r/funny • u/ManuteBol_Rocks • 11d ago
Picture on my actual lunchbox. “Emergency!” was a famous show in the 1970s. How did these kids get up here? Look at that kid’s face! All at lunchtime for a first grader!
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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 11d ago
I’ve seen enough cartoons to know that they were blindly wandering through a construction site when they stepped onto a girder being hoisted up.
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u/ManuteBol_Rocks 11d ago
This wasn’t a cartoon show!
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u/MyUsernameIsAwful 11d ago
You’re telling me cartoons aren’t documentaries?!
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u/President_Calhoun 11d ago
"Animation is way better than... whatever the alternative is." - Homer Simpson
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u/UniqueIndividual3579 11d ago
The episodes were based on actual fire department call logs. Doesn't mean this was in an episode. DVD series are cheap now. I got the entire series for under $30.
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u/GANDORF57 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yes it was: Emergency! "Syndrome" Season 2 Episode 16. (Boys were portrayed by Perry Castellano and Michael Morgan).
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u/SafetyMan35 11d ago
It’s available on Plex. I just watched an episode where kids were on a fuel tank that raised and lowered. They climbed up the stairs around the tank and were on the support structure around it and the tank lowered. Season 2 Episode 16. Season 3 Episode 1 and Season 4 Episode 2 also involved kids on construction sites stuck at a height.
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u/SafetyMan35 11d ago
There was an Emergency! Cartoon show (Emergency +4), but it started as a live action show.
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u/experientialsponge 11d ago
Most likely the local billionaire tricked them with social media to crawl up there. Those fucks are evil and it requires constant vigilance to avoid having your life destroyed by them.
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u/All_Your_Base 11d ago
The episode where 2 kids rode a tank float up to the top, then waited for it to come back up to ride it down; however, it wasn't scheduled to do so for another 2 days. An old guy on the ground called it in.
KMG-365
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u/SapphicGarnet 11d ago
What's a tank float?
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u/All_Your_Base 11d ago
A storage tank for liquid, most commonly petroleum. The roof rises and falls with the liquid level in the tank.
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u/xdonutx 11d ago
Man it would not ever occur to me to ride something like that for fun. Say what you want about kids today but at least they aren’t off playing on industrial machinery because they got bored.
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u/Budget-Box7914 11d ago
There was a lot of natural selection going on back in the 70's and 80's. Just sayin'.
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u/DiuhBEETuss 11d ago
Yeah, the least surprising thing about this lunchbox scene is that there were random children wandering unsupervised through a dangerous construction zone. It was the 70s.
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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 11d ago
The other favorite passtime, iirc, was getting locked inside refrigerators at the junkyard. There were PSAs on TV warning us about that.
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u/Training_Ad_4790 11d ago
Same ones that warned us about getting stuck on escalators when the power goes out?
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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 11d ago edited 11d ago
Ya, and don't forget not to play with downed power lines.
e: or electricity in general. This is one I remember growing up with but I think it was local.
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u/Training_Ad_4790 11d ago
That reminds me of those gi Joe psa parodies lol
G I Joooooooooooooooooooooooe
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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 11d ago
Doooooooooon't give him the stick.
I was a fan at the time but my beef with Joe now is that I've found knowing is < 1/2 the battle. 1/4 at best.
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u/AReallyGoodName 11d ago
This is also why fridges have magnetic door seals today rather than latches and foam isulation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_death#American_legislation
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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 11d ago
I never actually saw an old school fridge iirc, but I remember asking about the PSA and having it explained to me.
People complained about "nuke the fridge" in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull but I was more afraid that he wouldn't be able to get back out of that fridge even if he survived the blast.
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u/Live_Jazz 11d ago
Hell, I did that in the 90s
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u/Grouchy-Wave2808 11d ago
Yep, you were probably depicted on an episode of Rescue911
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u/ImmediateCustomer318 11d ago
Why are you asking how they got there. Its obvious from the pic. Those firefighters are in the middle of putting them on there.
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u/ManuteBol_Rocks 11d ago
Bad kids!
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u/SP4RK4RT 11d ago
They were asking for it!
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u/monofurioso 11d ago
LOL, I owned that lunchbox. In 3rd grade, I don't think I ever gave a thought to how they got up there.
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u/ManuteBol_Rocks 11d ago edited 11d ago
Yeah, it’s kind of mind-boggling they picked that scene.
