Category: 50s to 90s

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..

I posted before that my favorite phone I ever owned was an Ericsson 337 and 388. They both looked the same except the biggest difference was that the 337 had a metal front cover while the 388 had a plastic one. Also the 388 allowed me to send SMS while with the 337 I could only accept.

Anyway thanks to Jens a blog reader I now have in my possession an excellent condition Ericsson 388 with a perfectly working battery and home charger. Its gorgeous. Back when I had it the phone looked really tiny since its main competitor back then was the bulky Nokia 2110. Now the phone looks big compared to current phones. I still love the way the phone looks like and I love the green back light and the blinking green light on top of the phone telling me I have signal. Its all very retro.

The phone does lack some things. It doesn’t have a camera, no bluetooth, no infrared, no mp3 ringtones, no colored screen and no 3G. But I can make and receive phone calls and I can also send and receive SMS.

The Ericsson 388 is replacing my Motorola V3x which I have been hating more and more every day. Now I need to go and enter all my phone numbers manually into my phone. Its going to be a long night.

Note: To access the 388 service menu press right then * then left left * and left * one more time.

Anyone remember this Japanese TV show that they used to play every Friday morning on KTV1? It used to be called Al-7esn and the Arabic voice over was done by a guy called Ryadh Shararah. Here is a site with more pictures, info on all the characters and details of all the games. [Link]

Anyone remember in the early 90’s the music the DJ at the ice skating ring rink would play? These are the songs I remember:

I’ve got the power – Snap
Rhythm is a dancer – Snap
Back to Life – Soul II Soul
2 Legit 2 Quit – Mc Hammer
Wiggle It – 2 In A Room
Now that we found love – Heavy D and the Boyz
Everybody – Black Box

Here is some interesting information regarding the Kuwait national squad. It was written by ilbaasha and edited by me.

Why is the Kuwait national team called Al-Azraq?
Al-Azraq refers to the period of time at the start of February when it becomes extremely cold after few days of warmth and people start to wear winter clothes again. This is the last chance of getting rain in Kuwait and it indicates the start of the end for the winter season.

The national team mascot is Haydoo the camel; the word is used as a “sit down” order to camels according to the Kuwaiti accent dictionary.

Why and how was Haydoo used as the mascot?
Back in October 1981 Kuwait was playing a world cup qualifying match in Oakland, New Zealand where the Kiwi fans had signs reading “Go Back to your Camels!” which they were waving as the Kuwaiti team came onto the field. Kuwait won that match 2 goals to 1.

When it was the home game later that year, 100 camels were brought on the pitch before the match to show that Kuwait was proud of its past.

Kuwait ended up qualifying to the 1982 world Cup in Spain and was the first Arab country from Asia to ever qualify. A Spanish newspaper later claimed that the Kuwait national team will be late to the World Cup because they would be “traveling on the backs of their camels!”. So, the Kuwaiti Football Association decided to use a camel (named Haydoo) as their mascot.

Unlike the newspaper had predicted, the Kuwaiti team ended up arriving early. Too early actually and no one, not the journalists or the locals knew that the Kuwaiti team was even in Spain! To attract attention, the head of the Kuwaiti Football Association told a French journalist who there to cover the arrival of the French team that “The Kuwaiti team would withdraw from the competition unless they were allowed to bring their mascot.” Within hours the hotel was packed with journalists wanting to find out more about the mascot

The Spanish authorities and the hotel manager finally allowed the Kuwaiti team to bring their camel as long as it was left in the backyard of the hotel. The head of the Kuwaiti Football Association then called the minister of sport in Morroco to send a camel as soon as possible to Spain. He also ordered a T-shirt to be made for the camel. This hype and the Camel mascot helped make Kuwait’s presence extremely felt by the locals and journalists.

Haydoo, has been the mascot for the Kuwaiti national team ever since.

You can listen to the Haydoo song (its Arabic with some English). The file is in Real Audio format. [ Download Song]

Update: Here is the video

I just found a video on YouTube to probably one of the coolest moments in the World Cup ever. Back in 1982 when Kuwait was at the World Cup a very controversial incident took place. Kuwait was losing 3 goals to 1 when the French team scored the 4th goal. The Kuwaiti players thought they had heard the Russian referee blow the whistle before the goal so they stopped playing. After the goal was scored Sheikh Fahid Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah who was president of the Kuwait Football Association came down to the field and demanded the referee cancel the goal. He was furious and was yelling at his players to get off the pitch and go home when finally the referee gave in and canceled the goal. That was the only time in the World Cup history where someone other than the referee made the decision to cancel a goal. The referee later had his international refereeing credentials taken from him.

In the video the incident takes place like after 1:10 minutes.
Here is the link to YouTube

Anyone remember these guys? [Link]

Anyone got ANY pictures of the old Kids R Us in Kuwait? Tried google and I couldn’t even find the old yellow koala logo yet alone pictures of the actual place.

The Simpsons began as a series of animated shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show between 1987 and 1989. I just watched one of those original episodes and its really weird, it feels very wrong but then again even season 1 of the Simpsons feels wrong. Anyway you can download the original 48 episodes after the jump. [Link] #