In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 180: Weirdest 900 Numbers of the 80s & 90s, How Crash Test Dummies Became Celebrities, Top 5 Banned Drinks(1-29-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 180

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What were some of the most bizarre 900 numbers of the 1980s and 1990s? How in the world did crash test dummies become celebrities? What are some infamous banned drinks?
Episode 180 answers those questions with a heavy prescription of nostalgia.
It begins with the story behind the crash test dummies. No, not the 1990s alternative band. We look at how a safety measuring tool became a beloved part of 1980s pop culture. You will learn a lot from these dummies.
We go way back in the day and dive into some of the weirdest 900 numbers of the 1980s and 1990s. In a time where it seemed like every celebrity, musician, and cartoon character had their own hotline these are the ones that really make you shake your head and laugh.
This week's Top 5 showcases banned drinks. These were at one point popular but have since been removed from shelves or so drastically altered that they don't resemble what people knew.
There is a brand new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.
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Speaker 02:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 180. We are overflowing with nostalgia as we end the month of January. We're going to kick the show off with a look back at the story behind the crash test dummies. No, not the band. We're going to go way, way back in the day and look at some of the weirdest 900 numbers from the 1980s and 90s. Hopefully you didn't call any of these. There'll be a brand new top five that are going to be the top five banned drinks. Good luck trying to find any of these. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time Capsule centered around the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. All of that is coming up right now on episode 180 of the In My Footsteps podcast. January is almost over. We're almost into the month of love that is February. We got an early gift you will love this podcast episode. This was one of those months where, because of how the calendar goes, there were five podcast episodes this month. So I hope you've enjoyed the extra episodes. It's crazy, 180 episodes. When I started this, sure, I would have loved to have gotten to this point, but I wasn't sure. All the work that goes in every week—research, recording, editing, marketing— And there's still so much more to go. If you saw my lists of topics, potential topics for future episodes, you'd probably be like, man, he's going to be doing this forever. And I wouldn't say forever, but I keep finding new things to use as topics. Pop culture, nostalgia, these things never go away. So it's just a matter of finding areas that I haven't mined yet for content. And as we're here at 180 episodes... Naturally, I couldn't do this without you who listen, who share, who tell others, you know, check out this content, whether it's the audio podcast, all the videos on YouTube, the blogs. My biggest thanks go out to my Patreon subscribers, Laurie, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal. Thank you all so much for being my biggest supporters, my biggest backers. $5 a month gets you access to bonus podcast episodes, including one that will be going up in a few days. February 1st is three days away. There'll be a new podcast episode dropping for Patreon subscribers. And I'm always looking for new things to put up there, not just for subscribers, but for the free tier. After last week's Me vs. AI Top 5 that I did, I'm thinking about doing another one of those just for Patreon subscribers. I just have to find the topic to speak about and then the time to create the AI voice, which was Bonsai Buddy last week, for those of you that didn't hear the podcast. I know I say it every week, but this is going to be a fun show. I had a lot of good ideas to go through. The cold weather of the dog days of winter have left me inside a lot and a lot more time to research. So enough with the teases, let's get into it. Let's start off episode 180 of the podcast with a look at the crash test dummies. 80s and 90s kids, rejoice, here we go. You could learn a lot from a dummy. No, not me. We're going to start the show off talking about the crash test dummies. And no, I'm not talking about the band. Yes, I can only play a little bit of that song. It reminds me of a Campbell Soup commercial. The crash test dummies, the whole concept of these mannequins, the talking mannequins that they use to test vehicles to see how they would survive crashes... This was something that popped in my head not that long ago. But rather than have this segment just be me talking about, remember those commercials? It has to be more substance to it. So I had to do the research about the whole history of crash test dummies leading into the PSAs from the 80s and such. Those of you that grew up in the 80s into the 90s will likely be able to picture in your head the crash test dummies. But fear not if you don't remember, because that's what I'm here for, is to fill you in, fill in the gaps. The crash test dummies, the ones that were in the PSAs, and crash test dummies in general, they're a symbol of safety and science. The mannequins were designed to save lives by simulating the human body during car crashes. And that's what they started as. Just things that you would use to show how humans would react in a car accident. Never, I'm sure, when they started the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, I'm sure they never thought that eventually they'd become pop culture icons. An interesting fact about crash test dummies in general, they began in the mid-20th century. as automobile manufacturers sought better ways to improve car safety. But before these mannequins, the crash tests were conducted using cadavers or animals. So that means to test out these crashes, you would put dead bodies in there or animals. I don't know what kind of animals you would put in the car to smash. I'm figuring it had to be large enough. I would hope it wasn't dogs, but you could probably fit... I don't know. Deer. Could you fit a deer in a car? According to Tommy Boy, you can. These methods were effective to some degree, but naturally raised ethical concerns. Just like I'm saying, you're going to really put live animals, I would assume, in these cars and then smash them? Things changed in 1949. The first true crash test dummy was named Sierra Sam. and was developed by the Sierra Engineering Company. Sierra SAM was originally designed to test ejection seats in aircraft. By the 1960s, General Motors introduced the more human-like crash test dummies. One, the original was called Hybrid 1, and then there was Hybrid 2 in the early 1970s. The Hybrid 1 and Hybrid 2 crash test dummies They featured better anatomical accuracy, standardized data collection, and if you look them up, they don't look much different than what you would think of with the crash test dummies in the 80s and 90s. Eventually, the gold standard of crash test dummies was the Hybrid 3, introduced in 1976. This sophisticated design included sensors to measure impact forces on the head, neck, chest, pelvis, and legs. So by this point, we're decades into having crash test dummies, and that's just what they're for, in laboratories seeing safety features of vehicles. We fast forward, though, to what most of you are here for. That is the crash test dummies as mascots. In 1985, the NHTSA launched a groundbreaking public safety campaign featuring two anthropomorphic crash test dummies. They were named Vince and Larry.

