I loved watching Beany
& Cecil cartoons as a kid. I
guess you could say I was part of their “second wave” of fandom, because I ONLY
knew them from cartoons.
As a kid I had no idea that they
started out as puppets.
One luxury of my childhood,
though, was that for my birthday I got an official Beany-Copter.
Now, do you see that hollow space
in the center of the propeller? The
propellers originally had caps that fit over this little cavity. This small hollow space was to put secret
messages into.
You set the propeller onto the top
of the hat and turned it clockwise two or three times. There was a ratcheting spring inside, and you
could hear it click-pop every quarter-turn or so. Then you put your Beany-Copter on your head
and pulled the chin-string. This
released the propeller, which zoomed into the air and probably landed on your
neighbor’s roof, never to be seen again until the next windy day.
This merchandising card gives you
an overhead view of the cap -- the white thing in the center of the red was where you put
the propeller to wind it up. And you can
clearly see the hinged cap for the top of the “secret message compartment.”
I can still remember the
zip-click-whir sound made when you had your Beany-copter on and yanked the
string to let the propeller go!
Here’s a link to a Beany-Copter TV
commercial:
And, yes, children, it was typical to have
commercials that ran for one full minutes, not ten or fifteen seconds.
