What we (UMA'ers) grew up on??? Remembering the fun.

Started by marsattacks666, July 23, 2011, 04:39:04 PM

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Hepcat

Quote from: Zackuth on January 18, 2014, 08:03:11 PMHe was working there when the Bond movie From Russia With Love came out.  The breifcase from the film, complete with coins and knife, came out as a toy for children.  My dad said "those damn knives were all over the place!"

Toy briefcase? Which one?





???
Collecting! It's what I do!

Rex fury

Amazing Spider-Man 25 introduced me to pop culture in the early 60's and I've been hooked ever since! Somehow my parents allowed me to read Creepy and Eerie and those magazines brought me into the world of monsters. The first UMA monster movies I saw were the short 8mm films you could order from the back of those Warren magazines. I still have a Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notredame loop along with my favorite, Creature From the Black Lagoon. The first  monster movie I saw in a theater was The Vulture. I remember it scared the hell out of me! Later the Kiro Seven Vampire aired on television  in the Seattle area and I was able to see full versions of most of the Universal movies (thanks count!)
I long ago replaced my first copy of ASM 25 with one in nice condition. However I still have that original book. The splash page was at some point replaced with a splash from Marvel Tales and I wrote "my frist Marvel comic", with the incorrect spelling, on the cover. Strange as this may sound, I told my kids to bury me with that comic when my time comes.
RF

marsattacks666

Quote from: Rex fury on January 25, 2019, 04:53:25 PM
Amazing Spider-Man 25 introduced me to pop culture in the early 60's and I've been hooked ever since! Somehow my parents allowed me to read Creepy and Eerie and those magazines brought me into the world of monsters. The first UMA monster movies I saw were the short 8mm films you could order from the back of those Warren magazines. I still have a Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notredame loop along with my favorite, Creature From the Black Lagoon. The first  monster movie I saw in a theater was The Vulture. I remember it scared the hell out of me! Later the Kiro Seven Vampire aired on television  in the Seattle area and I was able to see full versions of most of the Universal movies (thanks count!)
I long ago replaced my first copy of ASM 25 with one in nice condition. However I still have that original book. The splash page was at some point replaced with a splash from Marvel Tales and I wrote "my frist Marvel comic", with the incorrect spelling, on the cover. Strange as this may sound, I told my kids to bury me with that comic when my time comes.
RF

Awesome! :)
    "They come from the bowels of hell; a transformed race of walking dead. Zombies, guided by a master plan for complete domination of the Earth."

Zackuth

"Listen to them; the children of the night.  What music they make!"  Dracula

Hepcat

#109
I don't remember precisely where and when I encountered my first pinball machine but it must have been over sixty years ago and I've loved them ever since.

As a youngster in the early sixties I was usually required to attend supplemental Lithuanian language classes Saturdays between 4:00 and 5:30 PM during the school year. These classes were in the basement of St. Peter's elementary school just north of downtown London on Richmond Street by the cathedral. Dreadfully inconvenient to be sure.

There was a silver lining though. I'd be given $0.50 or so to go see a movie downtown prior to classes plus bus fare there and back. But St. Peter's was only about a mile and a half away from where we lived in Old South London. So I could walk there anyway. The bus fare I could then spend otherwise!

Sometimes I would indeed take in a movie. But often I'd elect to deploy my cash in other ways.

One temptation was a pinball machine at a diner that was right across from the Wishing Well Beverages bottling plant on Richmond Street which was on the southern edge of the downtown area about halfway to St. Peter's. I believe that it was this Gottlieb Sweet Hearts machine released in 1963:





http://www.youtube.com/v/nViQpsT9Kvg&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

http://www.youtube.com/v/K6TOvPaGPJY&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

But pinball machines were then banned in Canada as "illegal gambling devices" until January 1976. But when the new student recreation center at the University of Western Ontario was completed in 1971, it had five pinball machines! One of them was the Gottlieb 2001 released in 1971 which ended up becoming my own gateway machine to a lifetime of sordid pinball degeneracy.





http://www.youtube.com/v/fnn9Or6FhMo&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

Now I was never short of cash as a student and so I fed many a quarter into that machine. But it couldn't last. You see under the law it was an "illegal gaming device". Accordingly a City of London police officer appeared at the rec center after about three months, played the machines for two or three hours to satisfy himself that they were indeed illegal gaming devices which could very well corrupt students, policemen and whoever else for life, and the machines were gone for good the next day. Yes, seized they were by the fascist State!

While the draconian law was repealed a few years later, I've never forgiven the bastiches. Smash the State I say!