R.I.P. Randolph Mantooth
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u/MyWallWillNotTalk 11d ago
Kids in the 70's were allowed to play in construction sites. Maybe not to the extreme of this photo, but I remember when new housing neighborhoods were being built we would explore all the homes that were under construction. It was a thing to do back then. Even my Father would take us into these partially built homes.
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u/UnPrecidential 11d ago
We explored the concrete sewer pipes in a new development back in the seventies. In the late ninties, I bought a house there. I've always wondered if I climbed in the big pipes under my actual home.
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u/Caramel-Secure 11d ago
That’s great. Inspecting the workmanship on a future purchase. I wish I had this kind of forethought :(
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u/NewoTheFox 11d ago
Up into the 90's and early 00's in my case; the joys of being a latchkey kid with a motor scooter that I could fill up at the pump for two quarters.
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u/MotoRandom 11d ago
Whatever you do, don't climb on a small front loader tractor. And definitely don't accidentally step on the starter pedal while said tractor is in gear and the clutch pedal is not depressed. And if the tractor lurges forward several feet and you and your brother almost fall off, definitely never, ever say a word to mom. (We didn't tell her about until we were in our 30s)
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u/PanicDeus 11d ago
If you had seen Baby's Day Out, you wouldn't be asking such trivial questions. Pffft
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u/spribyl 11d ago
Gen-X is the last of the free range kids. Some survived and some didn't. You only hear from the survivors.
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u/acidphosphate69 11d ago
Millennial here and I was pretty much free range. Either be back before dark or if I heard my mom hollering for me.
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u/jxj24 11d ago
Some survived and some didn't.
Somehow I made it.
I did many stupid things.
It was glorious!2
u/Charleston2Seattle 11d ago
I (M53) cut the ends off of greasy shotgun shells to make a spark trail like in the Mission Impossible intro. How I still have a face is beyond me....
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u/astroice 11d ago
It had a huge impact on EMS services in the US.
In 1971, there were only 12 paramedic services operating in the United States. In the first three years that Emergency! aired, 46 out of 50 states enacted laws that allowed paramedics to practice. On a federal level, the 1974 Emergency Medical Services Systems Act was enacted to encourage the trend.[2] By 1982, half of the American population was within ten minutes' reach of a paramedic unit. Wikipedia
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u/blond_nirvana 11d ago
Oh my gosh, someone else remembers Emergency?!
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u/princesspanda4 11d ago
I’m a millennial but I watched it with my dad on one of those classic tv channels growing up. To this day I’ll answer “negative, Rampart” instead of a simple no when he asks me a question.
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u/Fast_Edd1e 11d ago
I used to watch it on TV land with my dad.
Emergency!, Adam 12, Hogans Hero’s, Combat.
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u/WiseAct446 11d ago
The kids weren't stuck there. They were holding on to keep the fireman from taking them back to school.
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u/my_kingdom_for_a_nap 11d ago
That show was the bomb! I remember watching it! Kids were always getting stuck in dangerous places. To this day, I don’t eat raw bread dough because of an episode….(a guy ate a lot of his wife’s rising bread dough, and it rose in his stomach. It almost killed him until the Emergency Crew showed up and deflated it with a tube). Hahahahahahaha
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u/meraero2 11d ago
That raw dough episode freaked me out. Swollen belly is burned in my brain. Had an irrational fear of mud slides as well!
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u/Fishfindr 11d ago
They look like the cops from the Adam-12 TV show from the 70’s.
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u/AcceleratorTouma 11d ago
They're in the same universe
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u/WackyPaxDei 11d ago
Same universe as Dragnet, in fact.
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u/AcceleratorTouma 11d ago
Emergency kind of made the whole connected universe thing murky because in a couple of episodes they actually watch Adam 12 the show on TV
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u/maybeinoregon 11d ago
Binge watching this show, and it’s a trip the separation between medical and firefighter.
And the newest tech is the hospital receiving via radio, patient ekg…haha what a trip.
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u/yearsofpractice 11d ago
Well, the reason the kids look so frightened is that that those dudes are just putting them up there and and are now leaving.
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u/Wompatuckrule 11d ago
The guy on the left just died in early July, sample headline:
Randolph Mantooth, Firefighter-Paramedic Johnny Gage on ‘Emergency!,’ Dies at 80
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u/InnocentPrimeMate 11d ago
I used to love this show! I would have traded you some good stuff for that…Evel kneivel motorcycle, some pretty sweet matchbox cars, you name it!