Speaker 07:

Get up. Safety belt test at nine. Hurry. Not another windshield test. Count me out. What? The old pro backing down from a motorhome? Nothing like that. I'm just tired of trying to convince people to wear safety belts. No one's listening.

Speaker 02:

This was that time period in the mid-1980s where seatbelt laws, they had been there but they were never enforced. I mean, when I was a kid, seatbelts were an option. I can remember riding around in the back of my stepfather's pickup truck. There were no seatbelts back there. Or being in the back of our blue station wagon when the way back, five or six of us kids, there were no seatbelts back there. This is where they were trying to crack down on seatbelt laws. So the NHTSA created this public safety campaign to promote seatbelt use, safe driving, and it combined humor and education to engage a wider audience. This is also around the same time where there was Operation Last Call to crack down on drunk driving. So it was like a whole wave of safety when it came to vehicles. These PSAs would show Vince and Larry, sometimes they'd be at home, waking up to go into their job, which was to be the crash test dummies.

Speaker 07:

Dashboard du jour for Vince under glass. But Vince, look out! Even with airbags, Vince, you still gotta remember to buckle your safety belt. Now you tell me.

Speaker 02:

There was one really funny... And where they escaped. So rather than crash into the wall where the bullseye was for the car, they take off driving out of the lot. They were meant to be educational, but they became instantly recognizable, wisecracking characters who humorously endured the car crashes to demonstrate the dangers of not wearing safety belts. There'd be them being thrown around their cars, smashed into the windshields, flying through the air. They'd be in pieces. I always remember when I was a kid thinking the crash test dummies were Reminding me a little bit of if they put clothes on C-3PO. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one that ever saw that connection. All the PSAs would end with the same line.

Speaker 00:

You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.

Speaker 02:

