Vintage Acme Supermarkets “Meat” Token (1963)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sorry for the lack of updates, or at least ‘big’ updates. Life has been getting in the way as of late, and I’ve found that when I’m not busy, I’m tired from being busy. So, yeah.

Anyway, I wanted to write something King Kong-related for today, because, you know, Thanksgiving. And if not Kong, then at least something ape-like. I had a particular subject in mind, but the required object has not as of yet entered my orbit, which, you know, is pretty much a prerequisite to successful article writin’. Instead, here I am busting out a quick stop-gap post on Thanksgiving day.

(If you really want something King Kong-by-way-of-me though, you can check out last year’s big update, or revisit this oldie-but-goodie, which continously garners enough views year-round to give me some vague sense of satisfaction.)

ANYWAY, I still think today’s subject fits, because, I don’t know, Thanksgiving, food, grocery stores. You make the required mental leaps, okay? Dig this:

You wanna talk local? The Acme chain of supermarkets isn’t just local, but a veritable Northeast Ohio institution! As such, I tend to collect memorabilia pertaining to them – with one of my best finds being this plastic token from 1963, in which their ability to sell meat is exhorted. I don’t know why “the” is treated parenthetically, nor do I know the actual purpose of this token; some kind of discount not unlike your typical wooden nickel, mere advertising, or…? Maybe it was from a new store’s grand opening or sumpin’.

Nevertheless, as someone who likes both Acme and delicious meat products, I approve of the overall message. Not to mention the attractive red color scheme and actual 1963 copyright date printed on it. Not only does it totally save me the hassle of trying to narrow down when it hails from, but it’s also easy on the eyes; talk about a winner!

This wasn’t a new find of mine in the least; I got it yearrrrs ago, and frankly I can’t even remember from where exactly. In fact, the picture above isn’t even recent – I took it quite awhile back, and the pic just happened to cross my path earlier today, hence this resulting post. Had that not happened, it’s doubtful I would have written an update today at all! I’m not even sure where the token itself is at this very moment; I think I wound up putting it in a little cushioned jewelry box that’s now buried somewhere, but don’t quote me on that when you inevitably talk about this post with your family around the table tonight.

As a collector of local memorabilia and a sucker for all things Acme, this token really was a neat find, not to mention something I haven’t come across since buying it some 10-to-15 years ago. I don’t know for sure where I put it, but I’m sure glad it’s there! (Wherever “there” is…)

So, that’s that. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody! Eat turkey, be thankful, watch football, and so on and so forth.

Vintage(ish) Noid Halloween Masks!

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Alright gang, here’s the situation: here at casa de mi, there’s currently a PC switchover in progress. Rather than wait any longer till things get settled, I’m writing this from my phone. Note that I really, really don’t like writing on my phone; between autocorrect and my hitting the wrong key with my stupid dumb thumb, not to mention a general sense of less control over the proceedings, I’m just not super comfortable doing things this way. As such, this’ll be a fairly breezy update. Right now, I’m not even sure if I’ll get the annual ‘big’ Halloween post up – though the fact I’m still unsure what exactly I want that to be is a factor, too.

Maybe this will end up being the de facto Halloween update, maybe not. We’ll see what happens.

Anyway, this post certainly fits this time of year. And bonus: I already had the pic handy, because it was actually taken years ago. Dig this (well, these):

Those are indeed Noid, of Domino’s Pizza fame, Halloween Masks! Well, I guess they don’t technically have to be for Halloween (indeed, I’d encourage and applaud year-round usage), but needless to say, you’re more likely to see someone sporting one of these during this particular time of the calendar.

Now, you may look at these and, quite reasonably, figure they hail from the late-80s or early-90s. That’s when Noids roamed the land freely, after all. But, much to your (and my, to be honest) surprise, these weren’t a second-hand find at all. Actually, they were found and bought brand new…in 2007.

September 11 (boo), 2007, to be exact. I know this for a fact because, while this pic was taken years ago, I naturally still have these, and pulled the bag they reside in out earlier today. Wisely, I kept the original receipt with them.

Funnily, when I first extricated these from my closet some years back (but well after they were first obtained), I had only the vaguest (at best) recollection of even owning them. Not so unusual, considering all the frivolous junk I bring home, but nevertheless, these were essentially a ‘new’ find to me. I duly placed them in a relatively safer spot, where they have more or less resided ever since. Perhaps shockingly, I have thus far avoided inadvertently smashing or otherwise heavily damaging them. (They’re made of that really thin, really fragile plastic that makes them susceptible to cracking/breaking/etc. pretty right from the onset. That isn’t unusual with this kind of mask though; it’s not like they were meant to be industrial strength.)

After I found them, I gradually dredged up long-dormant memories of my mom finding these at local legend Mr. Funs, and knowing how ~~bizarre~~ quirky I am, not to mention my ongoing Noid fandom (it’s basically been a lifelong thing), kindly picking them up for me. Or at least that’s to the best of my recollection. I don’t think *I* was there when they were found.

The masks are pretty self-explanatory, but my main point of interest, then and now, is just how late in the game they were available to purchase. Now, it’s not inconceivable that they’d sit around forgotten for years at a stretch, but even so, 2007 seems OBSCENELY late to me. The Noid was primarily a mid-to-late-80s phenomenon, albeit one that stretched into the early-90s.

If I’m understanding that price sticker on the tag seen in the pic, it looks like it’s dated ’01? I might be getting that wrong, but assuming I’m not, that’s still waaaay past when I’d expect Noid masks to be produced. And looking at the tag itself, I could be wrong here too, but it seems like it’s far more recently-produced than what I’d expect to see from the Noid’s salad days. It just looks ‘new’ to me.

Of course, I could be way off-base here. Maybe they’re still producing these things nowadays, I dunno. In these retro-friendly times, it might even make MORE sense to produce these today. (Though as I recall it, there *was* a wave of 80s nostalgia during that rough stretch of the 00s.) Maybe they never even stopped making Noid masks, I couldn’t say. No one tells me these things.

At any rate, finding something this decidedly tied to the pop culture of 20 years prior as late as 2007, it still tickles me to this day. The fact they came from Mr. Funs, man, that’s just icing on the cake; I haven’t been there in awhile, but I loved going to Mr. Funs. I’m way overdue for a revisit.

So, yeah, if you were in the right place at the right time, you could find brand new Noid masks as late as 2007. That’s something to be treasured. (Especially when, nearly 20 years after that, I can get a quick post out of ’em.)

Happy Halloween or whatever. (Unless I see you then. If I have to write from my phone again, the odds aren’t good.)

Vintage Forest City Auto Parts Valued Customer Card!

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I have no false illusions with this post; I know there’s probably going to be minimal interest in it. It doesn’t help that I really don’t have all that much to say about it. Still, one of the things I continually hope to accomplish with this blog is giving spotlight time to forgotten local artifacts, even if just for a moment. Plus, I’m overdue for a new update.

Of course, it always helps if I have some kind of history with the subject at hand, and in this case, I do. Not much, mind you; my experiences with it are, or rather were, strictly of the outsider variety, and from my adolescent years besides. Nevertheless, this is a shot of nostalgia on my part.

Dig this:

What you’re looking at is, obviously, a piece of paraphernalia from the long-gone Northeast Ohio-based chain, Forest City Auto Parts. I remember this place!

Actually, what I remember mainly is their logo, the long-necked fella with the dapper bow tie seen on the upper left of this “Valued Customer Card.” What exactly did this card get said valued customer? Discounts of some kind is the safe ‘n easy guess. I really have no idea.

Nor do I have any idea when exactly this card hails from. I can narrow it down a bit, though. This page has some good info on the chain, and in it they note there were 71 locations by 1997. The card states “over 65 stores,” which of course doesn’t preclude 71 total, but the lack of area codes in the phone numbers tells me the card hails from before then. I think we started using those in these parts around 1996, so, yeah. My gut is telling me the card is from the late-80s or early-90s, but that’s merely guesswork on my part.

The card isn’t in the best of shape, and frankly It’s a bit of a wonder that it survived long enough to fall into my paws. The wear along the top makes me wonder if it peaked out of someone’s wallet for some indeterminate length of time before finally being removed. Considering no one bothered to write their name in along the side, was it ever even used? Such info is probably lost to time.

See that Tallmadge Ave. location listed? That’s the one I remember, or at least the one I think I remember. For the longest time, when passing by in the car with my parents, I’d be entranced by “neck guy.” Bear in my mind, I wasn’t very old, and it’s not like kids aren’t easily amused by such things, but nonetheless, “neck guy” was always just ‘there,’ a piece of the local scenery. Until he wasn’t. I don’t know when that particular location closed, but they were all gone by 2001. (By the way, “neck guy” actually had a name: Max.)

Then, after Forest City Auto went bye bye, the image of it, or their logo rather, kinda just faded, filed back into the recesses of my mind. I don’t think I thought of them/it at all for well, well over a decade. It wasn’t until 2019, when I was browsing through an old school yearbook at a thrift store that an ad for Forest City, accompanied by “Max,” brought it all rushing right back. “Oh yeah…!” was my reaction, at least mentally. Immediately, memorabilia pertaining to Forest City entered my personal want list. I mean, I don’t/haven’t really come across any, not in person anyway, but Forest City was certainly (back) on my radar when this card turned up in May 2024, an event that got me more excited than one might expect. (I’ve been keeping it in my – figurative – back pocket since then.)

And that’s my story with the place. Like I said, this really all comes down to it being a part of my local scenery, something that was always ‘there’ until it wasn’t. In some way, even though I myself never went there (that I can recollect; it’s certainly conceivable that I tagged along with dad on some now-forgotten jaunt during my formative years, though), I guess it was one of those establishments that you/I just took for granted as always being around, and then one day, poof, gone. I’m not sure “you don’t know what you got until it’s gone” accurately applies here, but the feeling is somewhere in that vicinity, I suppose.

