Sleds deserve a nod for toy hall of fame, too

Inner tubes were brought out of storage with the first snow fall and reinflated for use in sliding down hills. Because of its dual functionality on water and snowy surfaces, the generic car/truck inner tube is a worthy candidate for induction into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

 

It snows a lot in Washington, Pa., about 28 miles south of Pittsburgh in the southwestern section of the state, and the students at Trinity High School there learned a lot about the history of sledding in 2022 from student journalist Abby Drezewski.

“A favorite style of sled is the inner tube,” Abby wrote in a column for the school newspaper. The school’s physics teacher Mrs. Nicole Welsh stated: “The inner tube is the best way to sled. It goes so much faster. The coefficient of friction lower.”

Aluminum and plastic saucers work fine, too.

 

The first “traditional” wooden sleds produced in America were hand-made by Henry Morton in 1861. He and his wife, Lucilla Forbes Morton, formed Paris Manufacturing Company in South Paris, Maine. Their son Will Morton hand-painted each one with a different scene. (The company continues today as Paricon Inc.)

In 1868, Samuel Leeds Allen of Moorestown, N.J. (shown below), founded S.L. Allen & Company in Philadelphia, Pa., primarily a manufacturer of farm and garden equipment. He was an inventor who patented in 1889 a sled known as the Flexible Flyer with “laterally bending runners, which allowed it to be steered.”

 

It took about 10 years for the revolutionary sled to catch on, but eventually the product was picked up by major retailers like Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia and Macy’s in New York City. Flexible Flyer became a household name. By 1915 the company was selling 2,000 sleds a week with an estimated 120,000 each winter season.

 

Samuel Allen died in 1918, but his company continued to grow. The popularity of the Flexible Flyer brand grew steadily in the 1920s. Sleds were offered in a variety of sizes, from 38 inches long for children to 101-inch models capable of seating six grown adults.

 

My best sledding memories from Adrian, Mich., in the late 1950s/early 1960s were at the neighborhood sledding hill in a natural area we called “the gully.” There were several trails with varying degrees of difficulty to pick from.

Using a classic 48-inch Flexible Flyer with birch wood and steel runners, it was best to ride on your stomach and steer with your hands. Your feet hung off the back, so you could dig the toes of your boots into the snow to apply brakes if needed.

The most talented sledders could get up enough speed to jump the small creek at the bottom of the hill and finish their run on the other side.

In 1968, the Flexible Flyer name was sold to a California conglomerate, Leisure Group, ending production of the sled in Philadelphia. The brand was batted about among various owners, but the Flexible Flyer name was bought by Paricon in 2005, ensuring its continued availability in U.S. markets.

Abby Drezewski told her classmates: “Sled riding has always brought people together to have a fun and festive time amid the cold winter months.”

“As the holiday season approaches, so does the possibility of a snow-covered wonderland outside the windows of Trinity High School,” she wrote. “Don’t be afraid to get outside this winter to unleash your inner child. Grab a sled and hit the hills!”

While the Flexible Flyer has dominated the sledding market, there have been many competitors over the years. For this reason, the generic sled appears to be the best candidate to join the National Toy Hall of Fame.

Toy Hall of Fame selections are often ‘second-guessed’

Every year, some toy aficionados like to stir the pot and bicker about toys and games that have been “snubbed” by the National Toy Hall of Fame.

A favorite subject of conversation recently has been Mattel’s doll Ken Carson, which was introduced in 1961 as a companion to the legendary Barbie Roberts doll. She burst onto the scene in 1959 and was swooped up by the toy hall of fame as one of its charter members in 1988. But poor Ken. He is still on the outside looking in.

 

Ken was among the hall of fame “finalists” in 2023, and Charlie and Debbie Nance (shown below), who are radio co-hosts at Country 107.3 FM (WSOC) in Charlotte, N.C., thought Ken “was a shoo-in for induction.”

 

The Nances offered: “In a year when you couldn’t get away from Barbie, her constant comrade, Ken, just HAD to get in, right?”

