BLUE? The colorful one from Nehi!

Years upon years ago, a mini-mart near where I lived used to sell a wonderfully blue concoction that I only knew as "Blue Nehi" which I always pronounced "Blue Knee-High." I don't remember much about the flavor (I was perhaps 7 years old when I last had it) but I remember absolutely loving it.

As time progressed, Blue Nehi stopped showing up in my area and before I knew it; I questioned whether or not I had made it up in my head or not. Convinced that was the case, I quietly accepted my ungraceful jump into senility.

Then, a couple months back, I was doing an article on the first soda to be sold in cans and that led me to the history of Royal Crown (RC) Cola. Turns out that before they were Royal Crown, they were known as Nehi and, in the late-1940s, one of their flavors was Nehi Blue Cream. After shaking the terrible image out of my head, it dawned on me that this was the magical "Blue Nehi" that I had given up on.

So no, I didn't go senile in my teens (apparently, I went senile when I was 20) and it very much existed. Though the company completely changed their name to their flagship product in the 1950s, the Nehi brand still pops up on uber-rare occasions.

So I now have another goal to reach for in life. First, I need to get my hands on Pepsi Clear and do a taste test (then promptly have my stomach pumped, I wanna kill two birds with one stone here.) Then I need to get my hands on some new Nehi Blue Cream and see if its flavor happens to jog my memory. It'd be nice to verify whether or not this was the same drink that I loved as a kid.

FACT! #63

In honor of my wife's return to school and the start of the new term for myself and many of my friends in the area; I figured this would be a very appropriate FACT! subject! Though I'd probably make the creators disappointed in my terrible, terrible grammatical skills... And mathematical skills... And eating skills... Hell, even gaming skills.

A whole generation of kids just had a severe blast from the past with that logo. First debuting in 1973 from David McCall; Schoolhouse Rock was a very popular and surprisingly long running educational series. The cartoons were usually just a single song in length, usually about 3 minutes long, and dealt with a wide variety of educational subjects. The series was part of the much coveted Saturday Morning line-up for ABC. The series managed to score some hits with some of the songs... Who grew up in the 70s/80s/90s can't hum "Conjunction Junction?"

The initial run of the series was between 1973 and 1985 with a handful of spin-off series: America Rocks (in honor of the bicentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence), Grammar Rock, Science Rock and Computer Rock (with only a handful of shorts produced in the early-1980s.) A second series of shorts were released mainly from 1993 until 2002 with a few more new spin-offs.

Even after nearly 40 years, the series is still going strong. In 2009, the production team released a direct-to-video series named Earth Rock, with many songs written by the original band including Bob Dorough (who wrote the first Schoolhouse Rock song: Three Is A Magic Number.)

Welcome back to school, chitlins! Now I totally need to listen to "My Hero Zero."

FACT! #62

By the early 1980s, Atari's reign of dominance quickly began to yield as new competition entered the video game market. With the introduction of Mattel's Intellivsion (1979), the Atari 2600's technology began to look obsolete and a nearly knockout blow came in 1982 with the release of the vastly superior ColecoVision.

Atari already figured that the 2600 was going to become obsolete roughly around 1980 and in 1979 began to design a new system. Preliminary work on the successor, named at the time the Atari Video System X - Advanced Video Computer System, began and was based off of Atari's growing line of home computers, the Atari 400 and 800. The name was changed to the Atari 5200, though there are a few known copies of the Video System X that do exist.

In 1982, the Atari 5200 was released with 4 controller ports on it, whereas the vast majority of systems at the time had only 2. In 1983, the system was re-released with only 2 ports and was reconfigured so that Atari could release an Atari 2600 adapter allowing backwards compatibility.

Sadly, the 5200, albeit a much improved system, was doomed basically from the start. In 1983, Atari made massive blunders and a glut of terrible video game titles led to the video game market crash of 1983. At the time, video games were viewed as a passing fad and Atari discontinued production of the 5200 quietly in 1984.

A little over half of the games for the system sell for under $10, but a surprising percentage are starting to gain value due to the somewhat limited production of them and are going for $10 - $50 with one title regularly fetching over $100.

FACT! #61

Today, most people are wondering about the longevity of the penny/cent and why on earth we're still minting it as it has become such an apparently useless coin. But back in the day, pennies were easily the most commonly used coin and had so much value that, in 1792, the US mint authorized the production of a Half Cent.

The US Half Cent was minted from 1793 to 1857 with several interruptions in its production during the early and mid-19th century. The coins usually had "Half Cent" on the back with some stating "200 for a dollar." Most mintages of the half cent were under 500,000 with a few years seeing between 0 and 100,000.

Due to the limited minting of the half cent, most varieties go for no less than $50 regardless of condition. Some rarer ones go for $200 - $500. The rarest varieties do go for premium prices well into the thousands and tens of thousands of dollars; including mint and near-mint conditioned coins.

FACT! #60

If asked what the first digital audio recording format was, most people would receive one of three responses: The Compact Disc, MP3s or Cassettes. Those three responses are all incorrect. In 1976 a new audio format named SoundStream and the company of the same name, debuted.

The technology they used allowed them to convert analog recordings into digital and thus improving the quality of the recordings. The company quickly began working with major companies including Warner Bros., RCA and CBS to record various works of music under all of those labels.

Though initially successful, SoundStream was eventually overtaken by the growing popularity of the CD. A brief format war began between the two after the CD was released in 1982; but by 1985, SoundStream went the way of the Dodo and succumbed to the inevitable and the CD soon became the most popular format for over a decade.

FACT! #59

In 2006, Coca-Cola released a seemingly unholy concoction named Coca-Cola Blak: a Coke/coffee drink. Originally debuting in France, the drink was brought over to the United States and Canada in the same year. In 2007, Coca-Cola announced that they would discontinue the drink in the US once the original concentrate ran out and by 2008, the drink was discontinued everywhere.

Though the Canadian and French version of this drink was sweetened simply by sugar; the American version was sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, aspartame (aka, NutraSweet) and acesulfame potassium. This combination caused the American version to be significantly sweeter tasting than the other versions (acesulfame potassium is approximately 180 times sweeter than table sugar. Aspartame is approximately 200 times sweeter than table sugar.)

Though I can't vouch for the non-US versions of the drink, I will go down on the record as saying it was horrible. Admittedly, I'm not a fan of coffee, but even people I know who love coffee thought that Coca-Cola Blak was a terrible abomination of a drink.

FACT! #58

Back in 1979, programmer David Crane had figured out how to make a semi-realistic sprite of a little man. In 1982, he wanted to figure out how to use that little running man in a video game and the idea that followed was the basis for Pitfall!

Pitfall! went on to become an early smash hit in the history of video games, selling over 4 million copies and was the second best selling game on the Atari 2600 system. The game was ported to the Intellivsion, Colecovision and a number of home computers in the 1980s as well.

The game was well known for pushing the boundaries of the Atari 2600's hardware and is also known for the special tricks that went into its programming to make sure that the game could fit the system's 4k memory.

Pitfall! had a number of sequels over the years and has gone on to have lasting popularity. One of the more notable sequels was 1998's "Pitfall 3D: Beyond the Jungle" that had Army of Darkness star Bruce Campbell as the voice of the game's protagonist, Pitfall Harry.