EVERYONE HAS A NOGGIN!

In Sleepover Friends #30 Big Sister Stephanie - Kate’s annoying little sister Melissa strikes up a temporary hero-worship of the always stylish Stephanie. Seeing her , as any fashion mentor would see her , as a new candidate for an overhaul , Stephanie happily hangs out with Melissa picking out her winter coat and matching boots in her favorite color trio , the very 80's Red , Black and White. Stephanie even pushes her to be in Kate’s new video and coordinates a dance routine , this starts to pall when Melissa quickly loses interest and insists on Noggin ( I laughed like crazy when I read that name Noggin! ) her stuffed animal being in the scene. Of course Stephanie is too cool to be seen dancing with an eight year old and a stuffed bear and calls it quits after an attempt to get her to let go of her stuffed animal and refocus.
I couldn’t help noticing that though Stephanie was commenting on how babyish carrying around a stuffed animal was , she is only in fifth grade and it probably wasn’t long ago that she was clutching her own teddy bear or doll , though knowing Stephanie I imagine she was a Jem & the Holograms collector! I had my own set of teddy bears and though I didn’t sleep with them - they had their own specially made beds , it brought to mind how very fashionable stuffed animals were in the
80's.

You had Gund - remember the catch-phrase Gotta get a Gund - banned because it sounded like Gotta get a gun , or Dakin , then it seemed like every cartoon character had their own stuffed replica. Here’s a small list - Wuzzles- they were a cross breed of two animals for instance Butterbear was cross between a butterfly and a bear and had wings and little flower antennae , Smurfs , E.T. ( everyone seemed to have a stuffed E.T. and the stuffed version with his big blue eyes was even cuter then the movie E.T. ) , Kissyfur , Foofur ( big blue hound dog ) , Purr-Tenders ( I always thought these were the lowest of the low marketing wise - they were mostly cats that wore masks pretending to be other animals so they would be adopted at the Pet store - too cute huh? And yeah like a feathery mask is going to convince me a cat is a bird. ) , Care Bears , pillow-like versions of Holly Hobby and Strawberry Shortcake , Ewoks - especially the adorable Wicket , Gummi Bears ( not the candy but the cartoon characters cute little guys from the knighthood era all with rhyming names - Grammi Gummi the old battleax gummi who couldn’t cook but knew how to make Gummi berry juice just right , Zummi Gummi the resident wizard wannabee who always fouled up his spells , Gruffi Gummi the bossy worker gummi , Tummy Gummi whose name gives away the fact that he loves to eat! Cubby gummi the youngest always up for adventure and Sunni Gummi the preteen whose blonde fur was whirled up top her
head like a perfect Vidal Sassoon , new wave haircut. ) , Rainbow Brite Sprites , The Get-a-long Gang - anyone remember these guys? ( they were based on characters made for greeting cards and were soon developed into a series ) the stuffed toys were rather stiff (along with their price ) but the great thing was they came with little removable roller skates! There were all kinds of Comic strip characters - Snoopy , Woodstock , Doonsbury , Ziggy , Heathcliff , Garfield. Muppet Babies - not just the ones that McDonalds offered , there were others before it , I got a Baby Fozzie for Christmas and the box was designed like a little high chair , super cute! Snorks - A rip off of the smurfs but I liked them , they looked like little , light bulbs with a bent little snorkle on top.