“Barbie,” the 2023 fantasy comedy film released by Warner Bros. and directed by Greta Gerwig, was the first live-action Barbie film after numerous animated films and specials. Starring Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the film turned out to be a blockbuster, grossing $1.45 billion and becoming the most popular film of 2023. It received widespread critical acclaim as well.

 

“You think Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are America’s couple? Think again,” the Nances suggested. “For decades it’s been Barbie and Ken.”

The radio couple acknowledged that Ken did indeed face stiff competition in 2023, going up against the likes of Connect Four, Bingo and Battleship games as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures. “Look at that list, huh? All of them home runs, but NONE of them got into the hall of fame, either.”

So, who did get into the toy hall of fame in 2023? “Baseball cards, Cabbage Patch Kids, the Fisher-Price Corn Popper and Nerf foam toys,” the Nances said. “There have been years when we’ve had issue, but not with any of these.”

Generic toys that need to be considered in the future are inner tubes and sleds. 

Let’s start with auto and truck tire inner tubes that were used as water flotation devices, which led to the development of today’s float rings.

Katherine Sedgwick, a journalist living in Queensborough, Ontario, Canada, wrote: “You know what I miss in summer? Inner tubes.”

“It’s what we kids used when we went swimming at the Sand Bar on the Black River in Queensborough: rubber inner tubes from car tires. Nothing could beat those inner tubes as flotation devices, and what pleasanter way to spend a hot summer day than lollygagging in the river, floating around on one of them?”

 

In 1888, Scottish inventor John Boyd Dunlop (shown below) developed an inner tube “as an inflatable torus that formed the interior of pneumatic tires,” albeit for bicycles. 

The tube is inflated through a valve stem and fits inside the tire casing. The inflated inner tube provides structural support and suspension, while the outer tire offers grip and protects the more fragile tube.

The process carried over to apply to tires for early model cars and trucks, but beginning in the 1950s, tubeless tires for vehicles began to dominate.

No one is sure who was the first person to toss an inner tube into a lake or river, but these simple toys brought hours of pleasure to kids around the world. Patches on the inner tubes were viewed much like battle scars.

 hicago improved on regular inner tubes by advertising “float tubes” for fishermen and hunters.

In 1895, A. G. Spalding & Bros. of Chicago improved on regular inner tubes by advertising “float tubes” for fishermen and hunters.

Phase 10 card game is also ‘hall of fame’ worthy

One of the new inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2024 is Mattel’s rummy-style card game known as Phase 10, which has been enjoyed by generations of families since 1982.

 

It’s an interesting story to complement fellow 2024 hall of fame inductees Transformers action figures and My Little Pony.

Officials at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., home of the hall of fame, said that “Phase 10 has become one of the most popular cards games in the world; second only to Uno” (enshrined in the hall of fame in 2018).

New hall of fame members are selected annually by a panel of “historians, educators and others who exemplify learning, creativity and discovery.”

Suitable for two to six players, ages 7 and up, Phase 10 challenges players to collect various groups of cards, completing sequential phases of 10 before their opponents.

 The game was created by Ken Johnson of Detroit, Mich. (shown below), who had embarked as a teenager on a manufacturing career in the automotive industry. Working as a welder, in 1979, Johnson was among a number of General Motors’ factory workers who were laid off. At age 19, Johnson pivoted and decided to try his hand as a game designer.

 

While living at home with his parents, Johnson designed a companion game for viewing or listening to professional baseball broadcasts that he labeled Dice-Baseball.

 

Emma Klug of Hour Detroit Magazine wrote that Johnson approached the department store giant Kmart Corp, which had headquarters in nearby Troy Mich.

“In 1981 Johnson spoke directly with Kmart’s toy and game buyer, George Christianson,” Klug said. “His tenacity won over Christianson. The two entered into a distribution agreement that stated that Dice-Baseball would have a place on Kmart shelves as long as it met sales forecasts.” Unfortunately, the game fell short of expectations.

Christianson mentored Johnson, and they decided to experiment with a card game that might attract Uno fans to “a higher level of play,” Klug said. The result was Phase 10.

