Disneyland memories are a joy to remember. How things have changed since this 1950s footage. The Disneyland park is barely recognisable. Disneyland 1950s. it had Fantasyland and Skyway but many parts of the park have expanded considerably since this early footage.

It was named Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955. While Walt Disney was watching kids ride a merry-go-round, he came up with an idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together. His dream lay dormant for many years until 1955 Disneyland Park was opened to the public on with 20 attractions

Our Disneyland memories include the Disney castle and main street remain as always where as the early park looks like a brightly colored carnival in comparison to its latest look. During the early days of Disneyland Walt was often focused on color, particularly in Fantasyland and on Main Street.  As with his animated films, he saw color as a key element toward affecting a guest’s emotional experience.

Disneyland memories 1956 footage

Of course many of our Disneyland memories include old and new rides. Notable rides include Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Walt Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room.

The original park which is the only theme park to be designed and built under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. In 1998, the theme park was re-branded “Disneyland Park” to distinguish it from the larger Disneyland Resort complex.

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Houseparty from Southern Television was the Loose women of the 1970′s. The Houseparty door would go and ladies would pile into the coffee morning meet up with either a new crochet pattern or news on Albert’s hernia or Aunt Phylis and her Artheritis.

It must of got viewers as it ran for well over a decade. I don’t think men were allowed on the show, it was just ladies and there crafts from my memory. Of course unless you were sick from school you never saw it.

Houseparty Clip

Other episodes of Houseparty included making cucumber sandwiches or a chilli in a big slow cooker. The women all seemed to know each other from various backgrounds. Vera got a new hoover and demonstrated that for the ladies, while Joyce and Betty told them about the new book they had borrowed from the local library.

Houseparty featured the sort of items expected to be found within the covers of a “magazine for women”, such as cooking, knitting, crafts, and general gossip. The studio was arranged so as to resemble a living room and the regular ‘guests’ rang a ‘doorbell’ when they arrived after the programme had started, often bringing items of interest with them. It may have been a rather ‘phoney’ idea but the show was popular; it only ended when Southern stopped broadcasting, though Meridian revived the show for a brief time with the daughters of some of the original cast, in 1993.

The more you think about Houseparty, the more you realise it was actually quite awful, but at the time it was enchanting to see a show presented by women for women. A wide range of topics were discussed and various housekeeping items were demonstrated.

So what happened to the ladies on Houseparty? Cherry Marshall died a few years ago, following long retirement in Frinton On Sea. Lucy Morgan died of breast cancer. Daphne Lee died in France where she had retired. Anne Ladbury occasionally appears on BBC Southern Counties Radio talking about Houseparty. She has some Betamax tapes with editions of Houseparty on. Jean Orba, was the programme organiser of Houseparty and is still around reminiscing on the 70s show.

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Over 30 years of Depeche Mode and they are still going strong. But how about these remixes from a 3 piece band. Not  Dave Gahan, Martin Gore or Andy Fletcher.

They are called the Schrader family and they are something else – I just can’t imagine how many hours rehersal they put into these 3 songs. Worth sharing this for other fans to enjoy I think. Here is there first live session -

Dicken feat. Milah & Korben: “Everything Counts”

Dicken Schrader: 80′s keyboard, xylophone, kazoo, tambourine, Coke bottle and voice.
Milah Schrader: Recorder, rattle, windchime and voice.
Korben Schrader: Toy keyboard, maraca, cheese grater and voice.
Music and lyrics by Martin L. Gore (Depeche Mode)

Dicken feat. Milah & Korben: “Strangelove”

Dicken Schrader: 80′s keyboard, xylophone, tambourine, Coke bottle, baby rattle, Ikea bucket, chocolate mix can and voice.
Milah Schrader: Recorder, Ikea bucket, chocolate mix can and voice.
Korben Schrader: Maraca, egg maraca, Fisher Price racetrack and voice.
Music and lyrics by Martin L. Gore (Depeche Mode)

Finally Dicken feat. Milah & Korben: “Shake The Disease”

Dicken Schrader: 80′s keyboard, xylophone, kazoo, tambourine, Coke bottle, beer can and voice.
Milah Schrader: Scissors and water spray.
Korben Schrader: Chocolate mix can.
Music and lyrics by Martin L. Gore (Depeche Mode)

Finally, how about this for a reunion? The band that was formed right back in 1980 is now going back to its original roots with current band member Martin L. Gore working with Vince Clarke.