So, there. In some small way, I’ve done my part to keep Forest City’s memory alive. This customer card, I think it’s a cool little memento. Sure, I would have preferred a keychain or something, but this is certainly neat, too. Who knows, maybe the image of it will jog someone else’s memory. Or maybe pics of this thing haven’t had much, if any, presence out in internet-land prior. In which case, hey, that’s exactly the niche I strive to fill with this blog!

Gordy International’s Batman Racing Game (1988)

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I know, I know; I took all of July off. Sorry.

I intended on getting this update posted last week, but man, I was sick as a dawg. The very thought of staring at a computer screen and thinking of words to put in some kind of readable order for any length of time, well, it just sounded like pure torture to me. (I’m feeling heaps better now, at least physically, not that you care.)

Anyway, given the new movie, I wanted to write about something Superman related, and indeed, I gave some thought to digging up my unfinished review of the Atari 8-bit Supes game and, uh, finishing it. But I wasn’t really feeling the subject, so you’re getting Batmang instead.

(By the by, I liked the 2025 Superman. Maybe not loved, but liked. There were some things I would have preferred been different, but all in all, I found it to be an enjoyable flick, so why complain?)

Today we’re looking at the Batman and/or Batmobile Racing Game (the package says one thing, the actual game says another; I’m just gonna refer to it as Batman Racing Game for the duration, okay?), as put out by Gordy International Toys waaaay back in 1988. This thing is closer to 40 years old than it isn’t. Depressing? Well sure it is!

This handheld contraption actually reminds me of The Amazing Spider-Man Rescue Game (remember that?), except that’s it’s involving a different character from a different comics publisher, the game is of an entirely different style and genre, it’s not even slightly electronic, it IS slightly newer, and it was way, WAY cheaper, both in price and build.

(Actually, when I put things that way, just about the only similarities between the two are the whole superhero handheld game aspect. So what point am I even trying to make here?)

Speaking of cheap, this was really just a grocery store rack toy from back in the day. What exactly was/is a rack toy, you ask with righteous-yet-unwarranted indignation? It was an inexpensive toy meant to keep ornery children occupied for a minute or two. There’s even a fanpage (and accompanying book!) for ’em out there in innernet land!

I personally never had this particular specimen back in the late-80s/early-90s, at least not to the best of my recollection, but I absolutely had stuff like it. Indeed, I had (and still have) a very similar Ghostbusters driving game, though it hasn’t functioned correctly in decades. And I can certainly recall being with mom at Finast and seeing/getting some of the cheapie playthings not unlike Batguy here. So yeah, I’ve got some nostalgia goin’ with this.

Look close and you’ll see the remnants of a price tag on the card; this was initially purchased at a now-defunct Duckwall-Alco, and while the actual price portion of the sticker is MIA, I bought another one of these things, still fully sealed (this one ain’t, hence the review), and that one sez it only cost $1.99. Even in 1988 dollars, that wasn’t exactly breaking the bank. Something tells me that’s probably just about what we’re looking at today originally cost. Rack toys were not pricey items. (Of course, there are still cheapie toys to be had nowadays, though I’m not sure if they’re still considered rack toys or not. At any rate, now is as good a time as any for an obligatory Kung Fu action figure link.)

I bought this particular example as complete-but-opened, which turned out to be wise, because the play instructions (such as they are) are printed right on the sides of the card:

Oh we on the honor system now! There’s no way to keep score on the handheld itself; you’re strictly on your own here. This turns out to be a difficult, yet exceedingly brief, challenge, but we’ll get to that in just a bit.

(Oh, and for the record, the back of the card is totally blank, so I’m foregoing a pic of it. I mean, why bother? There’s not much I can say about nothing, man!)

Here’s the extricated handheld. Molded in an attractive light blue with a yellow title sticker along the top, coupled with the colorful graphics of the game itself, Batman Racing Game honestly looks pretty cool. Even the dashboard sticker, while strictly decorative, is neat. Or at least fitting; things would look emptier without it!

The character illustrations really take me back. It was in that general era that I first got into Bats. And you know, those late-80s/early-90s comics still hold up as terrific reading today. No jive, I was dog-sitting at my brother’s some weeks back and brought a stack of readers I got out of the dollar box at my local comic shop with me, and I found myself pretty engrossed in ’em. Nicely drawn, well-written, and with some dark nihilism sometimes running throughout, I was totally reminded of just why I got into Batman in the first place! (Granted, my adult eyes appreciate all of this more now than my lil’ kid sensibilities ever could back then…)

Weight-wise, Batman Racing Game is light. Very, very light. Despite the wedge-like shape of it suggesting a makeshift door stop, which I attempted to show here, there’s very little heft to lend much success in the endeavor. I’d venture to guess that being hit by one of these things would largely be akin to being pelted by tater tots: mildly annoying but no real harm done.

(Of course, I’d never suggest actually whipping one of these at someone. It might still hurt them, and besides, you’d risk breaking your Batman Racing Game – and that’s not a very wise usage of your Batman Racing Game investment, is it?)

Here’s how you play the game: turning that knob on the left side of the unit scrolls a paper roadway, while steering the, erm, steering wheel, uh, steers your little plastic Batmobile. The idea is to stay on the road as much as possible, though as previously stated, there’s no automatic scoring, so who’s to know if Batman occasionally clips the curb? It’ll be your little secret!

And you will go off the road, at least a bit. The streets are twisty turny, but the problem is, your Batmobile is molded in a, for lack of a better descriptive term, straight line. Oh sure, you can angle it to the left or right somewhat, but there’s no way to really ‘keep’ on the road, because the ‘stick’ the Batmobile is on is centered in the middle, but the road often isn’t. Batman may be a deliverer of justice, but I’d like to think he also tries to be a conscientious driver as much as possible. Here, it’s not really possible.

As you can see, the Joker is on the premises, and there are appearances by Penguin and Riddler as well (see if you can spot the latter’s delightful cameo in the pic here!), but they really don’t have any bearing on the gameplay (such as it is). Unless they all collaborated on misaligning the Batmobile’s wheels, they might just all be out to taunt Batman as he fails to properly maneuver his own car. Or perhaps more likely, they’re just there for decoration.

To add a little spice to the game, there are a couple dead ends you can hit, though I have no idea if running into one counts as just a lost point or is supposed to end the whole game entirely. I guess that part is up to you! It’s not like there’s anything to make the gameplay stop, short of your thumb getting fatigued from endlessly turning the knob. (Or something breaking, which given my history with rack toys, was/is a real possibility.)

Of course, since there’s only about (and this isn’t a joke) a foot or so of paper road to scroll, it doesn’t take much accumulated memory to recall where the dead ends are, or to complete the circuit entirely in very short order. You can go faster or you can go slower, you can use your imagination as to what the plot of the game is, but frankly, there’s just not much to it.

But then, it was like a $2 game; why nitpick? And you know, for as simplistic as it is, I really do dig this thing. Not only is it nostalgic, but it just has a very cool, and very fitting, comic book look to it, as you may well expect. I have no idea when it hit shelves in 1988, but you gotta figure it was around when the hype – and subsequent release – of Tim Burton’s ’89 Batflick was at full force, and if so, it was certainly around at precisely the right time. it sure couldn’t have hurt sales, at any rate! Especially not at that price.

Speaking of sales, nowadays, you’re not exactly likely to be tripping over these things while walking down the street, but they are fairly plentiful for sale online, and for the most part they’re relatively inexpensive. You’ll be shelling out a bit more than two bills, but like I said earlier, I was able to purchase both a sealed carded example as well as the one we’ve just looked at, and at no point did I feel the need to turn to an imaginary camera and shed a single tear.

So, what now to do with Batman Racing Game? I think I’ll set it aside, and next time I hold a Frasier-esque dinner party for my friends, whoever is waiting to play the Dragnet puzzle game can bide their time with this. That way, everybody’s happy! Well, occupied, anyway.

VHS Review: Madacy’s 2-Tape DRAGNET Set (1992)

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“Oh dude, this guy can’t even be serious right now…Dragnet again?!“

Look, I didn’t intend to hit the subject of Dragnet again so soon after already looking at it not once but twice recently. (Well, relatively recently.) BUT, I had really been wanting to take a look at some Madacy (I’m currently in “nostalgic 90s budget VHS” mode), and truth be told, I’m still in a Jack Webb mood anyway, so this just kinda happened. Stay with me here though, cause this one’s kinda neat. Well, I think it’s neat, at least.

(Wacky Fact: I’ve never seen He Walked by Night, and not only did that film feature Webb and actually lead to the creation of the original radio Dragnet, but there’s also a 90s Madacy issue of it on VHS to boot. As such, I originally intended on picking up a copy, which would have, in theory, provided today’s update. But, I, uh, ain’t purchase it, so I ain’t write about it. Yet?)

Why the current Madacy kick? Like I said, nostalgia. Budget tapes put out by them (apparently the company no longer exists) were once found in abundance in Best Buy’s much missed (by me, anyway) $2.99 VHS section. While in retrospect their selections were by and large the usual public domain offerings, if there’s one area in which Madacy excelled, it was presentation. While they tended to reuse the same pictures and descriptions over and over again (see: any one of their myriad releases of Metropolis), Madacy was really, really good at clean, attractive presentations. Oftentimes, they’d switch up the packaging, even classing it up with shiny foils on occasion, but the print contained within the tape was always the same – even if it was perfectly crummy (see: Metropolis). They even liked to play into the whole “golden age of Hollywood” aura, regardless of whether the property was a Hollywood product, or even American, at all. (See: Metropolis.)