Yes, that's the one. The campaign was one of the most effective safety initiatives of its time. In 1980, only 11% of drivers used safety belts. By 1990, that number had jumped to 49%. And I'm sure a lot of that came down to the funny PSAs with the crash test dummies. Although it is still interesting that even after all that, it was still just about half the people use seatbelts. I'm sure the NHTSA was thrilled with the increase of seatbelt usage. But I'm sure they were also happy with money they could make with Vince and Larry the Crash Test Dummies becoming cultural icons. In 1991, toy manufacturer Tyco released a line of Crash Test Dummies action figures. These toys allowed kids to simulate crashes. The action figures would break apart on impact. And you know little kids love that. Smash their toy and it breaks into pieces, but it's meant to so you can just put it back together. In 1993, there was a TV show, a cartoon, The Incredible Crash Test Dummies that was on Fox Kids. And this also spun off into comic books. So in less than 10 years, these safety mascots went from being just in a laboratory to having PSA commercials, toys, comic books, TV shows. I can't really think of anything else to compare it to. Something that was never really meant to become pop culture icon worthy, and it did. It didn't stop there. Vince and Larry the Crash Test Dummies made guest appearances on talk shows, children's programming. As I mentioned at the top of the segment, they inspired an alternative band, the Crash Test Dummies. It's like they became symbols of safety and risk. They were referenced in parodies, cartoons. But why? Why did Vince and Larry work? It was... rooted in their unique ability to combine humor with a serious message. Because if you strip away the funny voices and the funny PSAs, you're talking about people potentially dying in violent car accidents. That's not really an easy topic to talk about, especially PSAs where kids like me, I was eight years old when the first one came out. I'm sure I thought it was pretty funny seeing them get all destroyed. But these anthropomorphic dummies embodied the consequences of unsafe driving. Having them laying there with their arms and legs ruined, you couldn't really do that with a real person. It would be way too bloody and violent to have in a commercial on TV. The comedic tone made it where the message would resonate without feeling overly grim or preachy. Vince and Larry the Dummies, they helped bridge the gap between new legislation for automobile safety and public buy-in, making safety cool and comprehensible. Vince and Larry the Dummies did not make it out of the 90s. The campaign officially ended in 1999. For those wondering, Vince was voiced by a man named Jack Burns. And Larry was voiced by a man named Lorenzo Music, who he may not have a familiar name to you. Maybe he does. But I always remember Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield in the 1980s on the TV shows. By the time the Vince and Larry campaign ended, the NHTSA reported that in 1999, nearly 70% of people were using their seatbelt. And if you miss Vince and Larry, the costumes are a part of the Smithsonian Institute. You can go there and put one of the crash test dummies in Archie Bunker's chair. So to sum it up, I mean, crash test dummies started as scientific tools to improve automotive safety, but they evolved into unlikely pop culture icons. I'm sure some of the clips that I've shared in this segment have brought some of you of a certain age group back to those times. where crashed-ass dummies were celebrities. They have left an indelible mark both on science and culture, and it teaches us all that, well, you know, sometimes you really can learn a lot from a dummy.

Speaker 00:

You could learn a lot from a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.

Speaker 02:

This week in history, we are going back 39 years ago to January 28th, 1986 and the tragic Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. This is probably one of the first events that I actually have some vivid memories of. So I was in second grade. I was eight years old. The big thing with the Space Shuttle Challenger was that Krista McAuliffe, who was a school teacher, was going to be in space forever. doing lessons from the shuttle. So being a child in elementary school, that really resonated with me. The space shuttle program was initiated in the 1970s to develop a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying humans and cargo into space. It marked a significant shift from the expendable launch systems that they had previously used By the early 1980s, the shuttle had become a symbol of technological prowess and ambition. The Space Shuttle Challenger had successfully completed nine missions prior to this disaster. I do know that I did not see this live when it happened, but I believe that there were some classes in my school where they had TVs to watch it live. I am assuming my class was one of the unlucky ones, or I guess lucky ones, to not see it. So in the days leading up to the launch, there were concerns raised about unusually cold weather at Kennedy Space Center. Temperatures dipped below freezing on the morning of January 28th, leading to formation of ice on the launch pad. Engineers from Morton Fekel, the contractor responsible for the shuttle's solid rocket boosters, warned that the cold could compromise the O-ring seals, which were critical to preventing hot gases from escaping the boosters. Despite these warnings, NASA managers proceeded with the launch, partly due to schedule pressures and the high-profile nature of the mission. At 11.39 a.m. Eastern Time, the Challenger lifted off, and only 73 seconds into the flight, the shuttle exploded. It disintegrated. resulting in the death of all seven crew members as my memory serves me in second grade i believe that our principal came on over the intercom and said something about the space shuttle disaster in my elementary school it was kindergarten through second grade so i don't know if He was announcing it more for the teachers to know so they could answer any questions. Because me at eight years old, I don't think I would have understood. The Challenger disaster was a devastating blow to NASA and the nation. There was an immediate investigation led by the Rogers Commission. And this investigation revealed that the O-ring seals had indeed failed due to the cold temperatures. This allowed hot gases to breach the booster joint, leading to the structural failure of the shuttle. As a result of this, the space shuttle program was grounded for nearly three years while extensive safety modifications were made. One of the most significant changes was the redesign of the solid rocket boosters to include a new O-ring seal design and additional safety measures. Teacher Krista McAuliffe, she is immortalized in the McAuliffe Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, New Hampshire. As she was born in Boston, I visited it years ago. It's really interesting if you're into space travel science. The new safety measures, they haven't been perfect. As the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's orbit in 2003. The Challenger disaster, it remains a poignant chapter in the history of space exploration, a testament to the bravery of those who venture into the unknown, and a reminder of the responsibilities that come with such endeavors. And that horrific space shuttle Challenger disaster occurred 39 years ago this week in history. All right, we will try to bring the mood up a little with a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to that same date, January 28th, 1986. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Well, let's find out. The number one song was At This Moment by Billy Vera and the Beaters. This is a song that I couldn't remember it, so I had to go and play it. And immediately I was like, oh, I know this song. It was actually released several years earlier and went back to number one because it was a mainstay song for that season of Family Ties and the romance between Alex Keaton and Ellen Reed, Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollard who ended up really getting married. The song was clearly Billy Vera's greatest hit ever of his career. But an interesting fact is that he has written several famous TV show themes. including the themes for Empty Nest and King of Queens. So there you go. The number one movie was Down and Out in Beverly Hills, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $3.71. It was only a few weeks ago in episode 177, when I talked about 1980's Fox TV show Fails, that I mentioned the TV version of Down and Out in Beverly Hills. This is totally coincidence that this movie was number one. The movie stars Nick Nolte, Bette Midler, Richard Dreyfuss, about a rich but dysfunctional family that saves the life of a down-on-his-luck homeless man in Beverly Hills who is basically trying to drown himself in their pool. The movie is 77% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and made over $62 million on a budget of $14 million. So it was way more successful than the TV version of this movie. The number one TV show was The Cosby Show, because it's the mid-1980s, and of course it would be. This is the show about the Huxtables living in Brooklyn. The show was on from 1984 to 1992. 201 total episodes. Five of the show's eight seasons saw it finish number one in the ratings. So that's why anytime I do a time capsule from this period, it's usually the Cosby show that's number one. And if you were around back then, January 28th, 1986, maybe you were in second grade like a podcast host was at the time. Maybe you did well on a math project like I might have done at the time. Well, you deserve a toy, so we're going to bring you to Toys R Us. So much for so much less, always, as they say. There are various He-Man Masters of the Universe action figures for $5.97 each. You can get a Power Wheels all-terrain motorcycle for $1.14.97. a stereo headphone cassette player for $9.97, but it is not a Sony Walkman. It's some brand called Crown. And if you enter now, you could possibly win a five-minute toy run sponsored by Toys R Us and Nickelodeon. So get your entries in there. Then you can get a thousand of those He-Mans and Power Wheels. But that'll wrap up another Time Capsule, another This Week in History. We go from hard to find toys now to drinks that are impossible to find. As we look at some banned drinks on a brand new top five. Oh man, this is going to be a lot of interesting things to talk about here as we talk about banned drinks. I was able to find five good ones as far as drinks that are banned. The honorable mentions is going to be a lot of additives, more generic, general types of drinks. For me, as someone that has enjoyed energy drinks for quite a while and pre-workout things for going to the gym, ready to drink stuff, There were a lot of examples of drinks that had had their formulas changed, so they weren't necessarily banned, but their original formulas were, I guess if that makes sense. This happens a lot with pre-workout stuff, where it'll have things that are in it that at first the FDA doesn't even know about them, and then after time and more research, they find out that these things are bad for you. I specifically remember a pre-workout substance called Jacked, and the E in Jacked was a 3, so I would say it was Jack 3D. Their formula got changed. There was one called NO Explode, which is still around. Their formula got changed. There was a drink called Redline by a company called VPX. And that drink was discontinued, so not really banned, but I had people that would refer to it as liquid crack in case you wondered how potent Redline was. With this top five, they're