Vince Clarke left the band after the release of their 1981 debut album, Speak & Spell, and was replaced by Alan Wilder (keyboards, drums) with Gore taking over songwriting. Wilder left the band in 1995 and since then Gahan, Gore, and Fletcher have continued as a trio.

After 30 years of working on their respective ongoing music projects, Vince Clarke ( Erasure / Yazoo / Depeche Mode ) and Martin L. Gore ( Depeche Mode ) come together for the first time since 1981 as VCMG to release a brand new album on Mute, preceded by a series of EPs.

Depeche Mode Discography

• Speak & Spell (1981)
• A Broken Frame (1982)
• Construction Time Again (1983)
• Some Great Reward (1984)
• Black Celebration (1986)
• Music for the Masses (1987)
• Violator (1990)
• Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993)
• Ultra (1997)
• Exciter (2001)
• Playing the Angel (2005)
• Sounds of the Universe (2009)

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Laurel and Hardy -This is your life was a very special moment as they were beginning to loose the amount of public appearances as the years caught up with them.

Early 1950s Laurel and Hardy took several months off, so they could recuperate. They then traveled to Europe and undertook a successful series of public appearances in short sketches Laurel had written: “A Spot of Trouble” (in 1952) and “Birds of a Feather” (in 1953)

In 1954 on 1st December, they made their only American television appearance, surprised by Ralph Edwards on his live NBC-TV program, This Is Your Life. Lured to the Knickerbocker Hotel as a subterfuge for a business meeting with producer Bernard Delfont, the doors opened to their suite #205, flooding the room with light and the voice of Edwards. The telecast was preserved on a kinescope and later released on home video. Partly due to the positive response from the television broadcast, the pair was renegotiating with Hal Roach Jr. for a series of color NBC Television specials to be called Laurel and Hardy’s Fabulous Fables. However, plans for the specials were shelved, as the aging comedians suffered from declining health.

Laurel and Hardy – This is your life Preserved

Thanks to television, Laurel and Hardy came back into popularity in the 1950’s, shortly before Oliver Hardy’s death in 1957. They have remained in the spotlight ever since, proving that as much as tastes in comedy may change, the sight of a skinny man and a fat man smacking each other around will always be funny.

Worth noting that Ricky Gervais puts a lot of his initial success from studying Laurel and Hardy. The main influence for Gervais was the “camera look”. Hardy said “I had to become exasperated, so I just stared right into the camera and registered my disgust” Gervais implemeted this in main of his fly on the wall mocumentry like The Office.

More Laurel and Hardy links

Laurel and Hardy (series)

This Is Your Life

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On 9.30 saturday Oct 1976 Multi-Coloured Swap Shop was born.

Multi-Coloured Swap Shop was a Saturday morning magazine programme that was screened  for 3 hours. Never had the BBC broadcast a show as long as 3 hours unless it was a sporting advent.

Swapping was often not allowed at school and Ebay wasnt even a concept, so this was in effect a eBay style show of moving on old toys and games for new. A live car boot for kids. With famous people swapping things too it was all very special in its day.

Reminiscent of the American Banana Splits show, this UK programme was a recipe of several mixtures sprinkled with cartoons and pop music and videos.

Saturday Morning Multi-Coloured Swap Shop presenters

Presented by Noel Edmonds along with Keith Chegwin or “Cheggers”, (who later went onto his own 80s show “Cheggers Plays Pop”) Maggie Philbin and John Craven for the News section.

Multi-Coloured Swap Shop was casual light hearted entertainment. Delivered 3 hours every Saturday morning  interviewing pop stars, cartoons, competitions, the unexpected and plenty of spontenaity.

