In every 70s US home ever

No ceramic panther, no deal.

Oh mannnn, Tarfumes, that video is great. Perfect example of exactly what the Yellow Submarine aesthetic had become by 1976. I grew up surrounded by kids' books whose covers were the still-image version of this, like the 1971 Houghton Mifflin Readers. We have a thread for this kind of thing, right?

OMG. I was trying to recuse or absent myself from my thread for a while like some Joycean creator whilst y’all worked your magic with these last several posts but just now I was reminded of two things. First is that I bought a book through the Scholastic Book Club called The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics which, in the paperback form I owned had no actual illustrations except on the cover, but did have an introduction by Richard Brautigan and in photo insert section which some pictures of things such as The Beatles in bathing trunks in the Bahamas whilst shooting Help! or mugging with Muhammad Ali. Second is, did anyone else on this thread apart from James Redd have bicentennial wallpaper?

A photo insert section with

Feel like I need to justify my inclusion of the first thing because of trickle down cartoon psychedelia (the one illustration on the cover reminded of what I would see a little later in the artwork for Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy without the hidden boobs) and because Scholastic Book Club book, in case we haven’t mentioned yet.

See also those special Sunday newspapers with a free wraparound Peter Max poster!

Wow, I definitely was assigned those Houghton Mifflin readers in grade school (late ‘70s - early ‘80s) — I remember Panorama and Fiesta. And James Redd, sorry to hear you got screwed on that Beatles book. I remember flipping through it at my local library and digging the illustrations, most (all?) of which were by Alan Aldridge, who had also done the Who’s A Quick One cover.

The other thing about The Beatles book was that it didn’t seem to have any of George’s songs, let alone Ringo’s, but instead included some Lennon-McCartney-for-hire audition fodder numbers such as “Like Dreamers Do.”

Hmm. Maybe that book actually has a few George songs but not all. Perhaps it’s a Northern Songs/Harrisongs thing.

That one PSA looks like some Parallax View-level mind control psy-ops.

Just confirmed that Alan Aldridge also did the Captain Fantastic artwork.

We used those Houghton Mifflin readers from K-6!

We used something called SRA Reading Laboratory.
https://bookriot.com/a-box-of-nostalgia-the-sra-reading-laboratory/

Color-coded folders containing one or two page stories along with accompanying questions. Color-coded so the kids supposedly wouldn’t know that their classmates on the Gold Level were more advanced than those on Maroon Level, they even scrambled the colors from grade to grade to throw you off the scent.

At some point later on I felt maybe we should have been reading more challenging formats but at the time it was a very addictive, gamified process, like a precursor to Duolingo.

If no one else owns up to using those think I am going to feel like I had some kind of multiverse slip.

I vividly remember the big SRA boxes in my grade school classrooms. I have no memory whatsoever of myself or any of my classmates actually using them.

Perhaps they were already being phased out by the time you arrived in the system.

We also used SRA, and took SRA tests in fifth grade.

Oh I was totally schooled via SRA. Haven't thought about that in decades, ha!

Definitely remember the giant SRA box — in fact I have so many memories of the SRA box Im wondering which ones I should and should not share.

I went to school in the 80s fwiw

Please share whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Either on this thread or a new one if you think that would work better.

The author of this piece didn’t like the system, but her write-up – along with sample card! - seems to remind me of the appeal.

http://hackeducation.com/2015/03/19/sra

Fidgit! The Fidget Spinner of its day!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5Ms14Weak0E/Tu6KJDlk7KI/AAAAAAAAANo/NGOa_g8MIxU/s1600/fidgit2.jpg

^this wasn’t some kind of mood thing?

In any case, that one is slowly working its Proustian madeleine magic on me this morning, thanks for posting.

I don't remember if it was temperature sensitive like a mood ring. It was some kind of oily I-don't-know-what that changed colors as you smushed it around with your fingertips.

I thought I remembered every stupid device of the era, and I have zero recollection of the Fidgit.

I recognize it, or the general principle. Maybe we had a differentlyre-formed, no-name knockoff from a few years later.

I don't remember the Fidget thing. But randomly it triggered memories of GI Joe action figurines. Google sent me to an vintage TV commercial for GI Joe with Kung Fu grip. From today's vantage point, yikes. Don't think my parents were particularly anti-Vietnam War but that figurine is OTT.

In (many) 70s homes in NYC and the Tri-State Area: mini-bagel necklaces with names on them given as souvenirs for going on Wonderama.

"A jade plant, hung in a macrame plant hanger" absoilutely

I didn't see this yet in this thread

https://i.etsystatic.com/8777027/r/il/dc4ba3/730668538/il_fullxfull.730668538_4ei2.jpg

Oooh, we had one of those. I remember sitting around it with my parents on Friday nights pretending it was a campfire.