in no particular order. And the honorable mentions, like I said, I'm going to get into those because I wasn't sure if it fell into the category of these things have been banned or if the formulas have to be changed. So let's just get into them and you can decide. For the honorable mentions, a very recent one is red dye number three has been banned. It's typically for coloring things like strawberry milk. Some of those would have red dye number three in them to give it that strawberry color. Another recent additive that was banned is brominated vegetable oil. It was a chemical additive that helped prevent flavoring oils from separating. What I found as far as the drinks go, there were a lot of drinks from Walmart that had this in it, but that was just banned last year in July. The other honorable mention, and we're going to get into a lot more of these, is caffeinated alcoholic beverages. I mean, it kind of is common sense. You're going to combine an upper and a downer together. It's kind of rolling the dice, like, well, let's see what this does to them. There were several different caffeinated alcoholic beverages, but the A number one, as far as this list goes, and was the whole reason I started this band Drinks Top Five, we're just going to jump right in with number one, Four Loco. Caffeine, alcohol, what could happen? Sometimes referred to as a blackout in a can. This drink debuted in 2005. It was marketed as an energy drink. After a year, they weren't really making money on this Four Loko, so they slightly changed the formula and upped the alcohol content, which really made it take off in popularity, but also in danger. There are multiple examples of people dying from drinking Four Loko, or at least their deaths kind of being around it. with lawsuits against the company. This is what led to, in 2010, them having to drop the caffeine from the Four Loko. You can still get the drink, but it's just alcohol. No more caffeine. In an interesting segue, I said after a year, the creators of Four Loko changed the formula slightly. That's because it originally had something called wormwood in it, which was supposedly a psychoactive ingredient that was a big part of what is number two on this list, absinthe. Absinthe is an anise-flavored spirit. Anise is kind of like licorice. This is an interesting caveat, much like for loco. Absinthe is only legal in the United States when that psychoactive wormwood is removed from it. Even without the wormwood, it is a highly potent alcohol, ranging anywhere from 90 to 148 proof. Absinthe was originally created in Switzerland in the late 18th century and became popular among writers like Ernest Hemingway, Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland, which makes it make more sense if he was on absinthe, Wormwood is the psychoactive hallucinogen in absinthe. This drink was banned in the United States in 1915, so over 100 years that the original formula has been banned. The revival of absinthe began in the 1990s as they produced it without the wormwood. The hits just keep on coming here as we move to number three, powdered alcohol. I had no idea this was even a thing. The concept of highly potent powdered alcohol dates back to the late 1960s in Japan. Sato Food Industries created this powder called Alcock. In 1974, the Sato Company patented the process for making alcohol powder. Test sales began in 1977 under the name SureShot. which coincidentally is the title of a Beastie Boys song, and now I wonder if that's where they got it from. In the U.S., it's commonly referred to as palkohol, a combination of powder and alcohol, and it's illegal with the latest info I've seen showing that 27 states have voluntarily banned this palkohol. Have any of you ever tried it or even heard of powdered alcohol? Number four is Vin Mariani. This was created by Angelo Mariani, a French chemist, in the 1860s, and it's a cocaine wine. So it's like you think Four Loko was bad. Can you imagine alcohol and cocaine mixed together in a bottle? It's amazing when you think back to the late 19th century, all the products that had cocaine in it, including Coca-Cola, the original formula had trace amounts of cocaine in it. The irony being that Vin Mariani was an inspiration for John Pemberton's creation of Coca-Cola. Now, what's interesting about this, it's a little bit of a gray area because the Vin Mariani wasn't actually banned, but Angelo Mariani did not pass down the recipe. So when he died, no one could make it anymore. But I still added it in because I haven't heard of anything like this. A cocaine alcohol mixture. So it's sort of like you just assume that this is banned. But I couldn't make this all alcoholic drinks that have been banned. I got to grab one straight from my own life. Number five is Ephedra tea. Ephedra was a weight loss diet product. This was banned, taken off the market after many people died from it. Me, I'm still going strong now, but Ephedra tea was exactly what it sounds like. It was a drink, I think it was black tea, but it had Ephedra in it. I can remember taking this when I was in college. The only way I can describe Ephedra tea was that as I was drinking it and after I was done drinking it, I felt like someone was strangling me. That's because my blood pressure would spike. I know, not exactly safe or responsible, but when you're in your early 20s, you see yourself as invincible, so why not try? This ephedra was no joke. I actually have direct connections to someone who died. My aunt Susan, one of her closest friends, died from ephedra. And this was before I was drinking the ephedra tea. So I couldn't pretend to be stupid. I went looking online to try to find an image of the bottle for the ephedra tea, and I actually did find it. If you type in Google ephedra tea drink 1990s, you'll see the bottle black and orange with an E in the center that's got kind of a lightning bolt as part of it. I don't remember when exactly the drink was banned. But I do know that ephedra itself as a stimulant supplement was banned in 2004. So I'm assuming it was around the same time. So there you go. Top five banned drinks. I would assume none of you have ever had Vin Mariani since it went away over a hundred years ago. But if you tried any of the others, I think it's a good thing that these things have been banned. But that's just me. This is going to be such a fun segment. I've wanted for a while to talk about the bane of parents' existence in the 80s into the 90s and the 900 numbers. TV stars, musicians, cartoon characters, they all had their own phone numbers that kids could call, speak to their favorites. I would always say get your parents' permission first, but I mean, come on. It's also, ironically, a bit of a timely segment, as when you look back, the very first 900 number in the United States was Ask President Carter. This was for his radio program. So this was March 1977 that you could call this number, ask a question to the President of the United States. 900 numbers are pay-per-call numbers. Those of you that are younger that have no idea about these things, it would be a hotline, a phone number you would call. The first minute would be more expensive. Then it would be cheaper for each additional minute. I do remember my sister Kate racking up a pretty good phone bill on the New Kids on the Block hotline in the late 1980s. I am pretty sure that she did not ask her parents' permission. What I wanted to do for this segment, though, was look at the weirdest hotline numbers from the 80s and 90s. I'm sure to the younger listeners, all of this is weird, but there were definitely some that were weirder. I'm sure at some point I could do a part two of this where it would be the most popular hotline numbers ever, if there's a such thing as that. What I have here, though, are nine of my choices for the weirdest hotline numbers ever. The first one that I found was the Jessica Hahn tells all hotline.

