What did you do to your site this week? Most of my work was in adding actual contents and blog posts in the “off-topic/rewind” category of my WordPress site. I had assistance from an open classes meeting where Professor Graham helped fine-tuning my “contact” page to get it to the way it looks right now, which I’m very happy with (Thank you!).
How happy are you with it? I’m happy with certain aspect of my WordPress sites. A good example is the home page and the contact page. My blog post content I’m also happy with, but I know at the same time the presentation and layout of the blog post templates can be much improved. The way the footer looks can be improves by setting widgets to align horizontally in a grid, but I was unable to achieve that at the moment.
What would you change if you could? I probably would like to change and definitely work on the custom template layout for the “Web Development” page. Given the time constraints and having to balance other things in my life (like another class, taking care of errands, etc.), I think what I have to submit as a WordPress page is decent, but I also know that it can be much, much improved upon.
What’s one new thing you learned about WordPress development this week? There’s so much I want to learn and accomplish, but with so little time I just have to decide where to focus most of my effort and cut my losses. Do I think my WordPress is “good enough” to submit? Sure. Do I prefer to have it look “much better” and be more “perfect”? Absolutely. Do I plan to continue working with WordPress so I can feel more confident about my skills and knowledge in WordPress? Definitely.
If there’s anything I learn about WordPress development this week, I imagine it kind of emulates the “real world”. You could be working on a website for a client or your employer and you desire to have it look as perfect as possible and spend all this time and energy (and stress) trying to achieve that. But in the real world with real deadlines and other aspect of life that also needs your attention, sometimes it’s just has to be “good enough” and presentable to the client or employer. Changes can be made at a later time if you would like and are allowed to do so. Otherwise, “good enough” is good enough. 🙂
Also, as a last note. I learned that this WordPress class was not long enough. It’s a compliment. I really enjoyed this WordPress course, and I’m sure other students in this class also agrees with me. I’m kind of disappointed that it’s coming to a close. I intend on continuing to learn by working with WordPress and seeking tutorials in my spare time. Thanks Professor Graham for a fantastic class!
Before the “cloud”, external hard drives, SD/microSD cards, and even the USB flash drive, the floppy disk was the way to conveniently store and transport computer documents data.
I wouldn’t have a computer for quite some time, so having a floppy disks was the closest thing to owning a computer. So to the floppy disks I held on dearly as it stored my important school documents and various images. I remember when Pokemon first came out and our local KTLA television channel was the station that broadcast the Pokemon episodes, they mentioned to visit their website to look at the gallery pictures of 150 Pokemon, I fitted as many of those pictures I could on these floppy disk. I may have taken up maybe two floppy disks. The storage capacity is anywhere from 1.44 MB to 2 MB, less after formatting the disk. But hey, at the time that was a lot of storage space when it came to portable data storage devices.
Floppy disks colors in the beginning were, more or less, related to the consumer electronics and home computer colors at the time. Whether it was an IBM-compatible computer, a Macintosh computer, or the Sony Trinitron television, floppy disk were available in black like most television sets or that light gray color that was popular among most home computers.
Sometime later during the 1990s (I know…I seem to mention this decade a lot), Floppy Disks were offered in stylish solid colors like the ones in the picture above. I do not know, but if I had to guess, it may have been related to other electronic trends around the mid-decade like the Gameboy Pocket and the Gameboy Color.
By the end of the decade and leading into the 2000s, floppy disks were available in a variety of colorful, translucent physical format. Again, just an opinion of mine and I have no fact to back it up, but from what I remember around that time was the new iMac G3 computers just came out in 1998 which were available in a variety of translucent colors like green and blue, Volkswagen had just reintroduce a car called the New Beetle that looked like no other car on the road and was also available in a variety of bright colors, and the Nintendo Gameboy Color and Nintendo 64 had also offered versions of the game consoles in a variety of translucent colors.
