Dudley the Dinosaur

years ago, sometimes on a Saturday morning, I would see these animated commercials featuring dinosaurs talking about the importance of good dental care. The star was a green boy dino named Dudley, and I thought his commercials were fun and cool. Though these days, you seldom see them on tv. Anyway, I caught onto Dudley and was looking for merchandise of this catchy mascot character, maybe a fun picture with a costume of him? Finally my opportunity came during our town's annual summer street fair. It was located in the business section, where there were booths from various companies and organizations. I came across a booth of the ADA and saw the Dudley.
I had mentioned to the woman in the booth on how much I was a fan of Dudley and asked kindey for some of the things in her booth. I got two Dudley the dino activity books and a few dental samples. It was then that it was late in the afternoon, and upon passing the booth from a distance, I had then began to ask her a question. Immediately she yelled at me angrily and told me to get away from her. She was extremely rude to me. But I did manage to get the Dudley samples. I also found out from the ADA website that they have Dudley merchandise as he's the official spokes dino of this organization. However I thought that you had to be in a dental business to order the merchandise, but the minimum for the order is 100 at just a little over a $1.00 per copy.
I don't think I would want to order 100 copies and spend over $100.
I feared that the same woman who yelled at me would be there the next year. She wasn't thank goodness.

Geoffrey the Giraffe

growing up, I thought Toys R Us was cool, but my main interest was their mascot character Geoffrey the Giraffe. Believe it or not, I first had memories that Geoffrey had a giraffe family in the earily commercials for this great toy store. Of course that was back in the 1970's-1980's. I didn't go there much, as the only closest one was in a shopping center before the SmithHaven Mall. But the few times I went there, I have never seen Geoffrey in costume form walking around the greet the kids. It was on my trip to Toys R  us in NYC that  I finally met up with him  and had my picture take with him in his cartoony form (which is what I most remember him by). He was much taller than me, as  I had only made it height wise to his nose. But he's the giraffe that makes us laugh. The next time I saw him in person, was when the store made a more realistic verison of him. Met up with him and got my picture taken with him. Personally, I much prefer to see him in cartoony form.
        The only few Geoffrey products I bought was a plastic candy tube as a Christmas thing. The tube was filled with red and  green M&M's candies, and the top cover was of Geoffrey in a Santa suit with his two giraffe kids in his arms on each end. I think the Geoffrey family consisted of Geoffery, Mrs. G, Big G, and Baby G. (I'm not changing her diapers) I found a few websites that took me down memory lane of animation cels of the animated Toys r us commercials featuring Geoffrey and his family. Of course I got a few Geoffery merchandise in the NYC store. Very big place, and they even let you play with their toys.  Sometimes I thought I was crazy for remembering these things, but turns out that sometimes what you're trying to remember might be just within your fingertips.

nostalgic products

I know that alot of  products had come and gone, but I loved them and I missed them dearly.

Hostess Pudding pies
Giggles Cookies
Keebler Pudding Creames
Some kind of sortbread cookie that had a drop of chocolate on it
PB Max chocolate bar
Shoprite brand Bran Muffins (Used to be sold at Shoprite)
Dinosaur Grrrahms cookies
Patterson's Lochness monster short bread shaped cookies (imported from Scotland)
Chocobliss candy barr
Dinersaurs Cereal
Rocky Road Cereal
S'mores Crunch Cereal
plastic backed baby diapers (from when I was a baby in the 1970's)

Kid's short films

A few funny short  movies I remember seeing on tv as a kid were very memorable, but I'm not sure what the name of the movies are.

1. Channel 21 used to air short movies featuring a guy that always got into accidents like being high on a tree, and upon chopping it down, he fell down.

2. A Boy, His Dog and a frog. This is what being a boy is about. going out with your dog and looking for a frog down by the creek. It's a very funny movie as the boy got muddy and dirty during his attempts to catch the frog. The funny part was seeing him trying to catch the frog, as he leaped away. Seeing frogs hop like that is hilarious. And just when he gave up and went home to take a bath, the frog followed him home and went upstairs to see him. Ribbit.

3. The Lollypop dragon- various film strip stories seen in school, with a tape recorder playing a pre-recorded track for the stories. When I saw the image of the Lollypop dragon during my nostalgic search, the green dragon somehow reminded me of Zak from Dragontales.

4. ZAP! a kids movie seen in school of a kid who gets magical powers by mixing various ingredients together and then reaches his hands out and shouts "Zap!" whenever he wanted to change something.

5. Channel 21 used to air various education short movies, one such I remember was Inside Out.

6. I remember an animated short film, where an young alien creature lands on Earth, and is lost. A little girl is playing and notices the alien and helps him out and shows him around. Later, you hear, her mom call her "Maria." the little girl explains to the alien child that it's her mamma calling, and suddenly hundreds of language translations of Mama was shown on the screen and as the alien cries out for his mama, his mom comes and  picks him up.

7. An animated poem about the colors, as a woman narrates it and asks what is black, white, red, etc, and tells a poem of what  those colors mean to her.

Old Tv Kid's commercials

Believe it or not, I remember alot of the old tv commercials and announcements to kids back in the 1970's. Back in school I saw the fun live action puppet film featurin Mark Ritt's puppets "For the love of Fred." The  puppets were so memorable that they appeared in a variety of commercials from the Junior Consumer Tip of your better business bureau. They taught the importance of saving money, eating right, saving energy. I only wished that I could see that movie again. Channel 11 used to air these animated movie shorts "The Most important person." Like episodes that taught about being lonely, making mistakes, feelings. One other funny commercial featured puppet pills that came out of a pill jar and sung a song about the dangers of taking pills as they're not candy.  Back then Saturday Mornings were worth the wait as the're are tons of cool shows to watch.

nostalgic products

I get nostalgic for tons of things, as they all somehow left my life, and I can't say goodbye to them. Mostly they were products once sold at the supermarket, and such and as time goes by, the products are no longer sold. So sometimes when I watch a movie on tv made in the 1980's or 1970's, they sometimes will show a scene in a grocery store. Sometimes you might get lucky and see a scene of breakfast cereals on display, and you remember them fondly and wished that you can get it again. I saw a movie on tv "Oh God! You Devil." A scene or two at a grocery store brings back memories of the Tic Tac display at the register, as well as a few boxes of cereal.
     Talk about getting nostalgic over breakfast cereals, I saw this live action short movie on a tv show called Callioupe. I don't know what the name of it was, but it's about a little boy in a supermarket who has a big imagination and imagines things happening to the people who work  there. During a scene of him going down the breakfast isles, and seeing all those nostalgic breakfast cereals as they were made back then, the boy sees a guy with acne on his face as he places the price stickers on the product. The boy wonders how that man got those bumps. He invisions that maybe he went up a tree to a beehive to get fresh honey to sell in the store and he got stung.
One of the breakfast cereals the little boy picked off the shelf was "Dringles" freaturing Dr. Dringles. The little boy looked at the box and thought of the animated commercial advertising the product.
      Oh here's another one, "Three Men and a Baby" One of the men goes to get diapers for the baby, and all the diapers there are plastic backed. Talk about nostalgia, but the movie was made in the late 1980's. Sometimes a scene in the movie might take place at a video arcade and you see the classic arcade games all lined up and lit up in all it's glory playing it's music and sounds. Makes you wish you could go there and play those games. Another movie Poltergeist has a scene in the kids bedroom where the original Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot character is scene on his bed sheets, pillow cases. And even in the movie E.T., one of the older kids in the family is wearing a Space Invaders T-shirt. I had one of those, but I always got sunburned as the t-shirt was black, and darket colors absorb heat.