In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 97: Goodbye Lady of the Dunes, Producer Frank Durant Interview Pt. 2; Restaurant Storytime V: Lucky to Be Alive; Forgotten 80s Trading Cards; Unusual Discontinued Cereals(12-15-2022)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 97

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Episode 97 is a special show.  It kicks off with a second interview with Lady of the Dunes documentary producer Frank Durant.  It was recorded on location in Provincetown, with part of it being recorded from the exact location where the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry, was found in 1974.  The new revelations are discussed, as well as what's next for the documentary and the book.
The mood gets a little lighter as Restaurant Storytime makes its return. The fifth installment tells the tale of when simple cleaning goes wrong.  This is another true story pulled from nearly two decades of craziness working in the hospitality industry.
We go way Back In the Day to the 1980s and some of the oddest trading cards that have ever been produced. The 80s might not have had a monopoly on weird trading cards but bad movies, copycat cards, singers, television shows, and horrible real-world events are all things you could find on cards in that decade.
There's also a brand new Top 5 that shares some of the strangest discontinued breakfast cereals ever.  Strange flavors, strange mascots, it should be no surprise that none of these lasted long.
As always there's a new This Week In History and Time Capsule surrounding the last humans to walk on the moon(so far).

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Listen to Episode 96 here.

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00:00 Intro
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 97. It's going to be a weird, unusual, fun, monumental episode of the podcast kicking off with a special interview with Lady of the Dunes documentary producer Frank Durant as he and I walked the dunes of Provincetown out to where the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry, was found in 1974. You don't wanna miss that. We're gonna transition into some laughs as I tell the story of Restaurant Story Time Five Lucky to be Alive.
 
We're gonna go way, way back in the day and look at some weird forgotten 1980s trading cards when anything and everything had its own trading card. There's gonna be a brand new top five that are unusual breakfast cereals that no longer exist. And, of course, there'll be a brand new This Week in History and time capsule all coming up right now on episode 97 of the In My Footsteps podcast. It's crunch time.
 
When this podcast goes live, there's about a week and a half left until Christmas. Did you get your shopping done? Are you gonna be scrambling on the last few days? I'm definitely no pro at shopping, and I get tired of the rush at the end. So this year, I got my stuff done early.
 
In addition to December being a Christmas month, it's also a birthday month for a lot of people in my family. I wanted to wish a happy fifteenth birthday to my nephew, Landon, coming up a few days after this podcast goes live. Being old and forgetful already, I wanna wish a happy eleventh birthday to my nephew, Lucas, which occurred a couple of weeks ago at the beginning of December. And just in case I forget, a special happy birthday to my uncle Bob, which will be a few days after Christmas. And if there's anyone else I'm forgetting, I'm sure I will hear from them.
 
As per usual, I have a lot of information, breaking news, I guess, when it comes to the Lady of the Dunes book, documentary, and website. The documentary is available for preorder. It will be available to actually order at the end of this month, December 2022. I have a link in the description of the podcast, but it's oldies.com, Lady of the Dunes. I am also finalizing my Kickstarter project to crowdfund the Lady of the Dunes book so that I can self-publish a short run-in the hopes of selling enough copies and making enough noise with the self-publication that a traditional publisher comes along and wants to share it with the wider audience.
 
It's something I've never done before and it's new to me. But once the Kickstarter campaign is up, I'll have links. I'll share it everywhere. Basically, it's going to double as a pre-order for the book. So I'm not looking for huge donations from each person.
 
I'm looking at people basically paying what they would to pre-order a book. And then when the campaign is done successfully, hopefully, and the books all get printed and shipped to me, then I sign them and I send them to everyone who ordered one. I'm also putting together the ladyofthedunes.com website. It will have links to the Kickstarter, and links to the documentary. Hopefully, it'll have streaming of the documentary on it, links to businesses associated with all of these projects, and friends of the documentary.
 
I've also recorded a four-part special mini-series on the Lady of the Dunes case, the documentary and the book. What I'm thinking is that if anyone donates to buymeacoffee.com, I've got a link in the podcast description. I might put up the first part of that podcast miniseries for all of my backers to hear before it goes up on the Lady of the Dunes.com, sort of a thank you. If that sounds interesting, shoot me a message. Let me know.
 
As time goes on through December, January, and into the spring, I'm sure I will have lots more news about the book, about the website. So keep listening to the podcast. Keep following me all over social media. But as far as news and information that you can actually sink your teeth into right now, we're gonna kick off episode 97 with a special interview with Frank Durant, producer of the Lady of the Dunes documentary. This was done live in Provincetown, parts of it on the walk out to and at the site where the Lady of the Dunes was found in 1974.
 
It's a fun bit of closure and was definitely yet another in a line of adventures that I've had with Frank since coming aboard this project. So let's jump right into that interview right now. 


04:51 Frank Durant Interview

Way back in episode 62 of the podcast, I did a special interview with film producer Frank Durant leading up to the premiere of the Lady of the Dunes documentary that he created and that I have been writing the book for. We decided with all of the news that had come out in the last several weeks, specifically identifying the Lady of the Dunes as Ruth Marie Terry. It would be fitting for some closure for the project, at least as the documentary goes, to do a follow-up interview.
 
