Horror Series: The Headless Nun

I totally should have started this series off as "Horror Series" and not "Legendary Creature Series." Anyways...

courtesy of miramichionline.com.

Hailing from the great Canadian landscape, the Headless Nun is a ghost story from Miramachi, New Brunswick. According to legend, she was a nun in the area back in the 18th Century who was decapitated... Though it was not known who had done it. Accusations have been pointed towards sailors, a run-of-the-mill murderer or even a crazed woodsman, but there's no consensus exactly who was the responsible party. Nowadays, she is said to wander the area in search for her head.

Sadly, as she has been wandering the land for a couple centuries, we have disrespected her plight by playing a TV show that not only seemed to mock her, but mock her in the worst way. The Flying Nun (1967 - 1970) was a TV show that aired on ABC that starred Sally Field as a nun whose head wear (cornette) and light build would allow her to fly.

Seriously... The Headless Nun is spending an eternity looking for her head and we actually air that show? Seems like a complete dickhole move on our part. Sally Field can fly around because of something she wears on her head, the ultimate freedom... While the Headless Nun doesn't even have the luxury of having a head.

Seriously, we deserve to be haunted.

Courtesy tvtropes.com.
Then again, maybe our curse is to have this series as a part of our collective memory.

Legendary Creature Series: Manananggal

The Manananggal is a vampire-like creature within Philippine folklore. It usually takes the form of a beautiful young woman and has the lovely ability to utterly tear its own torso from its legs, grow wings and begin to fly in search of its prey. ITs preferred prey seems to be women, namely pregnant women that are sleeping.

Similar to western vampires (of the non-glittery persuasion), they seem to be weak against sunlight and garlic. Though instead of a stake through the heart or leaving them in the sun during the daylight hours, the way to defeat a Manananggal is to find its abandoned lower half and cover the gaping wound with salt and ashes before day break to ensure that it cannot reconnect.

Courtesy of booalert.com

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this creature is the lack of points one can get in Scrabble from it. With no modifiers, this creature can only net you 15 points despite how many letters are required to spell it.

General Mills' Monster Cereals

Damn near one of my favorite things about the entire Halloween season would have to be the time limited release of Count Chocula. Ever since I was young, I was always happy when he made his annual appearance and I know that I'd be soon downing all of his chocolatey goodness and his marshmallows... That are sorta just like pebbles when dry. God forbid you eat one that's stale, by the way.

Count Chocula has been making yearly appearances at your local supermarket since 1971... Regardless of day or night, it seems fluorescent lights aren't enough to burn his flesh. Even though it's enough to burn normal human flesh. Perhaps that's why they use those lights... To appease the grocery vampire gods or something. Or maybe it's to assure that Chocula will come back every year or something.

Back then he was known as Dr. Count Chocula (who in the hell gave him a PhD.?) and debuted alongside Frankenberry.

Seen here being way too happy eating his own cereal in a form of cannibalism both delicious and horrendous.

Speaking of Frankenberry, this is something that has bugged me for quite some time...

This is Dr. Frankenstein...

This is also Dr. Frankenstein... ('s grandson, Frederick)

This is Frankenstein's Monster... NOT Frankenstein.

This is Peter Boyle.

Alrighty... My nerd rage will subside quite a bit with that. Getting back on track.

Count Chocula and Frankenberry were the first two, but in 1973 they were followed by Boo Berry.

Boo Berry, Count Chocula and Frankenberry. This was the trio that I remember for most of my life. I had tried all three and well... Yeah, Count Chocula was the best in my opinion. I mean, he's a bit loony, but at least he's not a cannibal like Frankenberry nor was he higher than a coked out bonobo that just had fifteen balloons pop in its ass.

What I didn't know was that, for many years, there were other monster cereals.

In 1975, Fruit Brute made his debut. This was a multi-fruit flavor cereal on par with Trix or Fruit Loops... But with a rainbow overall wearing brute of a wolf. Though it was around for a few years, sharing the limelight with the Count, Fruit Brute was discontinued in 1984. Though this year, General Mills had re-issued Fruit Brute and you can buy it once more.

