Category: 50s to 90s

These scratch ‘n sniff stickers were popular ack in the 80’s when I was in high school. I wonder if I could still buy these stickers from somewhere… [Link]

I found this on Ma6aba’s blog who found it on Thekrayat’s blog. Now if only someone can upload the Pizza Italia commercial and some Kids R Us footage!

[YouTube]

Found this old Abenderado commercial while flipping through YouTube. Anyone who watched any TV in Kuwait pre-1990 will surely remember this. If anyone can find me the old Hungry Bunny or Pizza Italia commercials I would be very grateful!

[YouTube]

I posted about this song before, here is the actual video clip:

[YouTube]

A pretty weird HITACHI commercial from 1992. [YouTube]

And while I am at it, here is a clip of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant Vs King Kong Bundy and Big John Studd [YouTube]

I found this old ShowBiz Pizza Place promo from 1983. Anyone who has been to ShowBiz (or Chucky Cheese) should find this interesting. [Link]

I’ve been blasting Do you love me? all morning at the office, I think everyone is addicted to it now. Here is another classic song which they used play a lot on KTV, its by Abdel Moneim Madbouly. [Song]

Wow Kuwaitism just posted the coolest music video ever made in Kuwait. The video was recorded in 1978 back when alcohol was still legal and when the sea was actually visible while driving down the Gulf Road. Its an English music video called Do You Love Me? and its by the Bendaly Family.

Kuwaitism also has another video linked and more info so check out his post [Here] Also the guy who put the video on YouTube has a ton more vintage music videos which you can also check out by clicking [Here]

update: I asked my mum if she knew a group called Bendaly Family since she was in Kuwait back then and she told me she did and it turns out I do to. They are a Lebanese band and their daughter Remi Bendaly later went solo and was pretty famous. According to my mum back in around 1985 or 1986 I actually attended a Bendaly Family concert here in Kuwait and got to sit front row. The concert was held in Shaab Park which was an open area back then. The Showbiz owner back then George Karam brought the Bendaly Family to Kuwait.

Hungry Bunny is a local creation that opened up in the early 80s in Kuwait. It was inspired by a Australian franchise called Hungry Jack which was what Burger King was called in Australia back then.

In 1997 Al Homaizi Foodstuff Co. who owned Hungry Bunny got the rights to Burger King. Since they couldn’t have two competing franchises they decided to close down all the Hungry Bunnys and open up Burger Kings in the same locations.

Since then there have been copycats the most popular being “Hungry Bunny World” and “Super Bunny” which was named after the famous Hungry Bunny burger. Hungry Bunny World actually opened up a branch on the 4th Ring Road back in 2005 and called it just “Hungry Bunny”. This led to a lot of speculation and rumors that Hungry Bunny was relaunching but they weren’t true. Al Homaizi sued (or threatened to sue) so they added the word “World” on their signage.

I heard awhile back from a friend that Al Homaizi was actually thinking of relaunching Hungry Bunny but I don’t know if thats true or not. For now the only way you can enjoy Hungry Bunny is to drive down to Saudi Arabia where the franchise still exists there. Here is the link to their website: www.hungry-bunny.com

note: the above information is based on my knowledge. If there are any mistakes in dates or events I will fix them but as far as I know the above is accurate.

update: A reader by the name of HaMooR wrote the following:

Dear Mark,

Al Homaizi has the BK franchize since the first hungry bunny openned in Kuwait. and I believe it was Kaifan branch, in order for Al Homaizi to sake BK prudects at that time in kuwait. they have to change the name of BK, because BK was consider in the taboo list (boycott Isreal).

There was a big sign in kaifan branch that says all the meat prudects are BK. So when BK was removed from the list back in 97 .. and there is no reason to for them to hide the name, they switched to BK.

– You’ve ever ended a sentence with the word “PSYCHE!”

– You always wanted to send in a tape to America’s Funniest Home Videos… but never taped anything funny.

– You remember New Kids on The Block when they were cool

– You knew all the characters names and their life stories on “Saved By The Bell”

– You know the Macarena by heart.