They also liked to notate their releases as collector’s editions, though they rarely, if ever, actually were; bare bones EP recordings without extras were the order of the day – even if the EP recordings were often touted as “highest quality” on the back of the sleeves. (Seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me, but whatever.)

This Dragnet set, while not one I recall seeing back in the day (I almost certainly would have gotten it when my fandom of the franchise first struck in the late-90s, had I come across it), certainly checks off much of what I’ve just talked about. Stock photo of Jack Webb’s Sgt. Joe Friday? Check. “Collector’s Choice” emblazoned over a shiny red foil banner? Check. Playing up the whole golden age of television aspect? Check. The front cover certainly looks good, if nothing else.

The back of the sleeve really has more general information on Dragnet as a whole rather than anything specific pertaining to the contents of this set, but it does manage to impart a “specialness” over the whole thing. The broadcast history is nice enough, and the cast listing is fine, though aside from, obviously, Jack Webb, only one of them is present across these tapes. (Despite the implications, neither Harry Morgan’s Officer Bill Gannon nor any of the ‘early’ partners to Sgt. Joe Friday are here. You only get Ben Alexander’s Officer Frank Smith throughout, though that’s not a bad thing.)

Like the front cover, there’s a stock shot of Joe Friday on the back, though I have no idea what he’s doing, and both pics appear to be from the 60s iteration of the show besides. The four episodes found here, however, are all from the 1950s version.

Speaking of which, the whole reason I wanted to do this review was because, of those four, three of them (“The Big Deal,” “The Big Net,” and “The Big Lift”) are harder to find. (“The Big Crime” tends to be commonly found.) Now, I don’t want to say those three are exactly hard to find, this tape set was mass produced and isn’t exactly rare or expensive to acquire, and besides, you can probably find all this stuff online nowadays anyway. But when it comes to 50s Dragnet collections, particularly in the DVD era, buy enough of ’em and you start to see the same episodes over and over and over. As such, whenever I come across episode titles that don’t immediately ring a bell, I take notice – even if they’re on VHS.

Okay, see if you can follow along with this, because it might get a little confusing. This set came out in 1992. In 1993, Madacy way outdid themselves with a 10-tape/20-episode collection. (Like our subject today, they certainly could have done some condensing and put more than two episodes per tape – all four of what we’ll see momentarily could have easily fit on one VHS – but I’m guessing that the bigger the set, the easier it was to ask for more bucks. Big leap in logic there, huh?)

That 10-tape collection is, to this day, one classy looking product, and while I don’t remember seeing it at Best Buy back in the late-90s, I do recall seeing Madacy’s somewhat-aesthetically-similar big ol’ Charlie Chaplin boxsets. To my young eyes, they looked so clean and attractive and comprehensive that, despite my being a huge Chuck Chaplin fan at the time, I don’t *think* I ever asked for or even considered getting one. Not seriously, anyway. Just seemed too prohibitively expensive to my 11/12 year old self. (Looking back, the cost probably wasn’t too terrible for the time, though given the EP recordings and public domain content, well…)

ANYHOO, of the three harder-to-find Dragnet eps in this set, only two made it to that 10-tape set; “The Big Lift” was completely MIA. (And just to spite me for what I said only moments ago, “The Big Crime” wasn’t on it, either.) Nevertheless, if VHS is still your bag, from strictly a quantity standpoint, that 10-tape boxset by Madacy is one of the best that can be had – plus it’s inexpensive to acquire, and frankly, just looks good. Even today! I told ya, Madacy knew how to sell a product!

BUT WAIT, that’s not all: when Madacy later put out a whopping 25-episode collection on DVD in the 2000s, you’d naturally think that they just used all they had from the VHS years in one relatively comprehensive DVD collection. But in actuality, there’s actually a number of differences between that 10-tape VHS set and the later DVD release. (I’m not bothering with pics; you’ll just have to look ’em up yerself, if you’re so inclined.) Despite there only being a difference of five episodes between the two, there’s a handful of installments found on the VHS that aren’t on the DVD – and vice versa. Still, like the big VHS boxset, if DVD is your thing, that set is, to this day, one of the better ones to be had. It’s just that, if they had put everything they had previously released on it, it would almost certainly have been/be, far and away, the best DVD collection of the 1950s Dragnet commercially available.

Oh, and while on the subject of other Madacy Dragnet releases, one more thing before we look at the episodes proper: where our subject today is concerned, this actually isn’t the first one I bought. I picked up another copy a few weeks ago, but when I went to play it, despite the labels on the tapes listing the supposedly correct contents, the actual recordings were simply the first two volumes of that 10-tape set. Evidently there was a manufacturing goof somewhere down the line! Upon this discovery, I had a few reactionary options: hot, bitter tears, a tense Jack Webb-esque lecture (directed at who exactly, I couldn’t say), or the resolve to try again and just go buy another. Or any combination of the three.

I opted to just try again. This ‘correct’ copy was, I assume, from a different run; the reels in the tape were, rather than the standard kind (which was what the other set sported), of the big wooden wagon wheel spokes variety. (I’m not bothering with pics of this, either.) Anyway, my point is, if you’re interested in getting a copy of this tape set yourself, just be a little cautious. Luckily, copies for sale online are plentiful and cheap.

Here, both tapes feature this little intro before heading into the show(s) proper. I vaguely recall The Golden Years of Television as a (syndicated?) TV showcase back in the day, but I may be confusing that with something else. At any rate, the other ‘wrong’ copy of this set definitely did NOT feature this.

Look close: that’s Andy Devine with Froggy the Gremlin! I chose that shot specifically because, well, you know, Ghoul Power. “Hi ya gang, hi ya hi ya hi ya hi ya!”

Tape #1:

“The Big Deal” – An organized car theft ring is jackin’ automobiles, and it’s up to Friday & Smith to stop them.

Interestingly, during what would have been the original commercial breaks, this print features brief title cards stating, “end of prologue,” “end of act one,” etc. Also, it’s worth noting that there’s no real action in this episode – it’s pretty much all interrogations. They don’t even show the actual climatic bust; in fact, two of the three perps aren’t shown at all until the ‘trial results’ reveal at the very end! Despite all that, and despite featuring a plot that, on paper, I generally wouldn’t find very captivating, this one held my attention. A real testament to just how well-written 50s Dragnet could be!

“The Big Net” – A rash of purse snatchings are afoot; women are being robbed and slugged for ’em! A host of policewomen, with appropriate backup, are stationed about in hopes of finally stopping the cad behind the robberies.

The title of this ep is very, very apropos. This is a very good example of a real “dragnet operation,” as the undercover cops attempt to finally ‘net’ the robber, whilst Friday & Smith have to contend with suspects who may be good for crimes, but not these specific crimes. Similar to the preceding episode, we don’t see the actual perp until the results at the end. There’s a real downer conclusion to this one, though we go get a terrific last line from Friday.

Also, this episode takes place on and around Thanksgiving. Add it to your holiday viewing schedule? There’s a scene where Friday & Smith, forced to be on duty, downheartedly “celebrate” the big day at a diner – where all they can get is sliced rabbit! They’re not exactly ecstatic about the option.

Tape #2:

“Toasty!”

“The Big Crime” – Two little girls have disappeared from a park, and while they’re later recovered alive, they’ve been molested. Friday & Smith need to track down the monster responsible, for obvious reasons.

Like I said before, of the four episodes in this set, this is the only one that would be considered “common” (I didn’t even need to actually watch watch it for this review), which is somewhat ironic, because, boy, I’m hard pressed to think of a 50s episode of any series with darker subject matter. Not saying that there aren’t/wasn’t, just that I can’t think of any. SVU and the like may have desensitized (to an extent) viewers to this sort of thing nowadays, but it’s still wildly uncomfortable (as it should be), and frankly, pretty shocking when seen in a show from the 1950s. And the final declaration from the perp as Friday & Smith arrest him is truly chilling.

A captivating episode, but obviously not exactly good time party fun (which Dragnet didn’t exactly specialize in anyway). We do get to see Joe Friday go all Johnny Cage on the suspect, though. (Ever the stickler for proper police procedure, it was in self-defense, of course.)

“The Big Lift” – This is the episode that didn’t make it to Madacy’s 20-episode VHS set or 25-episode DVD set. Here, a burglar has been hitting a neighborhood on a regular basis, and the citizenry are becoming increasingly frustrated with the inability of the police to stop him.

Like every episode in this collection, this is a good installment that held my attention, though truth be told, I just don’t have much to say about it. There is a funny bit where a victim keeps reminding Friday & Smith who her husband is. Also, like the first episode on the first tape, there are brief “end of prologue/act” cards during what were the original commercial breaks.

Look for a cool, albeit brief, shot of Friday & Smith behind one of those big see-through city maps. In fact, I was a buddy and provided it as the screencap for this episode right here! Because I care. I didn’t mean to capture Frank Smith looking so angry.

Annnnd, that’s it. No, this isn’t a comprehensive collection of Dragnet episodes, but it is a strong selection, especially considering three of them don’t tend to show up in compilations very often.

But it’s really about the set as a whole here. Not only do you get four strong episodes, but it just looks good. (Rather than attempting to return it – something I very, very rarely feel the need to do anyway – I used that first ‘error’ copy of the set as a display piece; it’s now part of a random menagerie of ‘stuff.’) Plus, hailing from a time when you couldn’t just hop online and find this kinda content with just a few clicks of the mouse, it actually manages to feel kinda, I don’t know, special, I guess. Plus, it reminds me of something my grandma would have had in her VHS collection, though she didn’t.