This interview begins as Frank and I head up the Outer Cape, and he drops off DVD copies of his documentary to local libraries. Our end game was to head back to Provincetown to the grave of the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry, and to the actual site where her body was found. So we're here in Provincetown, interview number two with producer Frank Durant who created the amazing Lady of the Dunes documentary. You've heard me talk about the documentary, my book, a ton on the podcast. We figured with all the recent news and events that have come up in the last month, two months, it'd be good to do a follow-up interview and also visit the drop site of the Lady of the Dunes, Ruth Marie Terry.
 
Christopher Setterlund: So obviously a lot has changed since that interview in March. Most specifically, Lady of the Dunes is no longer a mystery. She's been identified as Ruth Marie Terry. So I guess my big question is how did you hear about the announcement and what was your initial reaction? I was at work.
 
Frank Durant: I got a call from Steven the Medium around 08:30 that he received a Twitter, feed stating that there'll be a news conference about the longest unsolved murder mystery being solved, having the identity and more to come later. And then within an hour, people kept asking the question, this has to be Lady of the Dunes. So NBC and CBS kept changing the news feed every thirty seconds to include that it is the Lady of the Dunes. So it was, kind of a shock because we were all kinda being prepared for Halloween. And we thought, really? I don't know. All day is Halloween. They're gonna this is happening. But we were beyond thrilled. It was very surreal because we thought this day would never come.
 
CS: Yeah. It was wild. I just remember being on my way to get new tires and you calling, sending texts, saying that this was happening. And it was kind of like, are you serious? Of all days, Halloween. Obviously, with the name Ruth Marie Terry, what did you think of that? Did anything that came out with the press conference with the FBI news release? Did it sound like anything familiar? Was it all kind of out of left field? 

FD: Well, the only thing in left field was she was a mother, a wife, and a mother because we all thought that, you know, if who was she last seen with? And everybody's made that question. Once you find out who she was last seen with, we'll know exactly who her murderer was. But to find out that she had a huge family, we were shocked it it took this long for the DNA to match up because the Terry family, there are hundreds of people down in Tennessee. It's it's a large family. So it wasn't like she was from a very small unknown.
 
 She had quite an abundance of bloodlines connected to her. So it was almost easy once they once they were able to match that DNA up and get a name, everything started to fall into place. 

CS: That's right. So the fact is she actually had family that had been looking for her. Right?
 
FD: For what I was told, yes. I guess, in 1974, there was a missing person's, report made by the Terry family. And, everything on that police report matched up to what was in the public information of her height, weight, and everything about that. 

CS: Okay. So without naming names, obviously, you know, has anyone from the documentary that was either in it or help behind the scenes, have they reached out to you since the Lady of the Dunes was revealed to be Ruth Marie Terry?
 
FD: Yes. 

CS: Did anyone say anything about how the documentary might have influenced law enforcement or pushed forward getting her identified? 

FD: Yes. Now I'm I'm proud of the movie, period. I talked to all three of my producers, all my investors, crew members, we all stand by and believe in the movie that we produced. Period. And pride is a sin, but we agree with everything that we said in the documentary. And we will admit, we got some stuff wrong. But we got a lot of things right, and we brought a lot of new insight to the public's attention. And whether it was the movie or the research that led to the movie, because we made at least a thousand phone calls. We talked to a lot of people in forensic, law enforcement, federal, state, and local level, talked to a lot of people who were players in this, from journalists, historians, people who just knew people. So before we even yelled action in April of 2021, we collectively pissed off some good people, powerful people. And if that's what did it, if that's what helped push or light the fire, as opposed to when we premiered this in April of 2022, we know for a fact a lot of people in law enforcement came to the free premiers in Dennis and Provincetown, and this is six months before her identity came to came to be. So will we get the credit? Probably not. But at the end of the day, we're proud of what we did and what we've set out to accomplish, we didn't. 

CS: At this point, we actually record a little bit of the interview standing in the spot where Ruth Marie Terry, the lady of the dunes, was found on that July day in 1974. The walk out there was very windy, hilly, difficult terrain, more than a mile through soft sand, and it was decided that that did not lend itself to great acoustics for an actual interview. So we only did a little of it standing in the shelter of the scrub Pines where her body was found nearly fifty years ago. Well, so we're out in the dunes right now where her body was found.
 
We're standing where the body was found. So what do you think this site where she was found says about her killer or killers? Like, you know, as far as their relationship to her. 

FD: Well, it's definitely not a random site because if you decide to take a walk out here, there's literally a thousand other places to dispose of a body. This is not random. It's actually quite specific to where the old intersection was to the Duneshack Road. And whoever came out here must have known of the place because you're literally in the backyard of where a seascape used to be before you get to House 2, which I believe is the Adams House or 3 Or 4. So to get out here is a challenge. So I truly feel this is a drop site. I believe she was murdered someplace else. And whoever knew of this area knew that they won't find her body for weeks, if not months. It's interesting because standing here like you can see a couple of dune shacks but yet it's still it's so secluded. It's you would have to know this area to get out to here because just I can tell you just walking out here it was quite a hike. Well, you know, south of here is the campgrounds. So if I was to dispose a body, that body would be found within a day. If I chose the East part, I'd be back where the old parking lot was for the public hiking up to the dunes, and the body would be found sooner than later. And organized crime knew that all the drugs were coming in from the West part of Race Point. So whoever dropped it here knew about those three locations. This was not random. They had the four-wheel capability of a jeep, which I was told that Guy Moldovan had an international jeepster, I think they were called. But then again, unless he knew how to drive out of these roads, and he would need needed help out here. So I'm pretty sure this location he had been out here before or the person with him knew about this location. 

