Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash” was re-released as a single in 1973 and became a Billboard chart hit for the third time. I loved the song, and when I spotted this cheap LP (probably at the Woolco in the Bowling Green Mall) it had to be mine! Of course, I knew nothing about the low-rent “Pickwick Records” label at the time, and the version on this album was a re-recording of the song by some unknown studio schmuck.
But I also didn’t really care, because I got such wholesome tracks as “Screams of the Torture Chamber,” “The Victims of the Guillotine,” and “Attack of the Incredible Crab” along with it. I spent many hours destroying the grooves on this LP with dull needles on my stereo. Good times, great oldies!
In the summer of 1973 7-Eleven stores began a promotion for DC Super-Hero Slurpee cups. Of course, there were NO 7-Eleven stores in Muhlenberg County. The closest were in Nashville, 75 miles (!) away.
Fortunately, my Dad had an old friend in Nashville that we would occasionally visit. On the next visit, I begged to stop at a 7-Eleven store and brought home three cups. (A Slurpee each for me, mom and dad, but of course I would have been willing to drink 30 Slurpees if they would have let me!)
I snagged the incredibly cool Wildcat cup, the awesomely swank Vigilante cup, and the fantastically lame “Dick Grayson” cup (Really? Robin without a mask? Really?) Which only became more irritating when some slightly older cousins visited and got a whole evening of guffaws from a fact that I had a cup on display in my bedroom with a character on it named "Dick." (Obviously, they were from the intellectual wing of the Fox family...) Oh, Slurpee, you know not what you spawned.
