A few weeks ago, I blogged about how lame many of today’s toys are. I also talked about how lame many kids’ TV shows are these days.
One thing you don’t see on TV anymore are local kids’ shows. They always came on in the afternoon, after school hours. I was a little kid back in the 60’s, in Brooklyn, New York, and there always was plenty of good stuff for kids to watch. usually they’d have some kind of host, and they also showed cartoons, or Three Stooges and Our Gang/Little Rascals shorts.
I remember that Officer Joe Bolton was the host of such a show, on WPIX, channel 11, in New York. Reading that article sure brought back a lot of good memories. Anyway, I remember Officer Joe telling us that when Moe hit Larry and Curly on the heads with a hammer, or poked their eyes, or anything, that they were “just pretending”, and that we should not imitate them. That they were professional actors and not really hurting each other. Nowadays, a lot of stations won’t even show the Stooges anymore at all, because they’re afraid that kids will try to copy what they do.
Over on channel 5 (WNEW), there was this guy named Sandy Becker who had a similar type of show. I don’t remember his show as well as I remember Officer Joe, but what I DO remember was that he had a character named Norton Nork. I didn’t even remember that much about the character until I Googled to find out. But what I do remember was how much I liked tosay that name, over and over again. Norton Nork. Norton Nork. Norton Nork. I think that if we ever get another cat, and it’s a male, I’m naming him Norton Nork.
Another show I remember well was Winchell-Mahoney Time. I think that was actually nationally syndicated, not local to New York. I loved Knucklehead, he was my favorite character, and I so wanted a Knucklehead doll. I don’t remember now if they ever made Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff dolls…they probably did. But I never got one…sniff…
Speaking of other cool stuff I never got…I well remember Winky Dink and You. I wasn’t born yet when the original 50’s version was on, but they revived it in the 60’s with new, color cartoons. Those are the ones I remember. They used to sell these “Magic Kits”, which consisted of a clear “magic screen” that you were supposed to put over your TV screen, static cling held it in place. It also contained a box of crayons and a cloth to wipe the magic screen clean.
The idea was to help Winky Dink get out of trouble by drawing something on the magic screen to help him. Say he’s running away from the bad guy, and he comes to a cliff. You would then save Winky by drawing a bridge for him to cross, and then you erase it before the bad guy gets there, thus making him fall off the cliff.
I so wanted one of those kits, but I never got one. Now, they are selling new kits that contain the aforementioned screen, crayons and cloth, as well as a DVD of Winky Dink cartoons. I saw this on Amazon, and of course, I bought one. So now, I’m 47 years old and I still like to “save” Winky Dink from the bad guys. So bust me! 
When I was a teenager in the 70’s, we moved to southern New Jersey. There, we got all of the Philadelphia TV stations. Channel 6 (WFIL) had Captain Noah and his Magical Ark. This was actually a morning show, and I was really way too old for it, but I watched it anyway. What I remember most was this song:
Send your pictures to dear old Captain Noah
Send today, send right away
Send your pictures to dear old Captain Noah
We’ll hang them high, in the TV sky…
And the camera would pan over all of the drawings that kids sent in, hanging high in the TV sky…
They just don’t make shows like these anymore. Most of the kids’ shows on today are crap. Even the cartoons are unfunny and unimaginative, for the most part. I do like Spongebob, though.
But as I said in that other post, I would NOT want to be a kid now. Both toy-wise and TV-wise, I had it so much better than kids today do! 