In the early 2000s, and around the time I had just entered college, I continued to use the floppy disk for a while. By then something called the flash drive (sometimes we even called it the “jump drive”; not sure if people still say that today) that was a more capable storage device in a smaller physical format. I think at the time it was either 64MB, 128MB, or 256MB was the size of my first flash drive. As time went on, the floppy disk was slowing phased out and even computer manufacturers began excluding the floppy disk drive from their products.
Although I have no actual use for the floppy disks now, I still keep them around today. I don’t think I currently own a floppy disk drive. Why do I still keep them? Perhaps it’s for sentimental value. Perhaps it’s out of nostalgia. Perhaps it’s because I wouldn’t know where I would get floppy disks if I ever got rid of them and later on want to get floppy disks again for some reason. Perhaps I think it would be funny if a friend ever tells me, “wow, those would make awesome coasters,” but I would never mistreat such an important item of technological history.
The two fast food establishments that I remember going to the most was McDonald’s and Burger King. During the 1990s, the Big Mac and the Whopper were only $0.99, so for around $10, you can comfortably feed a family of six. I remember wanting the Happy Meal toys, but financially it didn’t make sense as a family living on a tight budget, so I only got the Big Mac. Same story with the Whopper. I was still satisfied and content with that because I like food!:)
The thing that I do remember a lot is the activity newsletters that the restaurants had, especially Burger King in addition to giving out their paper “crown” (which I think they still offer in their restaurants today). I have a couple McDonald’s examples here, but the one that I remember the most because it was within access inside the restaurant was the “Burger King Kids Club” newsletter.
These were newsletters that features Burger King’s in-house characters, the Burger King Kids Club Kids. Each newsletter has various activities like mazes and crafts like “door knob hang signs” and would sometime feature various holidays theme/design throughout the year. It would also feature advertisement of the kids toys offered at the time.
From what I learned recently, the characters were used by the Burger King restaurants from 1989-1999 as part of their marketing strategy. In my opinion, it worked because I still remember how awesome these characters were while I was a child, browsing the newsletter activities as I enjoyed my Whopper.
Sometimes the characters would be on the cover page, other times a certain franchise that was tied with a Burger King promotional at the time would grace the cover, but the Burger King Kids Club characters would be featured on the inside pages.
The newsletters I have pictured in this blog post are just a few examples of what the newsletter cover page looks like. Although not a complete collection, I am glad that I kept these around and was able to share images of it here.
I appreciate all the Burger King Kids Club characters, but if there was one character that I just thought was the “coolest”, that has to be Kid Vid. With his trendy sideways red baseball hat, to his cool visor goggle glasses, to the finger-less gloves, extreme sport knee pads, and athletic sneakers, I thought he was the perfect example of what it was to look “cool” in the 1990s.
By around the year 2000 or so, the Burger King Kids Club was phased out and in such quiet manner that I hadn’t noticed for many years. I hadn’t really notice and looked into it until quite recently. An example of this can be seen the “Batman Beyond” newsletter pictured just above, on the right. Nowhere in this newsletter did I see any images or mentioning of the Burger King Kids Club characters. As far as I can tell (I hadn’t research it thoroughly yet), the characters were retired from use in Burger King’s marketing campaign sometime after 2000.
Maybe in today’s world, with all the handheld devices, mobile games, and social media that kids younger and younger are getting easy access to, things like activity newsletter and stickers just isn’t enough to interest them and therefore it may not be worthwhile for a company like Burger King to put an effort in providing to their customers. But I will can always appreciate the time when activity newsletter like these were more than enough to bring a “fun-factor” to kids while they were enjoying a family meal together inside their restaurants.
The clothing brand “Champion” in recent years have had a strong following. It’s premier brand that is popular with the young consumers, from teenagers to twenty-somethings. From backpacks to hoodies, from t-shirts to even shoes, Champion is popular brand among the “popular” people.
But some years back, Champion was a mostly forgotten brand, except maybe if you bought clothes that branded with the college’s name, logo, and designs from your local college and university. The only place I found Champion products at the time since I’m a fan of the brand (I’ll get into that in a bit) was at my local Sears which had the t-shirts, the hoodies, and the workout pants/shorts or if I went to the nearby Payless Shoe Source which had Champion shoes.