Johnson, who resides in Franklin, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, is one of six African-American toy inventors who participated in a Black Inventors Hall of Fame film production in Washington, D.C., in 2021. The documentary reveals how minority business leaders are having an impact on the toy and game industry.

Johnson said Phase 10 has brought him much joy, “seeing how the game is transcending languages and cultures to bring people together all over the world.”

 

Created in 1998, the toy hall of fame now includes 88 toys/games, including charter members: Barbie, Crayola Crayons, Duncan Yo-Yo, Erector Set, Etch-A Sketch, Frisbee, Hula Hoop, LEGO, Lincoln Logs, marbles, Monopoly, Play-Doh, Radio Flyer Wagon, roller skates, teddy bear, Tinkertoys and View-Master.

 

Others are: alphabet blocks, American Girl Doll, Atari 2600 Game System, baby doll, Baby Nancy, ball, baseball cards, bicycle, Big Wheel, blanket, bubbles, Cabbage Patch Kids, Candy Land, cardboard box, checkers, chess, Clue, coloring book, dollhouse and dominoes.

 

Also: Dungeons & Dragons, Easy-Bake Oven, Fisher-Price Corn Popper, Fisher-Price Little People, G.I. Joe, The Game of Life, Hot Wheels, jack-in-the-box, jacks, Jenga, jigsaw puzzle, jump rope, kite, Lionel Trains, Lite-Brite, little green army men, Magic 8 Ball, Magic: The Gathering and Masters of the Universe.

 

Also: Matchbox Cars, Mr. Potato Head, Nerf, Nintendo Game Boy, paper airplane, pinball, playing cards, puppet, Raggedy Ann, Raggedy Andy, Risk, rocking horse, rubber duck, Rubik’s Cube, sand, Scrabble, sidewalk chalk, Silly Putty, skateboard, Slinky, Star Wars action figures, stick, Super Soaker, swing, Tonka Trucks, top, Twister, Uno and Wiffle Ball.

Toy Hall of Fame welcomes new inductees in 2024

Finally, two of America’s most popular toys from the 1980s have been voted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 2024. They are Transformers action figures and My Little Pony, both brands of Hasbro.

They “survived the test of time,” according to Christopher Bensch of The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, N.Y., home of the toy hall of fame.

“These very deserving toys showcase the range of how people play,” Bensch said. “Established in 1998, the hall of fame is dedicated to enshrining toys and games that have inspired creative play and experienced sustained popularity over a long period.”

For Transformers, its sixth nomination to join the toy hall of fame finally proved to be the charm. Its induction in 2024 coincides with the 40th year anniversary since the product was rolled out in the United States in 1984.

 

Transformers originated at the Japanese toy company Takara, based in Tokyo. Essentially, two alien robot factions at war could transform into other forms, such as vehicles and animals. (The Autobots were the heroes and the Decepticons were the villains.)

Henry Orenstein, a Holocaust survivor, is credited with brokering the deal that brought together Takara and Hasbro in the 1980s to introduce the Transformers brand to U.S. markets.

“Orenstein’s real life was more amazing than Transformers,” wrote The Times of Israel.

Orenstein was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1923. While imprisoned at Budzyń, a German labor camp in Poland, in 1944, he got word that the Nazis wanted “all scientists and mathematicians to register with the camp administration.”

“Despite not knowing if the scientists and mathematicians would be given better conditions or killed immediately, and despite the fact that Orenstein himself was neither a scientist nor a mathematician, he gambled and signed up.

Those who registered were assigned to a special squad that was tasked with developing a gas for the Germans that could paralyze enemy tanks. That never happened, and later, Orenstein suggested it was a ploy “thought up by the German scientists in charge at Budzyń to avoid military service on the Eastern Front.”

After having been rescued by Soviet troops, Orenstein emigrated to the United States in 1947 and made inroads in the toy industry. He ran several toy manufacturing companies and held more than 100 toy-related patents.

 

Ever the gambler, Orenstein became a professional poker player in his “senior years” and invented the “hole card camera” to make televised poker championships more interesting for viewers, as they could see players’ face-down cards. Orenstein died from COVID-19 in Livingston, N.J., in 2021, at age 98.