The cornerstone, however, was the Swaporama element, hosted by Cheggers, who was very rarely in the studio. An outside broadcast unit would travel to different locations throughout the country where children could swap their belongings with others. This proved to be one of the most popular aspects of the show, often achieving gatherings of more than 3,000 children.

John craven had some horrific jumpers and swapped them on one swap shop broadcast.
Posh Paws the purple dinosaur (which is the words Swap Shop backwards) also featued heavily on the show.

Swap Shop finished in 1982 and was replaced bt Saturday superstore with Mike
Read. Also like Swap Shop, it was a show accessible to kids via a phone in. But it never quite had the cutting edge that Multi-Coloured Swap Shop brought to our screens in the 70s and 80s

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John Cravens Newsround is one of the first news programmes that you may ever of seen while growing up. Today we take a few minutes to find out more about John Cravens Newsround and how and why the man himself started the newsround off for younger viewers of the BBC.

From the outset, the idea of it was it should bring news to the children.

Today John Craven is known fFrom country file and journalism or eben Saturday morning Swap Shop, but he got his big break on his Newsround Show.

From the age of 11 John Craven reported on heroes from post war childhood.
John Craven was into nature and wildlife from his radio days. By 1958 he made his guest appearance on the Sunday Break. This provided teenage stardom for him instanlty and this is where he got his initial break.

In late 60s John Craven broke into local news reporting and soon into the BBC daily news programme Nationwide. Noting that children found the 9 o’clock news he decided to
help school children understand current affairs with a studio full of children the show was called Search.

How John Cravens Newsround was born

At the time BBC childrens department wanted a programme that could present
straight forward news for kids. The team needed all the news facilities to provide details for the early news slot. The name “John Cravens Newsround” came from the idea that kids had a  Paper-round so here was a newsround belonging to John, John Cravens Newsround.

The aim was for journalist as well as John to explain the news so a 9 year old could understand it. Quite a challenge for a presenter. Kids trusted him and felt safe with his warmth and authority. Newsround was shown daily at 5 oclock and explained teenage violence, issues in northern Ireland. Even capture of the Yorkshire ripper was shown as a way of making kids feel safer. Education of aids, war orphans and explaining war conflicts a tricky balance of fact with simplification.

He managed to provide breaking news sometimes. The Pope being shot was a massive scoop for the Newsround team as there were no 24 hour news channels in those days.

When on location they had a revised programme called john cravens newsround extra. Interviewing Mother Teresa were all big scoops for the newsround extra team. Reporting on Chinas giant panda in the 70s was also a memory for many Newsround viewers. That always had an amusing piece of news with it’s “and finally” where you get a man bathing in spaghetti 22nd June 1989 was the last john cravens newsround news after 17 years. It continued with a new presenter.

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Super Striker was the new and improved subbuteo for kids. If you loved football or soccer then you would love Striker and Super Striker. Though these were only 5-a-side games, not your full 11 players.

These plastic figures with long necks made them all look like Rodney Trotter on a football pitch, but they had one major advantage over Subbuteo. They could kick a ball.

“For real football action, there is only one Super Striker” was the advert and at £30 in the seventies it was half a weeks wages, which is about the same as a ticket to any premier soccer match today!

In addition Super Striker boasted diving Goalkeepers, floodlights and a soccer scoreboard. Most sets cam with just two teams one in red shirts and one in blue. so most matches were Manchester United versus Chelsea or Liverpool versus Everton.

Super Striker Game Play

The rules were pretty basic and obvious.  The Super Striker players have one moveable leg controlled by a rod and spring inside the figure which attaches to the player’s head. Place the ball in the slot in the base, and then press the head down to propel the ball. The pitch is divided into sections, with one player in each section. If the ball finishes in a section controlled by one of your players, you can move that player to the ball, and then pass or shoot. If it finishes in the penalty area, the goalkeeper throws it back into play. It’s that simple. The goal is slightly bigger than a standard Subbuteo goal, and the ball is much smaller – it is actually in scale with the players. The team that scores the most goals in a designated time win. Or the first one to 5 goals.

