M for...

McDONALD'S

I am of an age to remember when McDonald's had the clamshell packaging, the first Happy Meal and their cookie and when McNuggets were first introduced.  I was around 10 when McD's first came to my once small town, and McNuggets were my favorite item to order.

The Happy Meals used to consist of a burger, drink, fries, a cookie and a toy. Nowadays, they're mostly about the toys, a promo of sorts for some new movie or toy line. I remember buying the Happy Meals in 1998 to get the miniature Beanie Babies. If you still have any Happy Meal toys, they may be more valuable than you realize:

I still eat at McDonald's. Two of them are in my town now. I hadn't gone to the golden arches much since before the pandemic, and when drive-thru began during the shutdown, I forgot what McD's had on its menu. But I have gone back ever since, especially now that all fast food restaurants allow dining indoors once again (my preference).

MUSIC VIDEOS:

Yes, there was once a time when music videos were everywhere. It's been over 40 years since MTV was launched, making music videos popular. People were shouting, "I want my MTV!" Rolling Stone even did a cover story in 1983, with a cartoon drawing of Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, promoting their then-current hit, "Say, Say, Say."

By the time we got cable in our house, MTV was still airing videos, but was gradually starting to phase them out, bringing on non-music-related series like House of Style and The Big Picture (movie reviews). Reality programs like The Real World began taking over in the early 1990s.

Before having cable, I would struggle to stay awake to watch Friday Night Videos on NBC, which was created in the wake of MTV's success. It was how people who didn't have MTV caught the latest music videos.

And of course MTV and its sister stations VH1 and MTV2 are now nothing but reality shows.  And even Friday Night Videos dropped the videos in favor of comedy, becoming known as Late Friday before it left the air in 2002. Basically the only way to see music videos now is by looking them up on You Tube. I have discovered old several music videos via Youtube that I never saw the first time around.

MARKERS:

I always had markers on hand for my drawing. Before they are washable, it was easy to get them on one's hand.

Besides the basic ones, many back in the day had fancy ones like these scented ones which are still made today:

There  was a set of markers I had that contained a clear marker, that, when drawn over the other colors, revealed a hidden color. I don't know what they are called, but this item from Crayola in the 1990s has a similar concept (I never saw this one, as far as I know):

I still use markers today, the Crayola brand.

MAGAZINES:

I began getting Rolling Stone when I was around 12. Before that the only other magazine I'd subscribed to was called Dynamite. I learned of this kids' magazine through one of our ubiquitous book-order forms in grammar school. I only subscribed for about a year, but they were still fun to read. I was still being sent to day care at 11, and when I brought my-year-old issues one day, none of the other kids knew about the magazine. One of the providers asked which issue was the latest. I tried to explain that these were a year-old, but even the grown up did not understand that! One girl saw the cover below, immediately recognizing The Dukes of Hazzard stars, but "I don't know who that is." She pointed to the woman on the cover below. Again, these other seemed not to understand when I explained she was a magazine staff member, known as the "Dynamite daredevil." This must have not been a popular magazine, at least not in my neck of the woods. 

I was never a fan, but I recall various heavy-metal magazines. Not much into that genre. And I seem to think other girls at school were reading Vogue. I never got into fashion magazines. This was decades before Vogue launched a teen version.

MYSTERY BOOK SERIES FOR CHILDREN:

I never big on Nancy Drew, though I may have read one or two books. The one I read the most was The Bobbsey Twins. Not sure I ever read The Hardy Boys. Imagine my surprise years later when I learned that Franklin W. Dixon (the author said to have written The Hardy Boys), Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew) and Laura Lee Hope (Bobbseys) were all the same people using more than one pseudonym! I found this out when looking up The Bobbsey Twins. And until now I had never heard of Tom Swift, The Rover Boys, The Dana Girls or any of the other series written by the Stratemeyer Syndicate under different pen names. I must have missed these at my school libraries! Or maybe they didn't have those ones. They always had plenty of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twins books, though. And the syndicate wrote the Dana Girls under the same pen name as Nancy Drew. And it was just now that I learned of several other series that were not by the Stratemeyer Syndicate: Cherry Ames, Trixie Belden, Vicki Barr, Connie Blair, and Judy Bolton. I am now hoping to find some of these books to see what I missed then!

And something I did not realize: The Bobbsey books were originally written in the early 1900s and revised in the 1960s. One day I saw a Bobbsey book that did not sound at all like the one I remembered, and it wasn't until years later that I knew about the original versions. It was the revised ones I got from the school libraries. I had one or two of the titles seen below:

MS READ-A-THON:

A classmate recently reminded me of this annual reading event to benefit Multiple Sclerosis by getting people to sponsor each of your reads. I then found this video explaining the event:

I'm glad to see the Read-a-Thon is still happening. The aforementioned classmate mentioned that his son is participating.

MAKE UP SET (PLAY):

Before I was allowed to wear actual makeup, I had this play makeup set. I had not thought about this in years. The play make up came in crayon-shaped tubes. 

I'm pretty sure this was the brand I had. When looking for the commercial on Youtube, I came across this one as well. This doesn't appear to be the one I had. I don't know if I had any other such set. 

 

MY LITTLE PONY:

This is another toy that came along when I outgrew toys. It's one I definitely would have wanted had I been younger. 

I would especially have wanted the unicorns--I loved those creatures.

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MANY thanks for viewing. See what's NEXT on Monday.