[More]

I found this tape while clearing up some stuff. I swear its not mine!

Here is another classic football song called Al Azraq. [MP3 4.5MB]
Thanks to Holla for sending me this song.

And if you previously missed it, Haydoo.

Today I had to wake up at 5AM because I had a photo shoot at 6 in the morning. Once the shoot was done and after having a quick breakfast at Krispy Kreme, me and a friend decided to head to the Friday market.

Last time I went there was over a year ago and things have changed condierably since then. The place is cleaner and more organized then before. They seriously sell the strangest stuff there, you can find anything including used deodorant cans.

After walking around for around 40 minutes I spotted a guy with a ton of vintage video game systems. He had a ton of video games for the SNES, NES, Megadrive and MegaCD. He also had some video game consoles, Sega Genesis, Sega 32x, Sega MegaCD, Sega Saturn, Atari Jaguars, NES systems, a Panasonic 3DO and a NeoGeo. They weren’t all in the best of shape plus I had most of them so I wasn’t really interested in any of them for my collection. Then I spotted a NeoGeo game. The guy noticed I was interested and told me he had more pointing to under the table. I looked down and was like fuuucccckkkkk…. There were around 15 NeoGeo games just pilled up there.

A quick history on the NeoGeo. It was released in 1990 and back then it was priced at $650. It was one of the most expensive video game consoles and each game used to cost over $200 and most of the time over $300. Finding a brand new NeoGeo console today is very difficult, the last time I saw a brand new one online they were selling for $1200. Luckily a few years ago I got my brand new NeoGeo for less then $300.

So back to my story. The guy wanted KD5 for every game. I told him the prices were too expensive but he then pointed to the original price tags on the games.. KD75, KD60, KD65 etc.. I told him yeah they cost this much back in the 90s. I offered to give him KD10 for the 15 games. He said no and so I left. 30 minutes later I came back and decided to haggle with him. In the end I ended up getting 11 NeoGeo games (I had the other 4), a NeoGeo joypad and 2 Atari Jaguar consoles all for KD14. I have an Atari Jaguar but I accidentally ruined it a while back and needed a replacement. He didn’t know if the 2 systems he had worked so I decided to take both of them.

When I came back home I quickly started checking the NeoStore for prices of the games plus checked the price guide and it turns out I walked away with over $700 worth of NeoGeo games, the most expensive being Aggressors of Dark Kombat which is selling for $149 at the moment.

The other day one of Marzouqs posts reminded me of an amazing pair of sneakers I owned ages ago, the Air Jordan VII. They were released in early 1992 and I believe were the coolest Air Jordans ever. I think Kriss Kross had the same pair. [Link]

My building has underground parking, 3 floors of it to be exact. The last floor is divided in half, half parking spots and the other half storage areas. Two days ago I noticed that some workers were emptying the storage rooms. I didn’t think of it much until today while snooping around through the boxes the building janitor spotted me and told me I could take whatever I wanted because they were going to throw everything out tomorrow. I was like cool and went upstairs and told Nat about it. A few minutes later we both went back down armed with two Maglite’s, a swiss army knife and camera.

There were a whole bunch of boxes lined up everywhere just filled with books, toys and electronics. We started going through them one by one and as we found stuff we just filled them in the trunk of my Wrangler.

I found a whole collection of National Geographic magazines from 1967 all the way till the early 80s. I found an excellent condition Apple II, a excellent condition NES with the gun and the Super Mario Bros / Duck Hunt cartridge. I also found a clean SNES, a box full of DC comics cards, and a couple of cool books including a copy of Stephen Kings The Shining dated from 1977. My trunk is full of vintage treasures and I need like a shopping cart or something to help me take them upstairs. I even found a pristine condition ALGOL computer programming book dated 1968. I hadn’t heard of the ALGOL programming language up until two hours ago.

Anyway, this weekend I am probably going to pass by IKEA get me some new shelves. For now, I got junk in my trunk. I love this stuff..