There was also a World Cup edition for the 1974 tournament.. Super Striker soccer game was released after the initial Parker game called Striker. The tag lines were “Football with a kick” and Players actually kick the ball” .

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Just Dennis? Well It seems that Dennis is the name to have in the 60′s or 70′s especially if you were the type who caused trouble and mischief.

Yes while kids in the UK enjoy “Dennis the Menace” as a curly black haired menace causing havoc with police in the UK neighbourhood along with his dog Gnasher, the USA “Dennis the Menace” was younger, slightly more innocent and caused great upset to his neighbour Mr Wilson, oh yes he had blonde hair too. For UK readers not to miss out and so as to avoid confusion with Beano Comics Dennis, “Dennis the Pickle” or “Just Dennis” became the marketed name of the Dennis Mitchell. This USA comic strip was drawn by Hank Ketcham. His Dennis was always playing havoc in the Kansas area of Wichita.

1964 annual Just Dennis the pickle

Dennis the Menace started off as a daily syndicated newspaper comic strip originally created, written and illustrated by Hank Ketcham, but has since then has become a movie, book and cartoon feature. It seemed to change names when converting media to the Television. The television version screened in the UK simply as Dennis.

Characters included his dad Henry Mitchell. Alice Mitchell Dennis’ mom. Ruff – Dennis’ sheepdog. His suffering neighbours George and Martha Wilson. Dennis’ friends included Tommy Anderson, Joey McDonald, Margaret Wade a freckled red-haired, Gina Gillotti a young Italian American girl, who Dennis secretly has a crush on. Jackson added in the later comics.

I loved the Dennis the Menace annuals though being a UK resident, always knew them as Just Dennis (the pickle) from the great Hank Ketchum TV series and Comic Strip.

Just Dennis annual  just gone missing

At the moment I’m trying to track down the Just Dennis Television Story Book of 1964. So if you know of it’s whereabouts, please let me know. In the mid sixties around 10 annuals were released under the Just Dennis title (according to Tony’s excellent annual trading site)

Another favorite was the other 1964 Dennis TV annual. It seems that more than one annual was released during the year of 1964.

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Masquerade Party was a TV Game Show shonw on the following Networks: CBS,NBC,ABC TV July 28,1952-February 5,1960

Hosts: Bud Collyer,Bert Parks, Eddie Bracken, Douglas Edwards, Robert Q.Lewis and Peter Donald.
Announcer: Johnny Olsen

Returned: Syndicated:1974
Host/Performer: Richard Dawson

Regular Panelists: Lee Meriweather, Nipsey Russell and Bill Bixby

Announcer: Jay Stewart

This tv game show had a panel of famous performers and personalities trying to guess the true identities of the persons..who were hidden under make ups and costumes.

The persons..who appeared on the panel would be Ms.Ilka Chase, Ms.Buff Cobb, Poet and Children’s storywriter:Oden Nash, and comic actor:Phil Silvers.

The hosts of the series varied from the different versions that aired on the three networks during the 1950′s. Bert Parks, Eddie Bracken, Robert Q.Lewis, Douglas Edwards and Bud Collyer mc’d the proceedings. But? The one mc that maintained the program during it’s run was former radio comic / character actor, dialectician and wit: Peter Donald. Peter Donald was best remembered for playing soused resident “Ajax Cassidy” of “The Allen’s Alley” segment of “The Fred Allen Radio Shows”.

Mr.Donald kept the pace going and the atmosphere of the show fun and light.

Among the famous persons..who were willing to undergo the difficult ordeal of putting on the disguisess were:Bandleader Fred Waring (Who was decked out as a penquin),”The  Three Stooges” (dressed as The Three Gabor Sisters) and George Reeves (TV’s “Superman”) Ironically he was dressed as a box of the show’s sponsor : Kent Cigarettes.

There was also an additonal segment..where a viewer at home would try to reveal the guest masquerader by sending their guess via the mail and their guess would be mentioned on that program..if the home viewer’s guess of the disguised person(s)was correct? The home viewer would win a prize.

