Retro Thing

Upgrade Your Sea-Monkeys To A Sportier Model

I remember staring in wonder at the back page of a Richie Rich comic book (or something equally unfunny) with my best friend. A wildly colorful ad offered Sea-Monkeys; mysterious and miraculous pets that you bring to life by simply adding magic powder to water. Sort of like Tang. The ad claimed that you could train the Sea-Monkeys to do tricks, which sounded really cool. We sent away for a kit, but were concerned that they'd resemble the art in the ad; genitalia-free nudie pink aliens beings, the ladies modestly clad in only a single large bow in her antenna.

We needn't have worried. The result was more like the stuff we fed the goldfish. The fine print of the ad does actually say "Caricature not meant to depict Artemia Salina". I felt a little gypped, but I guess kids wouldn't buy Sea-Monkeys if they knew they weren't that much cuter than having pet silverfish.

Once hatched, the little brine shrimp could be trained to perform a couple of "tricks" - mostly since brine shrimp naturally steer toward light. So you could basically puppeteer them with a flashlight. We never got them to do anything impressive, but maybe that's because we lacked impressive training facilities. 

These 1970's commercials show the "ski trials", "cycle race" as well as a more upper crust "fox hunt" for those Sea-Monkeys of better breeding. These elaborate race courses exploit another natural quality of brine shrimp, that they swim against the current. So you and a partner stir up the watery course with special syringes in what may be one of the oddest races ever. More evidence that the people who brought us Sea-Monkeys sure thought up a lot of ways to have fun with pets that are little more than bait. Then again, it beats getting a Pet Rock.

Support Retro Thing when you order Sea-Monkeys supplies on Amazon

The Affordable, Transportable Cellular Telephone

"Finding a phone in a car isn't that unusual anymore -- except when it leaves the car for greener pastures, the high seas or a leisurely lunch."

In 1990, the Radio Shack CT-201 retailed for $799 with a 90-day minimum new activation through an authorized carrier. A $199.95 portable adapter kit included a shoulder strap, antenna and DC power adapter/charger. For maximum pretentiousness, an optional $39.95 kit sounded your car's horn to alert you to incoming calls. 

1990: Radio Shack Cell Phones [YouTube]

Slot Car Racing In Brooklyn

Dave Clausen writes, "I posted some photos and wrote up a little blog post about my visit to Buzz-A-Rama, a 1960's era slot car joint in Brooklyn. What better way to spend a hot, humid Sunday Brooklyn afternoon than checking out Buzz-A-Rama, a 1960’s era slot car parlor in Kensington?

Inside this unassuming storefront are 4 or 5 large twisting tracks, where children and adults race cars about 3 inches wide by 6 inches long, much larger than the matchbox-sized slot cars I played with as a kid. Amateurs like us use slow cars rented from Buzz. The pros, however, bring their own custom lightning-fast cars and controllers, and they are quite serious about them."

Slot Car Hacking at Buzz-A-Rama

A Personal Hovercraft For The Masses

Thirty years ago, I was a science-crazed kid. Fast-forward three decades and I'm still disappointed that we don't have the flying cars promised in the glossy pages of Popular Science. Sure, we have tiny supercomputers that fit in our back pockets, but actually taking them anywhere usually requires the use of a lumbering 4-wheeler that's at the mercy of traffic lights and an army of diligent law enforcement officials.

A Hoverjet GT might just be the solution. Its 60 hp two-cycle Rotax engine is capable of propelling the machine up to 70 mph on smooth ice or 40 mph on calm water. The GT is capable of endless dizzying 360 degree turns on land, ice or water, while carrying a pair of freedom-loving passengers in open air luxury (hearing protection optional but recommended).

The vehicle includes modern amenities such as electric start, a four rudder steering system, Hypalon^® coated skirts and stainless steel skirt anchors, a 16" windshield and replaceable hardened aluminum skid rails. The only things that might make this machine more appealing are cup holders and a gun rack. The price? A mere $13,995.

Hovertechnics Hoverjet GT

Video Fever: A 1982 Look At Video Arcades

ABC's Los Angeles affiliate produced this five part series on the arcade industry in the early eighties. [via Curt Vendel]

Build Your Own... Lightbulb?!