To fill that hairy, fruity void in our lives... General Mills released Yummy Mummy in 1987. Yummy Mummy was, essentially, the same as Fruit Brute but with a minor change. Fruit Brute had lime flavored marshmallows, Yummy Mummy had vanilla flavored marshmallows. Yummy Mummy was discontinued in 1993, having a shelf life shorter than Fruit Brute. Again, in 2013, Yummy Mummy was re-issued... So now we have TWO fruit flavored marshmallow monster cereals. Clearly this is a great idea.

I need to point out that, thus far, we have a number of the Universal Monsters in cereal form: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, Wolf Man and the Mummy. Boo Berry is the only exception, maybe he's like, the Invisible Man or something. I mean, he's wearing a hat and all.

So there you have it. Take this chance to try each and every one of these cereals. The main trio should stick around, but Yummy Mummy and Frute Brute may not, if history is any indication. Enjoy them and get some of the taste of Halloween in you... For those who absolute must live, breathe and eat Halloween... These are all essential.

October 1st!

Today is the beginning of what I believe is the "holiday season." The first day of the long holidays has officially begun in my eyes... And which holiday takes the cake for October? That's right, Columbus Day! ...Wait, I mean, Halloween.

Halloween has been one of my all time favorite holidays for a number of reasons. It's when the weather finally starts turning fall/winter-like here, it's when I view the holiday season as starting and the entire spooky, superstition stuff that goes along with it. It also helps that a plethora of items get Halloween themed makeovers and Count Chocula comes out of hiding to become the best cereal of the year. This year, I sincerely hope I actually get around to making a few posts about Halloween related items within the month of October.

Then again, my track record exemplifies Halloween at its best: Horrific. I hope to finally change that this year and make a number of posts that are Halloween themed. Whether they're good or not is up for potentially ironic discussion.

Anyways... Happy Holidays everyone! I can finally say it!

FACT! #67

Courtesy of jimscoins.
I don't recall ever seeing Washington with a copper visage. Probably just a spray tan or something.

No, what you're seeing isn't Photoshopped. That is indeed a US quarter minted on a penny planchet. This kind of error is one of the more jarring and unique ones out of the dozens of errors out there. The error is happened when the wrong kind of planchet is fed into the wrong coin stamping press. In this case, the planchet for pennies was fed into a stamper meant for quarters.

Courtesy of coinquest.
"In your face FDR! My coin is bigger than your coin!"

There are numerous cases of this error out there; different denominations, different combinations of material and sometimes... The same denomination with different composition. That's the case with the insanely rare (and very, very valuable) 1943 Copper Cent and 1944 Steel Cent.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1943, the US Mint switched to steel for pennies that year due to copper being used for the war effort.

Courtesy of coinsdig.
In 1944, the US Mint switched back to copper planchets for pennies.

All of these coins go for premium prices, with the 1943/1944 composition swapped coins going for insane prices. The 1943 Copper Penny fetches in the tens of thousands, with some examples going for around $100,000 in mint condition. The 1944 Steel Penny tends to fetch a slightly higher average price, with only 25 - 30 known examples; they tend to fetch between $75,000 and $110,000.

Courtesy of jimscoins.
Penny stamped on a stamped Dime. "I am an abomination!"

Slightly related to the wrong planchet strikes would be double denomination coins. When a coin has already been stamped, it sometimes ends up getting stamped again with another die. The last die to stamp the coin is usually the strongest (in the case above, the penny die was the last to stamp), but details of both are visible (such as the "ONE DIME" to the top right of the above coin.)

FACT! #66

Courtesy of Wikipedia. The original prototype burned the retinas of artists using it.

Perhaps best known for his creation Betty Boop and his work on the Popeye and Superman cartoons; Max Fleischer (b. 1883 - d. 1972) also pioneered a number of techniques used in animation and was quite the innovator. Today, we'll be focusing on one of the more elaborate techniques he created, along with the machine named after it; Rotoscoping and the Rotoscope.