Of course, in actuality this is just a budget VHS set recorded in EP and that used more tape than needed and quite possibly cost more than it should have (at least initially). But you know, somehow it manages to transcend all that and become something worth having, even today. Maybe that’s just combined nostalgia for Madacy and fandom for Dragnet on my part, but considering official licensed releases of this version of the show have thus far eluded us, I dare say there’s still some value to be had here. It probably helps if you’re still sporting a VCR, though.

As I said before, this isn’t something I came across at Best Buy back in the day, but I’d have gone nuts for it if I had. I was a sucker for all things Dragnet at the time, after all. (Not unlike nowadays, come to think of it.) And considering my intro to 50s Dragnet came via two separate tapes from that Best Buy $2.99 section, sporting but a single episode each, and I went nuts for those, even if it was a few bucks more, a double tape/four-episode set would have been considered a real score.

Hey, I consider it that now, come to think of it. Maybe that “collector’s choice” banner on the front cover wasn’t meaningless hype, after all!

Vintage (?) Ghoul Pocket Mirror!

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I picked up this cool little piece of Ghoul Power memorabilia a little over two years ago now, just keeping it in my (figurative) back pocket until I deemed the time right for an update. The time seems right today. But whether I end up writing about them or not, trinkets like this are something I’m always after, so when it popped up for sale online, man, I was all over it, right quick.

Coming via a seller in Michigan, from a location relatively near Detroit (you know, Ghoul country), I don’t know if it originally hailed from there exactly, but apparently in the viewing area either way. The again, people do move, so…?

With the iconic Ron “The Ghoul” Sweed caricature emblazoned over a white background, does this look like a common garden variety pinback button to you? Well sure it does! But, it’s not. In fact, I think it’s quite a bit cooler than that. It’s the size of a pin, but in actuality, it’s…

…a pocket mirror! A Ghoul pocket mirror! I couldn’t, and can’t, recall ever seeing one of these before! And I like it a whole bunch!

Being a mirror, this naturally seems like a piece of memorabilia perhaps better suited to The Ghoul’s female audience. You know, throw it in the purse, have it at the ready so she can check her makeup and/or hair, all while also ably demonstrating her Ghoul Power fandom. (Sounds like the girl o’ my dreams!)

‘Course, I don’t mean to sound sexist here; it’s not like men wouldn’t have use for a lil’ pocket mirror, too. I mean, didn’t The Fonz like to make sure his hair was perfect? (I’d rather reference Sam Malone here, but The Ghoul apparently bombed in Boston when he was briefly syndicated there in the 1970s, so that’s out.)

You really can’t see it in my picture here, but around the edge, Badge-A-Minit of LaSalle, Illinois is notated. I couldn’t find a really decent article on them to link to (this thread here is okay), but apparently, they sold button makers for hobbyists to, uh, make buttons with. As such, I’m really not sure if this pocket mirror is officially sanctioned or not. It certainly could be a fan-made item. The quality of the image on the front is high enough that I’m operating under the assumption that it’s legit however, and besides, nothing says The Ghoul and/or his crew couldn’t use a Badge-A-Minit whatever in-house to be producing these. Plus, for all I know, people could place orders with Badge-A-Minit and have things manufactured for them. I’m unsure on that aspect, so hopefully someone in the know will chime in.

From my (admittedly brief) research on Badge-A-Minit, it seems products bearing their moniker were fairly common in the 1970s and 1980s, which would very much line up with The Ghoul’s television runs in the Detroit market. Plus, given the general wear and tarnishing to the mirror, there certainly seems to be some real age to this thing. Nevertheless, I can’t be sure, hence the “(?)” in the title in this update. It definitely looks like it could be either from the 70s or 80s to me, though.

Here, one more pic, just to show that the thing still, erm, works. (Ha!) Please enjoy the texture and color scheme of the couch. See, still entirely functional! (“Gee, you don’t say!”)

Of course, this isn’t the sort of thing I’d use; this is a collector’s item, dude (dudette)! I can use a ‘normal’ pocket mirror if need be, or, you know, my phone.

No no, a pocket mirror featuring The Ghoul on it is something to be treasured, something to be cherished. After all, who know if or when I’ll ever come across one again!

So in summation: it’s a pocket mirror, featuring The Ghoul logo on one side, that presumably hails from the general Detroit area, likely from either the 1970s or 1980s (or both). It may or may not be officially sanctioned by The Ghoul and/or his crew, but one thing’s for certain: it IS officially cool!

Old Flats (as in Cleveland) T-Shirts

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As I hope you all know by now, I’m always on the lookout for old local, as it pertains to me personally, memorabilia. Of course, “local” to me means anything Northeast Ohio; as much as I maintain an interest in “Clevelandy” things, I have never actually been a Clevelander. Doesn’t mean I won’t turn into a babbling maniac (figuratively) if I find “sumpthin’ good” from there though – or a simpering mess (figuratively?) if I miss out on something of a similar stature.

I’m not sure either of the two t-shirts we’re looking at today quite rise to those esteemed levels, but I like ’em plenty. Enough to shell out the dough for ’em at a thrift shop, on two separate visits, some time back, at least.

If you’re from around these parts, you need only to hear the words “The Flats” and no further elaboration will be necessary. The famous (and infamous) industrial slash residential slash recreational district in the Cuyahoga Valley is something local denizens automatically know about – even if you have never actually frequented it. Granted, you may have to be of a certain age for that last observation to apply, but for people like me, you always just sort of knew about The Flats, whether you’d been there or not. And to the best of my recollection, I haven’t; I was too young for the bar scene during the heyday of The Flats, and nowadays, well, that scene just isn’t my, uh, scene, man. (Plus, it’s kinda far away besides.)

Still, because it’s such a piece of Cleveland history, I naturally take some interest in it, though to be frank, only one of these shirts was purchased specifically because of its provenance and not because of an, for lack of a better description, additional factor. Read on and hopefully that last statement will make sense eventually.

Truthfully, this first shirt here is my favorite of the two, because it’s just such a throwback – even though people almost certainly still sell memorabilia like this nowadays. I don’t necessarily mean in The Flats specifically either, just in general.

Dig this: it’s an airbrushed Flats t-shirt! As in actually showing off the location! The neon colors just scream early 1990s to me, though I don’t know when or where it was actually produced. There’s no date, with only an artist’s signature I can’t exactly use (or even decipher, truth be told) for additional research.

I imagine this was a souvenir sold somewhere “on the premises” (huge educated guess there, huh?), maybe even airbrushed on the spot for the purchaser.

Like I said, it looks early-90s to me, and since the tag states the shirt itself was made in the USA, there definitely seems to be some age to it. Might even be from the late 1980s, I dunno. The material is incredibly thin, as was common with t-shirts back in the day, though this may be less of an indicator of age and more of a cost-reducing measure by the airbrusher. It might even be described as less of a tee and more of a full-fledged undershirt. Regardless, I sure like it.

I think what really gets me with this one is that it’s not something mass-produced that you could just go and pick up at any store; near as I can figure, you had to “be there” for it. That, coupled with the fact that I just think it looks neat, makes it irresistible to yours truly. Plus, the chances of me coming across another are decidedly thin. Even thinner than the material of the shirt itself? Sure, why not.

And now on to the other Flats t-shirt…

Wacky fact: before digging it out earlier, I couldn’t remember where this shirt we’re about to see hailed from. As such, this update was originally going to be split into two separate posts. But when I extricated the thing from a pile of other shirts and saw it was also from The Flats, well, it wasn’t exactly a shining example of ingenuity to combine both into one single article.

This shirt here is from the Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, which, if I have the location correct, appears to have since closed, though in slightly more recent times than you may first assume when it comes to The Flats.

Aside from the logo on the front (and the declaration that “You haven’t hit The Flats until you’ve hit Rock Bottom” on the back), there’s not much for me to talk about graphically. It’s interesting, it’s local, but honestly, I didn’t buy this because of aesthetics or because it hailed from The Flats.

Why did I plunk down the dinero for the shirt, then? The additional factor(s) I mentioned earlier, that’s why! I know they’re hard to see (don’t worry, more pics are forthcoming), but notice those signatures scrawled on the front of the shirt? I doubt the thrift that put this out knew who they were from, but it didn’t take me long to realize who the signers were: from left to right, the shirt was signed by John Webster, John Lanigan and Jimmy Malone! WMJI’s morning show guys of the 90s! Now that’s cool!

John Webster (who has since passed on) was a bit before my time on the morning show. He had left it in 1997, which was around or a year or so before I started listening to WMJI – and even then, I didn’t really listen to their (or anyone else’s) morning show until even later than that. By the time I came around, the show was simply Lanigan & Malone.

I may have had little personal experience with Webster, but I certainly knew of him by the time I came upon this shirt. Since I never had the opportunity to meet him myself, this was the next best thing, y’know? I can’t quite make out what all he inscribed here; “Thanks for —“ what? Does that say “listening,” or are those two separate words? I’m flummoxed! Still cool to have though, and unless I’m forgetting something, it’s the only example of Webster’s signature in my collection.

(By the way, I’m just going to go ahead and figure these signatures are all legit. Just thought I should add that somewhere in the post.)

John Lanigan, though, Lanigan I did get to meet. It was at the 2011 Moondog concert (a then-annual oldies show put on by WMJI, commemorating Alan Freed’s original Moondog concert). The station had their morning show personalities set up at a table in the lobby of the venue, and you could meet them one by one, going down the line. I got autographed pics from each and every one (with one notable exception; more on that in a bit), including Chuck Collier (who suddenly and sadly passed some months later) and, needless to say, John Lanigan.

Lanigan, who has since retired, is one of my favorite local personalities. Lanigan & Malone was generally my morning show of choice back in the day, and when it comes to local TV, his stint(s) as host of WUAB’s Prize Movie, boy, that’s one of my top pieces of interest when it comes to regional broadcasting.