Teddy Ruxpin , Ducktales - Huey , Luey , Dewey and Webigail. My Pet Monster big blue furry monster - I thought the toy was bizarre looking but on t.v he was quite adorable. Alf , Winnie the Pooh , Shirt Tales ( another American Greeting card set of characters ) , Alvin & the Chimunks and other revivals of old characters ; Pink Panther , Flintstones - especially Dino , Bugs Bunny & all other Looney Tunes , not to mention Scooby Doo.) My Little Pony’s stuffed versions , Nosy Bears - with squeezable stomachs that made their see-thru plastic ball nose emit some sort of activity like turn a spiral ball inside , or shoot yellow plastic marbles from a minature popcorn container , Yawnies - bear or dog like things that had exaggerated yawning mouths and sleepy eyes ( cute but a bit of a bore ) , Popples ( I loved these guys - I’m not sure what they were kind of like patchwork day-glo bears with dog ears that had a pouch on their back so you could stuff them into a ball shape - the transformers for girls! They had cute names too - P.C. - Pretty Cool , Potato Chip , Party etc. ) Pound puppies - these were a pretty hot commodity for a while I think the toy spawned a show and not vice versa , one version of the toy had a little pouch inside the dog and when you purchased it there were little ‘puppies’ inside. Monchichi’s - awful , awful toy I hated these things everyone thought they were so cute - they were little monkeys but with strange little faces that seemed more kiddish than a Cabbage Patch Doll , Sesame Street characters ( and when Muppet Babies came out Sesame Street introduced baby Sesame Street characters , I had Big Bird but I cut off his bonnet and diaper? And used to make him little clothes and for some bizarre reason , I think it’s cause I couldn’t buy the real one I called Big Bird , Gonzo ) . Other character stuffed toys - Hello Kitty , Benji ( member the little dog mine came with a little plastic brush to keep his fur nice ) , Mickey Mouse - or rather Mickey Mouse Power - that’s what mine said on his t shirt , Pac-man and other arcade figures-Q-Bert , , Mario and Donkey Kong. Babar , Glo Worms and Lottsa Legs - really long bright caterpillars wearing fake colored sneakers on their cloth feet and terry-cloth legwarmers. Amtoy’s super pickle , Wrinkles , Keyper’s gimmicky toys - they had little plastic hollow centers with a key to lock away things ( all precious jewelry such as gumball rings and jelly bracelets) , Puffalumps , Hasbro Be Mores plush dinosaurs , Shamu whales , Roger Rabbit , Tyco Kitty Kitty Kittens , Yum Yums by Kenner ( bears and dogs and lions in pastel shades with candy printed tummies , ears and feet ), Kodak Kolorkins , Energizer bunny , Grabbits Kenner 1989 , Applauses' Sad eyed animals , Mattel Emotions animals - like Boo Hoo Hoo bear , Romper room characters like Kimble , Chubbles , Dakin Fun Farm Frou Frou , Amtoy Hamburger , As for the non character stuffed toys these were sold by the hundreds , they showed up in all the 80's department stores Woolco , K-Mart , Towers which even devoted one entire row to stuffed animals - they all had springy little elastic loops on their heads so that they could dangle from hooks in the pegboard , and the era’s favorite animals were - Pandas , unicorns , Bears , Koalas , racoons , horses , hippos and who knows what else. Some were even gimmicky -Hearts with little feet and googly eyes sold during Valentines Day , and lots of rabbits during Easter. There were even pillow type stuffed toys more for decorating your bed than anything - perhaps started by Don Knotts on Three’s Company check out his big face , Sly Cat head pillow! Window pane friends member those? , big lips , rainbows , shooting stars , a box of crayons , lifesavers , their was even a pattern booklet on how to knit your own pillows that looked like Allsorts Licorice ( you know the kind pink pentagon shaped candies with soft licorice centers) . Along the way their has been more and more bizarre stuffed toys I’ve come across 80's mail-away’s for Cap’tn Crunch , Dig ‘em ( the Frog from Sugar Smacks ) , Toucan Sam , Green Giant dolls ( if you’re drawing a blank reach into your fridge and see if there is a picture of a green giant on your bag of peas - that’s him ) , And get this a cob of Corn - you read right , your eyes haven’t deceived you a cob of corn , plus a pea pod and a giant Peach - Each one called Cobbie , Sweet Pea and Peachy and even more were put out by Del Monte.