Rotoscoping is the process of tracing the outline of live action footage and was first used in his "Out of the Inkwell" series in 1915 when he filmed his brother, David, in a clown suit as he performed... Which led to the creation of his first major character, Koko the Clown. Max designed and patented the Rotoscope and went on to use it quite extensively at his animation studio. The Superman cartoons from the 1940s used rotoscoping heavily. Though a personal favorite use of it would have to be in 1932's Betty Boop cartoon "Minnie the Moocher" where he used the technique to animate Cab Calloway's dance moves.

Courtesy of moviefest2012. Why Cab Calloway was rotoscoped into a walrus ghost is beyond me. Then again, pot wasn't exactly illegal until 1937. Mystery solved?

Though Fleischer Studios used it extensively, they weren't the only animation studio to use it. Disney used it in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Ralph Bakshi used it quite a bit in the 1970s, most famously in 1978's "Lord of the Rings." Later uses could be found in a-Ha's "Take on Me" music video, "He-Man and The Masters of The Universe" cartoon, both in the 1980s, and Don Bluth's "Titan A.E." released in 2000. Even Star Wars got into the game using the technique to add the glow to the lightsabers.

The prominence of rotoscoping has waned quite a bit, but it has lasted the test of time. It's still being used and is fondly remembered as a unique technique. There were other innovations made by Max Fleischer (which I'll get around to eventually), but this was perhaps the most inventive.

FACT! #65

Courtesy of Wikipedia. They didn't even believe in truth in marketing, the soda wasn't even OK.

OK Soda is what happens when you try to can the alleged essence of Generations X/Y and their anti-corporate, apathetic, angst-filled and disillusionment. Conceived by Coca-Cola in 1993 and test marketed in a number of "hip" cities that summer, OK Soda had a limited life span on grocer's shelves.

The marketing campaign was created by Portland, Oregon based Wieden & Kennedy and centered around a sense of irony that only the teens and 20-somethings in the 1990's seemed to grasp. Unfortunately for Coca-Cola, it turns out that they were the victims of irony when their campaign was met with apathy and a general anti-corporate attitude.

There were a number of different cans styles that were released, above is just four of them. The artwork was done by Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns. There was also an "OK Soda Manifesto" that was released with the soft drink:

1. What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?
2. OK Soda emphatically rejects anything that is not OK, and fully supports anything that is.
3. The better you understand something, the more OK it turns out to be.
4. OK Soda says, "Don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."
5. OK Soda reveals the surprising truth about people and situations.
6. OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.
7. There is no real secret to feeling OK.
8. OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.
9. Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of "OK" brand soda.
10. Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.

Don't worry, that feeling of your brain melting out of your ears is really just blood. Okay, maybe you should go to the hospital. It's definitely a natural reaction to reading something like. For the kids of today, imagine that in hipster speak... It's essentially the same thing. This is precisely why you don't try to corner the market exclusively on the counter-culture, you really just end up lampooning yourself.

Since it left the shelves in 1995, it has attained a bit of a cult status. The flavor is, apparently, more like Diet Coke than the supposed, marketed taste of "fruity." Though I haven't been able to find anyone or any reviews of the taste back from 1993... Then again, I didn't exactly do much research into this one.

FACT! #64

Yes, there was a time many, many moons ago that a game like this could be created. Released by Spectravision in 1983 for the Purina Foods and based off of their massively popular Chase the Chuck Wagon advertising campaign.

The game was a standard maze game, the player controlled a dog, named Chuckie, that had to make its way from the center of the maze to the chuck wagon that sat at the exit of the maze. The game has a time limit of either 60 or 30 seconds, depending on exactly what difficulty was chosen. There to thwart the player's efforts are a "dog catcher" and a "bone" that, if the player touches them, stuns him temporarily to make it more difficult to accomplish the goal.

If the player makes it to the chuck wagon, the second phase of the level is reached where the player has to control the dog as it attempts to eat the food... Seriously. All of that work (well, "work") just to help a dog whose depth perception is so shitty that they can't accurately judge where its food bowl is. What a riveting experience.