And finally, we have Jimmy Malone. He joined the morning program later, making the duo of Webster and Lanigan a, erm, trio. Like I said, Lanigan & Malone was the iteration I was most familiar with over the years. Plus, if I recall correctly, it was Malone who brought “Knuckleheads in the News” to the program – a bit that was always a crowd pleaser.

It was also Malone who was the sole WMJI personality I wasn’t able to meet at that 2011 Moondog concert. I forget the reasoning behind it, if indeed I even knew to begin with, but his chair was empty by the time I made it down the signing line. Maybe it was a bathroom break, or maybe he was preparing for his hosting duties of the rapidly approaching concert. At any rate, I didn’t get to meet him or get a signed pic. But unbeknownst to me at the time, I would eventually end up with his signature. (That’s it right here, man! Not a bad consolation prize!)

As to why these signatures are on the Rock Bottom shirt, I couldn’t say. The safe guess is they were doing a personal appearance at the place, though maybe they were just there having a meal or a drink and someone asked them to sign their shirt real quick. I obviously couldn’t say for sure one way or the other, and the details may very well be lost to time, but if nothing else, it’s a cool, and definitively “Cleveland” artifact to have.

So there you have it, two vintage t-shirts from The Flats. Even though I prefer mediums, they are both larges and thus wearable by yours truly, though I’m not gonna do that. I have no shortage of shirts to wear whilst out and about, and besides, I’d be afraid to wash ’em! The Rock Bottom one, obviously I’d be concerned about dimming or washing away the signatures (plus it still has the new tags on it), and the airbrushed shirt, given the thinness of it, not to mention the, you know, airbrushing, it just seems like something I should handle gingerly. Also, if I were to wear one or both outside and a stain or tear should occur, I’d get supremely cranky.

I may not feel comfortable wearing them (figuratively, not literally, I mean), but boy, as pieces of Cleveland history, I’m sure glad to have snagged them! (Also figuratively, not literally, I mean. Snags would make me supremely cranky, too.)

A Roller-Skating Pizza? On a Hockey Puck? Yes and Yes!

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I like vintage pieces of local advertising. You know that. I particularly like when said vintage pieces of local advertising are related to pizza. You know that, too. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be local to me to pique my interest, though that certainly helps. When it comes right down to it, I like promotional items that point to a specific time and place, a definitive era. And if that item happens to be a little oddball, off the beaten path if you will, then hey, all the better.

I may not have been as mentally eloquent about it when I stumbled upon our subject today for sale online, but that was the general thought process when I finally decided that, yes, this was indeed something I’d like to purchase. I had no illusions of it being a monetary investment or anything like that, I just liked the cut of its jib.

Wait, can hockey pucks have jib? Cause this is a hockey puck, and I strongly suspect that it does. Dig this…

Your eyes don’t deceive you; that’s a hockey puck in my paw, and it’s sporting a roller-skatin’ pizza pie. And that roller-skatin’ pizza pie is adorned in bell-bottoms. Dude, that’s not oddball; that’s awesome.

Obviously, this didn’t originally hail from my neck of the woods; this was a Canadian innovation. French-Canadian, to be exact. I evidently have some French-Canadian blood in my, erm, blood; I could say I was just tapping into my heritage or something when I hit the “buy dis” button for this some months back, but the honest truth is I just thought the thing was neat lookin’.

Promoting Le Restaurant D’Youville of Quebec (if this was the same place, it appears to now be closed), I know not what year(s) this puck originally hails from, but a pizza on roller skates, in bell-bottoms no less, gives me some real roller derby vibes. Late 1970s? Early 1980s? Man, I don’t know. The amount of wear on the puck would point to some age (I can’t even really read what it says on the upper-left of the pizza due to that; “Ste Roy,” maybe? Is that a French-Canadian thing?)

Or maybe there were literal roller-skating pizzas on the premises. Methinks that would top Chuck E. Cheese’s offerings! (Also, the notion of real live roller-skating pizzas has to instantly rank amongst the dumbest things I’ve ever posited on this blog.)

Look, I really know basically nothing about the restaurant itself; I just really, really like the image used for advertising it here!

The idea of a promotional hockey puck may seem a little ‘out there’ to some, but they’re actually relatively common. Of course, I imagine that kinda depends on where you’re from and whether you have major (or minor) league hockey teams in the vicinity. I’d guess this sort of thing is even more common in Canada, for obvious reasons, but I’ve seen local-to-me examples, too. I even have a Cleveland Barons/WJW 850 AM puck tucked away somewhere. So, just like old belt buckles, hockey pucks may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to vintage advertising, but they can indeed be a good source of it. If you’re into this sort of thing, anyway.

As for this puck here, there’s nothing on the underside, and just a statement of “Made in Czechoslovakia” along the edge (I’m not taking a picture of it, you’ll just have to trust me on this). Look, when you’ve got a roller-skating pizza in bell-bottoms, you’ve already ~~hit a home run~~ scored a goal; what more do you really need to add to the pitch?

How one went about getting one of these originally, I do not know. Giveaway at a local team’s games? Freebie at the restaurant? Both? Neither? No idea. Maybe a reader living in Quebec at the time can fill us in in the comments. (Yeah, sure, real likely.)

‘Course, if someone reading does know, please comment in English, because the French I took in high school, it, uh, hasn’t exactly held up. (It’s a wonder I ever managed to pass that class.)

Transogram’s DRAGNET – BADGE 714 Puzzle Game (1955)

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Did you happen to read my last post, the big honkin’ review of a 50s Dragnet DVD set? You didn’t?! Well, that hurts me deep, not only because it took a bit to write, but also because, if you had, you’d know that I briefly, without much specification, referenced a piece of Dragnet memorabilia I hoped to spotlight as a follow-up post. Today that follow-up post happens – not that you care.

In the years since my initial Dragnet fandom flourished, when I discovered the 1960s revival series on TV Land in the late-90s (I mentioned this occurrence in the last update, the one you so callously ignored), I’ve also come to love the 1950s original just as much. Indeed, should you randomly appear in my home and ask me to give you a list of my personal favorite shows, I’d absolutely say Dragnet, with the caveat that you consider the 50s and 60s versions as one long series with a break in the middle rather than two separate entities, which, some differences between the two aside, I don’t consider them to be. Hey, if Family Guy, a show I despise, can get away with a series-interruptin’ break, then surely the same courtesy can be afforded to Jack Webb.

Anyway, I’d tell you all of that. Then I’d tell you to get out of my house.

If it seemed like I was a little down on the 60s iteration of Dragnet in my last post, let me clarify: I love that revival. Indeed, while the episodes focusing solely on the inner workings of police procedure do little for me, at its best, I still to this day find the series as utterly captivating as I ever did. Is some of it a little cheesy and heavy-handed in this day and age? Well, maybe. But the same can be said for any number of programs from television past. As far as I’m concerned, when the 1967-1970 Dragnet was/is on its game, it ably showed not only how terrific it could be on its own, but also how deserving it was to continue the legacy of the show that essentially created the television police procedural, as we now know it, back in the 1950s in the first place.

Speaking of that 1950s version, if there’s one thing it had going for it that the 1960s one didn’t, it was an undeniable air of coolness. Oftentimes dark and noirish and unflinching, the original television version of Dragnet attained a level of innovation and popularity that the revival never quite matched. Case in point: the licensed merchandise associated with it.

When you think of kid’s fads and toys of the 1950s, you might think of cowboys or spacemen or Davy Crockett caps. Well, for a time, Dragnet and Jack Webb’s Sgt. Joe Friday could be counted amongst those very same ranks.

What we’re looking at today is just one such example of that phenomenon. Put out in 1955 by Transogram Toys, the Dragnet – Badge 714 puzzle game, while by no means the only product related to the show released during that timeframe, is to me one of the neatest. While it could technically be considered a board game, it’s really much more akin to one of those little peg games they let you goof around with at Cracker Barrel while you wait for your food. As such, personally, I think it’s knocking on the dexterity game door, which is a much more appealing genre to yours truly that outright board games are. (Dragnet did indeed have a full-fledged board game too, however.)

See, that’s the thing with the 50s Sgt. Joe Friday; this right here is evidence that kids wanted to be him. It’s really hard to imagine the 60s version garnering such fandom. I mean, look at the box above; dude’s wearing a fedora, and not in a cringey modern way, either. That’s how you know he was cool.

Also, look closely and you’ll spot the notation of watching Dragnet on NBC and Badget 714 on local stations. Both were the same show, but Badge 714 was the title given to syndicated repeats, as was common practice at the time. (Renaming shows, even just slightly, helped differentiate between new and old episodes; it wasn’t uncommon to see this sort of thing in action up into the 1980s, though I’m hard pressed to think of an example beyond the middle of that decade.)

Between Joe Friday’s word bubble on the front of the box and various declarations on the back here, not to mention the instructions on the inside (which we’ll see next), boy, the game sure liked to challenge your level of intelligence! It might as well come right out and say, “can you catch the crook and win the game, ya dumb kid?” ‘Course, I’m jaded; I could be reading too much into it.

And truth be told, in the era before video games, short of going outside and, you know, playing, puzzles like this were one of the few ways you could really put yourself into the shoes of your movie and TV heroes and become them – preferably while unironically wearing a fedora. It was the same concept as kids playing cowboys and Indians (minus the fedora – probably) or, more fittingly in this case, cops and robbers.

I am so, so glad they printed the instructions on the underside of the top lid and not as a separate sheet of paper; makes things much easier from a collecting, completist standpoint.

The borderline patronizing tone present on the back of the box continues here, especially in that first paragraph, to the point that I’m getting flashbacks of Gary Owens and his description of the in-game Space Quest IV hint book in, uh, Space Quest IV. (“…a pathetic nimnal…”) According to the instructions, the game is easier to solve than it first appears, and boy will you hate yourself for not figuring it out sooner! Seriously, it says that. Go read it if you don’t believe me!