I almost get a homesick pang walking down the toy aisle now , longing to see a stuffed toy aisle or even something reminiscent of the 80's. Of course one could argue the 80's weren’t perfect with all their Rambo machine gun kits and dancing flowers , so what , are those ugly Bratz dolls any better? Am I the only one that gets creeped out looking at those things - they look like ten year olds trying to achieve the look of a slutty twenty-eight old. At least Barbie with her phony measurements and purple eyeshadow looked like a moderately , relatable woman , and Maxie dolls and Hot Look dolls were just plain fun. They had the look of a best
friend.
I had a quartet of cherised stuffed toys one was a Snoopy ( I cut his ears into three strips , braided them , put blue eyeshadow over his black eyes , and made a strapless dress for him by cutting the end of a sleeve off a velour shirt , stuffing the top of the dress for boobs , he had now become and remained in my mind always as Stephanie.) There were others including my only Barbie doll a Peaches and Cream Barbie - I chopped her hair off shoulder length and called her Barb. And there was one bear I could never get my hands on he was extraordinarily pricey a Gund of course and he was this squat little bear Snuffles ( he was called ) , that sat on his rump with a little round circle patch on his tummy. He was super soft and came in two sizes large about the size of a big Popple and small about the size of a small Popple. There was this store near where I lived , it was one of those artsy 70/80's stores attached to a hotel. It was something to bring in the tourists you know the kind , hard wood floors to give it that General Store charm , home made crafts - member that 80's craft fad of using pantyhose material and making life size old people , or maybe cute potato faces for fridge magnets or pickled bums ( you read right - jars filled with little pantyhose stitched butts ), they had a whole room full of those ( the old people not the pickled bums ), plus quilts , wind chimes , sun catchers , rocking horses , elaborate kites , fancy book marks ,
painted beach stones , glass jars filled with flavored candy canes with every flavor imaginable , I loved root beer and watermelon , and then the stuffed toy nook , all devoted to Gund. I used to go there and ‘visit’ this toy ,I would pick up that toy having named him by now , Pudge , and would play sometimes luring my friends to join me , until the cashier would get annoyed and chase us out. I have since come across several Pudges but never one as soft , or as in good condition. Still looking.

I was very elaborate with my stuffed toy playing in fact I had created a whole other world for them luckily my best friend didn’t think I was insane and we both created some of my best memories just hanging out- no t.v., no texting , just playing. We gave each toy a name and a voice , they would talk to each other and have incredible adventures , I must say we had pretty good imaginations back then , but three t.v. channels and sharing what shows we watched with siblings makes one very creative. We made schoolwork booklets for the toys , they even took school tests and got report cards , when they passed notes we made them a dunce cap , we made elevators ( picnic baskets on a rope ) and sent them out the window , we made them tents and had them sleep outside , even tented outside ourselves never without the toys though , carved up a long box and using magic marker turned it into a school bus after which we pulled it through the orchard behind my house , taking them to the back reservoir and pretended they had gone on a class trip , ( Influnced by night soaps ) we even pretend they had murdered one of the stuffed animals complete with a trial , we took them on picnics , bike rides , slid them down the slides , swung them on the baby swings , they had birthdays , parties , and best yet we would have the stuffed animals call each other on the phone , I would say to my friend Miss Piggy wants to talk to Bear go get him , I didn’t doubt that she ran and got the bear rather than just talked in his voice.

I'm relived to know for sure I wasn’t the only one who created ‘identities’ for their stuffed toys , ever see the Polka Dot door? - I’m not sure if this is strictly a Canadian show or not but I’d watched it and it was one of those children’s shows like Sesame Street or Mr. Dressup ( I think that’s Canadian too ) and Today’s Special ( whoops Canadian again. ) The show featured a big creature-thing , I think it was supposed to be a green and yellow girrafe / kangaroo thing - okay I don’t know what it was but his name was Polkaroo. It also had two grown up hosts and four stuffed toys Humpty & Dumpty one of which looked like it’d gotten 80's funkified - he wasn’t black but grape giving him the appearance of a hip black humpty dumpy , Marigold a cloth doll , and a plain yellow Bear. The grown ups would maneuver the toys slightly and pretend to hear them talk and have them do things like a tea party of make a kite , it was one of the cutest shows because it wasn’t overly cute.
Though I think Barney the purple dinosaur got kinda a bad rap in the 90's , you just have to watch some of the shows prior to understand why , he and the kids just tried so hard!

A STUFFY DILEMMA

In The Fabulous Five # 11 Hit and Run - Jana clings to her Valentine bear Gorgeous ( a gift from Randy , her main squeeze ) while in the hospital after a hit and run. Randy himself lies in a coma having taken the brunt of the hit after pushing Jana out of the way. Jana sick with fear , reluctantly, at the pressuring of her folks and nurses , allows the screaming little girl in the bed next to her to cuddle it and cuddle it. The little girl won’t give it up for any substitute and I find it strange that a child separated from her parents after a car crash , wouldn’t have been given a toy from the children’s ward immediately to distract her - but then there wouldn’t be Jana’s wavering noble sacrifice. Would you let a little girl borrow your teddy at the very moment you felt you needed it?