Speaker 09:

Jessica Hahn is an actress and model.

Speaker 02:

She's known mainly for being on the Howard Stern show a lot in the 90s, being in Playboy magazine a couple of times. Her hotline, though, had to do with the allegation she made against televangelist Jim Baker for sexual assault. The incident occurred in 1980, but her accusations happened in 1987. And it's a very serious situation. Jim Baker stepped down as the head of the PTL satellite network. But for a couple of years in the late 80s, early 90s, you could call this phone number and Jessica Hahn would tell you all the details of what went on with Jim Baker. 1-900-568-6868. This was $2 a minute. And I'm pretty sure like with most of these hotlines, the people on them would speak slowly so that you'd use up more of these minutes. The next one is something called roommates, but it's with two different words, roommates.

Speaker 10:

Roommates are special. Together, they share their private romances. Call and be a part of it. 12 minutes minimum

Speaker 02:

of ultimate fun. This seems to be the early 1990s. 1-900-737-2233. This was one of those very late night ones where you would call and it's like a party line with quote-unquote hot girls talking to you. There were tons and tons of these types of phone numbers. I didn't want to have this list be all of those, but I had to put at least one. The crazy thing about this one, about the roommate's hotline... was that it was $3 a minute and the call was a minimum of 12 minutes. You want to talk about racking up a bill pretty quick. The commercial I found is from 1991. So if you spent $36 on the phone call in 1991, that's the equivalent of just over $83 when adjusted for inflation to 2025 that you would be spending at minimum on a phone call with hot girls interested in talking to you. Yikes. There was also phone lottery 900 numbers. So there was more than one of these. This was like the equivalent of buying a scratch ticket. Call a specific 900 number and if you were the lucky caller or had the right number or whatever it was, you'd win a prize. I couldn't find what these prizes were, what the odds of you winning were. Probably zero. I mean, this is one of the stupidest ideas there is. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer basically calls Las Vegas to make a bet. And he says, like, I'll put everything on black on roulette and then it's red. And he just yells, all right, I'll send you a check. It's like that, except you don't even bet. You're just giving them money for them to say, nope, you lose. There was the Grandpa Munster hotline. Hiya kids,

Speaker 05:

it's me, your friend Grandpa. I gotta tell you, I am starting a new club, and I want you to join. It's called the Junior Vampires of America. I mean, you'll hear scary monster stories.

