Things you can't believe used to be allowed/exist - Page 17 - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

zukes · 01-12-2017, 09:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

McHappy Day at school - where you watched a film at lunch (some live action cruddy Disney movie starring Dean Jones) while eating McDonalds hamburgers. I can't imagine that still goes on.
Or Texas Doughnut day.
We also had a "Church's Fried Chicken" day - where they gave us a little Styrofoam airplane. My grade 3 class collectively decided it would be HILARIOUS if when our 70 year old teacher came into the room - we jump from behind our desks and throw our planes at her. How could that not be funny? Well we did it, and she just quietly went over to her desk and started crying. Ugh.

Remarkably with all the crazy #### we were allowed to do, the one thing that was banned from our school was marbles.

The "heavy weight" championship of marble season was this guy who had a "King Kong Steelie" - which of course was nothing more than a big ball bearing but it was bad-ass. If you wanted to try and beat him for it you would hit 4 or 5 times whereas he would only have to hit you once.
So he had this thing for a long time.
Until one day someone finally beat him.
And he wouldn't give it up.
Which caused a massive fight.
Which caused letters to go home to parents outlawing marbles. I think there was even a school assembly about it.

I wonder if my mom kept my Crown Royal bag of marbles somewhere?

I totally remember that. Can't remember the kid that had it though? I just remember losing a lot of marbles to him. Pretty sure I got to 3 on him once and thinking I'd be the new marble king!

JiriHrdina · 01-12-2017, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zukes

I totally remember that. Can't remember the kid that had it though? I just remember losing a lot of marbles to him. Pretty sure I got to 3 on him once and thinking I'd be the new marble king!

I got to 3 to him once too - I worked my way up to getting a Jumbo Steely (again really just a big metal ball but whatever). But after my 3rd hit I was like half a foot from him and it was over.

The dude that had the King Kong and wouldn't give it up, if memory services, and ironically, was Mark Steel.
The dude that beat him was a guy named Doug. Can't remember the last name.

JiriHrdina · 01-12-2017, 10:08 PM

Also Mark Steel often smelled like peanut butter.

zukes · 01-12-2017, 10:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

Also Mark Steel often smelled like peanut butter.

Isn't that the kid who got his head run over in his driveway? He lived right by the school. I remember him coming back and half his head was shaved and he had an enormous number of stitches.

JiriHrdina · 01-12-2017, 10:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zukes

Isn't that the kid who got his head run over in his driveway? He lived right by the school. I remember him coming back and half his head was shaved and he had an enormous number of stitches.

yeah that was him. I forgot about that but yes.

CaptainCrunch · 01-12-2017, 10:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raekwon

This is the exact one I had, made a radio. Instructions said touch the wire to the screw of an electrical outlet for better signal so I thought why the screw and not pull the plug out a bit and touch that. Since then electricity and I have never liked each other.

I had about 4 of those kits, and they were awesome for building things like Radios and channel scanners. I remember going to radio shake and buying electronic eyes that I mounted in my bed room door that made a really obnoxious anti-intrusion device.

I remember cross wiring so many of those kits together and then attaching the wire to the screen on my window so that I could get radio signals that were bouncing off of the atmosphere from Texas.

I also remember at one time we created a light reflector with two mirrors and bought a cheap temperature sensor so we could measure how hot it got between the two mirrors when we shone a light in between.

There was no limit to those things and what they could do.

My friend had one and we wired microphones into it and since his room was line of site we basically had the ability to talk by radio during Flames games.

McG · 01-13-2017, 10:29 AM

Free Radio Shack battery cards; 1 free battery per month!

Dentoman · 01-13-2017, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

I wonder if my mom kept my Crown Royal bag of marbles somewhere?

My mother-in-law did. My wife's bag of marbles is still in the Crown Royal bag in our games closet. The kids break it out on occasion.

jeffporfirio · 01-13-2017, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I had about 4 of those kits, and they were awesome for building things like Radios and channel scanners. I remember going to radio shake and buying electronic eyes that I mounted in my bed room door that made a really obnoxious anti-intrusion device.

I remember cross wiring so many of those kits together and then attaching the wire to the screen on my window so that I could get radio signals that were bouncing off of the atmosphere from Texas.

I also remember at one time we created a light reflector with two mirrors and bought a cheap temperature sensor so we could measure how hot it got between the two mirrors when we shone a light in between.

There was no limit to those things and what they could do.

My friend had one and we wired microphones into it and since his room was line of site we basically had the ability to talk by radio during Flames games.

I'd love to get my son (14) one of these. Who makes anything similar nowadays?

CaptainCrunch · 01-13-2017, 11:22 AM

I don't know if anyone makes anything like those kits anymore. But they show up on Amazon every once in a while and they're pretty affordable.

Someone was selling the 200-1 kit for about $100.00 US.

They were a genius toy, sometimes I wish I'd kept mine, and my lego.

I just recently went over to a friends house and he's the same age as me and he has buckets of lego that he builds things with, not the kits like they have now, but just buckets. He claims they're good for his concentration and creativity, and he's built amazing things.

Wormius · 01-13-2017, 11:35 AM

If you look at the Make website there are a lot of options. Snapcircuits seems to be the most common, but not really the same as the old Radio Shack ones.

photon · 01-13-2017, 11:47 AM

Some are still made: http://www.elenco.com/product/produc...ject_labs=NTQ=

photon · 01-13-2017, 11:51 AM

These are also cool, though not cheap.
http://littlebits.cc/

CliffFletcher · 01-13-2017, 01:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wormius

If you look at the Make website there are a lot of options. Snapcircuits seems to be the most common, but not really the same as the old Radio Shack ones.

My son has snapcircuits. Both those elenco boards look awesome. Might have to look into getting one for his birthday.

jeffporfirio · 01-13-2017, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by photon

Some are still made: http://www.elenco.com/product/produc...ject_labs=NTQ=

Thanks..looking at this one for his birthday.
CAD 110 + free shipping
http://www.robotshop.com/ca/en/elenc...t-lab-kit.html

CaptainCrunch · 01-13-2017, 01:43 PM

just reading up on it that 500 to 1 lab is unbelievable. Its even got Ram and a CPU in it that can be programmed.

Its too bad its discontinued and about $500.00

afc wimbledon · 01-13-2017, 02:57 PM

I was going to post some clips of old racist British TV comedies that were hugely popular in the 70's, Love Thy Neighbour being the stand out, but after looking at the clips they are so racist I'm not even comfortable posting them.

CaptainCrunch · 01-13-2017, 03:12 PM

kind of like blazing saddles.

getbak · 01-13-2017, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

McHappy Day at school - where you watched a film at lunch (some live action cruddy Disney movie starring Dean Jones) while eating McDonalds hamburgers. I can't imagine that still goes on.

We used to have those too.

I was trying to remember which movies we saw during those. They were always the lower-level Disney films. I remember Pete's Dragon, The Aristocats, and at least one of the Love Bug movies (speaking of Dean Jones) ... and then it occurred to me that I'm pretty sure one time, they showed Song of the South.

That's definitely something they'd never do today.

ResAlien · 01-13-2017, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

I was going to post some clips of old racist British TV comedies that were hugely popular in the 70's, Love Thy Neighbour being the stand out, but after looking at the clips they are so racist I'm not even comfortable posting them.

I'd never heard of that but just watched the telephone episode. That fella makes Archie Bunker seem downright progressive. Yikes.