K.A.C. 2024 - T - 18 Days ...

 

     1982 - Santa's looking a little different this year - I just can't place what it is about him. Oh, yeah, the beard! Whoa, he REALLY needs to grow the beard back. He looks kinda sick without it ... almost 'ay-lee-in' *snerk*

      This is the year of E.T., another massive film hit for director Steven Spielberg. 

     https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/e-t-the-extra-terrestrial-released

     And speaking of E.T., after the debacle of STAR WARS toys not being ready in time, Spielberg wasn't going to be caught with HIS pants down! Nice idea, but HORRIBLE execution, as Ranker relates:

     "Atari president Steve Ross paid $21 million for the rights to the E.T. game, which meant he would need to sell 4 million copies to break even. In order to pull this off, Atari needed to have the game ready for the Christmas sales season. The problem was that Spielberg and Atari made their deal in July of that year. Raiders had taken 10 months to develop, but game designer Howard Scott Warshaw only had five weeks to make a viable product. Miraculously, Warshaw finished the game and Spielberg signed off on it, but the designer later called it the toughest five weeks he ever endured. 

 The story of the Atari E.T. debacle is a classic tale of corporate mismanagement. In the early 1980s, Atari controlled 80% of the $2 billion video game market on the strength of hits like Pong, Centipede, and Missile Command. The company had also produced a successful adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of the first video game adaptations of a movie. So, in 1982, Steven Spielberg approached the company about making an E.T. video game.

    
The game hit stores with much fanfare, but gamers soon began complaining about its confusing gameplay system and E.T.'s tendency to fall into holes and get stuck. The game still regularly makes lists of the worst video games ever made. In the end, it only sold 2.5 million copies.

With literally tons of unsold copies of E.T. on its hands, Atari opted to bury them all in the desert in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Although Atari tried to keep the dumping quiet, it got reported in The New York Times. However, without the internet to keep it alive, the story faded into memory and eventually became little more than a rumor.

That is, until 2014, when a documentary crew led by filmmaker Zak Penn found the dumping site and excavated it. The photo here depicts actual unsold Atari cartridges retrieved from the dump!"

     

     Playing that E.T. Atari game is going to give you an appetite, especially after you've gone dumpster diving to FIND it (or pay a dealer a highway robbery price for a truly awful game ... remember what I said earlier about bragging rights?) - not to worry. Here's a look at 30 MORE awful food choices for the holidays. Believe it or not, # 2 on the list, pictured here (Salmon in Bladder of Pork) is NOT the worst! Dive on in:

     https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-old-food-pics/ 

     We'll wrap up our entry with some light reading. You know the 12 Days Of Christmas by heart, but are you aware of the '12 Bizarre Laws Of Christmas'? Click below to make sure you're an abiding citizen!

     https://home.heinonline.org/blog/2023/12/the-12-bizarre-laws-of-christmas/ 

     More tomorrow!