CS: So we you actually just brought it up. Now that Ruth Marie Terry has been identified, you know, that was our whole thing, the documentary and with the book was to give her her name back. 
 
FD: Mhmm. 

CS: So now she's got her name, so it kinda turns to who killed her and why she ended up out here. So do you think that you mentioned Guy Moldovan that was her last husband. What do you think? Is anything else going to come out about her?
 
FD: I hope so. But to defend law enforcement, they gave her name back and they tied everything to this this guy mold event. So to answer the question why is just window dressing to the people who have been really involved with this person's case, I feel, honestly, giving her a name back, her identity, bringing her back to the family is is more than justice, and her murderer is is obviously dead. But to really I hope so, but at the end of the day, I I feel that we're kinda closing the the last chapter of her story. So we actually just came from the gravesite, and she now has a stone with her name on it. And it's kind of I mean, we're doing this for closure, but it was kinda surreal knowing where this all started, where she was this Jane Doe for almost fifty years. And now we go to her cemetery for the grave for maybe the last time, and she's actually got a name. Well, she has a son, and I was told that the son one day is gonna visit his mom's grave. And I'm very grateful that the people of Provincetown have left mementos. They've left flowers, seashells, a rock, coins. They left something behind just to remind anybody who comes to visit her that people in this community wanted to keep her memory alive. That's love. Whether you're a local journalist, local law enforcement, local podcaster, people have not exploited her, but they've kept her memory alive for this day to to come. So I, along with you, Christopher, we brought sand from where her body was found, and we placed it at her gravestone. And, you know, sand for the test of time will probably won't won't be there in a couple of days, but we were there today. We said our goodbyes. We said how grateful we were. We also stopped by the graves of Leslie Metcalfe and Chief James Meads to say thank you. And for resolution or closure, I believe today we received it. I agree.
 
CS: I totally agree. This whole journey has been just for me growing up on Cape Cod, growing up with the Lady of the Dunes mystery. If you had told me when I was a teenager that I'd be even slightly involved with her getting her name back, I just there's no way. But, you know, as we kinda get done with Provincetown and leave that behind and leave the Lady of the Dunes behind, at least in the documentary, I'm still working on the book and getting that published. But after her identity reveal now, how has this project, the Lady of the Dunes documentary, been different for you than others that you've done?
 
FD: It shows the power of filmmaking. You know, I started this with the goal of making a murder mystery series. When I met with the investors, I assumed they wanted to hire me to do a feature project or commercial something. And when they when they sprung this on me, I thought, okay. They're it's it's where my talents meets the the needs of the world. You know? That's that's the ego talking, but I truly felt like they're they called on me. They commissioned me to produce this documentary. So I felt, okay, this isn't just doing a fun movie for giggles. This isn't doing something just to put a few dollars in my pocket. This is something where they want me to affect this case. They want me to try to bring her identity to light. And out of everything I've done in the last twenty years, yes, it's probably the most important film-related project I've been involved in. I'm I'm proud of having spent the last two years investigating, producing, and making the documentary and coming to, this this fine award or rewarded, resolution. 

CS: I agree. When it comes to all of my work I've done in writing and such like that, this has been the most important project of my career, so I'm totally in agreement with that. And as far as the film itself, where are people going to be able to see it? Because now the time has come when people are actually gonna be able to see it outside of a theater setting. 

FD: Well, if you visit her grave, I left a DVD copy there for someone to hopefully see it, take it with them, watch it, and then pass it on to someone else who wants to watch as well. Local libraries through the Cape Cod Cod network will receive free copies in their library directory. We should have a free screening through social media, whether it's Vimeo or YouTube. And, AlfaNew Cinema, which owns oldies.com, they work with Allied Vaughn, they're releasing it different ways to watch the documentary either through online or, through DVDs. So I hope, if there is interest of watching what we did, enjoy. 

CS: So with all that said and done, kinda what's the next step? What's the next chapter as we go? Not necessarily just in the Lady of the Dunes, but in general, like, where where do we go from here? 

FD: Well, first, I can't wait to read the book when this book comes out of yours. Everybody who's interested in the documentary, if not just the subject matter, is waiting for this book to see the light of day. So I can't wait to read about what I did and who I am in this book, whether it's a murder mystery or fiction or what have you. So I can't wait to read that. But at the same time, the phone rang two years ago and I was asked to do this. So I think I'm on the path where I'm waiting for that phone to ring. So if there's another Cape Cod project, whether it be feature film or documentary, I'm gonna wait for that phone to ring. 

CS: There you go. So people that are listening to this interview, if you've got an idea, reach out to us. If you see the Lady of the Dunes documentary, if you read the book, it's it's great stuff, and it's a true story. And never in my wildest dreams that I think that I'd be a part of even a little bit of a resolution to the case. So that's all thanks to you, Frank. I mean, I never would have thought I'd be involved in something like this. 

