1. 1979 Sears Junior Fashions – Retrospace has the hottest Juniors fashions from Sears in 1979. It almost looks like a parody of a Sears catalog. Almost. First, from the “is it a robe or is it a fancy dress” category:
Anyone who was hoping to make a splash in the lunchroom or the hallways knew to take their fashion cues from Mork & Mindy:
Except for those who were a little more…career-minded. At 13.
2. Super Spike V’ball – My biggest NES regret took place in 1991. I was playing Nintendo at a friend’s house and made the worst trade of my life. I traded Ninja Gaiden II (which, at the time, was pretty much the second coming of video games) for Super Spike V’ball. It was one of those trades that was intended to be temporary but ended up being permanent due to the transient nature of childhood friendships. I held on to Super Spike V’ball for the remainder of my childhood. I’m not just shortening “Volleyball” for convenience here; the title is “V’ball”. Volleyball is your grandpa’s sport.
It’s not a bad game, not really. As you can suss out from the cover, the game is very “hot guy” centric. You bump, set, and spike your way to becoming the kings of the beach. It’s basically like that one scene from Top Gun stretched out across an entire game. It was fun enough, but I had a tough time swallowing what I’d done. I had traded in Ryu Hayabusa’s struggles against The Dark Sword of Chaos to become king of the beach.
3. Disney Contemporary Resort – Imagineering Disney’s got some great pictures of the construction of Disney’s Contemporary Resort. Their flagship resort in Orlando, the story of its construction is pretty interesting.
The Contemporary was the beachhead of Disney’s effort to get into the resort business. The company knew how to create an entertaining theme park, and they knew how to create media, but resorts were completely new to them – both the construction and the hospitality angle. The Contemporary Resort was created as a frame, and modular rooms were lifted from a crane and inserted into the appropriate holes in the frame.
It’s a pretty fascinating technique and speaks to the way Walt envisioned Walt Disney World in Orlando as a showcase of new technologies and ideas, right down to the nuts and bolts of the operation. This approach came with its headaches and might have gone more smoothly if someone hadn’t tried to build their first hotel ever this way, but the end result is pretty breathtaking.
4. A Trip Through Space – Some serious design inspiration here from Dreams of Space.
5. McLobster – McNo.
-ds