 

Loyal fans of My Little Pony also celebrated the toy hall of fame announcement with glee, as the line of pastel-colored ponies had been a toy hall of fame finalist seven times. At long last, My Little Pony trotted into the winner’s circle in 2024.

 

Having made its debut in 1981, the line of mini-horses “encourages children in traditional forms of doll play – fantasy, storytelling, hair grooming and collecting. The small ponies have come in more than a thousand varieties, all with elongated tails and manes made to be brushed,” according to Michelle Parnett-Dwyer, the Strong museum’s curator of dolls and toys.

 

The primary inventor of My Little Pony is Bonnie Zacherle (shown below), who was employed by Hasbro as an illustrator. Early models wiggled their ears, swished their tails, and winked an eye. Today, the ponies are branded with a unique symbol on one or both sides of their flanks, which are referred to as “cutie marks.”

Record label executive claimed ‘Louie Louie’ lyrics innocence

When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents visited the New York City office of Wand Records company president Florence Greenburg in 1965, they demanded to hear tapes from every recording session associated with the rock’n’roll song “Louie Louie.”

 Performed by the band known as the Kingsmen of Portland, Ore., and released on the Wand label in 1963, “Louie Louie” shot up to No. 2 on the national charts in 1964 and sold millions of records.

 

The FBI was in hot pursuit of a case to prove the tune’s lyrics were vulgar. Greenburg, who formed the Wand label in 1961, claimed the FBI was barking up the wrong tree.

“It’s all nonsense,” she said. “There was no dirty record. I wouldn’t take anything dirty. The lyrics to ‘Louie Louie’ were completely unobjectionable.”

Greenburg added: “I could use another one like that.”

That didn’t happen. The Kingsmen had a lot of turnover in personnel but continued to churn out records for several years. Success was fleeting, however.

It didn’t matter, said music historian Jim Esposito. “Many refer to the Kingsmen’s recording of ‘Louie Louie’ as the first successfully famous slab of garage rock,” he said. “It remains a quintessential rock’n’roll recording and one of the most recorded songs in the past 70 years of pop music.”

Sources agree that “Louie Louie” is the No. 2 most recorded song in history. (“Yesterday,” released in 1965 by the Beatles is No. 1.)

A new generation of music fans was introduced to “Louie Louie” in 1978, when the song became the anthem of the comedy film “Animal House,” sung by Bruto Blutarsky (John Belusi) and his Delta House fraternity brothers “like a bunch of drunken Romans in bed sheet togas.”

Curiously, the film was set at mythical Faber College in 1962 (a year prior to the Kingsmen’s recording of “Louie Louie”), making it one of the movie industry’s classic anachronisms (a chronological inconsistency).

Early in 1978, Universal Studios approached the University of Oregon about filming on campus in Eugene. Jim Scheppke of The Oregon Encyclopedia reported that university president William Beaty Boyd signed a $20,000 deal stipulating that the filmmakers not identify UO in the movie.

A halfway house became the derelict Delta fraternity house. Most of the movie’s interior scenes were filmed nearby at the original Sigma Nu and Phi Kappa Psi fraternity houses. President Boyd’s office in Johnson Hall became the office of Faber College Dean Vernon Wormer (John Vernon), who was driven to pull the Deltas’ charter.

 

Delta House brothers replied:

Among those invited to the Delta House Toga Party was Marion Wormer (Verna Bloom), wife of the esteemed dean (shown above). 

Another special guest was Clorette DePasto (Sarah Holcomb), the 13-year-old daughter of the town mayor. After the girl passed out from drinking the forbidden purple passion, brothers deposited her into a shopping cart and delivered her to her home.

“The movie was the second most popular movie in 1978 after ‘Grease,’” according to Scheppke. “‘Animal House’ was produced for less than $3 million. It grossed $140 million in theaters in the United States and Canada.”

“‘Animal House’ is ranked 36 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 greatest film comedies of all time,” he added.