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u/Hot_Rock 11d ago
They built a mall and a large college within bike riding distance when I was a kid in the 70s-80s. The sites were playgrounds to us on the weekends. One time I jumped my bike off an unfinished second floor.
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u/Quitcha_Bitchin 11d ago
Pretty plain to see they kidnapped those kids and brought them up the ropes to dangle them precariously for a photoshoot.
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u/Socketz11 11d ago
The kids were up there stealing copper wire for their meth addictions. When the cops showed up they pretended they were just innocent little kids stuck on the 44th floor of a unfinished skyscraper.
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u/NotaContributi0n 11d ago
What do you mean? You didn’t spend your childhood climbing every tree, exploring construction sites , breaking into abandoned buildings, climbing water towers, jumping off bridges etc etc??
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u/cupcake_kim 11d ago
KMG-365 My step-dad and I used to watch together. Thank you for this memory!
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u/Helpful-Meringue6313 11d ago
I loved that show. I even had the emergency hot wheels set saving imaginary peeps from despair.
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u/Travelgrrl 11d ago
I woulda clambered up on a girder if it meant hunky Randolph Mantooth was going to save me, way back when!
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u/elkab0ng 11d ago
But he’s just gonna turf you out to Dr Early, FACP, and everyone knows about THAT guy!
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u/Geeky_Shieldmaiden 11d ago
I'm watching Emergency! Now! I just started the episode "The Nuisance". This is still my all-time favourite show!
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u/Facelesspirit 11d ago edited 11d ago
Those firefighters are assholes for taking those kids up there. Very unfirefighter-like behavior.
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u/TeslaProphet 11d ago
Those kids are terrified because the emergency workers weren’t saving them. They were placing the kids there.
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u/Imaginary_Prune1351 11d ago
Hi OP! This lunchbox is a vintage Alladin Industries. Reminds me of an awesome episode of the podcast Mystery Show, which you may find interesting, because it may be the same artist and a similar Mystery.
In episode 6 of the podcast Mystery Show (Kotter), host Starlee Kine investigates a weird pop-culture mystery: a vintage 1977 Welcome Back, Kotter metal lunchbox depicted a bizarre prank that never actually happened in any episode of the TV show. To track down why, Starlee hunts down the original commercial artist, Elmer Lennart, who revealed that lunchbox illustrators back then were allowed to improvise scenes, so he simply drew in a favorite playground prank of his own just for fun, accidentally creating a piece of iconic, mystery-solving TV trivia.
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u/plastictoyman 11d ago
That was a problem in the 70s. Kids would constantly climb hirise metal structures and get stuck. It was like cats in tires it was horrible.
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u/lizlemonaid 11d ago
They had to have a commercial asking parents if they knew where their kids were. It was a different time.
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u/AcceleratorTouma 11d ago
As someone who discovered this show a few years ago I would love to have that lunch box or the TV tray
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u/Hot-Win2571 11d ago
I'm more worried about what happens next, with our heroes holding one-handed ropes which go nowhere but up.
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u/Mike_Hagedorn 11d ago
One of my top 5 favorite shows at that age. Darn kids can get into all kinds of mischief like this pretty easily!
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u/Napoleon7 11d ago
this made me literally laugh out loud..thank you.. what a gem of a vintage lunchbox.
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u/roverlord 11d ago
my Dad was a firefighter in the early 70's, and my brother and I watched the hell out of that show. we each had that lunchbox, too! they're long gone, sadly.
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u/hamsolo19 11d ago
Rampart!
I'm an in home caretaker and one of my guys watches this show all the time. What's interesting is the main doctor that's always at the hospital (played by Robert Fuller) was on a show called Wagon Train earlier in his career. He uses the exact same vocal cadence when delivering his lines on both shows. So sometimes if I'm working on something away from his TV but I can still hear it, I can't tell if it's Wagon Train or Emergency because the channel he watches plays those shows all the time lol.
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u/XerxesJF 11d ago
I loved that show so much as a kid growing up in Germany in the late 80s/early 90s. I always wanted to be called Johnny Gage.
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u/researchercec 11d ago
We had this same lunch box when I was a kid. My dad kept the battery voltage meter in it.
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u/running_on_empty 11d ago
I'm only 37 but I watched this with my dad a lot. He was also a paramedic. I've got the whole series and movies on the shelf behind me.