But back in the 1990s, during a time when basketball was my absolute favorite sport (and favorite thing in general) and it was an exciting time to be an NBA fan, Champion was the official jersey supplier of NBA and official manufacturer of NBA jerseys marketed towards fans. Two main category of fan NBA jerseys were replica (the design were silkscreen) and authentic (the design were embroidered and stitched). Most people I went to school with, and including myself, had the replica as it was the most affordable.
Although the replicas are priced at a reasonable $40, that was still a lot of money for a humble teenager living a modest lifestyle. So around this time, my family and I discovered a store called Ross. Ross may have been brought up in school if someone was trying to make fun of you as being cheap, but I was a fan of Ross. Name brand goods at low prices; looking back now, why does anyone ever cared what some “cool” kid that doesn’t even have a job yet talk negatively about Ross.
It was at a Ross that I picked up my very first basketball jersey, a Charles Barkley Phoenix Suns Size 44 made by Champion. It costed me just $10 for a brand new jersey. I was delighted! Our school has a uniform dress code, but on free dress days when we are allowed to freely wear our clothing of choice, I definitely wore this jersey on at least a few occasions. During those times, when a player had just traded teams, their old jersey is considered obsolete. Charles Barkley had gone to the Houston Rockets at the time and so the Phoenix Suns jersey is considered outdated. But I didn’t care, I still really liked my basketball jersey.
Another jersey that I found also at a Ross for $10 was a Champion jersey was a Gary Payton 1996 Dream Team USA Basketball jersey, a replica version of the one worn in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia. I really liked this jersey as well; the colors and the graphic designs just scream 1990s awesome that I now look at it.
Both of these jerseys were also made in USA, as can be seen by the rectangular tag on the lower left of the jersey (lower right if you are looking at the front of the jersey).
Sometime later, not sure when…maybe around the 2000s, the license to produce NBA jersey had been given to another brand. I’m not sure what brand or brands that may be today as I’m not too knowledgeable in this aspect. Champion, from what I can tell, focused and got by in business through producing college alumni clothing for college campuses’ stores, and like the previous mentioned product placement in Sears and Payless.
Nowadays, Champion is one of the brands that the cool people wear. I remember walking through a Macy’s and there were a bunch of awesome looking Champion hoodies and shirts. Their shoes are decently popular as well. My favorite walking shoes right now is a pair of “ninety-three eighteen” models as they are quite comfortable, and they were on sale! As for my two Champion jerseys, I’m glad that I held on to them and that the 1990s was the “baggy” clothes era, as those baggy jerseys from my early teenage years fits “just-right” if I were to put them on today.
A Starbucks Snow Globe of the first Starbucks store, 1999 Edition that I found a few years ago (Maybe 2016?). I paid that sticker price (think also plus tax).
Growing up, I lived a very humbling life style. More often than not, we didn’t have things that we wanted, but we always had the things that we needed like food, clothes(although not trendy), and shelter. For that I am grateful and believe the way I grew up help shaped the person I am today. I learned to appreciate the things that I did have in my life and to not take things for granted. Also, the importance of a dollar and the need to save as oppose to spending without given it much thought or consideration first.
Funny enough, I didn’t grow up going to thrift stores. My guess is that since we got most things we needed from low price places like going the Swap Meet on most weekends and shopping at places like Pic’N’Save (now known as BigLots!) and Wal-Mart, we probably never considered or even look into thrift stores other than maybe a few rare occasions.
Fast forward to about my mid-20s. It’s 2013 or 2014 or around that time. I had just gotten a full-time job for a while now with a decent wage and full benefits (this was a huge deal after navigating the world first as a poor college student and then as a college graduate, post-2008 financial crisis working one, and sometimes even two, part-time jobs that only paid minimum wage; no real set work schedule and benefits was not offered to most part-time employees like myself). So with my living standards having received a mild( but much appreciated) upgrade, I had a little extra disposable income I can enjoy and go on an adventure with.
