Monday, January 9, 2012

The Chipmunks Visit Hills Dept. Store – 1968

With Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked currently in the theaters, it's a good time to post this ad, which ran in the Journal on September 11, 1968. It announces the upcoming appearance at Hills Department Store out in South Lorain of the singing trio and their father figure, David Seville.

I sure would like to know what that event was like! (Does anybody remember?) It looks like it would have been a lot of fun – plus all those free 45's too.

And a frozen Coke or some fresh popcorn on the way out of Hills would have made it a perfect day.

I'll be doing more on Hills here on the blog in the next month or so.

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Christmas 1959
I've been a Chipmunk fan since, well, I was a baby. They released their first single – The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late) in late Fall 1958, so they were very popular when I was born in early 1959.

One of my "first material possessions" was this windup Alvin doll (at left), which was a Christmas present in 1959. He's holding his trademark harmonica, and when you wound him up, he played Alvin's Harmonica. (It looks like I found it pretty amusing.) It didn't take me long to rip the harmonica out of his hands; it laid in the bottom of the toy box for years, long after the Alvin doll was put out of commission.

We also had one or two Chipmunk 45's when I was a kid, and we watched The Alvin Show too. (You can buy a DVD of the very first show here.)

For a nice history of the whole Chipmunk phenomenon, visit their website.
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 9, 2012 at 10:13 AM

    I rec'd a Chipmunks do Beatles covers album. Sometimes when I hear a Beatles classic I hear Alvin "Do you want to know a Secret"

    ReplyDelete
  2. -Alan D HopewellJanuary 9, 2012 at 12:46 PM

    We used to play "Chipmunks" with my mother's Della Reese and Mahalia Jackson albums, playing them at high speed.....hilarious!

    ReplyDelete
  3. MarkJanuary 10, 2012 at 4:54 PM

    Loved Hills Dept. Store. As a kid, my parents and I would go there and Kmart, and then usually end the day at Wendys on cooper-foster.

    ReplyDelete