Terrific non-TV Toys: "The Peanuts Movie" Happy Meal Toys, McDonald's, 2015

Didya catch the big-screen "Peanuts Movie" a few years back? Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Sally and all the gang, along with our beloved beagle? Well, McDonald's was in on the fun, rolling out a line of Happy Meal Toys celebrating the movie's release. BRBTV did not collect all of them, but we got quite a few, and in this season finale episode of Terrific non-TV Toys for 2024, we show not only those but also throw in a bonus item -- one toy from the Snoopy NASA set. 

See the other episodes in the Terrific non-TV Toys series.

Those beloved Gloria Vanderbilt jeans show up again -- this time on "Soap"

If you've ever seen this author's Pinterest account, you know I'm a big fan of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans. Since my very first pair in junior high school in the early 1980s, I've owned many, many over the years, along with shirts, shoes, purses, cologne, dishware and anything else Gloria I can get my hands on. Ms. Vanderbilt, who passed away in her 90s in 2019, remains one of my personal heroes. So, as I've been making my way through rewatchings -- or first-time watchings -- of great classic TV shoes on Tubi and other likeminded streaming apps, I've been very delighted to see GVs pop up on many of the characters of that late '70s, early '80s timeframe. I blogged before about Janet and Chrissy wearing them on "Three's Company." I blogged about the gals of "Facts of Life," particularly in the first season, wearing them in all colors. And now, for the past few weeks I've been watching the '70s comedy "Soap" for the first time, and guess what I see on Corinne in the second season:

I'm tickled pink! Or gray or whatever color they are, with white stitching! (Truth be told, they look like they could be the lavender fine cords I got in junior high school, with white stitching. Those came from the mail-order Alden's catalog -- remember Alden's?) Anyway, the above shot is from S2E8 of the series. Then, in episode 19 of the same season, Corinne sported another pair of colored GVs, this time a forest green with white stitching (the image below captured them as a very similar color as the pair above, but they were more green):

She wore that pair again in the following episode. This was in 1979, as GVs were riding high in our pop culture, helping lead the charge for the popularity of designer jeans.

I'll keep watching for more!

Six Feet Under Hollywood: Arnold Horshack!

Wow, we had almost forgotten that he illustrated Wesley Eure's children's book, and we didn't really know the details of his death (and even the rest of his life). But BRBTV certainly enjoyed his performance as Arnold Horshack on "Welcome Back, Kotter." This author just did a rewatch of the whole series on Tubi -- the first time I've really watched the series since its original airing. So this time on Brian's Six Feet Under Hollywood blog, it's Ron Paolillo's turn in the spotlight (and note the variance in the last name, which you can see on his grave) ...

Six Feet Under Hollywood: Arnold Horshack!:   Ronald Gabriel Paolillo was born in New Haven, Connecticut on April 2, 1949. He was the son of Gabriel and Carmel, the former of whom ...

A video tour through the former Eloise Asylum

In June on this very blog you saw some photos of this author's historical tour of the former Eloise facility in Westland, Michigan, commonly called Eloise Psychiatric Hospital or Eloise Asylum. The videos from that tour have been dropping weekly on my secondary YouTube channel, and they're now complete. These clips go in order from the lobby of the Kay Beard Building (once referred to as the "D" building) all the way up to the fifth (top) floor, where the most dangerous patients were once housed -- the criminally insane.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take your own tour of Eloise Asylum.

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Catch the newest episode of "Reanimated"

 
The undead are out in full force as a few of our survivors take refuge in a remote cabin for episode 8 of the "Reanimated" web series. And things aren't looking too good for this author's character, Blanche Lancaster. She was injured in a helicopter crash in an earlier episode, and that wound to her abdomen continues to get worse. And now? We'll you'll just have to watch and see.