Aerosmith – "Toys in the Attic" (1975)

Toys, toys, toys

In the attic

Did you ever own “The Game of Cootie”?

If you did, check your mother's attic the next time you visit her – it might still be up there.

The Game of Cootie

I hadn’t thought about The Game of Cootie in at least 50 years.  But then I stumbled across a piece of clickbait titled “What Was The Most Popular Toy The Year You Were Born?”

The Game of Cootie was invented in 1949.  In 1950, only about 5600 units were sold, but sales jumped to a million-plus in 1952 – the year i was born.  By 2005, sales of The Game of Cootie totaled 50 million units.

The Game of Cootie's game pieces

To win The Game of Cootie, you have be the first player to assemble the game pieces required to build a complete “cootie” – a body, a head, two antennae, two eyes, a proboscis, and six legs – by rolling certain numbers with a die.

I remember exactly what the cootie’s proboscis looked like:

Three proboscises

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“What Was The Most Popular Toy The Year You Were Born?” can be found on the Dusty Old Things website.

Dusty Old Things is one of a number of websites that belongs to Great Life Publishing, which sees the glass as half full, not half empty:

At Great Life, our goal is to focus on the stories that remind us that life is in fact great.  You won’t find negativity.  You won’t find divisiveness.  You won’t find gloom, doom or fear.  We proudly serve up nothing but daily inspiration.  After all . . . LIFE IS GREAT!

A year ago, I might have dismissed that mission statement as hopelessly corny and naive.  But after a year of seeking shelter from the storm of vituperation that’s been generated by the zillions of people who lost their everlovin’ minds over Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Great Life sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

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“What Was The Most Popular Toy The Year You Were Born?” covers 1930 to 1980.  (I don’t think that title is strictly accurate.  I have a feeling that the title should be “What Was The Most Popular Toy That Was Invented In The Year You Were Born?” because some of the listed toys – like The Game of Cootie – were not immediate best-sellers.)

I was born in 1952, which was the year that “Mr. Potato Head” was introduced.

Mr. Potato Head

Mr. Potato Head was the first toy advertised on television.  Over a million units of the toy – which contained hands, feet, ears, eyes, mouths, noses, hats, eyeglasses and a pipe, and retailed for 98 cents – were sold in 1952.  Later versions of the toy came with plastic bodies, but the original Mr. Potato Head required you to use a real potato.

The most popular toy of 1953 was the Wiffle ball, which is still popular.  I have to believe that every male baby boomer in the United States owned a Wiffle ball and the skinny yellow plastic bat that was sold with it.

The big seller in 1954 was the Mattel “Shootin’ Shell” cap pistol, which also fired small plastic bullets.  I would have traded a kidney for one of those bad boys when I was a kid.

Here’s a TV commercial for the Shootin’ Shell pistol, which would be viewed by modern bureaucrats and parents alike as horribly dangerous:  

Here’s what Dusty Old Things says were the most popular toys from 1955 to 1964:

1955 – Betsy Wetsy doll

1956 – Play-Doh

1957 – Silly Putty

1958 – Colorforms

1959 – Barbie doll

1960 – Legos

1961 – Etch-A-Sketch

1962 – Lincoln Logs

1963 – Duncan Yo-Yos

1964 – G.I. Joe

I’ll stop there because I turned 12 years old in 1964, and stopped paying much attention to toys.

Click here to read “What Was The Most Popular Toy The Year You Were Born?” in its entirety.  It’s may be clickbait, but it’s worthwhile clickbait.

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Aerosmith’s third studio album, Toys in the Attic, was released in 1975.  I played it a lot when I was in law school.

Toys in the Attic sold over eight million copies, and included the band’s two most famous singles – “Walk This Way” and “Sweet Emotion.”  Its title track isn’t quite as good as those two songs, but it comes pretty close.

Here’s “Toys in the Attic”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Aerosmith – "Love in an Elevator" (1989)

I kinda hope we get stuck

Nobody gets out alive

I’ve never been to China, and I have no plans to go there.  But if I ever do, I’ll eschew taking the elevator and use the stairs instead.  If you know what’s good for you, you will too.

On January 30, a maintenance crew went to check out a malfunctioning elevator in a residential building in the Chinese city of Xi’an, which the home of the famous “Terra Cotta Army.”

The "Terra Cotta Army"

The crew didn’t manually open the elevator doors to see if anyone was inside – they simply yelled “Anyone in there?” (in Mandarin, of course).  When they didn’t get an answer, they turned off the electricity to that elevator, and went home without opening its doors.  

When the workers returned to the building on March 1– over one month later – and opened the elevator cab, they were in for quite a surprise: to wit, THERE WAS A DEAD WOMAN IN THE ELEVATOR.

The infamous broken elevator

The hands of the victim – who had starved to death – were bloody and battered as a result of her desperate attempts to claw the elevator doors open.  

