Comments on: Big Ed Loves Mona (or “The Adventures of Balloon Boy”)

By: Tor Hershman

Tor Hershman — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:54:41 +0000

Big Ed just needs to view AmaZING Grace
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjK_yVdGNGk

By: Ms Avery

Ms Avery — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:58:28 +0000

What on earth is Triple A Golden Maverick? Something for cows?

By: Fergal

Fergal — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:54:24 +0000

The disposable artifacts of 70s/80s Irish pop culture are insanely hard to find

How true. I was googling the many commemorative festivals (From Galway 500, through the Dublin Millennium to the final "how d'you like them apples" of Mayo 5000 ) of the 80's and found barely a jot about them online. More revsionist denial of our embarrassing pre-latte past.

By: fústar

fústar — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:39:11 +0000

My father had taken care to warn me that all advertising was lies.

My parents didn’t open my mind up to the forces that try to shape & dupe us to quite the same extent. They limited their cynicism to madly annoying, rain-on-my-parade comments about the various implausibilities going on in whatever film I happened to be watching. James Bond (who I loved as a nipper) came in for particular scorn.

“Hah! How’d he do that?!” “Sure, that would never happen!” “Ah, come on. That’s a bit hard to swallow!”.

I’d sit there grinding my teeth to dust and praying for a future when multiple TVs in a single household would become commonplace.

I liked Mona. Or I thought I did.

You didn’t. You couldn’t have. See Daragh’s comment if you don’t believe me. You liked that frisbee (or the rose-tinted memory of a frisbee lost) so much that it’s positively coloured your taste recollections. It’s your rosebud.

I bet there isn’t a single traceable Big Ed frisbee anywhere in the world right now…just to make you feel worse. The disposable artifacts of 70s/80s Irish pop culture are insanely hard to find. Presumably they’re all in attics, or landfill. But nobody cares. If scarcity automatically equaled value then Big Ed’s frisbee, and mint condition (free a) nippers, would be going for massive sums in Sotheby’s.

By: Daragh O Brien

Daragh O Brien — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:22:47 +0000

I hadn’t thought about Mona yoghurts in years.

Thank you SO much for undoing all that expensive therapy.

By: Fergal

Fergal — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:09:07 +0000

I liked Mona. Or I thought I did. In any case, I ate enough of it to send the required number of foil lids off to Monaghan in expectation of a Big Ed frisbee. It arrived in far less than the standard “28 days”. In fact, I received the thing practically by return post, suggesting that if summer interns were taken on by Monaghan Dairies to deal with the frisbee-rush, too many were engaged. As luck would have it, it arrived on my door-step on one of the three sunny days in Ireland during the 1980’s, and I was in no time at all flinging the thing about. One over-zealous throw later, and it was sailing out of reach into some place irrecoverable, even with adult assistance. After a mere few hours, it was lost to me forever. Now, like an ageing lothario, haunted only by the one that he could not win, I look upon it as the one that got away. Though I was denied all but a fleeting moment with it, its demise in, nay before, its prime means that its youthful glamour remains forever untouched, the Rupert Brooke of promotional plastic toys. Forgive my misty-eyed reverie, but the memory of that frisbee, like the yoghurt it promoted, is bitter-sweet.

By: Simon McGarr

Simon McGarr — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:57:00 +0000

My father had taken care to warn me that all advertising was lies. Nonetheless, It took Puma to drive the point home.

They ran a 2 month countdown to the ‘end of shoelaces’. Still have shoelaces.