BOXED AWAY BEARS?

I often wonder what doll Jessica would have cuddled and is now boxed away or hidden under a towering mess in the Hershey bar( nickname for her chocolate covered room - in earlier books) Or what Liz would have cherised for that matter. I see Liz as the Panda bear or the rag doll type perhaps a kindered goody goody? Holly Hobby? Jessica with some wretched furless bear that she’s been drooling on since she was three years old. Lila something bizarre - a pillow that looks like a giant credit card. Winston he’s a definite closet My Buddy lover. Bruce a Cabbage Patch doll named after himself or perhaps a left over from a home-ec class - sow your own Porche with 1BRUCE1 embroidered plates.

Doll cuddlers can be seen in movies old and 80's not just children clutching them but teens - check out the vintage ultra cool Katherine Hepburn flick Stage Door ( I can mention this I first seen on Family Channel in the 80's ) , Ginger Rogers blocks out the annoying neon light flashing into their room with a mask all while clutching a little rag doll in her arms. The title Valley Girl of the 1984 flick cuddles a very spooky looking clown doll to bed. D.J. on Full House has a Window pane pillow to hug , Stephanie has Mr. Bear and Sarah Jessica Parker mournfully clutches a bear while her father cuts off the tree limbs she has been using to escape out her window each night.See if you can spot the Popple in the Fred Savage movie Vice Versa , look fast.

I'VE FOUND THE REAL WAKEFIELD TWINS!

If you were as nutty as me as a kid , I loooooved the cover art of Sweet Valley High , you probably did insane stuff like I did - such as spread all the books out on your bed and line them up in order from favorite covers to least favorite or made mental useless lists like only four books other than some of the super editions and thrillers featured art work making up an actual picture: Most of the covers had the girls posing , making various faces of alarm , worry or triumph , prop objects like Jessica’s pink phone on the cover of Secrets , the mirror on the cover of Too Good Too be True or an ominous arm reaching for Liz on the cover of Kidnaped! Helped to allude to the plot-of-the-month. The books with actual pictures are ( out of books 1-100) , 38 - Leaving Home , in which Liz gazes wistfully at a poster of Switzerland in her room while Jessica watches in the hall , her face showing concern. 39- Secret Admirer. Penny standing in front of a bookstore checking her watch as she faces the fact she’s been stood up. 40- On the Edge - Regina with tears in her eyes gazes at the photo of Bruce on her side table. 56 - Jessica bedraggled looking like a drowned rat on an exotic beach for the cover of Lost at Sea. I also wondered if Jessica and Liz had been inspired by an actual model or a real live set of twins , the cover artist James Mathewuse couldn’t have just pulled the image out of his hat they were too consistent. Then years ago , on one of my scavenger hunts for used books I came across a Wildfire book called The Impossible Years and the puzzle was solved - for there he was Bruce Patman! I did a double take and snatched up the book which had a photo cover of both a male and female model perhaps I was seeing things but no, I bought it , took it home and couldn’t believe it , it really was Bruce Patman! I looked on the inside cover of the Wildfire book and it said photo by Owen Brown. He also did photo’s for Wishing Star books and Windswept I gathered up all my copies of Wildfire , Windswept and Wishing Star and began seeing if I could spot other Sweet Valley High characters. They may not be accurate but you be the judge some of the faces despite hair styles or expression are uncanny! The books - Bruce Patman on Wildfire’s The Impossible Love , Lila Fowler on Wildfire’s Christy’s Love , DeeDee Gordon on Wishing Star’s What About Me , Bill Chase on Wildfire’s Too Young to Know , Susan Stewart on Wishing Star’s Far From Home , Lynne Henry on Just You and Me , Enid Rollins on Wildfire’s Just a Summer Girl , Regina on Wildfire’s Saturday Night Date , and Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield on Wildfire’s Beautiful Girl.

ALL THAT GLITTERS - often tarnishes

All that Glitters series is the equivalant of a cream puff : spineless , mindless entertainment.
Never outwardly cruel or shocking to grab readers instead it merely floats along with characters
that are squeaky clean despite being famous actresses on a daytime soap. The series lasted from 1987-1988 and only had 8 books to it's credit.