“For decades, the University of Oregon tried, unsuccessfully, to hide its participation in ‘Animal House,’” Scheppke said. “Today, the film has become part of the culture of the university – a part of its brand. Movie locations are pointed out on campus tours, and Otis Day and the Knights’ rendition of ‘Shout’ is sung at UO Duck football games.”

The homecoming parade scene was filmed in the City of Cottage Grove, 23 miles south of Eugene. Officials agreed to close down Main Street for three days to allow filming. The “ghosts of ‘Animal House’” return annually to celebrate. 

In 1986, Richard Berry, who wrote “Louie Louie” in 1955, was living on welfare at his mother’s house in Los Angeles. California Cooler, America’s original wine cooler brand, wanted to use the Kingsmen’s hit in a television commercial, but the company’s lawyers were told they had to get Berry’s permission.

As a result, Berry regained partial rights to the song…and became a millionaire.

  

Lyrics of ‘Louie Louie’ form a rock’n’roll legend of the ages

Here we go…back into the music studio to solve one of the great mysteries of early rock’n’roll: What are the “real” lyrics of the hit song “Louie Louie?”

The tune was composed nearly 70 years ago as an innocent little calypso number in 1955, written on toilet tissue paper by Richard Berry, a doo-wop bass vocalist in Los Angeles. He was seeking to capitalize on America’s fascination with the sounds of chart-topper Harry Belafonte.

(Berry’s classic, melodic riff from “Louie Louie” is eerily parallel to a song named “El Loco Cha Cha,” recorded by Cuban-American band leader René Touzet. Just saying….)

“Louie Louie” was first recorded in 1957 by Richard Berry and the Pharaohs. On some Caribbean island, a shrimp boat sailor is telling his bartender friend named Louie that “me gotta go,” because a “fine little girl she wait for me” in Jamaica. The whole story unfolds as a Cajun folksong in just two minutes and eight seconds.

“Three nights and days me sail the sea / Me think of girl, oh constantly / On the ship I dream she there / I smell the rose in her hair.”

“Me see Jamaica moon above / It won’t be long, me see me love / Me take her in my arms and then / I tell her I-I never leave again.”

In 1961, the song was covered in Tacoma, Wash., by “Rockin’ Robin Roberts and the Fabulous Wailers.” They juiced it up instrumentally and put some rock’n’roll energy into the original lyrics. It’s quite an impressive rendition.

 

“Louie Louie” was discovered again in 1963 by a group of five guys in Portland, Ore., known as the Kingsmen. They remade the song, ramping up the organ, electric guitar and percussion input. Vocalist Jack Ely put the emphasis on “Louie Lou-eye.”

 

The band recorded the song in a rather bizarre setting. They circled a single microphone located several feet above them that was dangling from a cord hung from the ceiling. Ely was wearing dental braces that caused him difficulty in articulating the lyrics. The words came out rather muddled and garbled.

“That provided hormonal teens and their excitable parents license to imagine they were hearing all kinds of lascivious lyrics,” reported music historian Andrew Amelinckx.

 

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation got involved after being sent letters from across the country,” Amelinckx said. Some of the letter-writers included what they believed were the “true” lyrics. “For more than two years, FBI agents tracked down leads while the agency’s scientists attempted to decipher the song and determine if the band’s single violated the federal law that banned the interstate transportation of obscene matter,” he added.

As Dave Marsh wrote in his book “Louie Louie: The History and Mythology of the World’s Most Famous Rock ‘n Roll Song,” Jack Ely sang the words “with so tangled a tongue that not even FBI scientists could decipher them.”

By the end of 1965, the FBI file contained 119 pages, but on Dec. 2, 1965, an assistant U.S. attorney recommended dropping the investigation since there was "no evidence of a crime.”

The FBI totally missed one cuss word in the song, Amelinckx said. That utterance occurs about 54 second into the recording, when the band’s drummer, Lynn Easton, dropped one of his sticks and blurted out a four-letter word that is barely discernable.

 

“Louie Louie” lived on in infamy, Jim Esposito wrote. “You couldn’t go to a dance where it wasn’t played four or five times. And all the bands always knew the dirty version.” To be continued. 