Bennett Harris writes, "Reinventing Edison: Build your own Light Bulb is a science kit that I created and manufacture. It is as retro as you can get in that it lets builders recreate the experiments of the great inventors and the design of the kit and instructions hearkens back to the great science kits of the 50's and 60's (like those of AC Gilbert and REMCO)."

I often fear the iPod generation is too far removed from basic scientific knowledge. Handheld gadgets might as well be magic, because few people actually know what's inside an mp3 player or game unit or how they work. Household science experiments like building a crystal radio, playing with radioactive isotopes or assembling a Heathkit computer have become quaint historical anachronisms. Thankfully, entrepreneurs like Ben Harris realize this and are trying to fill the knowledge gap with high-quality kits that teach simple concepts.

Build your own Light Bulb includes almost everything you need to create an incandescent light bulb, including a safety glass vacuum chamber, a pump, wire, 28-page color instruction manual and several different filament materials including carbon and tungsten. All you need to provide are a couple of 6V lantern batteries and an enthusiastic kid or two.

Ben's kits are available in the Maker Shed and there's a Harris Educational fan page on Facebook.

Twitter on a Sinclair

A Twitter client running on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 128K. Spotted in Rain Rabbit's Vintage Computer Festival UK flickr set by jonpoet.

Original Pac-Man Design Sketches

Every cultural icon starts off as nothing more than a flash of imagination. Toru Iwatani's pencil sketches show the simple beginnings of one of the world's most famous video game characters.

Iwatani toont originele schetsen voor Pac-Man [via Boing Boing]

The Melodious Music Muff

Here's photographic proof that ungainly muffs were all the rage in the early eighties. The £79.95 Music Muff was marketed as the ultimate personal stereo without troublesome wires. It came equipped with an FM stereo radio and a micro-cassette player that used tiny dictation tapes for playback. Given the subsequent success of personal stereos with "troublesome" wires, it's probably safe to conclude that sane consumers prefer featherweight headsets to hefty spring-loaded head clamps.

Despite the introduction of double-speed mechanisms and high fidelity Type IV metal tape formulations, the micro-cassette format failed to catch on for prerecorded music. Even in high speed mode, the tape ran past the playback head at half the speed of a regular cassette. So, while the Music Muff shipped with three cassettes including ABBA, Simon & Garfunkel and a disco medley, new material simply wasn't widely available.

I love the little note on the order coupon that says "Please allow 28 days for delivery." These days, people get impatient after 28 hours.

THE must-have muff-diving accessory of 1982

1986 Auto-Shade Keeps Your Car In The Cool

I started driving in the late 1980's, eventually commandeering my father's '83 Olds Cutlass Supreme for my teenage adventures (the beast lasted into my 2001 adult adventures, but that's another story). I've never been a "car guy", so never got into the auto accessories fetish, but I did have the one add-on that everyone in Chicago seemed to have in the summer of '88: the cardboard sunshade. The windshield-shaped accordion-pleated cardboard unfolds, held in place by your car's sun visors, to screen out the sun from hitting your front seat. Unfortunately the wise and omnipresent sun seldom falls for it, cooking your vinyl seats from the side windows instead. Still the Auto-Shade did help quite a bit, which makes me wonder why it's so rare to see one today. When driving around in the warm weather lately, I've been looking for them. Aside from a couple of mylar numbers I recognize from the dollar store, there were none to be found.

They were frequently freebie advertising gimmicks (a quick Google search revealed that they're still being used for marketing this way), but the design that was most popular in my neck of the woods was the car-sized sunglasses. These made your car *ahem* "cool". I didn't have this little number in my high school heyday, instead hoping to cruise by on the free one I got from Taco Bell (and yes - I still have it somewhere).

As if keeping your car just a tiny bit more hospitable weren't enough, you could also flip the Auto-Shade over to reveal a plea for help from the police. I don't know how effective it was as I mostly saw it in this configuration in error (hopefully).