It seems easy enough on the surface: the marker signifying Joe Friday starts at the edge of the board, and the dirty filthy criminal starts in the center – both alternate single moves from one adjacent slot to the next until Friday has the baddie cornered. Now, it’s not like anyone is going to come over and play this thing with me, but it sure seems like games could go on indefinitely…

…unless you know the mysterious “secret” the instructions keep mentioning. What “the secret” was, or is, exactly, I couldn’t say. I assume it’s some mathematical equation or something. I don’t know, maybe I’m the pathetic nimnal here.

Of course, if you simply couldn’t figure out “the secret” yourself, no matter how hard you pouted at the board, you could always write Transogram directly and they’d straight up give it to you. Hopefully in a tone that implied you were a dunce for even asking, not unlike Gary Owens’ tone in Space Quest IV.

Actually, finding a boxed version of this game with the mail-away answer tucked inside would be really, really cool; you gotta imagine they’re out there somewhere. But as it stands, I know not what their reply looked like or what “the secret” is. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that address is no longer valid, especially since Transogram apparently went bankrupt in 1971. Otherwise, I’d totally write ’em. Maybe I should give it a shot anyway?

Here’s the board itself. The whole package isn’t particularly big (see my cute lil’ thumb for scale), which only adds to the dexterity game vibes I hamfistedly mentioned earlier.

I’ve seen this board produced in two colors: obviously green, but also red. Which one came first, I couldn’t say; maybe both were released simultaneously. I prefer the red one; that, coupled with the fact that the citywide “net” looks more like a spider web, gives that iteration of the game an appealing, noirish, almost Halloween-like vibe. With the green one here, it looks more like Joe Friday is pursuing his quarry through a beautifully vibrant park. That, or someone really messed up putting the lines down on a football field. “I’ll catch you at the 40-yard-line, fella!”

I kid, of course. While I do indeed prefer the red version, both ultimately look pretty cool. Neither are particularly rare (relatively speaking), but the green version seems to be a bit easier to find.

Here’s the game all set up for play. As you may well surmise, it’s not exactly a taxing process; just put your chosen markers in the correct slots, and off you go. Well, if you have someone to play with, that is. Since I didn’t, I also didn’t really play this game. I guess I could have played it by myself, but it would have been pointless at best, downright sad at worst.

Since the instructions didn’t specify who should be who, I chose the red marker to be Joe Friday, the white as the scumbag fugitive. You might think the white one should be the good guy, but if you knew your Dragnet, you’d certainly recall the jaunty red cardigan Friday wore in the “Night School” episode of the revival series. Despite my mental mixing of two different eras of Dragnet here, the idea of Friday pursuing and (hopefully) busting the fugitive while decked out in that attire is undoubtedly delightful.

(I wonder if fedoras pair well with red cardigans?)

Got him! “Listen here you mealy-mouthed punk, a lot of man hours have been wasted on you. You’ve put a lot of people through misery, you’ve given a lot of citizens a hard time. Some you’ve even given a bad name, a name they didn’t deserve. And for what? No reason you could give me would be good enough, so don’t even try. I’d just as soon not look at you now, except that I have to. But I’ll tell you what fella, it’s gonna be a real pleasure to book you. A lot of people are going to sleep better tonight knowing dirt like you has been swept up off the street. I know I will.” That’s my approximation of a Joe Friday lecture. It works better if you read it in his voice – I hope. Picture him wearing a red cardigan whilst delivering it, if you wish.

Nowadays, if you want a Transogram Dragnet – Badge 714 puzzle game, they’re not particularly rare or expensive to find online. I mean, they cost a bit, but probably not prohibitively so, especially if you shop around. I ended up buying two of ’em; the red one to keep collectible ‘n nice, and this green one here to play with company should I ever have some over for a Frasier-esque dinner party.

(There are other pieces of 50s Dragnet paraphernalia that will run you more dough, though the sad fact of the matter is the franchise doesn’t seem to be a very hot commodity in retro collecting circles in this day and age. Maybe that’s just my perception though. I could be mistaken.)

At any rate, this game is a cool piece of 1950s pop culture that hits several bullet points: toys, games, television, even movies and radio if you want to include those iterations of Dragnet. The fact it’s relatively affordable is just the icing on the cake. For Dragnet fans such as myself, I dare say it’s a must-have.

Now, if I can just figure out what “the secret” is…

Raintree Home Video’s Two-Disc 1950s DRAGNET DVD Set (2004)

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This one is long overdue.

I’ve been a Dragnet fan since the late-90s, when I discovered the 1960s iteration of the show on TV Land. I quickly became a fan of it, and of star & creator Jack Webb. Love for Webb-related shows Adam-12 and Emergency! followed, but my heart always returns to Dragnet. I will forever argue (but not violently; Jack Webb wouldn’t approve of that) that the three most influential police dramas are Dragnet, Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice. And wouldn’t ya know it, all three also make my personal top ten favorite shows of all-time list!

Which makes the absence of a full-blown Dragnet post here kinda odd. Well, okay, I did review a mega-budget Dragnet Christmas (!) DVD on here some time back, but a look at a ‘big’ DVD set has thus far been MIA. That changes today.

Here’s the thing with that 60s version of the series that introduced me to the franchise: I loved, and love, the focus on police procedure (as opposed to gun play, which is relatively rare), the progressive solving of a case, the eventual revelation of a suspect’s fate, the authority of Webb’s Sgt. Joe Friday, that evocative theme music, the stuff that’s the backbone of the franchise as a whole. But, the 1967-1970 series, compared to the climate of the times it aired, and even nowadays, it would pretty much be considered the ultimate “square” show. I don’t disagree with the anti-drug stance that pervades the series, but the oftentimes heavy-handed moralizing sometimes comes off more cheesy than thought-provoking. And with a fairly routine late-60s filming style, it often looks more like a sitcom than a drama, minus the laugh track, of course. And I’ll tell you right now that the episodes focusing almost entirely on the inner workings of the police department, I find those pretty much interminable.

Unbeknownst to me initially back in the late-90s, until the then still-bourgeoning internet set me straight, was that Dragnet didn’t begin in 1967. Indeed, that ’67 version was a revival, a continuation of a long-lived 1950s Dragnet. (Okay, okay; you wanna get technical, it was a radio drama even before that, but we’re talkin’ TV here.) Airing from 1951 to 1959, that initial television incarnation of Dragnet was, at heart, the same as what I was used to, but in practice, also wildly different. 50s Dragnet could be, at least for a time (more on that later), dark and noirish, less preachy, colder and more unflinching and intense, and often very stylishly filmed to boot. Webb’s Joe Friday was still authoritative, but also, and this may be hard to imagine for someone who has only seen the 60s version, actually cool. Despite being in black & white, as opposed to the color revival, it’s ironically the 1950s Dragnet that has aged better than the newer one! The fact that the 60s version is the one more widely seen in syndication over the decades only adds further irony to the matter.

My introduction to 50s Dragnet proper came in the summer of 1999, when I happened upon two single-episode VHS tapes in Best Buy’s much-missed budget video section. At $2.99 a pop, the price might have been a little high for just a single episode per, but as a mega-fan even back then, I pretty much had an obligation to get ’em. And what a revelation! At the time, I couldn’t say I liked the 50s version more than what I was already familiar with, I didn’t really have a big enough sample size for that and I was used to what lead to the series in the first place besides, but due to the differences between the two I mentioned above, it was certainly an eye opener. I was cognizant of those differences, at some level, even back then, though I would have been less verbose in describing them in detail; I mean, I was 13.

In the years since, the 1967-1970 Dragnet has been nicely represented on home video; the complete series can be had, easily and officially, on DVD. The same can’t be said for the 50s original though. One of my dream home video releases is an officially licensed complete series of it, but one never came forth and looks increasingly unlikely to do so. (Boy would I love for somebody to prove me wrong on that!) There’s a murky public domain status to much, if not all, of it, but there’s only about 30+ episodes in wide circulation via various budget releases. If you wanna go for less mainstream, more specialized releases, you can double that number, but even so, that’s not even half of the 276-episode original run.

As such, it has become a hobby of mine to nab DVD releases of the show, the more episodes the better. It’s an ongoing quest for the ‘ultimate’ 50s Dragnet collection, albeit a quest I know can’t be completed until some way, somehow, the complete series makes it out there. Nevertheless, I’ve got plenty of these in my collection; some of the better sets give you over 20 episodes in one fell swoop. Madacy’s 25-episode set and Echo Bridge’s 22-episode collection are two of the better releases, in my opinion. Given the public domain status of these episodes, picture and print quality can really, really vary from one entry to the next, but in this arena, you gotta take what you can get.

(Some DVD collections even feature modern, erm, “enhancements” to the show; music replacements to that famous theme aren’t uncommon, and one set I picked up even overlaid cheesy, computerized episode titles at the start of each installment. These releases are, if nothing else, interesting, but hardly definitive. Still, if there’s a relatively uncommon episode to be found or at least a decent selection…)

All that said, we now come to the Dragnet DVD release that is our subject today proper. This isn’t a new one for me; in fact, I first picked up a copy not too far removed from its 2004 drop date. It might even have been in 2004. It was a $1 DVD at Save-a-Lot, if I recall correctly. Put out by Raintree Home Video, this is one of those quirky, early-DVD-era releases that showed just how much fun this relatively new format could be.

The “TV Nite” branding and delightful “just the great episodes, ma’am!” subtitle give this a fitting, retro vibe, but what really got me back then and still appeals to me today is the notation that this features old commercials! That’s the kind of extra mile stuff that seriously helps a budget release stand out. I almost certainly would have picked this set up anyway, but bonus vintage advertising (which y’all know I love) absolutely sealed the deal.

