Day: July 18, 2003

One of the weirdest toys I ever had? Easily the Strange Change. It was an electric heater with plastic monsters… you warmed up the monsters and when they were soft you compressed them into little cubes. Then when you heated the cubes up at a later date they expanded again into the monsters!

Recently I’ve discovered that you got a bunch of the creatures with the set… but you could also buy more creatures in little cardboard-backed blister packs. Sometimes the creatures would be in their square “Time Capsule“ form so I guess you wouldn’t necessarily know what kind they were!

Virtual Vikki has a great description with pictures, and there’s another good set of photos at Sam’s Toy Box. And yes, I still have this thing in my garage.

KIRBY: ya ever notice how these things have a dangerous resemblance to now’n’laters?
BRIAN: I have noticed that. Funny isn’t it?
KIRBY: maybe that’s why they stopped making them
KIRBY: too many kids were either eating the plastic, or caught the set on fire by putting a now’n’later on the hot plate
KIRBY: where’d we get our set anyway?
BRIAN: temple garage sale
KIRBY: oooh
KIRBY: yea I didnt think the parents would shell out for that
KIRBY: it was probably $20 new or something
BRIAN: besides it was a toy from the 1960’s!
KIRBY: oh
KIRBY: I didn’t realize it was that old
BRIAN: yeah when we were kids most of the really dangerous toys were gone already

Today’s trivia: Sterling Holloway, voice actor.

Yes, you know him. He’s the original voice of Winnie the Pooh.
He was the narrator on tons of Disney cartoons, like say Mickey and the Beanstalk.

Here’s an article about him with a picture. An intersting snippet:

Ironically, for the actor whose voice was to be his fortune, it was the advent of sound that drove him, however temporarily, from Hollywood. “I came to Hollywood at a bad time. The movies were in a state of turmoil,” he later recalled. “Sound was coming in and silents were going out. I made a silent two-reel comedy called The Fighting Kangaroo. Then I did a silent feature, Casey at the Bat, with Wallace Beery for Paramount, and all of a sudden I was a has-been. Nobody thought I was suitable for talkies. I didn’t feel so bad when I heard about John Gilbert. So I returned to New York.”