Category: Miscellaneous

Frozen Novelties (Part 2)

October 14, 2016

The post on ice creams was unexpectedly popular! It led to some digging around on the interwebs during which I found these licensed Aussie ice blocks.

I’ll post them in more or less chronological order:

I can remember these! Apparently the license was so massive that more than one company made SW ice blocks over the years. This was of course in 1978.

Licensing was in full bloom by the late 1970s, although obviously the Bionic Man license was cheaper than the Star Trek one based on the cost of the ice block 🙂

The KISS ‘water ice confection’ came out in 1980 and I can remember the cola-flavoured back ice staining your tongue when you ate it. They sold these at school believe it or not!

Look at those flavours on this 1980 ice block! Lemonade, pineapple and bubblegum?!? I bet I loved them!

This delicious Flash Gordon ice cream was also 1980. I’d ruin one of these right now.

Collating these photos gave me distinct flashbacks of perusing the freezer cases in the days all this stuff was available. Happy times!

We’re into the early 1980s now. Orange and pineapple is my dream combination; here’s hoping they still market Donkey Kong when I visit 😛

The first one is a bit special since they came with glow-in-the-dark stickers. You can read about them here, and I strongly recall having a Spider Man sticker of my own! There other licensed shaped popsicles as well (such as Disney), but I don’t recall ever buying any.

Here things have just got a bit out of control don’t you agree? While this is a box from a New Zealand company, I read (although don’t recall) that Fame iceblocks were marketed in Australia as well.

All these are over 30 years ago, and there were virtually no licensed iceblocks before 1978. This is just another example of how Star Wars changed marketing entirely. Growing up in that era – where even The Bionic Man was a good license for the freezer case – was a privilege indeed.

House Of Hell

October 9, 2016

Yesterday we visited this tourist trap up in Lake George.

We didn’t really know what to expect as we handed over a Jackson, but I don’t think either of us would have predicted a museum of animatronic horror vignettes set inside an incredibly dark series of winding narrow hallways.

That’s one of them, a staked lady vampire. She was still breathing!

That’s the grim reaper taking the life of an elderly woman in bed. There were dozens of them, many obviously inspired by 1970s hammer films, with classic monsters (mummy, werewolf etc) or film scenes (torture, human sacrifice, witch trials). Some – most! – of them are extremely disturbing, such as this one called “The Bathroom Murder”…

She swung the axe up and down to the accompaniment of wet hacking sounds!

Some were surprisingly sophisticated using optical illusions, projections or audio tricks. Due to the extreme darkness it was easy to be creeped out and we were genuinely scared a few times by unexpected events.

Yes it was cheesy, a bit short and probably overpriced. But it was fun and were glad we went. Recommended if you’re ever in the area.

Frozen Novelties

October 7, 2016

I used to love ice cream. I ate it all the time, in vast quantities. Mostly vanilla, but in my youth enjoyed mango, pineapple, strawberry and peach flavour as well. I loved ‘ice blocks’ as well (non-dairy frozen treats), especially the fruit ones.

No longer. I rarely eat any ice cream, and when I do regret it. Even ice blocks aren’t much to my taste. Unlike some people.

I was thinking about this recently. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do eat, since the list seems to get shorter all the time. But compared to my youth, the absence of ice cream from my diet is notable.

That’s a Bubble O’Bill, an ice cream that was my favorite as a kid. It’s a ice cream cowboy with a chocolate back and bubblegum nose! He looks like this:

Appetizing isn’t it? I loved these guys; not only did you get a frosty snack but the bubblegum just seemed like extra bang for your $0.40. For a child, this deal was irresistible.

Bubble O’Bill was actually an American invention, released in 1985. It wasn’t too successful here though, but found its ideal market in always-sunny Australia. I remember when they were released; an immediate other option to the always-purchased Heart ice cream. The bubblegum nose meant they couldn’t be sold at school, but I’d buy them all the time at the corner shop.

The bubblegum nose was occasionally strange colours (a green nose?!) and I seem to recall there used to be quotes on the stick as well. The best was when he was a bit deformed, or his nose was on backwards. Such rare versions were prized, and consumed with a smile. It was the pinnacle of frozen novelties, and always money well spent!

Of course there were other ice creams I liked:

And Bubble O’Bill success led to similar treats:

That even continue today:

And in my teenage, sophisticated years I tended to prefer this guy:

But even up to me leaving Oz in ’93 used to still buy the occasional Bill.

In England we had some whipped ice cream at the ‘steam fair’ that reminded a lot of what I ate in my youth. I wondered why I don’t ever eat any during my annual trips. Next time, I think I’ll have to make it a point to get a Bubble O’Bill, even if just for old times sake.

And if – when – I do, you can look forward to a review write here on the blog 🙂

Robot Claw