Magic Time.

Take Two.

Flashback.

Love Lights.

Typecast.

Setup.

Upstaged

Award Night.

Nasty , sassy , princess of pout sizzles daytime declared the blurb on the cover of T.V. Talk # 5 unfortunately I cannot give Katie or her clan such rave reviews this series fizzles rather than sizzles like bursting soap suds. Each book goes back and forth between central characters Shana Bradbury & Katie Nolan best friends and stars of the soap All that Glitters. And the books promise with their fetching blurb- their lives are a soap opera on and off screen! But no more than Sweet Valley High , in fact Sweet Valley High one ups them , left , right and center. Shana Bradbury plays Jasmin Palavi a psychic on the soap ( though most soap scenes aren’t really shown rather implied ) instead the effects of the schedule and plot turns are more integral to their plots , her grandmother ( and guardian ) Edith Bradbury plays a character on the soap. Shana has a flaky , absent mother a faded actress who returns in book #4 to cause trouble , when her and a rival have a guest appearance on the show. Shana is the product of a May-December marriage between her mother and a Saudi Arabian prince Achmed who sends her a Kaffir cat , ) , a rare Egyptian breed which was used to guard palaces. The cat is called Nefertiti and spends most of book #4 in amusing stunts ‘protecting’ Shana. The cat was a birthday present for her 18th birthday but don’t get too worked up about her age it fluctuates through the series leveling off at age sixteen. Katie Nolan is Shana’s best friend , who , though a nice girl , plays the teenage vixen Alicia Gately which often causes battles between her levelheaded , lawyer father and her ex-model mother , Denise Nolan. In future books
Mrs. Nolan tries to live her life through Katie becoming a pushy , ‘stage’ mom. Kirk Tucker is Shana’s boyfriend a tennis pro who goes through an identity problem shedding his easy going manor becoming an uptight , image obsessed model in book #6. Katie’s boyfriend Mitch Callahan , her handsome co-star , has his own loft which causes some problems for Katie , the number one problem is that it’s deemed off limits by her parents and number 2 is that in book #7 Mitch’s ex-girl friend , nasty Nikki shows up and decides to move right in. Other characters came and went - the most stand out was Katie’s younger sister often called Little-bit ( whereas Shana & Katie were similar in tone in fact neither character had any, real standout features separating them , beyond their surroundings , but Little-bit or Jewel was feisty!) She worshiped her older sibling and wanted to include herself in whatever was going on , wether it was trying out for a part on All that Glitters in book #5 , much to her sisters chagrin , or trying to get rid of awful Nikki for Katie in book #7.

One of the main problems with All that Glitters is that though it says Kristi Andrews on the cover ( as writer ) don’t be fooled , like most 80's series they were written by many other writers using a one name pseudonym. Now , I’m not positive that All that Glitters was written by several people , I’m only going by what I read , and it reads like many people got a jotted dossier on what the series was about , but often forgot facts when it came time to type it out , ages fluctuated , facts changed , and most annoying was the habit each girl had of turning against their friend in an argument - If Katie was having a problem and turned on Shana she would be rational and calm in the next book Shana would have a problem and turn on Katie and Katie would become the calm , rational one. Their personalities were woefully , interchangable. Another problem was the fact that it played up like a teen series ala SVH but these were famous school girls , their boyfriends owned apartments wore suits and sent them crimson roses , they had money and went clubbing and yet things like drugs , sex and alcohol were hardly mentioned if they were mentioned at all. The focus was on fashion & scene - Katie & Shana two beautiful paper dolls dressed up , were manipulated around the scenery like Barbie Color-forms.
Here's some 80's fashion.
#4 - brown leather skirt and apricot mohair sweater.
#5 - Jewel’s black mini skirt & sweater with electric blue stockings made her feel artistic. , Jewel’s Alicia costume - thigh high butter soft black leather skirt , a flimsy fuchsia blouse , bangles , large hoop earrings , flashy sunglasses pushed back like a hair band. Jewel’s lime
green mini dress
#6 - Shana’s high button ankle boots
#8 - Shana’s thigh high black suede leather boots are a hunk magnet.

80's soundtrack for All that Glitters.

