MA-66 - Spy Craze

Welcome back to my musical compilations.

These songs reflect a smidgen of the impact on pop culture created by the popularity of spies and secret agents in recent pop culture.

You can probably trace the antecedents of 007, U.N.C.L.E., and the rest to Cold war anxieties.  After all, some secrets could be literally earth-shattering!

And the fascinating concept of sneaking around supposedly for a greater good was cast backwards in time to such TV characters as Honey West, or James West and his partner Artemus Gordon.  Were there any pup-culturally famous futuristic, sci-fi spies?  You tell me!

The present compilation covers songs from 1963 to 2012.  I hope you like it!

01. Special Agent - The Eagles (2:19)  1963

02. The Spy - The Original Checkmates (1:58)   1963

03. Agent Double-O-Soul - Edwin Starr (2:44)   1965

04. Would You Believe - George Kent (2:33)   1965

05. 007 - Stan Kenton (2:25)   1965

06. 99 - Barbara Feldon (2:49)   1966

07. Max - Barbara Feldon (2:22)   1966

08. I Spy for the FBI - Jamo Thomas (2:33)   1966

09. The Last of the Secret Agents - Nancy Sinatra (2:45)   1966

10. L’agent Secret - Petula Clark (2:13)   1966

11. Secret Agents - The Olympics (2:25)   1966

12. The Silencers - Vikki Carr (2:58)   1966

13. Come Spy with Me - Smokey Robinson (2:57)   1967

14. Undercover Man - The Edgar Winter Group (3:49)   1972

15. Secret Agent Man - DEVO (3:35)   1979

16. Love Secret Agent - Lew Kirton (4:18)   1980

17. I Spy - The Dooleys (3:07)   1980

18. Spies in the Night - The Manhattan Transfer (4:02)   1981

19. Goodbye, Mr. Bond - Blotto (5:42)   1982

20. Spy vs Spy - Toto Coelo (3:26)  1983

21. Secret Agent - Robin Gibbs (4:53)   1984

22. Hombre Secreto (Secret Agent Man) - The Plugz (1:47)   1984

23. Get Smart - The Kaos Killers (0:57)   1993

24. Secret Agent - Letters to Cleo (2:53)   1998

25. My Baby Loves the Secret Agent - The Detroit Cobras (1:59)   2003

26. Undercover Agent - The Caroloregians (2:42)   2008

27. I Wish I Was a Spy - Peter Bjorn & John (1:51)   2011

MA-66 - Spy Craze NEW 2021 LINK

Remember, maintain plausible deniability at all costs!

Man from U.N.C.L.E. Cards -- Then and Later

One of the accoutrements of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was the toys and other items that we kids wanted.  And of course, it fell to toy makers and folks in the show’s publicity department to create stuff for us to crave!  Around my grade school, a “Man from U.N.C.L.E. card” became one of those items.

On the show …

In the Second Season’s “The Nowhere Affair,” U.N.C.L.E. agent Napoleon Solo takes a temporary-amnesia pill as he’s being captured by Thrush agents.  While under its influence, he checks his wallet and finds these clues to his identity:

And here are my reproduction of the calling card:

My  reproduction of his ID, with and without his name:

I always thought it was embarrassingly cheesy for a multinational spy organization to use a Dymo label maker for its agents’ IDs.  Of course, with our grown-up brains we realize that the cheesy party was MGM-Arena’s props budgeteer.

*          *          *          *          *

If you bought one of the “TV Action Figures” from Gilbert Toys (of Erector set fame), it came with its own ID card:

 Here’s a close-up of the card, and my own reproduction:

Ideal Toys had the license for U.N.C.L.E. Guns.  They were pretty cool!

 

Here is a close-up of the gun set card’s front and rear:

Those who wrote in to the studio or network with fan letters got a special treat.  You guessed it, it was an U.N.C.L.E. card!

Here are my own reproductions of front and back:

But the last item is perhaps the U.N.C.L.E. ID card I worked the hardest over.  I made it in about 1983 -- on my Commodore 64 -- one dot at a time!

Fellow agents, your current assignment is to go see the movie again!

See you next time.