Election season is finally over and done with

Oh, what a relief it is. The political advertisements that peppered local television stations – and about drove us crazy – vanished on Election Day, Nov. 5.

 

In North Carolina, as a “battleground state,” we no doubt got more than our “fair share” of the negative commercials.

Two refreshing exceptions were the commercials that aired promoting candidates for North Carolina’s Council of State.

One commercial advocated for Democrat Elaine Marshall (shown below), 78, who was seeking to retain her seat as Secretary of State.

 

The commercial depicted Marshall as “helping out” at several small businesses. In back-to-back scenes, she was checking the oil of a car in a repair shop and serving a slice of pie in a diner. Presumably, she washed her hands in between.

Marshall held off Republican challenger Chad Brown, 52, winning by about 1.8 percentage points. She has been North Carolina’s Secretary of State since 1997.

Another advertisement of note featured Dave Boliek (shown below), 56, the Republican candidate for State Auditor. Featuring his wife and four children, the commercial showed how he runs a tight ship, accounting for every penny of family finances. 

His wife, Haden, begged viewers to “send him to Raleigh.”

They did, giving him a victory margin of nearly 2 percentage points over Democrat Jessica Holmes, 41, who was appointed to fill a vacancy in the office of State Auditor by Gov. Roy Cooper in 2023.

In the race for U.S. president, Republican Donald Trump, 78, rode a red wave of early voter turnout across North Carolina to outdistance the Democrats’ Kamala Harris, 60, by about 2.5 percentage points.

 

In the North Carolina governor’s contest, voters witnessed a total and complete implosion by Republican Mark Robinson, 56, who is the sitting lieutenant governor. Robinson lost by nearly 15 percentage points to Democrat Josh Stein (shown below), 58, who is the state’s attorney general.

 

Democrat Rachel Hunt (shown below), 59, a state senator from Mecklenburg County, won the race for North Carolina lieutenant governor by about 1.5 percentage points over Republican Hal Weatherman, 54. She is the daughter of former North Carolina Gov. Jim and Carolyn Hunt.

 

An objective analysis of North Carolina’s voting results has been compiled by Chandler Spaulding, director of strategic communications and government relations, at the Smith Anderson law firm of Raleigh.

In the U.S. House of Representatives, the political makeup of North Carolina’s 14-member congressional delegation “has changed based upon new districts that were redrawn in 2023,” Spaulding wrote. “North Carolina is shifting from a 7-7 split between Democrats and Republicans to a Republican majority of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.”

The 1st Congressional District race was the only competitive one in November. Incumbent Democrat Don Davis, 53, narrowly escaped with a win of about 1.5 percentage points over Republican challenger Laurie Buckholt, 62.

 

This “expansive district in the eastern part of the state covers 22 counties,” Spaulding said. 

Buckholt, who lives in Edenton in Chowan County won 10 counties, while Davis, a native of Snow Hill in Greene County, carried 12.

In the North Carolina General Assembly, the suspense was whether Republicans could maintain supermajorities in both chambers (a three-fifths advantage), Spaulding noted.

“Democrats only needed to gain one seat in the House and one in the Senate to break the supermajorities. Based on preliminary election results, Senate Republicans expanded their supermajority to 31 Republicans in the upper chamber,” Spaulding said.

“In contrast, House Republicans lost their supermajority by one vote, but maintain a solid majority in the lower chamber.”

A handful of legislative races remain tight and recounts could come into play, she said.

For the North Carolina Supreme Court, only one associate justice seat was up for election this year – between Democrat Allison Riggs, who was appointed by Gov. Cooper in 2023, and Republican Jefferson Griffin, who has been serving on the state Court of Appeals.

 

“As a result of the Nov. 5 election, Griffin narrowly won this seat, and the N.C. Supreme Court will now have a 6-1 Republican majority,” Spaulding wrote. “However, this race could qualify for a recount.”

Three of the 15 seats on the state Court of Appeals were up for election. Republicans won all three contests, so the Court of Appeals will now be comprised of 12 Republicans and three Democrats.