Video games, up to this point, was give or take a thing of the past for me. We grew up with the NES and had just the one game that it came with, Super Mario Bros. Most kids we went to school with had either the then-current Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis, then later the Nintendo 64 or Sony PlayStation.
My household lived a very humbling lifestyle when it came to video games. My very own game system would come in the form of a preowned Sega Dreamcast, which I bought with my own money after getting a job in the school’s cafeteria when I was a Sophomore in high school. Although I did had fun playing the Dreamcast, I also felt that I was “too old” for video games by then as I saw that “elementary” and “middle” school years would have been the better time to enjoy things like video games.
When you’re a sophomore in high school, you had other things to worry about. For me, I was more focused about my grades, how I’m going to get accepted in a college, how I’m going to pay for college, how I’m going to graduate high school, what various awards are being offered by my high school and what classes/grades/score/credits do I need to get said award so I don’t feel left out like I did when I graduated middle school. Also my goal and dream was saving enough money to buy my first car, which was why I was so happy to get the cafeteria job in the first place.
So throughout the remainder of my high school and most of my college years, video games had been present, but it was in the background setting. It wasn’t really the main focus of my attention. People that I knew and hung out with on campus may have been very into video games. They may have been playing their PlayStation Portable or Nintendo Dual Screen handheld game console or talking about how much fun the new Need For Speed Underground for the PS2 was while we hung out at the Pool Hall area at the University campus.
I may have bought my GameCube while I was in college, but it was a rare occasion that I played it. Video games was something I experience at this point in my life from a more “second-hand/third person” perspective because it was one of the focus in the lives of the people I knew in college. It wasn’t a focus in my life as I was busy with classes and going to the University’s career center regularly preparing my resumes and applying for jobs.
Getting back to me having a full-time job with medical and dental benefits and having a little extra disposable income. The previous years after having graduated college had been a struggle. Things had not panned out the way I had hoped, despite my best efforts.
Thrift stores have been something most people shop out of necessity because it’s a way to buy things that you needed, but would not be able to afford otherwise.
So there I was, and I guess you can called it nostalgia, longing for things that sparked my interest or brought me joy from my younger years. One of those things was video games. I’ve always wanted a Super Nintendo and never had a chance to own one. So I thought maybe I can go browsing at thrift stores to see if they have one or at least the games as I could always buy a “clone” console. This was around a time when I didn’t know “retro gaming” was a thing and before people are trying to get top dollar any thing and everything considered “retro”.
I believe in the just that year or the year that followed, I’ve walked into thrift stores more times (and so many times that I’ve lost count) in the single year than I ever had in all my other years of existence combined. To me, it was like going on a treasure hunt adventure. I just never knew what I may find that day I walk in through those doors to browse.
My main attention was of course looking through the electronic/household items for video games consoles and video game disks or cartridges.
Sometimes you walk in and walk out empty handed, but sometimes you walk out with your new-found treasures and sense of achievement and accomplishment as your walk out to your car and seek the next thrift store to visit.
What things have I found when I did find anything all that was of my interest? Well, I found various video games. Mostly PS2 games since I think around that time people were getting rid of their PS2 library. They were still awesome to me, so of course I was more than happy to buy these games at a low price.
One time at a Goodwill I found not one, but two PS2 consoles complete with at least a controller and power plug. One of them had two controllers, controller extension cables, a memory card, and, as I would later found out after having gotten home, a Tomb Raider game of some sort. All for $15! I’m not sure how much PS2 are going for at online auction these days for, but just console alone is probably more than $15. I had just bought the one console as oppose to buying both PS2 consoles that I found that day because although I was super stoked, I wasn’t greedy. I don’t have a whole lot of space at home and also thought, eh, maybe someone else will appreciate the other $15 PS2 bundle.