I've seen other car devices that try to keep the interior cooler on summer days. A little nylon hat-shaped thing to keep the steering wheel at a human-safe temperature (never worked), a solar-powered exhaust fan that clips to the windshield (the bunk), and of course the most elaborate - a remote starter for your car that kicks on the air conditioning (no good in a beat-up Corolla that hasn't had A.C. in ten years). Unbelievable as it may seem, this cardboard relic is still my best bet of keeping my car cool this summer - and you can take that any way you want to.

related:

1980's shutter shades are back?
Desk sized retro styled air conditioner that does next to nothing
Fan shaped like Nintendo R.O.B.

Fly Your Favorites Vehicles At The Sci Fi Airshow

Sci Fi Airshow is an effort long overdue to preserve and maintain our science fiction vehicular heritage. Too often when the cameras stopped rolling, these classy vehicles were cut down for scrap (there's a well known story that the Jupiter II and those water-heater shaped robots from Flash Gordon were melted down to make that vehicle from "Damnation Alley"), or given away to become ersatz jungle gyms at Hollywood orphanages.

Fortunately the staff of the all new Sci Fi Air Show are dedicated to keeping these classic sci-fi vehicles in top shape. You can see notable Irwin Allen & Gerry Anderson vehicles on display. If you're one of the lucky few, you can even ride the old beasts through maneuvers (though I'd skip out on the Spindrift. Its wingless design makes it notoriously difficult to fly).

Or you could if I hadn't made all of that up. Actually Sci Fi Air Show is the work of talented effects artist Bill George. Of course none of these vehicles were actually capable of movement, few were more than models filmed by special effects technicians. Bil George has created scifiairshow.com to fantasize what it would be like to actually get to walk inside your favorite retro future spaceships. I know it's all just deft work in Photoshop and 3D software, but I still hope someone pulls this off for real someday!

Rebirth Of The First Sinclair Computer

Robin writes, "I attended the Vintage Computer Fair in Bletchley Park, England this weekend. Colin Phillips has rebuilt a Sinclair Mk14 with the prospect of them being for sale later in the year. I think this is great news well worth sharing!"

Time Machine Up For Auction

Up for grabs at Bonhams on June 23rd: "A complete Doctor Who Tardis prop, circa 2005. Of painted rasped wood panel and glass construction, the base having painted parquet effect floor, panels fastening using bracket and bolt, having a pair of hinged doors, on with Yale® lock, with windows to doors and signage to front, top section of Tardis with removable 'Police Box' signs, interior of Tardis roof with a number of miniature lights, and further interior lighting, the roof with removable lamp to top, height approximately 10ft."

Lot No: 142W, Doctor Who [via Technabob]

Pocket Hi-Fi: Like a party in your pocket. But not in a weird way.

Jason Gilroy writes, "Long time reader, first time I've sent something in. Thought you would love seeing these retro takes on modern-day objects."

ALT/1977 fantasized about traveling back in time to the late 1970s with a pocketful of modern gadgets and turning the tech world upside down. These mock magazine ads incorporate superficial redesigns (wood grain and LEDs, anyone?) to keep people from getting too suspicious when stuff from the future starts showing up on store shelves throughout the free world.

The copy is as amusing as the artwork: "You're probably not familiar with the term "gigabyte." But you should know that there are 160 of them in the new Pocket Hi-Fi from Alt/1977, giving it the astonishing ability to store the songs of up to 4,000 long-play stereophonic albums in a device small enough to fit in your pocket.

Sound hard to believe? It should. Trust us. In addition to its impressive memory banks, the Pocket Hi-Fi features our proprietary 32-bit RISC microprocessor with a 32 kilobyte internal cache and high-speed MMU ... our company definitely wasn't started by rogue time travelers from 33 years in the future. Like, at all."

ALT/1977: We Are Not Time Travelers

Twinkie Art

The 37 ingredients in a Twinkie, shot by Dwight Eschliman. The shelf life of the original 1930s Twinkie recipe was only two days, thanks to the use of eggs, milk and butter that spoiled quickly.

Despite rumors to the contrary, modern Twinkies still have a shelf life of only three weeks and contain just one preservative (sorbic acid, to prevent mold). The filling was originally banana flavored, but a shortage of the fruit during WWII caused Continental Bakeries to switch to vanilla.

Dwight Eschliman: Still Life Gallery [via Make]