FD: It's been a good, it's it's been a wild trip, Chris, so I would do it again in a heartbeat.
 
CS: Yeah. And as we say that, we're gonna sign off with this interview as we now go to Pine Grove Cemetery to pay one last visit to the Tony Costa site. So it's it's over, but it's not over. 


20:23 Restaurant Storytime V

Well, I know a thing or two about sequels, and the further you get into a series that the quality likely dips. Well, here with restaurant storytime, I'm gonna try to keep the quality of the sequels going.
 
For those of you that have not heard any of the previous four restaurant story times, I share some pretty wild and funny stories from my many years working in the restaurant and hospitality industry. I also go out of my way not to name names because some of these stories don't paint people in the best light. Not that they're bad people, more that they'd be embarrassed with the foolishness that we did. I'm sure some of them who were involved in the stories have even listened to the podcast and know who I'm talking about. But I haven't heard anything about it from anyone, so let's continue.
 
 Restaurant story time five, lucky to be alive. Now why in the world would I have a title like that? This kind of foolishness is something I can't make up. This goes back, I'd say probably twenty years. I was working at this restaurant.
 
 Some of you know it, some of you don't, but use your imagination. And our head chef at the time who ended up becoming basically like a second father and one of my mentors in life, he had another guy that worked there that he really liked because he was funny. He would always make him laugh. But when it came down to it, he wasn't good at his job. He was very unreliable, constantly calling in sick, and I use that in quotes.
 
 But he was a nice guy. He wasn't a jerk who called in sick. So I don't know if that's better or worse. There would be times at the end of our shift. I typically work the morning breakfast, lunch shift.
 
 If the night crew came in early, we might tag out. They would take over the line cooking once they were done prepping, and we would go and finish our prep, which usually consisted of just making things for the morning, making sure there were things ordered, putting a list together of things we might need to make the next day while it's fresh in your mind. It also occasionally would consist of cleaning the prep area. And what I mean by that, we would always clean up the counters and the equipment. But every now and then, we would be tasked with really thoroughly cleaning, meaning mopping the floor, scrubbing the walls with a degreaser, and it wasn't fun, but it was necessary lest you get a checkmark from the health department that you were dirty.
 
 So this particular day, I'm assuming that it was winter. As we go along, you'll see why. I had been sent to our prep room, which was part of a barn across the parking lot from the main restaurant. Somebody from the night crew must have come in, so I was deemed expendable, and I could go across to the prep room and finish the prep for the next day. But after a long shift, you're just dying to get the hell out of there and go home.
 
 No matter how much you might love cooking, and I never loved it, but I love the people I worked with. So they had mercy on me. They sent this other guy, the funny one that was unreliable, across to the prep room to help me finish up. He had been told that today was one of the days that we needed to thoroughly clean, mop the prep room, and I was not really looking forward to it, but he offered to get the mop and bucket and put together cleaning solutions so that we could get the job done. At this point, I only had a few minutes left really of prep, a few things to do, and then I would start the cleanup to help this guy out.
 
 But looking back, I should have paid more attention to what he was doing. Sometimes, I am one that enjoys doing every bit of a project because at least I know the success or failure is on me. Whereas if somebody else is helping, if they're less than capable, Sometimes the project can suffer and it's not your fault. Anyway, I'm finishing up the prep. We're done.
 
 I'm starting to clean the counters, the stainless steel. And this guy has got the mop and bucket from inside our storage closet, which was a barn. And he's in the other room filling it with water. And we're supposed to put bleach in it to help clean the floors. I don't know any of you that are familiar with or have worked in restaurants or anything where you've got to use a mop and bucket and bleach.
 
 But how much bleach would you assume you put in with maybe a gallon, two gallons of water? Half a cup? A cup? Not that much. It needs to be diluted.
 
 You know why? Because if you put too much bleach in there, the bleach fumes overpower you. Do you see where this is going? So we start mopping. I didn't know how much bleach he had put in there, but I'm helping mop, I'm helping sweep.
 
 And within a few minutes, I just noticed I had a raging headache. At first, I'm thinking maybe I'm dehydrated. So I figure I'll get some water after we're done mopping. I'll be fine. Then within a couple minutes was when the purple spots started.
 
 So I am just headache, seeing spots, and I start getting nauseous. And you know why, because there was way too much bleach in the bucket, and we're huffing this bleach fumes, and it's made worse by the fact that it's winter. So we are in a sealed room. No windows are open. So we're just fishbowling the prep room with bleach, and I start figuring out what's going on.
 
 And this other guy is the same way. He's like, boy, I'm not feeling well. And maybe it was the bleach seeping into my brain, but it took me longer than it should have to finally ask him how much bleach he put in there. And I don't remember how much it was. It wasn't all bleach, but it was enough that we were both sick as hell, dizzy, nauseous, headache, seeing spots and they're trying to mop the floor.
 
 Finally, someone came across from the restaurant and opened the prep room door, which let in a nice fresh breeze, and they immediately smelled the bleach. We're just like, what the hell is going on in here? And I'm half dead, and I didn't fill the bucket, so I can't explain. So this other guy is having to kind of explain it, but also not sound too stupid, like, oh, I poured so much bleach in there in a sealed room. I remember busting out of there, getting out in the parking lot, and having to sit on the deck outside of the kitchen for a while to get my head right.
 