One of my best days thrift shopping was on a different trip to the thrift store. I had just found a treasure of Dreamcast items. I found a zip lock bag that had Dreamcast controllers (if I remember correctly there was three; I ended up giving one to a friend that had found a Dreamcast console that had no controller) along with various Ethernet cables of some sort. Not sure if they were CAT-3 or CAT-5, but it was part of the package. To top it all off, I also found a copy of Shenmue for the Dreamcast complete with all the disc and the case in the same store. I think the game had a sticker priced at $5.99. I think there was some sort of sale (10% or 25% percent off). So I think I paid less than $12 for that zip lock bag of Dreamcast controllers and less than $5.99 for the Shenmue game. I think each Dreamcast controller and the Shenmue game alone goes for more today than what I paid for everything I found that day.
Oh, and it’s not over yet. There I am, feeling like a winner after having found these Dreamcast items and thought, “you know, let’s hit up another thrift store!” So I drove up to another thrift store that was just a few miles up on a nice sunny day (might have been a Saturday). I walked into a Goodwill and browsed around a little. I walked past people looking at the selection of clothes and headed towards the electronic/household appliance/misc. area. There’s a few shelves aisles, so I started from the first to my left.
Not long after entering the aisle, something caught my eye. “Is that a Nintendo Entertainment System? Wait? It’s on top of something? Another NES? Not one, but two?” I had just came upon what I considered to be a highlight in “retro-gaming” and my “thrifting adventures”. I found two NES consoles, stacked on top of one another, both priced at $10. I hadn’t seen one of these since the one my family use to have as I was a child growing up.
It didn’t came with anything else from what I remembered (no power cable, no RF adapter video cable, no controllers) and I wasn’t sure it even still worked. Well, non-working/as-is example of these were going for at least $20 on eBay and that’s before factoring the price of shipping. So at $10 a piece, I’ll take my chances and grabbed both consoles, one in each hand, and marched towards the register (at least one of them is bound to work). I ended up getting both to work and did offer one to a family member that appreciate it.
The stuff I’ve found I still have most of it. A few items I had given away to someone I knew that I know would appreciate the kind gesture. I’ve found things that were non-video game related like the Starbucks snow globe I have pictured in this post. I found it a few years back and I bought it without knowing too much about it’s value and how much it was worth. I just knew that I saw it, I liked the way it looked, I made sure it wasn’t broken and that the “music” gear level still worked, and I bought it. I thought it was a nice holiday decor piece.
As the sticker in the picture illustrates, it was $4.99 and that’s what I’ve paid for it, plus maybe tax too. A quick search of “Starbucks snow globe 1999” on eBay would yield some examples asking for substantially more.
I hope people find at least something that “sparks joy” in their life. For me, it was browsing thrift store and looking for things that I found interesting. Maybe in a thrift store, you will find something too.
I think this was a Disneyland theme park map that I saved from my visit back in 2011. I came upon it and realized it had a very “90s” feel with the Kodak single use camera.
So while looking for content to add to my WordPress blog page, I came upon this map of Disneyland from my visit in 2011. I saw that there was a Kodak advertisement/endorsement and the style of the ad just took me back to growing up in the 1990s; this was when cameras still used 35mm film and Kodak was the king of “capturing moments.”
I remember families taking pictures while visiting places like theme parks and the beach on their Canon cameras which just had a fresh new insert of Kodak 35mm that came in a little yellow package, similar in size to some current day printer refill ink cartridges, which also had the film roll inside little plastic cylinder canisters. When the film where all used up, you take it to the local 1 day photo printing shop, which printed the pictures on quality Kodak photo paper.
Kodak film, especially the single use camera, holds a special place in my life. I remember one of the item gift baskets I had received for graduation high school from the nice lunch ladies I worked with at the school’s cafeteria was a single use camera. I got to take some pictures of my last week of high school; any remainder of the film I had left I took pictures of a “Drift Day” event I had attended with a couple coworkers back in 2004.
As we all probably know, photos nowadays are taken in a digital format and in a fast-paced world of social media and “insta-wha-cha-mah-call-it”, digital is the way to go.