Masquerade Party was seen on the NBC,CBS And ABC TV Networks from July 28,1952..until February 5,1960.

Masquerade Party revived in the 1970s

The show was revived again in the early 1970′s for national syndication by vetrain tv game show producers:Stefan Hatos And Monty Hall (The producers and creators of”Let’s Make A Deal!”).

Instead of having a rotating series of guest panelists appearing on every other show..This version of the program had a regular group of famous persons trying to “Unmask the masqueraders”..actress Lee Meriweather,comic/character actor and song and dance man:Nipsey Russell and Bill Bixby would try to find out the true identities of the guest masqueraders..Jackie Cooper, Bill Macy,Cathy Rigby,Dr.Joyce Brothers,Bob  Barker, Ronny Cox, Bob Crane, Robert Clary, Will Geer, Gary Burghoff, Andy Devine, Ray Walston, Pat O’Brien and many other famous persons tried to fool the panel.

There was also a segment.,.where two members of the studio audience would try to ferret out the true idenity of the disguised person.

Edgar Bergen,Michael Lernered,Art Linkletter,Sugar Ray Robinson, Caesar Romero,Richard Deacon,June Lockheart and Jim Backus would participate in this segment.

(Mr.Bergen had also appeared on the 1950′s version of  Masquerade Party  with tv’s top ventriloquist of the time Paul Winchell..where both men were playing “Dr.Henry Jekyll & Mr.Edward Hyde”)

Unfortuneately..the 1970′s syndicated version of the show was not as successfull as the 1950′s network edition and it was cancelled after one season.

Masquerade Party in the 1980s

The concept of  Masquerade Party  was revived one last time in the 1980′s as a segment on Dick Clark’s ” TV Bloopers & Practical Jokes TV Series” under the revamped title of “The Surprise Disguise”..Don Adams,Mr.T, Pat Morita and Adam West & Burt Ward were the famous persons willing to put on costumes and make ups for this segment.

Does anyone else remember Masquerade Party Tv Game Show from the 1950s?

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Tickle Me Elmo is based on the character Elmo from the children’s television show, Sesame Street.

Tickle Me Elmo was invented by Ron Dubren and Greg Hyman, two veteran toy inventors. In 1992, They had no intention to make it a sesame character until toymakers Tyco lost  the rights to do Looney Tunes but gained the rights to Sesame Street, thus starting Tickle Me Elmo.

The Tickle Me Elmo craze began innocently enough in 1996 when inventor Ron Dubren saw a couple of kids playing in the park. Watching the youngsters tickle each other until they erupted in giggle-fits, Dubren got the idea to create a stuffed animal that would react in a similar way when tickled by its owner. He created a stuffed monkey with an electronic computer chip housed in its stomach that would produce a “giggle” when it was tickled. Most toy companies passed on the toy, but one company kept Dubren and his idea in mind. Tyco liked the doll, but were forced to pass on it because they did not make plush dolls at the time.

Back in 1996 the frenzy for the toy turned into another shopping mob scene, with parents acting like children for there children and Elmo toys fetching thousands of pounds on ebay. Tyco released Tickle Me Elmo just in time for the holiday shopping season of 1996. Although Elmo dolls had been available long before Tickle Me Elmo, the new toy quickly became popular. This popularity got a shot in the arm when celebrity Rosie O’Donnell prominently featured the doll and sung its praises on her talk show. The constant television exposure she gave it transformed Tickle Me Elmo from a popular toy to a full-on craze.

Tickle Me Elmo Goes  T.M.X. Elmo.

Newer version of the toy have appeared. For instance the T.M.X. Elmo. This Elmo doesn’t seem all that grand. He looks like Elmo. Covered in the soft red fur that one would expect from everyone’s favorite Sesame Street character, T.M.X. Elmo stands an unimposing 14 inches tall. Even worse, he feels all hard and plasticy under his fur. But this Elmo is not meant for cuddles or hand holding or swaddling.

More on the Tickle Me Elmo toy on the skooldays web site

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