Back in the early 90’s there was an intense ad campaign for a new Hasbro toy. I’d see it after school on commercials during Duck Tales and Tail Spin, and later on Nickelodeon. Outside of the insane Crossfire commercials, ads for the Electronic Survivor Shot toys were my most memorable ones ever.
It was a laser tag toy and it looked fun as hell. “When you’re hit, you feel it!” Oh my gosh.
I had to have it. All year I begged
and begged my parents to get it for me. Finally Christmas arrived and it was
the centerpiece of my bounty under that plastic tree. A brand new Electronic Survivor Shot and it
was mine! There was a problem
though. The box only had one. You can’t play this game by yourself. Even if
you could shoot yourself, where’s the fun in that? Suicide is not fun, or a challenge. I had to find somebody that also had
one. My best friend Bryce didn’t get
one, and his mom Connie wasn’t too keen on getting him one either. Ok, whatever.
I just needed to fine one other person in Bonham that got one. When Christmas Break ended I asked all the
boys in my class if they had one. None.
Nobody in my class had one. Many never even heard of them. Was my class populated by a bunch of Luddites?
Perhaps almost as annoyed as me were my
parents. I had a useless toy and couldn’t
play with it. I have no idea how much it
cost, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. Especially for my family. Eventually I did to that toy what I did to my
Nintendo Zapper. I cut the cord and it
made for a cool looking colorful toy gun.
Friday nights one of the local channels aired a two
hour horror block. Syndicated anthology
shows Tales from the Darkside and Monsters aired back to back. Following those was the hour long syndicated
drama Friday the 13th the Series.
The first two shows were enjoyable, but Friday was the shit. That show was amazing. I loved that show. Such awesomeness. It was about the adventures of cousins Mickey
and Ryan as they tried to recover cursed antiques sold by their evil Uncle who
had made some kind of a deal with the Devil.
They are assisted by the brilliant Jack Marshak. It had nothing to do with the Jason movies.
It was much better than that slasher schlock. The Series was, at least to me,
smart TV.
I watched these shows in my room on an old black and
white TV about two feet from my bed.
This wasn’t cable; it was over the air TV. One of the regular commercials that aired was
for a car alarm system called viper.
This commercial was almost as insane as
Crossfire! A woman locks her car at
night and leaves. The car announces it’s
protected by Viper. Cue the no good car
thief. Oh shit! There’s a snake in the
car. If that guy doesn’t watch out, he’s
gonna get bit! It’s gonna get him! He takes off and the car remains unmolested.
There is a problem though. When the lady
returns, there is a killer snake in her car.
What good is that gonna do her? I
had it all figured out. Unlike
Electronic Survivor shot, this item was bullshit.
I had never known anybody with a car alarm. And outside of the club, I was totally ignorant about anti-theft devices. What is a car alarm? I took both these commercials literally. ESS looked awesome. For all I know it actually was. But I needed others to have it work. By
itself it was useless. Viper looked too real.
It presented a danger to the person it was supposed to protect. I was
smart enough to know you can’t trust a damn snake. Where were consumer reports on this one? The BBB?
These were examples of my very impressionable mind
being muddled by the boob tube. See my
similar quandary here. I would like to say that as I got older I got
smarter, but I doubt this is true. Ads
have gotten more sophisticated. I do
feel solace in knowing I am not the only gullible son of a bitch out there. Or
should I feel stupefied?
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| Dad, my sister, my brother and me. Guess my mom took the picture. 1991 |
If I were to pick a single song to be the soundtrack to this post it would be...
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