theretrogeek

Despite the fact that it sounded like a heavily sedated tracheotomy out patient speaking into a tin can, the Speak ‘n’ Spell was a stroke of educational genius.

All number of words and sentences could be created, voiced by the machine and then copied, and the word quickly spread through the Speak ‘n’ Spell network that the correct combination of 8s, 0s, 1s, 3s, and 5s resulted in the word ‘BOOBIES’ - if the machine was held upside down. Unfortunately, the machine didn’t actually repeat the word. Instead, thousands of young boys were lulled into believing that the correct word for breasts (or boobies) was ‘fivethreeoneeightzerozeroeight’.

Oh well, although I can barely remember anything about its other functions, I’ll be forever grateful to the Speak ‘n’ Spell far holping my sew march wath mi spllin.

Mir abbot thi Speak ‘n’ Spell hore: http://www.speaknspell.co.uk/speaknspell.html

Vanilla Ice (aka Robert Matthew Van Winkle… sorry, is it the other way around?) for those of you who are not familiar with early 90s but are reading this blog out of sheer boredom elsewhere, was not an ice-cream, nor was he the accent-impaired, dancing chimney-sweep from Mary Poppins. In fact, the origins of the ‘Ice Baby’ have never quite been clear.

Vanilla loved to boast about his violent and really scary gangster past on the streets, despite the fact that everyone knows that only a clinically insane lunatic with a death wish the size of MC Hammer’s trousers would dare walk gangster-ridden ‘hood’ in Miami with that ridiculous wedge of hair fixed upon his head. Who knows, perhaps the fact that his hair looked like a choc ice may have helped generate his nickname…

Whatever the story, the ‘Ice Man’ did release perhaps one of the most memorable tracks of all time: “Ice Ice Baby”, which shot to number one in the charts and inspired a new generation of supermarket workers to tear apart the cardboard boxes in the storeroom and break dance (used in the loosest possible terms) on them in the car park at lunchtime.

Vanilla Ice: silly name, silly hair, even sillier made up life story, but great song…

Official website here: http://www.vanillaice.com/main.htm

With a loading arm that somehow managed to harness the power of a medieval trebuchet, the Soda Stream was a surprisingly deadly home furnishing. The supercharged drinks it produced were encased in bomb-proof glass bottles, and were sweeter than the dessert trolley at a bees-only ‘Slimmers Day Off’ celebration lunch.

Unknown to the uninitiated, the Soda Stream was also the world’s first teleportation device. Amazingly, it was possible to transport entire volumes of water from this dimension to another. All you needed to do was fill a Soda Stream bottle with water, slip it up into the chamber, lock it down in place with the loading arm, repeatedly push the square button on the top of the machine until it grunted so loudly that it sounded as if it was about to explode, then release the loading arm (whilst at the same time removing any digits from the immediate area) and slide the bottle out from the chamber. All that was left inside the bottle was a swirling mist – the water had been teleported (at least that what I used to tell myself…).

Unfortunately, and for now apparent reason, Soda Stream seems to have been discontinued in Britain sometime during the early 1990s, or perhaps earlier. Either it was the inexorable spread of the canned drink industry that drowned this pillar of calorific confection, or the fact that a small boy in Lemmington Spa forgot to move his fingers out of the path of the trebuchet loading arm.

Whatever events conspired against it, forcing its eventual demise, Soda Stream: we miss you…

***UPDATE I have just stumbled upon the Soda Stream website for the UK; it didn’t die after all! Although it seems to have undergone a radical design change, which seems to omit the lethal loading arm… No suprise there!

The big Yankee brother of the very British Spectrum: the Commodore 64. No more did gamers have to imagine the fill-colours of the spritely characters, backgrounds and other creations that filled the small, square screens of the monitor or TV, or worry about games crashing half way through a load sequence. Bigger, better and with more brain power, the Commodore loomed in all its strangely flesh-coloured glory on the horizon of the British shores before delivering a crushing, heightened gaming-experience blow to the ranks of die hard Spectrum fans. The Spectrum 48k was dead, but not forgotten…

Play your favourite games online (no download required!) at: http://www.c64.com/!!!