30 years later and they still smell

I'm not talking about the Seattle Mariners, either. (A little weak Seattle humor, there, for you local people. To love a Seattle sports team--any Seattle sports team--is to have your heart broken. Repeatedly.)

Anyway, I am talking about my Strawberry Shortcake doll. Amazingly, she still smells faintly of fake strawberriness. And she has flat hands, which appear to make her more valuable to collectors. Not that I would sell such a thing.

Old greeting cards from Packrat World

Now you now how truly pack-rat-y I am: here are two cards from my 4th birthday.  I love the bright colors and 70s styling on these!  They are addressed to Baby Jo inside.

The floppy eared dog was a perfect choice for a little girl who already loved her dog so much that she (the dog, Penny) slept with her under her crib and growled at anyone who came near her.

Did I mention I've saved a LOT of stuff from my childhood? 

Tragically named and extremely discontinued: AYDS candy

My mom kept a box of these in the cupboard with the dishes…and the medicine. We weren’t supposed to eat them. They were For Adults.

So of course, we promptly ate them. They tasted kind of like fudge, but with that familiar, weird vitamin-y aftertaste. I figured they contained some type of amphetamine or something that swelled up in your stomach. Originally, AYDS apparently contained Benzocaine, a topical anesthetic, which aimed to dull your taste buds. Later, they (the AYDS, not your taste buds) hyped you up with phenylpropanolamine. Seriously. It was in the New York Times.

Check out the commercials for AYDS. AYDS are just little candies. They won't hurt you. Really!

Gee, I don’t know why they were taken off the market, what with the clever name, sweet, kid-enticing taste, and legalized speed...

That clown head: more Seattle summer fun

We've been having a rare heat wave in Seattle. Which reminded me of one of my favorite summer toys from the cool people at Wham-o: the Fun Fountain, which my mother called "That Clown Head."

Not as grand and glorious as the Slip N Slide, but pretty fun nonetheless, except when your little brother kept knocking the hat off so that all that remained of the fun was a stream of water shooting straight up while you stood there shivering in your bathing suit because like Mom said it was only 75 degrees and not really warm enough to run through the sprinkler and you wanted to go back inside and change after about 15 minutes so you could watch "Speed Racer."

Anyway, watch the commercial here. The kids in the commercial probably didn't live in Seattle, where it almost never hits 90 degrees.

Buying dolls at gas stations

Do they still sell collectible stuff at gas stations? I mean, beyond the constant new and exciting processed snack food products like Slim Jim Honey Jalapeno Cheddar Stixxs or Reese's Double Super White Nougat Caramel Peanut Fluffyballs.

I mean stuff like these dolls I excitedly collected in the mid-70s.  Each represented a nationality (Ireland, England, and Spain, above.) I can't find any info on these dolls online, so please let me know if you remember them or have some in your closet, too.