With all the mention of Shana's cat Nefertiti and Egyptian background I can’t help humming Walk like an Egyptian of course I might not have thought of it but wait there’s more in book #5 on a double date with little sis , Jewel they go into a trendy ice cream parlor , Betty Browns where their ice cream concoctions have names like Bananaramas and Xandus! In book #6 Shana puts on her sunglasses in a nightclub ( Outter Space!) when the flashing laser lights get to be too much - calling to mind Corey Hart - I wear my sunglasses at night. #7's soap plot line has Katie sweating. They want her character to start having an affair with her married school teacher! The Police will have her singing - Don’t stand so Close to me. Hmm #8 was tough , so cue the Eye of the Tiger , Rocky music as Katie and Shana duke it out over who’ll win the Emmy.

Other 80's doo-dads

- Katie’s pastel pink & green room ( was it just me or was pink and green one of the it combos of the 80's - I’ll have to do a write up on that )
- Characters saying the word Psyched as in I’m Psyched.
- Katie’s chrome & leather living room which her parents describe as soft tech and she describes
as soft yech!
- Katie does a very 80's role reversal thing and brings her boyfriend pink chrysanthemums (
Remember Kathleen Turner climbing the latter on hunky Michael Douglas’s boat to bring him
daises , turning the damsel in the tower motif upside down. )
- The guys in Jewel’s class start singing ‘she’s a brick house..’ after she lands a small cameo
on All that Glitters.
- eating pickles for a snack - okay it’s not entirely 80's but every series book wavered from fantasy snacks - fluffernutters and milkshakes- to nutritional boring snacks - shiny
apples. Was their no bruised apples out their or spotty bananas? Pickles seemed something I could relate to and , or , carrots - I always seemed to be grabbing one for me and several for my rabbits.
ART WORK

Terrific late 80's covers! The background offered My-little-pony pastels while the series name slanted across the top , accented by pac-man dots , resembling marquee lights , while the
photo art was set inside a curvy box that looked like a t.v. set! The girls on the covers were beautiful had dynamite hair , often windblown , and wore colorful clothes posing with or without a male model.
#4 featured ‘Shana’ in a fabulous red tank style dress with a crinoline style skirt blown up in a carefree way. Dangling from her ears are huge red rhinestone , star earrings. Her ‘boyfriend’ is stuck in the typically , trendy 80's look - printed shirt , skinny leather tie , red suspenders. His hair is bleached.
#5 - I had a jacket just like this! Same color Celadon- green denim. Of course I didn’t have that gorgeous mane of curly blonde hair. oh well.
#6 -Criminy! A carrot pin! Was this the height of fashion? Looks more like something swiped off
a fridge. I know in Valley Girl mini soft-drink can pins can be spotted on the one girls
jacket but this? And mock turtleneck sleeveless tops? ugh! I hated these they always made
your chest look droopy! Peach skirt , Crayon blue top and a carrot pin - well it’s certainly
memorable. Love her hair though she has the perfect bangs.
#7 - baby pink denim jacket with the cuffs turned up very preppy and the boy on the cover’s pretty foxy too!
#8 - Love the dreamy gowns - Katie’s southern belle , off the shoulder , ice blue dress with lace ruffle , and Shana’s pink iridescent dress with one exaggerated shoulder strap look like some something Barbie might wear - Barbie Goes to the Emmy's.

If you’re a huge fan of this series - sorry - but I just didn’t care much for it , I was expecting something more. Sweet Valley High was often exasperating but it was never boring. The writers
should’ve taken a bigger cue from what they were impersonating - soaps and dug up
some better plot ideas or at least some more interesting characters.

SOAP SCUM!