 So it's funny now looking back because as far as I know, I don't have brain damage. I mean, there might be others that think otherwise. But literally, if you look up, if you Google what can happen if you breathe in bleach fumes, it's not good. I'm reading that bleach can have chlorine gas can get released in the fumes. If you're exposed to that, it can cause fluid in the lungs, inflammation in the lungs, shortness of breath.
 
 I'm just looking at poison control and medical sites and such. And it's literally when you ask what can happen when you breathe in bleach fumes, they basically say you need ventilation. Don't use it where there's no ventilation. So here I was trapped in the Prep Room with it sealed shut with tons of bleach fumes. It's one of those things I think back if it had been, I don't know, even a few more minutes, someone would have come over to look in the prep room.
 
 We'd have both been passed out on the floor. I know even to this day, I've got PTSD about using bleach. Once a week at mind body spine, we soak our mop in a water and bleach solution. I put two gallons of water and like a half a cup of bleach, which is less than what you need, but all I keep thinking of is all those years ago in the restaurant industry and being trapped in this cave of poison gas. That guy that filled the bucket with too much bleach, even though he was funny and he was a nice guy, he did not last much longer.
 
 I don't think almost poisoning another employee and himself is good on your resume. It's yet another unbelievable but true story, and luckily nobody was hurt, but I was definitely woozy and nauseous for a couple of hours after that. I definitely earned my chicken nuggets and fries that I likely had for lunch when my shift was over. That was my staple almost every day. That's restaurant story time five, lucky to be alive.
 
 Does the title sound appropriate now? Have any of you had any stories like that from working in the restaurant industry? I mean, besides you out there that I worked with because we all know each other's stories or maybe we don't. Let me know and I'll go combing through my archives more to find part six that I'll share at some point. But I'll definitely celebrate tonight by cleaning and not using bleach and not feeling bad about it.

29:26 This Week In History
 
This week in history, we are going back fifty years ago this week to 12/11/1972, which was when the last humans walked on the moon at least so far. This was the Apollo seventeen mission, which lasted from December 7 through 12/19/1972. It included Harrison Schmidt, the first professional geologist on the moon, Eugene Cernan, who had been there on Apollo ten, and Ron Evans, who manned the command module. He became the twenty-fourth man to get to the moon. In total, 12 humans have walked on the moon, while 24 total have gotten there.
 
It started with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. In total, there were nine Apollo missions to the moon. Of course, only eight of those between 1969 and '72 actually landed on the moon. Apollo thirteen orbited the moon, but they did not land because of the oxygen tank explosion that's detailed in the movie. On Apollo seventeen, they collected 249 pounds of moon rocks and other material, but Apollo seventeen was the end of the Apollo missions.
 
As after nine total missions, the danger of Apollo thirteen, the public interest began to wane in trips to the moon, and funding was needed elsewhere. It's interesting to note what humans have left on the moon since all of our trips there. It includes 70 space vehicles that have been scattered all over the moon. Of course, they dump their waste, their trash. I'm sure it's not just scattered everywhere.
 
I'm sure it's in bags. There's a hundred bags of poop and pee from humans on the moon. That's great. There was also tools and television equipment that they no longer needed. A lot of it was to make room on the command module to bring back the moon rocks.
 
There's six American flags. There's two golf balls. There's a plaque marking where the Apollo Eleven first landed. Perhaps most interesting is that astrogeologist Jean Shoemaker's ashes are on the moon. They were sent up on an exploratory mission in 1998, and now they're among the dust and dirt on the moon.
 
Who knows? Having your ashes sent into space could be something that catches on. But the last humans to walk the moon, at least so far, took that walk fifty years ago this week in history. And now it's time for a brand new time capsule. We will stick with the same date, 12/11/1972, '50 years ago.
 
Let's find out what was hot in the world of pop culture. The number one song was Me and Missus Jones by Billy Paul. This was off of his album 360 degrees of Billy Paul. It was Billy Paul's only number one song. It stayed number one for three weeks, and it netted Billy Paul a Grammy for best male r and b vocal performance.
 
The number one movie was Lady Sings the Blues. This was a biographical drama about the life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday based on her 1956 autobiography. It starred Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, and Richard Pryor too. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Actress for Diana Ross. It was a modest financial hit just making back its budget, but it's 67% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
 
And if you enjoy Billie Holiday or Diana Ross, I'd say it's definitely worth checking out. The number one TV show was All in the Family. I find it funny that anytime I'm in the early seventies doing a time capsule, All in the Family was number one. This is one of the all-time great sitcoms created by Norman Lear, starring Carrol O'Connor, Jean Stapleton, Rob Reiner, and Sally Struthers. They live in Queens, New York, and Archie Bunker is the ignorant bigot, and his wife Edith is sweet, but he calls her dingbat.
 
And Mike and Gloria, they're the younger generation. So it's a culture clash. They tackled a lot of important topics during its run. It ran from 1971 to '79 and even after 1979 it continued on but they just changed the name to Archie Bunker's Place for four more years. And if you were around back then fifty years ago this week, you were looking for a stylish new car that you could drive around and play me and Missus Jones and try to find someone to bring home?
 
