The Toys of Christmas Past: Lori's Photos Part Three: Christmas,1970

  Here we are again, looking at some  of my friend Lori's Christmas toys from the 60's and 70's. My family took very few pictures, and we have a scant few from Christmases. But I recently found that Lori's old photos were a treasure trove of toys past. I have updated the first of these posts with a couple more pictures if you want to go back and check that out.
  This time we're looking at 1970.
  Lori was born in 1961, so she was 9 the Christmas of 1970.

She doesn't look particularly thrilled to be having her picture taken.

  I'm not sure, but the doll next to her appears to be Baby Tender Love.

  Baby Tender Love was made by Mattel. You can see a commercial for her HERE.

Lori and her best friend at the time, also named Tammy.

  The cradle below isn't the one in the ad above, but the changing table seems to be the one in the photo lower down. Lori's mom loved dolls, and later in her life had a doll collection of her own. Lori wasn't interested though.

As you can see from the above photo,Lori got MORE Barbie and Ken clothes this Christmas. Those are the ones in the striped frames. I'm not sure who the other clothes are for. I can only say they don't appear to be Barbie or Maddie Mod. The Ken outfit with the red shirt and the plaid pants is Play it Cool. It also had a brown felt jacket, The Barbie fashion in the front is Scuba Dos,and included a hooded jacket, a bathing suit, flippers,a snorkle,and a face mask. The Trouble game at the left is one of the 'popamatic' games. There was a clear plastic bubble in the middle of the board that contained the dice. When the top of the bubble was pushed the dice jumped and 'rolled' themselves. It's kind of a good idea as well as being a fun gimmick. This way the dice can't get lost. My cousins detailed in  THIS POST had a ton of Popamatic games,and believe me, that was probably the only way those dice were still around to be played with, and not crammed up somebody's nose. Lori's Trouble is made by Kohner. Since then, Trouble has been made by Hasbro and Milton Bradley.
  The pink box under the tree is a cotton candy maker! Ooh! I want one of those! Emma bought herself one when she was a kid. I'm not sure what the thing to the right of it is, but the box in front of that appears to be a vanity set.
  On the right of the next picture there's a loom. Lori may have been more into that than the dolls. The big gift in that picture though, is the doll house. It's the Barbie Lively Livin' House,which seems to have later changed it's name to the Surprise House

There's that changing table.

It's one of the more rare Barbie houses.

The furniture looks different in the photo. And there's that Ken outfit bottom right.
  In the picture below you can see that cotton candy maker on the left,the whatever-that-is in the middle,and on the right you can see a Yarn Art kit. Went well with the loom. (It was 1970. Yarn was big.) But the item on the far right is ALL Lori.

It's the Barnabas Collins game! Barnabas was a character on the popular afternoon horror soap opera,(Yes.There really was such a thing.),"Dark Shadows".
  No. Not the movie with Johnny Depp. Dark Shadows, the TV show, ran from 1966 to 1971. It was VERY popular. Kids used to run home from school to watch it. I remember it came on just as my sister got off the school bus. Our dog got so used to her arrival coinciding with the theme music, that once my sister borrowed the Dark Shadows record from a friend and played it on a Saturday, and our dog went running to look for the bus! It may look pretty cheesy these days, but it scared child-me so much I had to hide behind the recliner when Chris Jennings,who was handcuffed to the radiator, turned into a werewolf.
 

The series was so popular that there were two Dark Shadows movies made too. I got to see those at the drive in. There was also a series of books,two different Dark Shadows games,and a TV series remake in the 1990's,as well as the more recent Tim Burton remake.  Since 2006 there has been a successful audio book series featuring members of the original cast.

The soundtrack is a classic, and the popular "Quentin's theme" was nominated for a Grammy. And believe it or not, Barnabas,played by Jonathan Frid, was quite a teen heart throb at the time.

 

 Dark Shadows is one of Lori's all time favourite TV shows. The game was pretty cool. It contained a  skeleton which was put together as part of the game. (And it glowed in the dark!) Also included was a set of Barnabas vampire fangs,and a coffin to contain the skeleton. You can watch a commercial for the game HERE.

  That's it for this time. We still have some of Lori's photos to look at. See you next time for those.