Things Boys Loved in the 70s

#1 Monsters

Monsters were making a huge comeback after their big surge in popularity during the late 1950s. By the middle of the seventies, they were all over the small and big screen once again due to the airing of old drive-in favorites on late night television with shows like "Chiller" and "Tales From The Darkside". By the end of the decade, with a remake of "King Kong' already on the screens, monsters were showing up in comics, on lunchboxes, and even weekend morning cartoons.

#2 Saturday Morning Cartoons

All of the children's cartoons were cheaply made and looked almost the same in tone and texture. But the boys just loved them. Some were based on other movies or series, or even comic books, but most were off the wall struggles between man and beast. Back then there were no 24-hour kid networks, spewing forth child-centric programming all day, every day, so things were done on the cheap side. You only had 3-4 channels, and they were chock full of adult shows like All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and Columbo. In the latter half of the decade, you had shows like Happy Days and The Incredible Hulk which the whole family could get behind. However, those weren't exclusively for kids.

Kid time was Saturday morning, and you had to get your fix in before the weeknight programming began and it was back to watching Maude or Ironside.

#3 Space Anything

You can thank the 70s generation for the huge glut and over indulgence in space related movies and television shows we are forced to endure now. There had always been spatterings of science fiction offering here and there, but when Star wars hit in 1977, for whatever reason, kids (primarily young boys) latched onto it with the intensity of a Large Hadron Super Collider.

Before long the Star Wars collection included footie pajamas, thermos bottles, Halloween costumes, and even Darth Vader bedspreads. There was no stopping the force. This naturally opened the door to a billion other sci-fi realms: Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica on TV and host of other lesser sci-fi offerings in the theater (The Black Hole, Flash Gordon), and even a resurgence in the 60s pop favorite Star Trek. Eventually, all of this would coalesce into modern day geekdom.

#4 Comic Books

Comic books have been around forever. Kids in the 40's and 50's would buy and collect them. But in the 1970's, they were selling like wildfire! All of the superhero comics took on a new life and thousands of others flooded the market to cash in on the craze. Even magazines like Cracked, Mad, or Sick, were selling to the teen crowd. The prices went from fifteen cents a copy to 25 cents by the end of the decade, and the titles were even more absurd. Kids go to read comics about fish with super powers, apes gone mad, and aliens that were stuck in ancient Rome. But the boys just cried for more, and they got more, eventually leading to a great set of classics, which are today being made into movies and television programs.

#5 Car Chases

Guys were in love with car chases in the 1970s. I can't explain this phenomenon, but, somehow, every male-oriented movie or TV show seemed to contain the pre-requisite car chase. Sometimes they were badass and sometimes shamefully awful it didn't matter. We just had to have our car chase fix.

Certainly, this strange obsession wasn't limited to kids adults loved their car chases just as much. As with disco and so many other things that start out as fads for adults, if they are pervasive enough, will trickle down to the grade-school set. What starts as high-quality adult car action as in Bullit (1968) and The French Connection (1971) ends up as kid-friendly fluff as in The Dukes of Hazzard, The Gumball Rally, and Cannonball Run.

#6 The Bombshells

Boys in the seventies had their fantasy girls and attractions just like every other group of kids growing up did. The only difference is that in the 70's, the sexpots all seemed to have a little more to show off than they previously did. The boys were all fascinated by Suzanne Sommers and all three of Charlie's Angels. The sexiness and allure even became known as "Jiggle TV" because it seemed to many that it was being thrown right in the faces of viewers,most of which were teenaged boys. Not many boys from the decade didn't have a poster of Farrah Fawcett or Suzanne on their bedroom walls.

#7 Critically Unloved Music

It's an unwritten law that children must enjoy music that adults find repulsive. That's they way it's always been done. The seventies were no different. While the kids in high school or early adulthood were enjoying music by The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, The Ramones, Pink Floyd and Roxy Music, the younger crowd was getting down with a completely different sound experience. Back then teen and young boys made performers like Elton John, ABBA, Andy Gibb, and The Captain and Tennille, huge successes. Whether it was Cliff Richard's "Devil Woman" or KC & the Sunshine Band's "Boogie Shoes", the youngsters were lapping it up without a care of what older crowds considered "cool" or "uncool".

Real success came when a band could rope in both older and younger audiences. For instance, "Beth" by Kiss was big at the junior high; yet, the band still appealed to high-schoolers but were patently uncool to those in college or already adults. It's a complex business, this cool and uncool designation.

#8 Truckers

The baby boomers had their westerns and cowboys, but the kids of the 70s had truckers, which were portrayed as one in the same on TV and in the movies. Boys of the 1970s idolized truckers. Just like the cowboy and outlaw films, the anti-establishment, wild and free outlaw spirit was alive and well with the truckers. There wasn't a whole lot of difference between Bandit (of Smokey & the Bandit) and the bandits of old Westerns. With the rise in popularity of the CB radio, kids were given a taste of the trucker life, and movies like "Convoy", "Every Which Way But Loose," and TV shows like "BJ & The Bear" were very popular with the young boys.

#9 Fleeting Moments of Super Powers

The love of anything with "super powers" transcends the generations, as far back as storytelling began people had a fascination with powers like flying or invisibility. Remember The Invisible Man, or even Peter Pan? However, kids of the 70s were on fire for super powers. We'd sit through a full hour of The Incredible Hulk just to taste a few brief seconds of Lou Ferrigno. We'd sit through an hour of The Six Million Dollar Man and the annoying blathering of Oscar Goldman just to catch a few whiffs of bionic action. We'd happily suffer through the romance and plodding storyline of Superman: The Movie for a glimpse of super powers. These were the days before CGI live action super powers were expensive; so, we treasured every fleeting second. We would even watch The Bionic Woman, but only to see the super powers at work.. wink, wink.