Alright, now a few words about the toy triumvirate I mentioned earlier, Micronauts, Slime, and Hello Kitty. While all of these were first copyrighted in the U.S. in 1976, two were first introduced in Japan in 1974 and I don’t remember seeing any of them until 1977. However, for our purposes the 1976 copyright is enough for topical inclusion. Micronauts never became widely popular in my school, in fact I may have been just about the only kid who had any, most of the other boys concentrating their attention on the Star Wars figures that came out soon after the Micronauts first appeared. Other than the fact that I’ve always had a strong contrarian tendency to be into things that no one else I know likes, I think the fact that there wasn’t a pre-existing story attached to the Micronauts had something to do with my preference for them (my research today shows that they did actually have a story to go with them, but I was never aware of this at the time). Also, their translucent plastic bodies - I mostly just had a bunch of Time Travellers plus the Biotron - simply looked much cooler. They were gone by the early eighties, but I always thought that the Transformers, which were big soon after my prime years of toy-buying, seemed like a Biotron rip-off; probably other transforming robots like that had been around in Japan for awhile, I just don’t know much about such stuff. Moving on – I recall seeing Hello Kitty items around occasionally starting in the fourth grade, but they were never sold in my small town so not many girls had the stuff, maybe just a pen or a little coin purse here and there. I was always both intrigued and confused by Hello Kitty – I don’t recall anything before that wasn’t a cartoon or toy or something other than just an image with no further explanation. Actually, now that I think about it maybe Holly Hobbie was like that too – there’s probably some sociological theorizing that could be done about the fact the two examples which come to mind of widely beloved brands which were ONLY a brand without any further referent were for girls but such speculation would require far more thinking than I’m interested in undertaking right now. The fact that in the early years Kitty was almost always shown in the same exact pose, sitting with her face forward and her overalled legs sticking out to the side, added to her vaguely unsettling mysteriousness. Readers in the know will be aware, of course, that around 1987 the contrarian tendency I mentioned earlier led me to become very into Hello Kitty for many years, until the world of Sanrio and other Japanese cuteness became hip with the hipsters in the mid-90s and it was no longer uniquely odd. I do continue to enjoy my Hello Kitty toaster, even though creating a Turin-style likeness of Kitty on one side of the bread means that part of your toast doesn’t get toasted. Also, these years of Kitty-interest may mean that I know a few facts about her that you do not. For example, did you know that she has a last name and that she doesn’t live in Japan? It’s true: Kitty White lives in London, England with her twin sister Mimi (she has a yellow bow on her right ear instead of a red bow on her left ear) and their parents George and Mary. She’s in third grade, is five apples tall, weighs three apples, her favorite color is red, she plays piano, and her blood type is A. I’d continue now with a deconstruction of her video Mom Loves Me After All, but I think I’ve already made clear why I’m not sure that writing about subjects I actually know a lot about here is the best idea in the world – though it may be hard to believe that women are not overwhelmingly attracted to men who can tell them what Hello Kitty’s blood type is, I’ve found it to be a fact. More interesting Kitty-inspired freakiness can be found here (if you click on no other link in this post, click that one, it is awesome). Finally, even though I have some work now that I need to be getting to I need to at least mention Slime. This stuff was the hottest toy around when I was in the fourth grade, and for about a month I was the only kid in town who had it (I don’t remember why exactly, we must have gone to Des Moines or somewhere that it was on sale before it started showing up nearer to Ackley), making me quite popular at recess. Actually, one of my friends did have a can before I did during the summer, which is how I became aware of this miraculously mucus-like goop, but it had fallen into some dirt and become pretty much ruined by the time school started. For those few golden weeks I used to let kids play with it for the day in trade for something of theirs like a Hot Wheels car, and by trade I mean that they had to give back the Slime in mint condition at 3:30pm but the car was mine forever. I think that should clearly demonstrate the extreme hotness of Slime when it first came out. The downside, as the first kid who had the Slime found out, is that it got dirty and fucked up very easily and would quickly dry into an un-fun crust if left out of its little garbage can for very long, plus as moms across the country soon discovered, it stained fabrics. Still, it was one of the coolest toys ever and I can totally smell that not entirely pleasant chemical odor it had while thinking about it now. BUT, back to business…