From the Los Angeles Times:

[Q]uestions remained over how the woman in the elevator could have remained trapped for so long with neither her neighbors or her family realizing it.

The victim was reportedly mentally ill, and her family seems to have concluded that she had wandered off and gotten lost.  They reported her missing to local authorities, but that was the end of it.

Why did it take over a month for the elevator crew to return and fix the elevator?

Blame it on Chinese New Year.  (FYI, this year is the “Year of the Monkey.”  I was born in a “Year of the Dragon,” which pones all the other years.  Chinese birth rates usually go up during such a year because “Dragon babies” are considered to have many desirable characteristics.) 

"Year of the Monkey" greeting card

This year, the first day of Chinese New Year was February 8.  The official New Year’s break in China lasts about a week, but a lot of Chinese workers take additional time off before or after the holiday (or both).

I’m shocked that Chinese workers can take off for an entire month – I thought that privilege was reserved to the French and other decadent and lazy Western societies.  

By the way, taking an escalator in China may not be a good idea either.  Last July, a woman visiting a shopping mall in another Chinese city was “eaten alive” by the escalator she was riding with her young son.  

Once more, I’ll quote an account published in the Los Angeles Times:

The scene can only be described as horrific: on an otherwise unremarkable morning, a woman is riding up a shopping center escalator in central China with her son.  When she reaches the top and begins to disembark, she steps onto a metal footplate covering the machinery.  The plate collapses, dropping the woman into the gears.  She shoves her child into the arms of two mall employees, and is crushed to death.

Click here to watch a security video of the escalator incident.  (You might want to skip it.)

I’m sorry I ever heard about this incident.  I ride escalators everyday to go down into the Washington Metro subway station where I catch a train to work, and back up to the surface at the end of my commute.  

Maybe I’ll start avoiding the Metro escalators – which are out of service much of the time anyway.  After all, I can always use the elevator . . . right? 

Steven Tyler

“Love in an Elevator” reached #1 on the Billboard “Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks” chart in 1989.  It’s difficult to say whether this song, the music video, or Steven Tyler is more absurd.  

Tyler is sort of an American version of Mick Jagger – actually Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show may be a closer analogue.

Here’s the official music video for “Love in an Elevator”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Aerosmith -- "Back in the Saddle" (1976)

I'm calling all the shots tonight

I'm like a loaded gun . . .

I'm back in the saddle again

Veterans Day is celebrated today because the armistice that brought an end to World War I -- at least on the Western Front -- took effect at the 11th hour (11:00 AM) of the 11th day of the 11th month (November 11, 1918).  Today, you can add one more 11 for the current year.

Veterans Day used to be called Armistice Day in the United States -- that's what my father called when I was growing up.  The name was changed after World War II, when we had many millions more veterans to honor.

November 11 is still called Armistice Day in France and Belgium.  It is celebrated as Remembrance Day in the UK and the countries of the British Commonwealth.

I'm not posting this at 11:00 am, because the song that is featured in this post -- "Back in the Saddle," from Aerosmith's 1976 album, Rocks -- has absolutely nothing to do with Veterans Day.  Perhaps I could have come up with a song that did have some connection to Veterans Day if I had spent a little time and effort trying, but it's been a busy week for me.  (2 or 3 lines a day has a more topical post.)

Aerosmith was sort of a big deal in the Boston area in the mid-1970s, when I was going to law school there.  I wasn't a huge fan, but I had two or three of their albums, including Rocks, which was a favorite of Slash, Kurt Cobain, and James Hetfield.

A lot of their music seemed a little formulaic to me -- it was very skillfully put together, and it could be a lot of fun, but not necessarily something to take very seriously.  

Take "Walk This Way," for example.  Clever lyrics, dirty (but not too dirty), and some unexpected twists and turns to keep things from getting predictable.  It's a lot like a hip-hop song, with the speeded-up lyrics and the internal rhymes. 

"Back in the Saddle" is slower, and rawer, and dirtier.  The guy in this song isn't tongue-in-cheek dirty, he's seriously dirty. 

Aerosmith in 1976

 He's not a 16-year-old at the high-school dance, he's a saddle-sore outlaw who's been riding around in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks -- and after he gets good and liquored up, he's going to grab a skanky whore, drag her upstairs, and jump right back in the saddle.  It's not going to be pretty.

By the way, some of you will remember that good ol' Gene Autry had a song that also started with  "I'm back in the saddle again."  Very different song, boys and girls.

Aerosmith (like the Rolling Stones) stayed around way too long and put out a lot of crap.  But at their peak, they killed.  It's a miracle Steven Tyler has any voice left at all after opening so many concerts with this song over the past few decades.

Here's "Back in the Saddle":

Click here if you'd like to buy the song from Amazon: