Back to school 1970 vs 2014

Awesome!!! I just found out that my Big Trak and trailer are still back home.
Never had $6M man, I had Big Jim
I think that Big Jim and Evel shared a “platform” – I had big Jim’s RV (plastic and vinyl panels) and my buddy had Evel’s RV which was the same thing except it was Red White and Blue. My buddy also had Evel’s Snake River rocket car and a “chopper” motorcycle.
Big Jim’s muscles could pop a band off of his arm:

3 Likes

Man! You guys and all this lunchbox talk… I’m so old when I went to school mankind hadn’t even had lunch yet let alone lunchboxes.

2 Likes

through twelve feet of snow?
uphill both ways?

2 Likes

I don’t remember…was Big Jim the one that came with the free bottle of massage oil?

Or am I mixing him up with the lumberjack?

5 Likes

Outside of Ken, I think that Big Jim could be one of the gayest toys…
Good thing that I had Evel and GI Joe to butch back up a bit. :smile:

2 Likes

4 Likes

Yeah. Hey, were you the kid who always came in late?

1 Like

To get back to the article, my departure was that we usually got my school clothes from Target rather than Sears. My wardrobe mainstay in the early 70’s were Target’s Elephant Ear (perhaps Leg) flared jeans. I recall that when they were dried on the clothes line the bottoms would be these relatively stiff flat things that would be like cardboard rubbing against each other until they finally broke in halfway through the day.

3 Likes

I’m too old to be GenX and too young to be a Boomer.

My lunchbox, which I recall getting in 2nd grade (~1969):

13 Likes

Cool…

I had an anonymous plastic no-name tupperware knock-off tub. I do remember the first kid that brought one of those “unbreakable” plastic thermoses* into school. Turns out they aren’t, but it takes a whole bunch of kids kicking it around to find out.

*Thermi? Thermopedes?

4 Likes

Yeah? Well screw you guys.

18 Likes

I’m sure I had some branded lunch boxes in the 70s but can’t remember which ones. Planet of the Apes? Battlestar Gallactica? Star Trek or Wars? Lots of other likely candidates come to mind but I just have no clear memory of toting one of them.

This bit did jog some memory though:

Put some Planter’s Cheese Balls into a baggie and close with a twist tie.

Baggie? Twist tie? Yep, turn out I do remember those. Made me look up the wiki on ziploc to realize those didnt become popular till the following decade.

2 Likes

Ask your folks? I think I had Superman or maybe Pac-Man.

The link goes to the mobile version of the site. Take the ?m=1 off the end to get to the desktop site.

Wrong decade.

Brown-bagging it today?

Easy there, Chief. I don’t see Hollow-Point Wound Care on the menu.

1 Like

Nice, but I always thought the Stretch Monster was much cooler. Sadly my mother would never let me have one. Too many stories of kids cutting them open and releasing a hideous ooze that emitted Bert Bacharach tunes.

@crenquis Thanks for bringing up fond memories of carrying this to school. My parents used it to bribe me into behaving myself at a wedding. When I hear someone my age or older gripe about how in the old days kids just did as they were told it makes me laugh. The details have changed, but the generalities haven’t.

3 Likes

Hey, I had the same lunchbox when I was a kid! I recently found one locked behind glass in a chi-chi toy store in Manhattan. Thought you should know.

1 Like

There is something very wrong with you, and I like it.

4 Likes

I stabbed my brother’s with some scissors. It bled pinkish ooze. My husband, however, claims that his sisters not only cut his open, but ate the gunk inside. At least it was probably gluten-free?

2 Likes