Anyways, at the end of the second phase the points are tallied up. The point totals are based on how fast you got to the wagon and an additional 100 points were awarded for accurately getting the dog to eat from its bowl. Then the whole thing starts all over again with a different map!

The game was only offered to people who redeemed their proofs of purchase from Purina dog food, as was common for many, many years back in the 1980s. The promotion wasn't successful, has been considered one of the worst games from a period of time that crappy titles flooded the market and the game has become a sought after title.

So bitch if you want about the current gaming market (I know I do) but there was a time that almost every game on the market was absolutely terrible. When that happens, it causes an industry to completely sink.

A Return?

I'm not going to make any promises but after much consideration and thinking, I am planning on returning to this blog and expanding it by attaching it to an actual website! The long pause wasn't necessary, but it certainly feels like it was. I don't know how to explain it, but I suppose that's the best way to put it.

Life just happened. Things got in the way, my naturally lazy personality chiefly among them... And I guess I may have been burned out. But I don't think that's an apt description. Really, I just sort of lost touch for this blog.

In the time between my last post and this one, I have seen one of my all time favorite sites go through a long content drought and after several months, the owner of that site finally admitted that he was bringing an end to the site and announce that he was going to be starting on another site. Then another site I absolutely love has been on an indefinite hiatus since 2010 and while there are signs that they're going to continue with it, nothing has happened yet.

Both of those (not quite) ends have made me a bit upset. Not angry, just... A bit like a part of my ritual has been blocked. I joined those sites in midst of their creation frenzy, cranking stuff out on a regular basis that was all quality. Then they just stopped. No notice, no warning, just gone. When contact was made, it was to announce that one was going down and well, there's been no information on the other.

Of course, I am talking about www.x-entertainment.com and www.homestarrunner.com. Anyone who knows me knows how much both of those sites have influenced me and how important both of them were to me working on this blog.

It got me to thinking, though. I have wanted to restart this blog and get the actual Virtual Vintage site up and running for some time now. While x-entertainment is going to continue as another site... I feel as if there is a lull in new content on the random crap that site and my blog have in common and now was the time to continue work on my blog.

Long, rambling story short, I'm going to try and start posting new content here and will be launching my actual site soon!

I don't know when any FACT!s will return, I hope soon. I won't do the FACT! a day speed I was going at, but I am hoping to continue with them as well. It's not that I don't have enough information to share, it's that I am really lazy and doing one a day was killing me.

So expect some new stuff to be popping up here, and it'll again be worth stopping by every day or so to see what else is new.

Thanks for sticking with me. I'm shocked to see how often I'm seeing references to this blog out there (there are a lot, then again... More than three would be a lot to me) and between the people I know that were visiting and the number of people finding it, even while I was gone, has brought quite a bit of joy to me.

...Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Google sent me $100 to use to advertise this blog and my site. So that definitely helped motivate me. :P

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN POST!

...Or I could totally not make a single posting since the 3rd of this month.

Life hit me like a ton of bricks (or a ton of feathers, whichever is heavier) and it knocked most of the holiday spirit out of me in a single, felling swoop. That was, until, a couple days ago when I caught "The Great Pumpkin" on ABC.

I don't know how many (if any) people have those silly little things that arbitrarily make a holiday season feel "complete." I guess for many people, the Halloween season is capped off with an amazing party (check on my end here) or, for the chit'lins, trick-or-treating.

When I was a kid (until, I believe, I was 17 or so) trick-or-treating was what made my Halloween season feel complete. There's nothing like going out a bit later in the evening when people are just trying to give away the candy and after the kids went home that was awesome. The air seemed crisp, especially if it were cold. There was so much merriment in the annual candy-fetch that I continued doing the tradition objectively years past the date I should have stopped.

Then... I, too, stopped going. It wasn't really a conscious thing, I just stopped going door-to-door asking for handouts. I don't know what made me stop, to be honest; nor do I really care to explore why I did either. All I know is that, after trick-or-treating stopped for me... What made a Halloween seem complete was catching "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on TV.