(For the record, this copy here isn’t the one I first picked up so many years ago; that one is boxed away somewhere. I did pick up another copy a few years back with the full intention of reviewing it here, but then that one kinda got lost in the shuffle. Finally, a few weeks back, I found this one cheap locally. Plunking down the few bucks for a third copy was easier than digging out the second, so I guess now I’ve got a backup to a backup.)

Spread over two discs, the set features a healthy 16-episode selection; not the most ever seen in a single collection, but better than most. And luckily, no music replacements or other modern additions. Plus, with one possible exception, which we’ll get to, there’s not a dud episode here. So what say we check it out, ep by ep, right now? I mean, I’m not gonna spend an hour on each one or anything (I’ve already rambled for over 1000 words at this point), and I’m only going to use screencaps when I feel like it, but methinks I’ll still make up for missed time in a BIG way right here, right now! (See, “BIG,” cause the episodes use that word for each entry, and I wanted to play into… oh, never mind.)

DISC ONE:

“The Big Producer” – The first disc kicks off with an episode that tends to find itself on a lot of budget Dragnet releases. The plot: obscene literature has been infiltrating local high schools, Sgt. Friday and his partner Officer Frank Smith have to not only bust the kids distributing it but also nab the person supplying them.

Wacky facts (see, “facts,” cause… oh, never mind): One of the kids collared is a young Martin Milner (that’s him getting busted in the screencap), who of course later starred in the Dragnet-related Adam-12! Glad he got on the right path in life! (Webb often worked with the same actors over and over, both in the 50s and 60s versions of the show. Example: Carolyn “Morticia” Jones appears in this episode; she also turns up in two other episodes on this set.)

Also, Dragnet could be very good at wasting time. One of the more notable examples of this is in this ep right here: the obscene literature supplier is a down-on-his-luck, old timey Hollywood executive, and the final portion of this episode is a long sequence in which he fantasizes the filming of one of his pictures, instead of just getting on with it.

“The Big Frank” – A man is pulled from his car, robbed, and the car stolen. Later, the suspect shoots Frank, putting him in critical condition!

Because I came to Dragnet via the 1960s revival, Harry Morgan’s ~~Col. Potter~~ Bill Gannon was the first guy to be ‘my’ partner to Joe Friday, but over time, I came to really like and appreciate Ben Alexander’s Frank Smith. As such, his being so seriously wounded in this episode makes for a harrowing installment. Friday even gets pretty rough with a guy when trying to get some info on the shooter! Over the course of the two versions, we saw Friday get stern and lecture plenty, but rarely (ever?) lose his temper quite like this.

Sign o’ the times: Friday and his girlfriend both bring cartons of cigarettes to Frank in the hospital! Speaking of Friday’s girlfriend, early in the episode, Frank nags Friday to get married (a recurring theme among Friday’s partners; Gannon did it plenty) – Friday is 32, Frank got married at 35 but fears he waited too long. Hey, maybe there’s hope for me yet! Also, Friday was 32 at the time of this episode? Man, I know people looked older back then, but 32? Did Jack Webb always look like the definitive authority figure?

Commercial: Chesterfield Cigarettes. Our first retro ad of the set. Much to my (mild) chagrin, the commercials weren’t sprinkled throughout the episodes themselves (or what would have been even better, original parts of the original broadcasts), but rather, appear between eps every few entries. Chesterfield was a big sponsor of the show, Webb himself even pitched ’em, so it’s fitting that a vintage ad for them should appear here. It, uh, won’t be the last time.

“The Big False Make” – A dopey guy has confessed to a store holdup, but certain aspects of his confession don’t match up with what actually happened, despite a positive identification from the store’s owner. So, did he do it or not?

Wacky facts: This episode uses the Badge 714 title, which was what syndicated reruns of Dragnet went by during the time, lest they be confused with newer episodes. Renaming a series for syndication, even slightly (Happy Days was once called Happy Days Again in reruns, for example) was a fairly common practice for years, up through at least the 1980s, and episodes bearing the Badge 714 name are easily found across various Dragnet DVD collections. Whether these syndicated prints were subject to editing from the original network broadcasts like later syndicated versions of whatever were, I do not know.

In a nice bit of continuity (intentional or not), Joe’s girlfriend from the previous episode is mentioned. Also, Aunt Bee herself, Francis Bavier, appears in this one! She’s credited as Hazel Howard, and she plays… Hazel Howard. Mistake, or is that the name she went by for a time?

“The Big Break” – Habitual perpetrator Hoffman keeps getting arrested… and escaping.

Odd moments: An apparently reformed (spoiler: he’s not) Hoffman stops by the station to hit up Friday & Smith for a few bucks – and they give it to him! Is that something someone would really do, on either end? Also, Friday mentions during the intro that he goes to the beach on his days off; the image kinda amuses me. It’s hard to imagine cool cat 1950s Joe Friday lounging on the sand, and downright impossible to think of 1960s authority figure Joe Friday doing so!

50s Dragnet often has a very noirish vibe to it, sometimes featuring some very cool, very stylish visuals. This episode has some great examples of that during the final showdown with Hoffman, especially this shot of him walking down a long hallway while Friday & Smith lay in wait. Look at it here if you don’t believe me. I mean, why would I make that up?

This episode also features one of the few times Friday ever shoots someone, although not fatally. (There is an episode where it’s fatal, a terrific installment that’s unfortunately not included in this set but is obliquely referenced in the 1960s entry “The Shooting Board.“)

Commercial: Mattel’s tommy gun toy and detective set! This one’s a lot of fun; not only does it fit the theme of the collection perfectly, but it adds a bit of variety to the commercials, which, I’m just gonna say, are almost all for Chesterfield. The cig ads fit too (man, everybody smoked back then), but old toy ads are, to me, a lot more entertaining to watch.

I don’t know how much $7 was in 1950s dollars, but it probably wasn’t cheap. Ironically, $7 for one of these would probably be considered an ultra-bargain today!

Sign o’ the times: Toy guns sure looked realistic back then! No orange caps on these babies! In fact, I bought something related to Dragnet that I hope to do as a follow-up post to this one (we’ll see if that happens), and included was a licensed squirt gun modeled after a snub nose that looks uncomfortably realistic at first glance. It’s uh, not something you’d want to be waving around in public nowadays, that’s for sure.

“The Big Pair” – A couple robs the houses of out-of-towners and sells their furniture. Friday & Smith ain’t having none of it.

This isn’t a bad episode, but not one of my favorites here, either. I don’t have a lot to say about it. The scene where Friday & Smith question a grandfather and his granddaughter in their now-empty house reminds me of the “MISTER Daniel Loomis!” episode of 60s Dragnet (one of my favorites of the revival), so there is that. Time waster: a bird store lady keeps interrupting Friday’s questioning to pointlessly chastise her birds. Annoying? Why sure it is! (Maybe that was the point.)

“The Big Seventeen” – Plot-wise, this one could be a 60s Dragnet, though it’s handled in a way more typical of 50s Dragnet (read: better). Teens wreck a movie theater and have generally been causing a ruckus as of late. The reason? Marijuana. One of the teens has graduated to selling heroin… and he’s also been using it. Things end poorly for him.

This episode features who I have deemed a “Fake Frank Smith” (aka “Fake Smith”) because he’s played by Herb Ellis instead of Ben Alexander. According to Wikipedia, Ellis played Smith for the character’s first five episodes before Alexander took over. He’s not as good as Alexander, but then, Alexander also had waaaay more time to make the character his own.

The ending is a real downer, though we do get a great final line from Friday out of it.

Commercial: More Chesterfield, and this one’s a doozy. Apparently, doc says that these cigs don’t adversely affect smokers after a six-month trial period, even those that smoke their usual 10 to 40 (!!!) a day!

“The Big Cast” – Ed Jacobs (played by Barney Phillips) is Friday’s partner in this one, as he was for the majority of the first season. I like him more than Fake Smith, but not as much as Frank Smith. Nevertheless, this is one of the best episodes, quite possibly THE best episode, in the entire collection. It’s dark, it’s noirish, and it’s got Lee Marvin.

Here, Marvin’s character is wanted for questioning in the disappearance of a man, and the episode is almost entirely Friday & ~~Smith~~ Jacobs interrogating him, progressively getting more and more info. Marvin’s portrayal of a man matter-of-factly stating what he’s done and what drove him to do it isn’t just good – it’s chilling.

Look, if it’s sounded like I’ve been critical of 60s Dragnet thus far in the post, let me just reiterate that I love that version. Even so, this episode is about a million miles away from that later incarnation. Anyone who thinks Dragnet was corny and square, just show ’em this episode so they can see how good the show could be.

It could also be pretty cold. Here comes a spoiler, but don’t let it dissuade you from watching this one if you haven’t already: In that later version, when a suspect was sentenced to death, typically it’d say they’re awaiting execution. But here and in other 50s installments, when the bad guy gets the death penalty, the final reveal point blank states they’ve been executed. It may seem like a small difference, but to me, it’s so much more unflinching. Even more so in this episode; usually there’d be some background music to accompany the final reveal and Mark VII screen before the end credits roll, but here, except for the voiceover and pounding of the Mark VII hammer, it’s dead silent. I haven’t seen the entire 1950s series (has anybody, in the past several decades?), but just in the realm of common public domain episodes, this seems unusual – and incredibly powerful.

Man oh man, this episode is worth the price of admission alone.

“The Big .22 Rifle For Christmas” – The first disc ends with an episode I have already talked at length about; here, have the link again. As such, I’m not going to say too much about it here. It’s a pretty dark entry, which makes for a real one-two punch to conclude the disc, coming right after the previous episode as it does. This one, it’s a little cheesy towards the end, but effective nonetheless, and it has one of the, in my opinion, best Joe Friday final lines.

