I have one for you… PBS had a show in the 70's called Inside Out and I distinctly remember one episode called "Buy and Buy" which featured a whirligig… Kinda creepy for the fact it had a decapitated Barbie and a male doll head just slowly spinning around and Christmas lights and junky radio parts! One kid is creepy in just the way he talks and tries to manipulate his younger brother! Definitely Kindertrauma material!
With all those kids, looks like Dad had an iron whirly-gig mom liked to play with a lot…
Inside/Out was mentioned here a month or so ago by someone trying to remember what the show was called.
That triggered my memory of the show, and I had to watch a few episodes on YouTube, the "Buy and Buy" episode included.
As over the top as it was, it did remind me of a lot of the over-hyped pointless crap they manufactured then – and we bought it all.
The creepy puppets (what kids show in the 70's didn't feature puppets btw) and psycho guy in the costume were worse than the bizarre toy. The message was good though. Don't let your jerk of an older brother manipulate you into buying a piece of junk.
Even our fast food commercials had creepy puppets. I have a blog of my own (won't link here since it isn't horror related, but will send link upon request) and my most recent entry was about the McDonaldland characters of the 1970s. Looking at them then compared to now – yeah, they were pretty creepy.
Puppets on TV shows, puppets hawking our food. Given what consumers our generation became, perhaps we were the puppets.
Hey guys, Thunder (John Boone) Knight here, I must have either skipped school or missed or sick or something and was flipping channels and found this terror, lol! I am 40 now but I was in the terrible middle school I attended and I skipped a lot. I guess you get what you give, this scared me a bit, guess that's how I remember it so vividly. I saw a commercial on TLC about a whirl-a-gig and it triggered the memory. There is another episode, LOVE SUSAN about a sweet little girl verbally abused by her father, he was a bad dude, but I know a lot of us have been in his shoes, but viewing that as child, no excuses! Glad you guys liked this and thanks Lance for posting this, my third post as of this!