Well, you're in luck because you could get the AMC Levi's Gremlin car for $2,194 or 15,642 when adjusted for inflation. And when I say Levi's, I mean the jeans. The interior fabric had the look of blue jeans It even has the Levi's tag on the bucket seats, six-cylinder. The Levi's gremlin. The ad says it's the car that wears the pants.
 
So there you go. They made a car based around blue jeans. That's gonna do it for another time capsule, another this week in history. So we go from an unusual car like the Levi's gremlin. And now we're gonna do a brand new top five that are unusual discontinued breakfast cereals. Let's see if any of these were a part of your balanced breakfast coming up right now.

35:32 Unusual Discontinued Cereals
 
When it comes to cereals, especially when I was a kid, I gravitated towards the the sweetest cereals with the neatest mascots that were in the commercials that did their job and made me want my mother to buy that cereal. And then of course experimenting with different flavors, figuring out what I liked, what I didn't like. My favorites have always been ones like Count Chocula, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. But this week's top five is gonna go in a different direction.
 
So when I talk about unusual and weird cereals that are no longer around, I think of either unusual flavors or unusual mascots, people and things that you wouldn't expect to have their own breakfast cereal that did. As per usual, the top five is in no particular order, and there's gonna be some honorable mentions that'll kinda give you an idea of what I'm talking about. The honorable mentions, I will just go through. I really won't give you much info. If you wanna Google them, you can.
 
Honorable mentions for unusual discontinued breakfast cereals include Nerd cereal, Nintendo cereal, Mister Wonderful's surprise, Prince of Thieves cereal, which was based on Kevin Costner's Robin Hood movie, and Mister T cereal. So now maybe you have a better idea of what I mean by weird mascots, but we're gonna start off the top five with weird flavors as we start off with number one, OJ's cereal. I remember this is a kid, the commercials coming out in the mid nineteen eighties. The mascot was a guy named OJ Joe who was basically a cattle herder, but he was herding oranges. When you think of the most popular cereal flavors, I don't think orange is on there.
 
At least not as a standalone. I know Fruit Loops has orange flavors in it, but it's not all orange. And parents and kids of the mid to late eighties also agreed that orange was a weird flavor as that cereal did not last very long. It's funny. They actually some dedicated OJ cereal fans were petitioning Kellogg's to bring it back, but that didn't happen.
 
Kellogg's was like, nope. Forget it. Number two is new kids on the block cereal. My sister Kate would love this. I don't remember if she ever got it.
 
She was a huge new kids on the block fan in the late eighties, early nineties. They were the previous generation boy band that led to Backstreet Boys, NSYNC. And that's all well and good, but what about New Kids on the Block screams breakfast cereal? So this was produced by Ralston. And interestingly enough, I think this was only a prototype in 1990 where some sample boxes were made.
 
I don't know where they would have been distributed, but they are considered to be very valuable to serial collectors, which there's something of for everyone. But still, it's weird that a boy band had a serial. That's where I'm getting to with the unusual. Number three is grins and smiles and giggles and laughs. That's the full name, which immediately makes it unusual.
 
This was also created by Ralston. It came out in 1976, and it just has these weird characters. If you've ever seen the commercials, just look it up. It's like a fever dream. The main character is Cecil, the talking machine that makes the smiling cereal, but he's always mad.
 
I don't know when this cereal was discontinued. When I was a kid starting to form memories, I don't remember any cereal named grins and smiles and giggles and laughs. I guess Ralston wanted to capture everything about being happy with their serial, but the name and the characters are just unusual. Number four, Dunkin' Donuts cereal. Growing up in the eighties on Cape Cod, Dunkin' Donuts, for those of you around the country, is a local company started in the city of Quincy up right near Boston.
 
It really started going national in the nineteen eighties, and that's where this cereal comes from with Fred the Baker that was their mascot in the commercials being on the cover of the box. Cereal based around donuts and donut flavors, it's not that unusual. But having a, let's say, fast food restaurant, which Dunkin Donuts technically is, having their own cereal is just weird. Could you imagine if somewhere like McDonald's had its own cereal or Burger King? It's kinda similar to what I'm talking about here.
 
The cereal did not do well. It was released in 1988 through Ralston, came in chocolate or glazed flavors, and at one point they offered a duffle bag as a send away, but that didn't get people to buy it either. And finally, number five on the top five list of unusual discontinued breakfast cereals is Urkel O's. This cereal is based around Steve Urkel, the character from the TV show Family Matters from the late eighties through the mid nineties. Again, this is not so much about the flavor of the cereal.
 
It's just a TV show character having their own cereal. I just find unusual, Especially when there were so many better characters that could have had cereals from back then, like Alf or Kit the car from Knight Rider. This serial came out through Ralston in 1991, and Urkel's popularity led to it not being a total failure as a cereal, but I guess the taste was not that good. But you can't fault these companies for trying to make more money by trying something different even if the majority of the top five and honorable mentions were total fails. So do you remember any of these top five weird discontinued breakfast cereals, OJ's, New Kids on the Block, grins and smiles and giggles and laughs, Dunkin' Donuts, and Urkel O's.
 