Those who know me in real life should know my not-so-quiet obsession with the Peanuts gang. I've been a fan since I was a kid and well, watching it is something that helps tie the holiday season together for me... At least, it's something that really sinks it in with me that the holidays are beginning. Admittedly, I have the show on DVD and could watch it whenever I wanted... But there's something that makes it more official, more important, when it airs on television.

Now that I have seen it and have been to/hosted a party... It really does fill me with holiday cheer. Of course, that could just be enough beer to drown the Loch Ness Monster. I kid... Honestly, this is a feeling I can't replicate via alcohol. It's something so honest and genuine.

Anyways... I wanted to wish everyone a happy Halloween. I hope that all of you have found that special spark that makes this time of year seem wonderful... I mean, there's gotta be something special about this if we all put up with the stress and crap that happens... Yet, we find ourselves missing it after it's over.

I'll do my best not to make any promises about updating as, for whatever reason, those promises don't often play out due to various things that seem out of my control. It also sorta helps that we're heading towards a grossly under-appreciated holiday (Thanksgiving to those in the US, outside? Just carry on, I suppose) and it's one that I hold very high in regard (even if it's just for free turkey and enough stuffing to mummify even a jellyfish.)

With that, I shall leave you all with an image that has brought me smiles dozens of times over the years (and no, it's not the chimp drinking his own pee. That's a video.)...

Fact: One of the first signs of hypothermia is seeing the silhouette of a dog rising in the foreground. That dog may-or-may not be Snoopy. It could be a Hell Hound to devour your soul. SWEET DREAMS!

Update Post: 10/03/2011

I'm gonna be doing another FACT! here in the near future. The lack of updates recently is part because of school starting, part because of stress in obligations and doing freelance work for a store in my area. Eventually, there will be an ad up for that store as part of the agreement I have made with them.

As for the future of the site? Well, we've entered one of my favorite times of year: the long holiday season. I want to add graphics to the site that will be set to a theme for each holiday... So orange/black and "spooky" for Halloween. Red/brown and I don't know... Turkeys... For Thanksgiving. Red/green and the abominable snowman for Christmas. Just preliminary ideas and God only knows if I'll actually act on it.

Anyways, expect continued postings on the site and more themed posts related to the holidays we are approaching.

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.

FACT! #57

First produced in the early years of the 20th Century, Iridill Glass (more commonly known as Carnival Glass) was a very popular and affordable type of glass work. Inspired by the lavish works from Tiffany and other producers, Iridill was expected to be the next big thing and fetch premium prices.

This was not to be the case and soon Iridill Glass began to sell at steep discounts; enough so that carnivals began buying up many pieces and offering them as prizes to their games. Through that venue, many households got their first pieces of the glass and that is where the popular name comes from. To give the glass its famous sheen was from the application of metallic salts when the glass was still virtually molten.

Unfortunately, many makers went out of their way to copy their competitor's designs and most Carnival Glass lacked maker's marks which make identifying where individual pieces come from nearly impossible.

Today Carnival Glass has a very active collector's market both online and off. Prices for smaller pieces range from the single digits to hundreds of dollars; with larger pieces passing the $500 market and some climbing into the $1,000 range.

FACT! #56

Though Nintendo's first foray into the video game world was licensing the Magnavox Odyssey for distribution in Japan; the first system that they designed was not the legendary Famicom... It was the Nintendo Color TV Game 6.

Released in 1977, this system was similar to the Odyssey in that it was a dedicated system. The system had six games, all variations of table tennis/PONG that were programmed directly into it. The Color TV Game 6 didn't have the ability to swap out cartridges even though the Fairchild Channel F was released the previous year proved that the technology was there. The system was the first in a line of Color TV Games and was minimally successful. There were 5 systems released for the series between 1977 and 1980.

As the series was released only in Japan, the consoles do fetch a bit of money online now; sitting anywhere in the $75 - $150 range. The rare white systems could easily see $100 - $250 and perhaps more if there were enough interested buyers.