When pinball machines were legalized in my environs in 1976, two specific machines acted to set me on the path to permanent pinball degeneracy. These were both to be found at the York Hotel in downtown London directly across the street from the CNR passenger train station. The first was the Wizard released by Bally in 1975:





A very well designed game, it sold over 10,000 units which smashed Bally's previous production record of 5254 for a pinball machine. I had the game completely mastered and built up a total of nineteen free games on a single quarter one afternoon before I succumbed to fatigue.

The other game was in the other room by the old fashioned greasy spoon lunch counter attached to the York Hotel. (How I miss those greasy spoons now!) It was the Royal Flush machine which Gottlieb released in 1976:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF5uccdQzQ#

I had my best run ever on this machine one afternoon. I'd hit everything and I had the machine lit up like a Xmas tree. I was already up to five or so free games but I wasn't even targeting the free game hole. My timing was so good that I was hitting the silver ball hard enough to propel/bounce it right off the glass and I just wanted to keep hitting. And then believe it or not but a hippie watching me with astonishment leaned on the machine so hard that he tilted it thus ending my best run of all time. I wanted to belt him!

So no, I've never needed drugs or alcohol. Pinball, model kits, comic mags, gum cards and other baby boomer kids' stuff, muscle cars, and rock music and stereo equipment were all it took to set me on the path to ruin. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

;)
Collecting! It's what I do!

marsattacks666

Quote from: Hepcat on August 13, 2019, 02:32:49 PM
I don't remember precisely where and when I encountered my first pinball machine but it must have been over sixty years ago and I've loved them ever since.

As a youngster in the early sixties I was usually required to attend supplemental Lithuanian language classes Saturdays between 4:00 and 5:30 PM during the school year. These classes were in the basement of St. Peter's elementary school just north of downtown London on Richmond Street by the cathedral. Dreadfully inconvenient to be sure.

There was a silver lining though. I'd be given $0.50 or so to go see a movie downtown prior to classes plus bus fare there and back. But St. Peter's was only about a mile and a half away from where we lived in Old South London. So I could walk there anyway. The bus fare I could then spend otherwise!

Sometimes I would indeed take in a movie. But often I'd elect to deploy my cash in other ways.

One temptation was a pinball machine at a diner that was right across from the Wishing Well Beverages bottling plant on Richmond Street which was on the southern edge of the downtown area about halfway to St. Peter's. I believe that it was this Gottlieb Sweet Hearts machine released in 1963:





http://www.youtube.com/v/nViQpsT9Kvg&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

http://www.youtube.com/v/K6TOvPaGPJY&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

But pinball machines were then banned in the Province of Ontario (or all of Canada?) shortly thereafter until about 1975(?). But when the new student recreation center at the University of Western Ontario was completed in 1971, it had five pinball machines! One of them was the Gottlieb 2001 released in 1971 which ended up becoming my own gateway machine to a lifetime of sordid pinball degeneracy.





http://www.youtube.com/v/fnn9Or6FhMo&version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata

Now I was never short of cash as a student and so I fed many a quarter into that machine. But it couldn't last. You see under the law it was an "illegal gaming device". Accordingly a City of London police officer appeared at the rec center after about three months, played the machines for two or three hours to satisfy himself that they were indeed illegal gaming devices which could very well corrupt students, policemen and whoever else for life, and the machines were gone for good the next day. Yes, seized they were by the fascist State!

While the draconian law was repealed a few years later, I've never forgiven the bastiches. Smash the State I say!

When pinball machines were legalized in my environs in 1975 or so, two specific machines acted to set me on the path to permanent pinball degeneracy. These were both to be found at the York Hotel in downtown London directly across the street from the CNR passenger train station. The first was the Wizard released by Bally in 1975:





A very well designed game, it sold over 10,000 units which smashed Bally's previous production record of 5254 for a pinball machine. I had the game completely mastered and built up a total of nineteen free games on a single quarter one afternoon before I succumbed to fatigue.

The other game was in the other room by the old fashioned greasy spoon lunch counter attached to the York Hotel. (How I miss those greasy spoons now!) It was the Royal Flush machine which Gottlieb released in 1976:







http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SF5uccdQzQ#

I had my best run ever on this machine one afternoon. I'd hit everything and I had the machine lit up like a Xmas tree. I was already up to five or so free games but I wasn't even targeting the free game hole. My timing was so good that I was hitting the silver ball hard enough to propel/bounce it right off the glass and I just wanted to keep hitting. And then believe it or not but a hippie watching me with astonishment leaned on the machine so hard that he tilted it thus ending my best run of all time. I wanted to belt him!

So no, I've never needed drugs or alcohol. Pinball, model kits, comic mags, gum cards and other baby boomer kids' stuff, muscle cars, and rock music and stereo equipment were all it took to set me on the path to ruin. I don't know whether I should laugh or cry.

;)

😀
    "They come from the bowels of hell; a transformed race of walking dead. Zombies, guided by a master plan for complete domination of the Earth."