Big & Bubbly - 80's soap frothed up the boob-tube in the 80's growing more elaborate , extravagant and absurd as the decade came to it’s end. First their was everyday Day soap - filled with sex , lust , marriages , divorces , elopements , trickery , blackmail , death , mayhem , illness , and most important the who-am-I-again? The most predictable of all soap plots the old reliable
amnesia. Each Soap had their own unique twists like Wade trying to evade police while in drag in ALL MY CHILDREN. Chris Chapin is carrier of a mysterious poison dust found in a trip to an Egyptian tomb in ANOTHER WORLD ( not to mention the ‘Sin Killer’ being pursued by psychic Lisa Grady ). AS THE WORLD TURNS hones material from the Looney Tunes when John fakes his death after James tries to kill him so he and Dee can ‘haunt’ James. Angela the burn victim is out for revenge like Freddy Krueger in THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL. Wacky characters like Eugene Bradford an eccentric scientist and his robot Sico , Patch ( a henchman wearing an eyepatch ) , Calliope Jones , and Victor Kiriakis filled THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES with humor and Intrigue. Joe Kelly a bag-pipe playing detective who fell in love with his step mother was one of the strangest hunks , amid spies and secret agents , on GENERAL HOSPITAL , while Beth survives a rape attack by her stepfather on the GUIDING LIGHT. LOVING pulled the oldest trick in the book - faking a pregnancy with a pillow but ONE LIFE TO LIVE wins the booby prize of having the most bizarre plots ever - mad Colonel Dimitri off to sell anti-missile control panels to foreigners on Devil’s Claw island , Vicki’s operation to relieve a brain aneurysm causes her to see dead town residents in weird dreamy sequences and following suit is Clint who , after a clunk on the head , has visions of Buchanan City , old west style , with cast members playing their great so-and-so’s amid saloon settings. Then there was a soap within a soap! Fraternity Row - where actress Megan got cast as sisters Ruby and Roxanne not to mention the disastrous Eterna the lost underground city. RYAN’S HOPE offered up underage elopement , while SANTA BARBARA hauled out all the kooky stops - vixen Gina DeMott’s guest appearance on Wheel of Fortune , her wild wedding in Vegas on Christmas Day ,
Angel the fake teenage Evangelist , Bunny Tigliatti a transvestite with mob connections?! And Dr. Zack Kelton a gynecologist who turned out to be the ‘Video Rapist’. And in the YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS - Lauren had a nude picture , of her husband Paul , published in a magazine.

Not that this meager list even scratches the surface there was AIDS , kidnaping , impersonators , switches , and of course Eureka! The long-lost son / daughter / husband / wife / sister / brother / cat / dog / ghost of aunt so-and-so appearing in the easiest add-a-problem twist to the plots.

Night time soap - the Bubble Baths -started in the 80's under the ten gallon hat of J.R. Ewing in the much imitated Dallas. Glossier more fashionable and more catty than the day soaps
because more punch had to be packed in a once a week hourly installment where day soaps could spend weeks even months building up. BEHIND THE SCREEN - a short lived soap within a soap perhaps got too confusing for it’s viewers , it’s heros were creators and actors on a soap called Generations and often called two names and with a cast that kept expanding well , you get the idea. THE COLBY’S were spawned by Dynasty sporting the most bizarre cliffhanger outside of Twin Peaks - Fallon was kidnaped by aliens but what a relief to the writers for , when she and the others returned to Dynasty the next year, they could snap , the aliens dropped her off. DALLAS - Bobby shot , dumped and run over only to be resurrected lathering in Pam’s shower
dismissing 85-86 season as a dream! Bullet’s fly on DYNASTY as Alexis’s long lost daughter Amanda tries to marry Prince Michael of Moldavia only to have revolutionaries bust in during the ceremony with machine guns and blow away half the guests. FALCON CREST had a schizophrenic secretary Jordan who became hooker Monica at night , a tell-all book written by an amnesiac who forgets she even wrote it - ( say what?! ) , white slavery , and an underworld group called ‘The Thirteen’. FLAMINGO ROAD had black magic when the obvious soap shenanigans of blackmail and murder failed to do the trick ( shades of Gargamel ). THE HAMPTONS offered corporate intrigue and incest. HOTEL wavered between heavy topics - a prostitute getting gang raped by students and the usual glittery evenings. And though KNOTS LANDING was described by all as the most realistic of soaps still resorted to the usual goofy trappings - Karen paralyzed for a while?! , twins born , kidnaped and sold on a black market ring , and the grown-ups fading into the background as the teens took over the cul-de-sac.
BLOWING BUBBLES