Also, Fake Smith in this one.

Commercial: MORE Chesterfield cigarettes. This one spotlights the regular and king size varieties. The announcer says the only difference between the two is the king size is larger – gee, no kidding!

DISC TWO:

“The Big Frame” – Ah, the good Frank Smith is back for this one! Also, it sports the Badge 714 syndicated title. Plot: A dead body has been found, but it’s doubtful if it’s a hit-and-run or straight up homicide. Carolyn Jones guest stars again; she was also in the first episode of the first disc. Intentional? I sorta doubt it.

Time Waster: Talk about Joe’s painful wisdom tooth and its needing pulled.

“The Big Show” – This one features Virginia Gregg; she appeared in a LOT of 60s Dragnet. Plot: An abandoned baby has been found in a bus terminal; Friday & Smith have to find the mother. The problem? The description they’ve been given of her doesn’t match up with the facts they dig up. A surprisingly happy ending in this one, especially since it doesn’t first appear to be heading that way.

Commercial: Well, here we go! If they’re gonna keep throwing Chesterfield ads at us, this is the way to do it – because it features Jack Webb himself!

Taking place on the set of the show, behind-the-scenes Jack is way more smiley and upbeat whilst talking about Chesterfield cigs – probably because the man was getting paid to pitch, baby! For obvious reasons, this is the best of the Chesterfield commercials seen on this set; not only does it ‘fit’ perfectly, but it provides a nice contrast with the mostly serious Jack Webb we see throughout otherwise.

“The Big Phone Call” – An Ed Jacobs episode. Like the previous Jacobs ep, the stellar Lee Marvin entry, this one is pretty much entirely Friday & Jacobs interrogating a suspect. Here, it’s a weaselly guy being questioned about a jewelry heist, and who denies pretty much everything despite increasing amounts of evidence to the contrary. It’s a little funny actually, and even funnier when weaselly guy keeps trying to call his wife, and each time they remind him to dial 9 for an outside line.

“The Big Girl” – This was on one of those single episode tapes I got back in the summer of ’99; I didn’t watch it as much as the other one (“The Big Boys,” which is not in this particular collection), but needless to say there was some familiarity here, though I didn’t remember a ton of it. In this one, men are being robbed and shot by a female suspect, one whose description doesn’t always match. Carolyn Jones is back in this one; no, she isn’t the perpetrator, though she does get arrested. So, who’s behind the robberies? Spoiler: dude looks like a lady!

Commercial: YET MORE Chesterfield. In this one, Hollywood actresses Jean and Joan Corbett pitch the brand. One likes regular, one likes king size. Meh.

“The Big War” – Friday & Smith try to stop an impending teen gang war by putting pressure on one of the main guys behind it. The kid’s mother is in an unending state of denial, the kid is a temperamental liar, and when the war goes down and the kid ends up dead, Friday & Smith have to track down his killer.

This is an odd episode, almost certainly the weakest on the whole set, and I’ll tell you why: it’s basically a 60s installment, but from the 50s. Everything we’ve seen so far has had a distinct style, from how it was filmed to how Joe Friday acts. But here, the noirish elements are gone; this one is filmed very, for lack of a better description, by the numbers. And anyone used to 60s Jack Webb will feel right at home here; this version of Joe Friday is the lecturing authority figure of a decade later. He even looks like 60s Joe Friday. Frank behaves in a very Bill Gannon-ish way too, especially at the beginning of the episode. After everything we’ve seen so far on this set, it’s quite a gear shift!

Right from the start, this one felt ‘off’ to me. As soon as the opening title screen appeared, something didn’t seem quite right, and I couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it just because it was brighter? That’s what I had it chalked up to, but it wasn’t until I looked up the airdate that I got a better answer: lieutenant! The badge says lieutenant! I didn’t even notice that at first! That’s right, Joe (and Frank) apparently got promotions in the last season, though when the show was revived in the 60s, Joe went back to being a sergeant (the reversion was never explained in-show, but I believe the reason was because, realistically, sergeants would be out in the field much more than a desk-bound lieutenant would be. Or so I’ve read.)

BUT WAIT! According to that episode guide I linked to before (here, have it again), this episode isn’t from the last season, but rather, the penultimate season. So, what gives? Is the episode guide wrong? Did someone tack the wrong title card onto the wrong episode? Or…?

I can’t get over how different this one feels. Probably because it came so abruptly; maybe this change in tone wasn’t so noticeable during the natural progression of the original run, or even if we had a complete series set to watch in chronological order, but thrown in here like this, an episode from 1958 amongst others from the early-to-mid-1950s, it just doesn’t sit well with me. (I remember watching another late-series episode, “The Big Oskar,” which isn’t on this set, and feeling similarly, though not to this degree.)

If all episodes later in the original series were like this, at least we can see where Webb got the template for the revival from.

“The Big September Man” – Ah, back to normalcy! Ed Jacobs is the partner here, but that’s okay, because this is a return to form for the set. Here we’ve got a dark, noirish episode – and how! This one is cold.

In this entry, a secretary has been bludgeoned to death by way of a pipe. Friday & Jacobs eventually zero in on a self-righteous nutjob as the culprit. Terrific final line from Friday here, and an ice cold final result statement. This is a terrific episode, a quantum leap away from the one we just saw.

Commercial: This is the only time on the set we get two commercials instead of one, which is good, because the first one is just a repeat of that Chesterfield ad in which their cigs are basically presented as health food. The second commercial, however, is where it’s at; another Mattel toy gun spot! This one is similar to the last, spotlighting a kids detective get-up, complete with replica snub nose. Like I said earlier, these things were kinda realistic lookin’ back then; not something you wanna go flashing in public! At only $4, this was the cheaper of the two sets, though in 1950s dollars, it probably still came to like $900 in modern currency.

“The Big Shoplift” – A wave of shoplifting has hit the city, from fur to jewelry. The initial suspect is a saleswoman whose departments always seemed to get hit hardest, but as it turns out, it’s the work of a lonely klepto. And who should happen to play said klepto? Why, it’s Peggy Webber, who we saw before here and who did a TON of 60s episodes. And as of this writing, Mrs. Webber is still with us; how cool is that? (Her acting is noticeably better here than it often was in her 1960s episodes, but I assume that was due to writing or cue cards or whatever, because she’s not a bad actress.)

“The Big Bar” – The set ends with a really strong episode. A man is robbing bars and needlessly shooting the proprietors. The only clues? He always drinks the same thing and constantly plays the same tune on the jukebox. The climax is excellent: Joe, Frank and their commanding officer listen to the pursuit of the suspect over a police radio, while Frank charts its progress on a map. As the chase goes on and becomes more intense, all three men break out in a sweat. This sequence works really well; almost like an intense radio drama. Maybe those roots were showing? Maybe this episode originally was a radio installment?

The conclusion is slightly silly, as Frank laments his apparently slow watch and asks for confirmation from those nearby. Coming right after the intensity just seen, I’m not sure it works, but that’s just a small knock against an otherwise very, very good ep. Also, look for Dennis “McCloud” Weaver in the supporting cast.

Commercial: Annnnd finally, one last commercial. Well, it’s less of a commercial and more of a reminder that Dragnet was brought to us by Chesterfield. Which is fitting, because after the number of Chesterfield ads present across this double-disc set, we should get a neat little moment like this, even though we hardly need reminding at this point.

Thus ends Raintree’s 2004 Dragnet DVD release. By and large, it’s an excellent collection. Is it perfect? That’s subjective; there are some episodes found on other releases that I feel are stronger than some of what’s included here. “The Big Crime,” for example, it’s not exactly good time fun, but for 50s television, the subject matter is about as dark as it gets, and with a truly chilling statement by the suspect as he’s arrested. It’s a strong example of just how captivating the original television incarnation of Dragnet could, and can, be.

That said, there’s really not a whole lot that’s bad here. By and large, the episodes included are well-written and entertaining. “The Big War” notwithstanding, it’s a pretty solid line-up. (And even then, “The Big War,” while probably not the best on the set, it’s certainly interesting, if nothing else. It definitely showed the direction the series, presumably, evolved, while also pointing the way towards the eventual 1960s revival.)

I’ve picked up a lot of Dragnet sets over the years, and while this one may not be the strongest, I’d say it’s certainly one of the stronger ones. The retro vibes presented on the packaging are appealing, you’ve got a healthy number of episodes all in one place, and the addition of old commercials to further help set the tone, that was a great idea. Even though they’re weighed heavily in favor of cigarette ads, as a peak into 1950s television, Raintree did a really nice job.

This set isn’t remotely hard to find or expensive to acquire, and the nice chunk of eps coupled with low number of discs to fiddle with (and in standard DVD packaging, to boot), if they (whoever “they” may be) aren’t going to give us full seasons or a complete series of 1950s Dragnet, releases such as this one did, and do, a terrific job of filling the void.

And thems the facts, Jack! (Or so say I.)

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THE NORTHEAST OHIO VIDEO HUNTER

An adventure in analog video, electronics, television history, Northeast Ohio, and whatever else I feel like babbling about…

Vintage Acme Supermarkets “Meat” Token (1963)

Vintage(ish) Noid Halloween Masks!

Vintage Forest City Auto Parts Valued Customer Card!

Gordy International’s Batman Racing Game (1988)

VHS Review: Madacy’s 2-Tape DRAGNET Set (1992)

Vintage (?) Ghoul Pocket Mirror!

Old Flats (as in Cleveland) T-Shirts

Transogram’s DRAGNET – BADGE 714 Puzzle Game (1955)

Raintree Home Video’s Two-Disc 1950s DRAGNET DVD Set (2004)