106. The Archies - Record No. 1

I don't think I still have this. If I do, it's tucked away in my mother's attic somewhere and it's in terrible condition. But I am making an exception and reviewing this anyhow because a) someone requested it facetiously as if I could never be an Archies fan and b) it's great nostalgia.

This wasn't a real vinyl record. It was cardboard and it came on a cereal box. You had to punch it out of the back of the box and I remember being so surprised that you could actually play this thing like a real record. It was all the rage back then (late 60s, early 70s) and all the cool bands were doing it: The Banana Splits, the Monkees, The Jackson 5 and even (sigh) Bobby Sherman.

No one would let me play it on their stereo. Not my parents, not my cousins, not even the next door neighbor. No one would dare let their precious needle touch a piece of cardboard pretending to be a record. I suspect now that it wasn't so much the cardboard as it was the Archies themselves.

I broke down and played it on my Fisher Price record player. I thought of this as a toy more or less, one which played nothing but novelty records and damn it, the Archies were not novelty. They were real. Somewhere out there existed a real Archie and a real Jughead and it wasn't until many years later when I would fully understand the sexual tension and soap opera drama that was Riverdale High school but when I was eight, the people that populated Riverdale were real and pure and awesome.

Anyhow, I played it on my Fisher Price player and it sounded awful. I was very disappointed in the production quality of this cereal prize cardboard record of a fake band. This wasn't even the one with Sugar Sugar.

Which is fine, as that song is when the Archies became total sell outs.

Favorite song: I have no idea, but here's Sugar, Sugar
Cereal Box record discography