But I will never forget how much of an importance the 35mm film, like the ones from (Kodak, Polaroid, and Fujifilm) played an important role in my life as I was growing up.
As for Kodak, I think they’re still around today. How are they doing? I haven’t looked into it, but have you ever watched the credits of the end of a movie? Maybe I’m the odd few that actually sits through an ending credit. At least for some of the movies I can remember, those movies were shot of Kodak Motion Picture film. If you ask me, I’m guessing they’re doing not too bad.
Next time you have a trip, an adventure, a party, a vacation, or any other significant events going on in your life, maybe ask yourself just for the silliness of it: “Is this worthy of being called a ‘Kodak Moment’?” I know I probably will 🙂
Ah, the cassette tape. Nothing quite says 1980s like cassette tapes, although to be fair I think this format was commercially available since the 70s and was used well into the late 90s.
Sure, CDs was around and had been since ’82, but for most folks growing up in the 80s and much of the 90s, either the CD was too expensive compared to cassette tapes or the device to play CD (the CD player) was still too expensive. So, for quite a number of years, cassettes was the most popular format for music.
Growing up in the 90s, for what I can remember, most people that I knew who owned a portable music player, if they can even afford to get one at all, was in the form of a cassette-radio combo running on two AA batteries. Owning a CD player was a next level kind of thing. So, of course, with many young people still only having access to a cassette player, there was a demand for this format.
And forget about streaming or downloading music; this was a time where the internet was still very new and not common in most household. The only way to hear new music was either on the radio or if you went to the nearby music record store and hope they have a copy of your new favorite single, artist, or band on cassette. If you were really broke and have nothing else better to do on a Saturday afternoon, you get a blank cassette tape and get ready to press “Record” when that song you really like come on the radio (if they even play it at all while you’re sitting by that boombox of yours).
By around the 2000, CD format was finally gaining more of the market as the go-to format for music album. And CD Players were now more affordable to a wider audience. With Personal Computers being more obtainable to most people too, the new cool thing was also having a CD Burner. So now, instead of making a mix tape your crush, you can now make a CD mix; I can’t speak from experience…mostly because I didn’t have a personal computer until I was near graduating from high school.
I remember when I got my first car back in 2003, it had a cassette player deck and I was looking forward to replacing it with a more contemporary CD deck. If it played MP3 format on a CD, even better. I don’t remember which one I got, I just remember it was a Sony Xploid deck of some sort. I was finally current with the times, with a new CD player deck in my car.
Now, looking back many years later, I kind of miss that cassette deck and I am grateful that what I have in the car I have now is a factory deck with both CD and cassette. I actually use my cassette deck quite often nowadays since I play music off my phone utilizing a 3.5mm headphone jack to cassette adapter. That’s the only way to do it if you don’t have bluetooth in your car. These cassette adapter things had been around since the portable CD Player days; I’ve never thought that I would use these cassette adapters again, but am glad it’s around.
Is cassettes making a comeback, like the way vinyl record has in recent years? Depending on who you ask or talk to, some may say it already has. It was popularized in a popular comic-based movie a few years back and there is a company that still manufactures cassette tapes. For some, just like vinyl, cassette provides an aesthetic tone or sound that just can’t be replicated in digital format. The physical design of what makes it a cassette tape is quite retro-cool in itself.
These two examples here is from when I was visiting Disneyland with a family member. I think this was back in 2011. What a great time we had that day!
I don’t travel or go to “destination-locations” much, but when I do, one of things that I enjoy most when I visit somewhere, and is quite common at various tourism and attractions spots like theme parks, is the Penny Press machines.
What is the penny press machine? Well, it’s a machine that will accept a U.S. Penny and two U.S. $0.25 quarters (or maybe four quarters depending on where you are at); you insert it into the designated slot in the machine and you then crank the handle as you watch the gears rotate and the penny press surface “press” against the penny, stretching and imprinting the design to turn it into a copper and zinc souvenir work of art!