Speaker 02:

Actor Al Lewis, who played Grandpa Munster on the TV show in the 60s, had a hotline in the 80s. 1-900-909- $4,300 to talk to Grandpa Munster about, I don't know, how the family's doing. In the ads for it, you know it's geared towards kids because it says you can become a junior vampire. So if this is the late 1980s, and I would have been 10, 11 years old, I don't remember the Munsters being on. It would have been like my parents, and I highly doubt they were going to call Grandpa Munster. Oh, but you could get a free vampire patch, but it's $2 for the first minute, 45 cents each additional minute. One that I'm sure was probably pretty popular when it was out was the Dial an Insult 900 number.

Speaker 06:

1902insult

Speaker 02:

was the phone number. I found ads from 1989, 90. You'd call up and you'd get jokes you could tell people or insults you could say to people. One of the ads says it'll make your bad day worse. So it's like you're in 1989 and you have a bad day at work and you call the insult hotline and they say, hey, you suck. And it's like, all right, well, that goes perfectly with the rest of my day. It would have been fun to try if it wasn't $2 for the first minute and $1 for each additional minute. can imagine being an 11, 12 year old boy calling this insult hotline, laughing at all the stupid jokes that were probably right in my age group. And you just laugh and laugh until my mother gets the phone bill and it's like $50 worth of dialing insult. So these hotlines here, I didn't put them in any particular order. Because if I was putting them in order, the number one best one would be the next one that's the crying hotline. $2

Speaker 08:

for the

Speaker 02:

first minute to call up and have people make you cry? The commercials are just people crying on the phone. It's so stupid. The commercial is just spliced in scenes of different people just bursting into tears while on the phone. It looks like something that must be fake, but no, it's real. I'm figuring they probably got some business from people just curious, like, what in the world is this? But I wouldn't think they would get a lot of repeat business. If you're spending your Friday nights in the late 80s calling the crying hotline repeatedly, you've got some serious issues. We move on from crying hotline to something a little more lighthearted. That is the Jose Canseco hotline.

Speaker 01:

Hi, I'm Jose Canseco and I want to talk to you. So call 1-900-234-JOSE. I'll give you the latest scoop on baseball and my personal life. If you want to know if I use steroids, how fast I drive or about why I was carrying that gun, call 1-900-234-JOSE.

Speaker 02:

1-900-234-JOSE. And this is from 1990 when he was at the peak of his popularity as a baseball player for the Oakland A's. Yes, loads and loads of celebrities and athletes had their own hotlines. I just love the fact that in this ad for it, he's standing next to his sports car and says, if you want to find out if I do steroids or why I was carrying a gun, call my hotline. It's $2 for the first two minutes, so it's a deal, and then $1 for the additional minutes. With reviews at the time from newspapers saying that it was just Canseco talking about his day. Oh, there's no baseball game today. And in case you were wondering if Canseco needed the money, his salary in 1990 when this hotline was big was about $2 million. Or just under $5 million when adjusted for inflation to 2025. So he really didn't need money from his hotline. There was also a zombie hotline in the late 1980s. The

Speaker 04:

phone zombies are very, very dead. But they're not in their graves. And they're not walking the night.