I can say out of all of these top five and honorable mentions, the only one I ever tried was Nintendo Cereal, but all of these are gone to the heavens now. And I'll be back on the next top five, counting down something just as weird and random as I seem to always find with these. 

42:04 Odd Trading Cards

I started collecting baseball cards when I was eight years old. My first prized possession with cards was the 1985 Topps baseball set. And when I was a kid in the nineteen eighties, there were cards for all the sports, baseball, basketball, hockey, football.
 
 And there were a few different companies, Topps, Fleer, Donruss. Later in the eighties, there was Upper Deck that were the more expensive ones. But all that stuff is par for the course when you think about collecting sports cards in general. But what I didn't realize, maybe you didn't realize, is that sports cards weren't the only things that were on trading cards. And that's what we're gonna look at now as we go way, way back in the day and look at some forgotten nineteen eighties trading cards.
 
 That this could kind of be a flip of the coin from the top five segment of unusual breakfast cereals, where you find it odd that certain businesses, restaurants, celebrities had their own cereal. Well, that's gonna be the same right here because I've got a list of different trading cards that you won't believe are real and they're all from the nineteen eighties. Not all of these are bad because I can remember collecting the Batman trading cards from when the Tim Burton's Batman came out in 1989. And I thought those were pretty cool, but trading cards were not limited to good movies. One of the biggest box office bombs in the history of film was Howard the Duck.
 
 Now granted, when the movie was in production, I don't think they expected it to be a bomb. After all, Howard the Duck is a Marvel Comics superhero. They spent $38,000,000 on the budget, which is just over a hundred and $3,000,000 when adjusted for inflation. It ended up barely making back its budget and is 14% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. So the Topps company made Howard the Duck trading cards, scenes from the movie and characters and such.
 
 I guess they could be considered collector's items. You can find them on eBay. I just found one now, three packs for $15. And they're sealed packs, so they probably got the gum inside still. You remember the movie Return to Oz that was the sequel to The Wizard of Oz fifty years later?
 
 The movie and the trading cards came out in 1985, and these are again through tops, and the packages would have different characters from the movie on the front. And again, you can find them on eBay. Six stickers and one stick of gum in there. It's 56% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's close. It's It's not a bad movie, but it only made $11,000,000 of its $28,000,000 budget back.
 
 So it's a huge bomb financially. But I don't wanna just spend this time ragging on bad movies that ended up having trading cards. There was also a series of cards called Fright Flicks. These came out in 1988 yet again through the Topps company, and it's cards that mix 15 different horror movies, and that includes Ghostbusters, Predator and Poltergeist, Nightmare on Elm Street. Like I said, these aren't bad.
 
 This is just it's weird that Freddy Krueger has his own trading cards. Interestingly, this was kind of a third in a series that tops did of these horror slash monster cards. They did a creature feature set and a set called You'll Die Laughing. The You'll Die Laughing ones are from 1980, and it has classic black and white movie monsters with humorous captions at the bottom. For example, they have Frankenstein standing there kind of holding his face, and the caption at the bottom is I've gotta lay off those sweets, or the Creature from the Black Lagoon holding a woman in his arms and it says, is this the right way to pick up a girl?
 
 Just really weird stuff to be trading cards. Granted, I haven't been in a sporting cards shop in well over a decade. So I don't know what's out there now for weird trading cards, but I don't think anything can top the eighties because you go from fright flicks to something like ALF, the famous TV show, alien life form ALF from the planet Melmac, and he's got his own cards. Shockingly, there are two series of ALF cards in 1987 and '88, both through tops. I swear Topps probably made so much money through their other sports cards that they could just waste money on these novelty pop culture cards.
 
 But it's far more than movies and TV that had their own cards, musicians did too. Just like in the top five, when I said new kids on the block had their own cereal, well, they also had their own trading cards. That I'm not surprised on based on all of the merchandise that they had when they were at their peak in the late eighties. Of all the different cards that are on my list to share with you, I think that's the least surprising because I think there was a finite time that new kids on the block was gonna be in the spotlight, so their management wanted to milk them for as much money as they could. Then there is a series of cards called Weird Ball.
 
 They're through a company called Mel Appel from 1986. And if you see these cards, they are absolutely a rip off of Garbage Pail Kids. The only real difference between Garbage Pail Kids and the Weird Ball is that the characters don't look like Cabbage Patch Kids. They've got names like Spitball Louie, Freddy Fling It, Clean and Jerk. Not very creative.
 
 How about this for surprising trading cards? Cyndi Lauper had her own series of trading cards in 1985. Don't get me wrong, she was a big star in the mid nineteen eighties, but I wonder where they got the idea to give her a set of trading cards. She doesn't seem like one that would require a set of trading cards like a poster or a collage poster might be good enough. But stop me if you've heard this one was made by Topps, so I think that answers the question.
 
 Then there's the nineteen eighties weird wheels set through tops as well. These are a series of weird people or weird creatures driving cars in weird ways or chasing after animals. Slab Cab, you kill them, we chill them. Bad Brat, where there's this big heavy kid in what looks like a four wheel Tonka truck car chasing a dog. The joke kinda wears thin after reading a few of those cards, but that's basically the gist of it.
 