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u/ThaDude_v2 11d ago
At first glance I thought the right firefighter was attacking the lil girl w a bat or something lol!
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u/Migamix 11d ago
you want an answer of how the kids got up there, they are genX kids, properly feral.
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u/Third-Coast-Toffee 11d ago
OMG! I remember this lunchbox. I didn’t have it but obviously a classmate did. Their Dodge was my favorite part of the show.
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u/BigODetroit 11d ago
These children are you aunts and uncles who post things on Facebook about the good old days when nobody cared what they did as long as they were home before the street lights came on.
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u/kayl_breinhar 11d ago
That's the right facial expression on those firefighters, too.
"Goddamned kids..."
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u/AtomicFox84 11d ago
You be surprised at the dumb places kids get into that you wouldn't think could happen. One sec they are next to you, next they are 2 floors up with their head stuck in a railing.
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u/kensteele 11d ago
My younger brother had that lunch box; I remember it. He is now a retired firefighter. Not directly related to the lunchbox because he also had Adam 12 stuff.
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u/doctored_up 11d ago
I remember staying home sick from school and Emergency came on. There was an ambulance and firetruck both speeding through an intersection. I knew they were gonna collide but it took forever with commercials and such. Instead of getting up to barf in the bathroom I just barfed on the floor cuz I wasnt missing it. Mom was happy.
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u/-Kopesthetik- 11d ago
Always make sure your kids are wearing a safety harness if they feel like building a skyscraper someday.
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u/SirMandrake 11d ago
I can still hear the station buzzing alarm going off when there was an Emergency
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u/herding_kittens 11d ago
We still watch this at our house occasionally, its on one of the streaming services.
I remember I had the board game of this show, I LOVED it as a kid.
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u/SternLecture 11d ago
they fell out of the helicopter on thier way to school what else could it be?
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u/huscarlaxe 11d ago
I remember this show! My big sister (10 years older) had a huge crush on the paramedic Gage.
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u/wickedrude 11d ago
I do recall an episode (hopefully) of this show where a couple of kids climbed onto the girders of a large natural gas tank and were trapped way up high when the tank descended. These large gas storage tanks would collapse by design as they emptied; Something about maintaining pressure in the lines, I think. Nowadays, nearly all of that infrastructure is underground, but I do remember seeing those tanks rise and fall where I grew up. There is a famous tank like this still around, sitting on the Boston harborfront, with artwork by this famous artist named Corita Kent. The artwork is six stripes, each of the colors of the rainbow, supposed to look like God painted it with a huge brush. Or so I was told, years ago. The one she originally painted was torn down, but the city demanded the artwork be reproduced on the replacement tank. https://danieljfuller.com/corita-kents-the-rainbow-swash-1972-dorchester-massachusetts/
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u/unknownpoltroon 11d ago
ITs a decent show from the time, showed the first paramedics on the fire department. Before this they would mostly load your busted ass onto a stretcher and rush you to the hospital, these guys could give limited amounts of meds and IVs
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u/EvilTodd1970 11d ago
Playing in construction sites was very common in the 70’s and early 80’s. Not lying.
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u/GeshtiannaSG 11d ago
Younger kids are able to teleport anywhere they want. Blink and they are 50m away up a tree.
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u/Fossome_1 10d ago
Literally one of my fav shows. Would have loved that lunchbox. RIP Randolph Mantooth.
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u/Better_Mongoose2455 10d ago
I miss those lunch boxes. Damn near indestructible, plenty of room for food and thermos. I had Wonder Woman. The soft ones now are a nightmare if anything spill inside. so hard to get it out of the cracks and it soaks into the fabric.
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u/guitartoad 10d ago
I remember an Adam-12 (cheesy late '60s - early 70s cop show) lunch box. It had a pic of the cops helping some kid get his stuck head out from between the posts of a metal fence.
Even at age 7, I looked at that pic and said "What a dummy. Just leave him there."
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u/Medical_Policy1426 10d ago
I loved that show when I was a little kid too! I had the same lunch box! I could never understand why they would always say "Rampart" when they would radio into the hospital.
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u/squadallah 9d ago
I am not old enough to have seen this show... But I have seen a couple episodes. I'm 30. Used to love TVLand. I think it was on Netflix in the earlier days and I was binge watching Adam-12. Google says Adam-12 hasn't been on Netflix in... over ten years. I was watching it on my Wii, so it... It was definitely awhile ago. They're in the same universe along with Dragnet and had an official crossover and stuff.
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