Excerpt from (St. Paul Pioneer Press) Bulletin Board, January 23, 2003

First, here's Dave of Highland Park:

"I was pleased to see 'Older Than Dirt' Bob of Rochester talk about his cardboard records. It brought back a lot of memories. From 1962 to 1966, I was a product manager for the Columbia Records Division of CBS in New York. And what was my product? Auravision … the playable paper record. We made thousands of these promotional records that were bound into magazines, inserted into product boxes, or adhered to the outside of the package itself.

"I kept a lot of product samples of these old records … particularly of the last project I worked on with Disney Studios, when we were planning a series of 24 children's birthday records using all the Disney art and voices. All the original Disney art from that project has been sitting in my attic for almost 40 years."

And now Poet X of PDX:

"I'd forgotten that cardboard records were sometimes found in magazines. The ones I remember most are the ones that were put on the back of cereal boxes and had to be cut into circular shape before being usable. They had a play-life of about 12 hours until they'd curl up horribly.

"The artist I most associate with cereal-box records is Bobby Sherman (though I also remember that The Archies' songs were on … Alpha-Bits?). And thinking of Bobby Sherman always brings up this Unanswerable Question:

"Who decides which artists maintain nostalgic appeal decades later and what artists don't? Have you ever heard an oldies station play Bobby Sherman's 'Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya love me? Julie, Julie, Julie, do ya care?' At the time, Bobby Sherman was almost as popular as The Partridge Family, or the aforementioned Archies, whose songs are heard on said oldies stations.

"Bobby Sherman also evokes memories of the TV show on which he was a cast member: 'Here Come the Brides,' with Joan Blondell. The theme song was memorable, and may have been a radio single itself (also not heard on oldies stations): a song about Seattle that confused my childish mind (I thought the show should be called 'In Seattle' — the repeated part of the refrain).
"And who decides which shows are shown on nostalgia television? I'd rather watch 'Here Come the Brides' or 'It's About Time' (with Imogene Coca) than 'Leave It to Beaver' or, even, 'Gilligan's Island' any day.

"TVLand execs, are you listening?"