Retro by Lois B. Sutton – White Mountain – 550 pieces

So much fun! As with most collages this one went together quickly and I enjoyed each and every section. There’s just something about these images (and collages in general) that ticks the box for me; assembling them makes me happy.

This was a pretty good quality White Mountain puzzle, with my only concern being a little bit of a loose fit. The reproduction was the best I’ve seen from this brand for a while, I was impressed.

Ah, 8 track tapes. Boy do I have plenty of memories of these! If you’re a young’un you may not know about these – they were like cassette tapes that you cannot rewind. We had an 8 track player in our vehicle when I was young, and listening to Disney movies or songs on them is a treasured childhood memory for me.

8 tracks also remind me of a toy I received for Christmas one year, a 2XL “robot”. It was basically an 8 track player dressed up like a robot that asked you trivia questions and you answered by choosing which “track” was the correct answer. It was sort of like those make your own stories books, you choose where to go with your answers. I know my explanation doesn’t make much sense, but that was the toy and I remember it fondly.

Here’s another thing you may not know about if you’re younger – the test pattern that would come on television at the end of the broadcast day. Where I lived they used to play the national anthem and then a test pattern like this (or others) would be the only thing you could find on tv. Round-the-clock programming was not a thing; and after the late night shows there was literally nothing on tv.

Hi-yo Silver – away! I cannot think about The Lone Ranger without thinking of my dad and watching this show with him on Sunday mornings. It always seemed so stupid to me that the mask over his eyes made it so that no one recognized him; his voice never changed nor did the bottom half of his face. It was a thrilling show at the time, but my memories are mostly enjoying watching tv with my dad. 💗

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About the title – it’s funny to me that “retro” means different things to different people. What’s retro to me is NOT the same for another generation. The 80s may seem retro to some, but to me it’s the time when I was coming of age – not retro.

Retro is relative, you might say.