This penny press is from the M&M World store on “the Strip” from my first visit to beautiful Las Vegas in Summer 2012. This was a neat store that had all things M&M’s related. Despite not being much of a casino games type of person, I had a wonderful time that weekend in Vegas. I was even more surprised that there was a “Ross Store (Dress For Less)” on the Las Vegas Strip. Good times!
Penny Press machines are quite an awesome thing. It’s an interactive process where you have an actual participation in helping shape and create the souvenir piece right in front of you. Sure, you can always buy merchandise at the gift shops of the tourist places or theme parks you’re visiting and I’m all for it if you can financially afford and believe it will bring joy, and not clutter, to your life (I know I bought a few things from the theme parks’ gift shops that I’m definitely glad I purchased…after as much financial consideration as I possibly can without it being overwhelming while I’m at the theme park and whether it was going to bring joy to myself or someone I was buying it for).
Penny Press machines, on the other hand, are quite inexpensive and allow you to at least create a little souvenir piece that you can take home with you. It takes up very little space, so little that you may have to place it in a frame or sleeve of some sort (theme parks sells coin press album that you can collect your coin presses in, sort of like a photo album or a scrap book, but with penny press pieces). And it’s not going to break the bank or your wallet as you may already have the loose change coins required in your pocket or purse.
These are penny press pieces from my visit to Universal Studios Hollywood for the first time back in Summer 2019. It has The Simpsons designs. How an animated series owned by Fox Entertainment that now has Disney as a parent company, but still has a theme park ride owned by Universal Studios is going to work out business-wise, I do not know. I just know that these penny press machine pieces are awesome and I’m glad I got to press these pieces. Get one while you can if you’re in the area.
I don’t know if any penny press pieces are of any great monetary value, but they do have added value on your initial $0.51 (or $1.01 in some instance if I recall correctly). Just a browse on eBay would yield prices that are at least a few dollars on top of what you would have spent to make these pieces.
Sometimes, penny press machines get retired or otherwise pulled out of use at theme parks and tourist attraction destinations. I suppose the pieces made with these machines can then be considered “discontinued” and may have a “rare item” appeal and could bring a higher value. But I’m no expert. I’m just a person that really like penny press machines and I highly doubt any of the penny press pieces I’ve made will make me wealthy. Sure, if it brings enough for a down payment for a house, I’m all for it. But until then, I will continue to appreciate it for what it is: awesome souvenir pieces made using interesting manual gear driven machines during a wonderful visit.
Before movies and TV shows streaming service, before the internet was a commodity in many families’ household, before Blu-Ray or even DVD format existed for movies, there was the video tape VHS format.
For much of the 80s and 90s, VHS was the main format for movies and the “VCR” was what you needed to play VHS movies and TV Shows in your home and classrooms. How many of you remember or had those “CRT Television and VCR” carts that the teachers in elementary school would share when it came to using it for a classroom lesson or a classroom potluck party? Some of us had to move our chair and seating location just to get a decent view of the screen. Thank goodness the digital projector came around to many classrooms and probably what’s most common today. But still, the “TV and VCR on a cart” was quite an awesome experience to have in the classroom.
We did have a VCR projector in the auditorium when my elementary school did a “good citizen” movie once a month; this is where the school would show a movie to kids that didn’t get in any trouble during that month as a reward. Definitely one of the highlights of my otherwise humble childhood. That was as close to a “movie theater” experience as I got until I was 20! Even ended up working at a movie theater for 2.5 years, but I’m getting off-topic here.
When it came to video rentals, companies like “Blockbuster Video” and “Hollywood Video” was the go-to spots for renting home movies and even video games. Many mom-and-pop places were also setup in a similar fashion. The experience of walking into a rental store and browsing what VHS movies was available and talking to the employees there for assistance or recommendation as far as what movie selection to consider.
