy, I DO remember being super pumped when I saw the commercials. The producers did a very good job at making these things sound incredible. Supposedly, you could walk around playing “air drums” but actually produce drum sounds. Pretty cool concept.

They were a combo of fluorescent orange and yellow, a pretty extreme and eye-catching color combination back in the early ’90s. Each stick had a thin cord running from it to a sound box that you wore on a belt. All you had to do was make a striking motion in the air like you would while playing actual drums, and the sticks registered this “hit” and sent a signal to the soundbox that emitted a sound as if you had just rapped a snare drum.

I wanted these things so much. I would lay around and daydream about being the coolest kid in school if I had those things. Walking through the halls, playing a radical solo, with lots of girls following me and talking about how cool I was. I even joined the school band and chose to play percussion, just in the hope that the band director would let me play Hit Stix instead of an actual snare drum.  Sigh. It just wasn’t meant to be I guess.

Wrestlemania 2 VHS Tape Advertisement

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With Wrestlemania 40 about to kick off this weekend, I’ve been thinking back on some of my favorite memories of the yearly event that launched way back in 1985. And my earliest memory of Wrestlemania is watching the Wrestlemania 2 VHS tape with my cousin Tim.

I wasn’t into wrestling yet when the first Wrestlemania took place in 1985. And I was just starting to get into the WWF when Wrestlemania 2 rolled around a year later. I became aware of their existence during the buildup to the event. But when the VHS hit our local video store, Tim and I couldn’t wait to watch it and we weren’t disappointed.

The cage match main event between WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and King Kong Bundy was a big draw for us, as was the 20-Man Over the Top Battle Royal that featured stars of the NFL mixing it up with WWF grapplers. A third match was of particular interest to me as one of my favorites of the time, Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat would be in action.

Tim and I watched that tape twice when we rented it and loved every second of it. Even today I go back and watch the whole event about once every two years. Wrestlemania 2 usually isn’t high on fans lists of best Wrestlemanias, but the nostalgia I have for the event has kept it solidly in my top ten.

But that $39.95 price tag in 1986 though, holy cow, how did people afford these things back then?!?

Pizza Hut Street Ball

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Pizza Hut has had some of the best premium items in the history of fast food, and maybe one of their coolest offerings was their Street Balls they rolled out during March Madness for a few years in the early ’90s. Kinda like I’m doing with this post…trying to capitalize on the season. The street balls were non-standard-looking basketballs with custom prints that reflected what Pizza Hut thought the culture on the streets was like.

I had the one featured in the video above and used it all the time in my driveway shooting hoops by myself or playing a game of Around the World with my neighbor. I somehow felt like it made me a better player, but it probably just made me look like an even bigger doofus than I already did as a skinny, pasty-white white boy in the rural Appalachians trying to dribble between my legs on the way for a layup.

While I actually did play basketball in school and was a really good shot from downtown, I just didn’t look like a real ball player. What made matters worse was the fact that every one of us lanky kids who got one of these balls would bring them to practice trying to look cool. That doesn’t work when everybody brings one.

But I’ll say again, these street balls were a great piece of promotion by Pizza Hut, and anyone who was around back then surely remembers them.

Weekend Reading 03/24/24

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It’s been a little while since I shared a curated list of fun retro and nostalgia-themed articles and posts with you all, so today I’m dusting off the Weekend Reading feature to bring you a list of fun stuff I’ve come across online recently. So sit back, relax, and go check these out.

  • A Fortress Falls (Retailpocalypse) – great read about the demise of the old K-Mart headquarters and its vast history.

Taco Bell’s Texas Taco Sandwich of 1995

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The Texas Taco Sandwich hit the market in 1995 with a fun commercial starring Jack Palance. Palance was coming off a resurgence thanks to the movies City Slickers and City Slickers II, so he lent credibility to Taco Bell’s latest offering with a Texas flair. I was driving by the time this came out, so as soon as I saw the first commercials, I was making my run for the border to try one.

It featured Taco Bell’s traditional taco profile of seasoned ground beef or chicken, lettuce, and cheese, but also added diced tomatoes and a “special southwest sauce”. Some folks say they remember, and others theorize, that the southwest sauce on this was the same sauce used on the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito that was also released in 1995 as part of another promotion. The real focal point of the Texas Taco Sandwich though was the shell. It was advertised as “Texas flatbread”, which was unique for the time since it was thicker than a tortilla shell. I personally can’t confirm this, but I believe it was an early version of the Gordita shell they would debut in 1998.

The Texas Taco Sandwich was a unique item that captured my attention, as well as my taste buds while it was on the menu. I do seem to remember it being larger than the later Gordita, but it probably had to be since it was marketed as being associated with Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas I hear.