 So I went through all of those and I saved the best for last, the piece de resistance. Literally the reason why I put together this segment for the podcast. I can't make this up when I tell you, in 1987, the Piedmont Candy Company came out with a series of trading cards called terrorist attacks. It literally featured leaders of other countries that were fascist dictators, Muammar Gaddafi, with on the back with words about how can we stop him. This was still in the middle of Cold War America with that threat of potential nuclear war with Russia that I grew up with in elementary school.
 
 Going out of your way to create a series of trading cards based on terrorists and terrorist attacks is really heavy handed. They show these horrible propaganda scenes of America under guard where terrorists are holding them hostage, bombs going off. These would have terrified me as a kid if I was 10 years old seeing this, and maybe that was the point. But I think of trading cards as being fun ways to collect sports players you like. Maybe if you enjoy the movies that were there that had cards, you collect those.
 
 But I don't think of them as horrific scenes of violence against people. It's really unbelievable. It seems like it's from a different place and time. Go and look up the nineteen eighty seven terrorist attack trading cards. It'll blow your mind that this actually existed.
 
 As soon as I saw those, I knew I had to do a segment about them, but there wasn't enough there to do a long segment. So I had to find others that weren't as crazy to kind of pad out the segment. Did you collect any of those different types of trading cards in the eighties? Had you heard of any of them? Like I said, the Batman ones from the movie in 1989, they were the only ones that I had.
 
 And honestly, I don't really remember any of the other ones from when I was growing up. There you go. Some forgotten nineteen eighties trading cards. If you enjoyed this list, this back in the day segment, maybe I'll do ones from the seventies, from the nineties because I'm sure weird trading cards was not just a nineteen eighties thing. Still stick to collecting my baseball, football, basketball, hockey cards.
 
No Howard the Duck and no terrorist attacks cards for me. Thanks. 

51:25 Closing

That'll put a nice Christmas bow on episode 97 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Special thank you to all of you who have been tuning in, making this appointment listening for yourselves. We're coming to the end of twenty twenty two.
 
2023 will be my fourth calendar year doing the podcast, but we're only just over two years in. I hope you've been enjoying my wacky podcast that's like a quilt put together of everything I enjoy. If you've enjoyed it, spread the word, share it, click the link in the description of the podcast if you wanna buy me a coffee. Like I said, keep your eyes and ears open for the ladyofthedunes.com for my Kickstarter campaign for the searching for the Lady of the Dunes book. You can do that by following me all over social media, Twitter, Instagram, subscribe on YouTube.
 
 On Facebook, I have an In My Footsteps podcast page. That's the one where to go and find me and follow me. You can always hit up my homepage, ChristopherSetterlund.com. I got links, like I said, in the description of the podcast. Links for all this stuff.
 
 I'm gonna hit a refresh on my homepage to start 2023. There's gonna be a lot of exciting stuff coming to start the new year. I feel the momentum building. Typically, I'm afraid of change. Maybe that's just my sign, but everything that's changing feels like it's meant to be that this is all leading to good stuff.
 
 Hopefully, it's leading to good stuff for you too in your own lives. One good thing that it can be for you is getting your Christmas shopping done. Check the links like I said. I've got several people that have great products that you can check out. Gifts, homemade Cape Cod stuff, Kiwis Kustoms at etsy.com, KeeKee's Cape Cod Kitchen Cookbook, Chris Seufert's National Seashore Photography book, drone photography book, and Mind Body Spine Chiropractic and Cape Kettlebell where I do my day job.
 
 We're a one stop shop for health and wellness. Check out our website or come on down to 1573 Main Street in Brewster and see what it's all about. Next week, we will have the special monthly bonus episode of the podcast, episode 98. I thought about doing something sentimental for Christmas as it'll be a few days before the actual Christmas holiday, but I figured that would be too easy. And I wanted it to be something more fun and random.
 
 So I'm gonna talk about some of the famous chain restaurants that used to exist on Cape Cod. Some of these maybe you'll remember, others you might have had no idea ever existed down here. And just because these are former Cape Cod ones, doesn't mean that you can't reminisce about these because a lot of these are out of business now. So you'll still be able to remember them from your own childhood. And like I said at the top of the podcast, happy birthday coming up to my nephew Landon.
 
 Happy belated birthday to my nephew Lucas, and happy early birthday to my uncle Bob. And just in case I forget to do it on next week's podcast, have a happy holidays, merry Christmas, whatever you celebrate. I hope it's filled with family and fun, maybe a sprinkle of Christmas snow, but that's it. Whether you're with your entire family, just a few people, a few close friends, make the most of the time that you've got with the people that matter to you. Because one day, you'll look back at these days when certain people aren't around anymore, and you'll either be so glad that you enjoyed them or wish you had enjoyed them more.
 
 I told you the story way back in episode 70 about my camcorder that I bought and I had throughout high school and into the beginning of college. I'm so lucky that I have four different Christmases from those days on video. Some featuring my nana who's no longer with us. So I can still see her and hear her voice which is something that I'm so glad I did. So just enjoy these times because the good times are always fleeting.
 
You never know what tomorrow might bring. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment like I've been saying. Thank you all again so much for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast.
 
 I have been Christopher Setterlund, and I will talk to you all again soon.

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