The example I have above is of the TV Show anime ( or movie?) Mobile Suit Gundam Wing. It was my first introduction to the Gundam series after seeing it on “Toonami” on Cartoon Network around 1999 or 2000. The style and format was pretty much the norm for most movies: a black VHS tape with a white sticker label, enclosed inside a card-stock paper sleeve. Blank VHS were also available with a similar package, although I remember brands like Kodak has their signature bright #2 pencil yellow as the dominant color in the sleeve. These record-able VHS were used in camcorders for recording events such as family vacation, wedding videos, or graduations, or making copies of such type of videos to share with your family and friends. This was how recorded events were shared with people before social media and YouTube was a thing.
VHS were also available in plastic clam shells; if you ever encountered a Sega Genesis cartridge case, pretty much that same size and shape as it was influenced by VHS tape case format. It’s kind of like if you buy a physical copy of a video game for PS4 or Xbox One today. The size and shape is inspired by the Blu-Ray disc case format.
The one that I remember very well was the white clam shell that many VHS Disney home video movies came out the 1990s. Wish I had an example to show here, but I think many of these example can be found at the local thrift store today, maybe for just $1 if you desire to buy one.
VHS was a format that beat out the Beta tape format in the 80s, but by around the year 2000, DVD was slowing gaining popularity. The digital picture quality was in the range of at least same to much better compared to VHS. It was easier to use and navigate the DVD menu to get to where you want to start viewing the movie as oppose to randomly forwarding or rewinding the VHS tape and hoping you get to where you left off in the movie. DVD took up less physical shelf space compared to VHS and it can hold more data; what’s this means is that you can have TV Shows available in seasons or even an entire series in a convenient small physical format. VHS tapes can hold maybe three episodes if you’re lucky; to own a whole season or even a complete series of a TV Show or movie series would require a huge shelf space.
VHS is a media video format that is pretty much in the left in the past, but for many years it was the way many people and their families enjoyed entertainment viewing together that was outside the movie theater (or if there wasn’t a special movie presentation on TV). It was format that many of our favorite movies came. It was during a time when families gathered together in the living room, shared some popcorn, and spent time together. It was how special moments in people’s lives was recorded. That family vacation. That wedding day. Baby’s first steps. Kids soccer or basketball game.
Will VHS make a comeback like vinyl records? I kind of doubt it, but hey, who knows? Who would have thought that stores like Target and Walmart would phase out CDs to make room for Vinyls Records that are being manufactured today!
I unfortunately do not own a VCR to view the VHS tape I have pictured above, but maybe one of these days I encounter a TV/VCR combo in a thrift store for a low price and have space for one. Even if I don’t, it still kind of cool to own this VHS tape as it’s a souvenir of one of my favorite decades, the 90s. 🙂
During my childhood in the 1990s, one national holiday activity that I didn’t get to participate in for a while was “Trick-Or-Treating”. Simply put, we didn’t live in a neighborhood that was deemed “safe” for such activity like going to a bunch of strangers’ homes and asking for free candy.
Fortunately, we learned that the somewhat-nearby Lakewood Mall in beautiful Lakewood, CA provided a safe and well-lit environment for families to go Trick-Or-Treating. So it was there that we had our first Trick-Or-Treating experience as we went around to each participating stores, one after the other, and got our free candies or other treat item like stickers and such. I think my costume was a simple “Jason” mask that we bought at the nearby mom-and-pop discount store. If I remember correctly, it glowed in the dark, which was a big deal to me at the time as I thought it was quite awesome!
Journeys, the shoe store company that is quite a staple at many shopping malls around the country, was one of those participating businesses. What they gave out is what I have pictured above; these cool promotional “hi-five” stickers.
They had many designs and the ones I have illustrated here is just a small example of the styles they gave out. I’m not sure what I did with the others I had gotten, but I’m sure glad that I kept these around as I still think they’re still awesome.
I do not know if they still have these stickers available or if Lakewood Mall still provides the “Trick-Or-Treating” event in their mall, but I sure do hope so (provided the current pandemic is over with and everything will be deemed safe again). I will never forget how much of an importance and meaningful these seemingly little things meant to us growing up.
