PONDERING PONDEROSA: BONANZA TOYS

 

I clearly remember having some Bonanza toy figures as a kid, getting them one Christmas. Maybe Little Joe, Hoss and a horse. They were brilliant toys with soft plastic accessories. Very Marx like the Best of the West.

Westerns like Bonanza were such a huge part of TV in the Sixties and Seventies. High Chaparral became my favourite of them all.

Did you have any Bonanza toys? Did you like Westerns on TV?

CHRISTMAS BONANZA

Hi

         From You Tube is a video featuring an ad for the American Character line of Bonanza figures, based on the US TV series. This ad is clearly intended for toy retailers, and is not a normal TV ad aimed at customers. There were four figures and their horses. Ben Cartwright, his sons Hoss and Little Joe, and a villain named Six-Gun Slade.

 According to the Skooldays site this figure was originally to have been son Adam Cartwright, but when actor Pernell Roberts left the series in 1965, his figure was re-cast as a villain. There is also a 4-in-1 wagon, with parts and accessories for four different versions.

The You Tube video is dated early 1970s, but that is doubtful, as Bonanza was on US TV from 1959 to 1973, and the ad says 'America's number one TV family for five years', which suggests mid-1960s. Also, if the villain was originally intended to be Adam, the line must be a lot earlier than the 1970s.

(1) Early 70's Toy TV Commercial - YouTube

Bonanza action figures: Old Memories (skooldays.com)

Paul Adams from New Zealand

Did You Eat Beans Like a Cowboy?

When I was a kid I loved Bonanza.

I had all the action figures and the horse. They were brilliant.

I also tried to eat and drink like the cowboys at Ponderosa.

Taking a shallow tin pie-dish from the kitchen I'd heat up some baked beans ['cos that's what I thought they ate] in a pan and slap 'em into the metal dish. Sprinkling loads of pepper on there for some reason, I'd dress up in my Western gear, complete with hat, waistcoat, sheriff's badge, belt and revolver, sit on a stool in the garden and eat my beans with a metal tablespoon.

Cowboys held their spoons in a certain way inside a clenched fist. I'd do the same and it lead to some interesting sweeping motions to pick my beans up. The important thing was to scrape the dish as much as possible, make as much noise as could be and when done chuck the plate and spoon clattering onto the ground.

The beans were good but what was missing was a coffee pot heating on a pot-bellied stove. The kind you always saw in Westerns. You know the one, it was permanently full of black coffee and always there when a thirsty cowboy needed a cup. Like the enameled pot, the cups were always metal too.

We didn't have any of this stuff at my folk's house. I did try to drink black coffee now and then with my beans but it tasted rank. I always wanted to pour half of it onto a campfire too! I wonder which coffee cowboys actually drank?

Did you ever eat cowboy beans readers?