Speaker 03:

They're in the phone line and

Speaker 02:

they've got your number! 1-900-490-DEAD Calling up to hear zombie noises? This one says it's $2 per call. I don't know if that means you could sit there for 20 minutes listening to zombies make noise. You'd either get this sounds of zombies coming towards you on the phone, or every now and then you would get connected to a live zombie. You could ask it questions. How do brains taste? The last one here on the weirdest hotline numbers of the 80s and 90s was talking to... Kitty, the first lady of basketball? Because this was the other big thing. You had a lot of the phone sex numbers, like roommates, like that one. But there was a lot of gambling ones, too. I mentioned the phone lottery. But this one is just as bad. You get betting tips from Kitty. This was in the early 1990s, and Kitty's calls were $3 a minute. with stories at the time saying that she was so good at dragging out these phone calls that she often wouldn't give the callers any betting tips until they were about 10-11 minutes in. So that means you had already spent $30 at least on this phone call before you get betting tips from someone who claims to be good at gambling. This is one I could not find much information about this. That would tell me this number probably didn't last that long. I would figure it wouldn't take too many people calling up and being strung along for 10 plus minutes and getting those phone bills before it was like, yeah, we don't want to call Miss Kitty for her betting tips. Do any of you out there have any idea who this Kitty the First Lady of basketball was? Did any of you call any of these weird hotline numbers? Thankfully, I did not ever call any of those numbers. I think mainly because my sister got in trouble for the New Kids on the Block one. So if I wanted to call Hulk Hogan's hotline or something, I knew I'd get in trouble. But there you go. A fun look back in the day when 900 hotline numbers were all the rage. And then all the parents that got the bills were all enraged. There's a good segue for you. But until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 180 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you for making it this far. Whether this is your first episode you've ever listened to or whether you've been there since day one or you binged to catch up, I appreciate all of you who tune in wherever you're from. If you live within a few miles of me on Cape Cod, or you're from New England, the Northeast, anywhere in the United States, or all over the world. I will do my best each week to keep bringing you more warm and fuzzy nostalgia, pop culture. Look back at the good old days that get older every day. I still have times where I think the 90s were 20 years ago. Oh no, next year is my 30-year high school reunion, so yeah, that's just lovely to think about. We continue the march towards episode 200. Next week is episode 181. We will look at some weird, bizarre, possibly funny news stories from the 1960s. We're going to have a double dip of shopping game shows as we look at Supermarket Sweep and Shop Till You Drop. We'll look at the top five music fails of the 1980s. And there'll be more on episode 181 next week. If you enjoy my content, like I said, $5 a month on Patreon gets you access to bonus podcast episodes. I've got some ideas of things I'm going to be trying to do on the paying tier and the free tier for Patreon to bring more people aboard. You can always subscribe on YouTube. That costs nothing. I've got hundreds of videos up there from Cape Cod and New England travel to podcast segments, full podcast episodes, but those are just the cover art with my voice. So it's not a video podcast. So don't go into it thinking it is. Check out Initial Impressions 2.0, the blog about my weekly life, the random fun and foolish that goes on. I also do a video version, the webcam weekly wrap up podcast. I try to do it weekly, but sometimes scheduling just does not allow it. Recording the podcast, the video podcast is not hard. It's more the editing of it that takes a while. I had said when I first started it, I would try to do it weekly, but it would probably end up being bi-weekly. And I think that may be what ends up happening. There's only so much time in the day for my actual day job, all my other content work. I've said before, I typically spend 15 hours or more a week on content work, creating, editing, marketing. So your support means a lot because I love doing all this stuff and I'll keep putting in the effort as long as the viewers, listeners, readers are there. If you're interested in any of my nine books, visit my website, ChristopherSetterlin.com. Created, run, updated by my oldest friend, Barry. It's weird because I don't have any book events on my schedule so far for 2025, and that's by design. I'm trying to leave as much room as I can in my schedule for things that might pop up, like my first film role, my first acting gig that's coming up in March. But you never know, I might finish recording this episode and I get an email from some random library or bookstore wanting me to come speak. But that wraps up January, one month down in 2025, going into February, the love month with Valentine's Day. Even if it's cold, if it's snowy, if it's cold rain, which is terrible, try to do your best to get out there, get some vitamin D. It will help your mood, except if you're walking in the cold rain and snow. Before you know it, though, spring will be here again. Well, not on Cape Cod. That'll be late May. For the most of the rest of you, it'll be here soon. And just remember to make time for those that matter, because you never know. Every person you're going to see or interact with for the last time at some point. And we typically don't know when or where that's going to happen. So just enjoy every moment you have with the people that matter the most. And I will do my best to make my content matter. If you're spending an hour with the podcast with me or more time binging on whatever else I've got on all of my different social networks, I appreciate all the support. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. I'll talk to you all again soon.

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