And with all the serious soaps out there is wasn’t surprising that soap spoofs came out - MARY HARTMAN , MARY HARTMAN had a plot of a serial killer who started his spree after a bad knock , knock joke who kidnaps the hero and they split a candy lifesaver while the cops try to talk him into surrendering. SOAP was all sitcom and all soap as one character homosexual Jody was saving for a sex change operation , his half brother carried a dummy with him everywhere , and Burt Campbell was kidnaped by aliens with a replicant sent to earth in his
place ( and those were the ‘sane’ plots ) , FILTHY RICH was short lived but featured a plot of land baron Big Gus Beck found dead and after being cryogenically frozen his greedy family finds there is a twist , he has left them a living will on videotape and each clause will be played every week. Soap was even on the brain of sci-fi projects like V: the series. The battle between the resistance and the Visitors ( lizard-like aliens hiding under human face masks ) paled under the clash between Visitor leaders - the deadly cool brunette Diana and icy-blond Lydia.
In fact their cat-fight reached warrior proportions when in a spoof of night soap cat-fights Diana & Lydia meet on the space ships battle ground wearing glitter make-up resembling KISS
groupies and armed with staffs duke it out like something out of Mad Max’s Thunderdome!

With all this glitz and glamour being shown it’s surprising that All that Glitters is so boring. It doesn’t even fair well next to Sweet Valley High definitely sudsier than All that Glitters SVH had liars , boy friend stealing , drug addiction pasts , blackmail , a coma , a lukemia death and a suicide attempt all within the first 12 books! All that Glitters has shoplifting , bitchy co-stars , a boyfriend turning into a model wannabee , attack cats , and the weirdest night club ever - Outerspace were lazer lights crisscross and Monique the waitress wears a streak of paint across her forehead and cheek to go with her green and black bodysuit which in book #8 were are told made her look like 'an alien flight attendent.' There is an occational level of glossy maturity - a boyfriend takes Shana out for Pot-au-feu - a mixture of beef and vegtables in a fancy restaurant ( the girls are not above pigging out on sundaes ) , Shana does publicity shoots for animal shelters , Katie tries to avoid gossipy reporter Susan Chang's probbing questions and both girls
discuss their careers with their boyfriends.

10/30/08 - Blast off - 1st Blog for Cliquey Pizza

Hi , there! Peachalulu here wanting to share my love of the 80's
, especially teen book series with anyone who gets nostalgic over a
Sweet Valley High cover or a pair of vintage jellies. Why Cliquey Pizza?
Well for me , 80's series fiction did not exactly strive for Newberry awards , in fact they were little more than brain junk food and what was more popular in the 80's than pizza! As for Cliquey , the 80's were a very cliquey generation , you weren't just in or out - even the out's had labels ( not very nice ones mind you but if you were a dork you could console yourself that you weren't just a dork but a computer nerd , Atari freak , or an apple polisher - a whole resume of geekdom.)

I've been collecting series books for several years ever since I came across a book in a flea market and did a double take - was there a spin-off of Sweet Valley High that had somehow escaped me?! Nope , just a bit of mistaken identity - for a moment I thought the fake triplet Jennifer ( from Sweet Valley Twins #6 ) had been transformed into a real character. The series was the Dream Girls and the cover artist James Matheuse also did the covers for Sweet Valley High giving the characters an eerie similarity between the two series. The villain of Dream Girls conniving Arlene McVie is almost the spitting image of flirty , Jessica Wakefield while the good girl of the series Linda Ellis looks like a Jean West , Susan Stewart morph. Wondering exactly how many series had come out in the 80's , I started combing through used book stores , thrift stores , fleamarkets anywhere I could find the paperbacks for cheap. I couldn't believe how many were out there - over a hundred! Eventually it turned into a scavenger hunt - I'm still looking for the last book to fill in my Fabulous Five series - #29 - Melanie Edwards , Super Kisser and the harder to hunt down Roommates. Occationally I resort to Ebay and Abe books but unless it's a bulk lot I don't bother , I hate paying for shipping! Fortunately I still had my old books packed away so I didn't have to start , completely , from scratch. All in all , I have hundreds and hundreds of books, a dozen or so complete series and most series are nearly complete but still have hundreds left to find.

Reading these books is like a blast from the past , my own Delorian trip back to the 80's - when cell phones were a fantasy , the internet nonexistent and acid washed ( everything ) made laundry blunders look cool! My plan is to discuss the books and how pop culture might have and , or did , influence them.