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Fantasy Island (1979, + De Plane's life with drug runners and Johnathan Livingston Seagull) (media.piefed.ca)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/vintageads@sh.itjust.works
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Fantasy Island was a US TV series that ran from 1977 to 1984, staring Ricardo Montalbán as Mr. Roarke and Hervé Villechaize as Tatoo.

Tatoo would call out De Plane! De Plane! (youtube) Guests would disembark, who paid to live out a fantasy. Those could be dark, dangerous, or romantic, and often unfolded unexpectedly. Someone who achieved great fame wishes to be anonymous again, a man wants one last dance with his deceased wife, a soldier revisits WW-II to prove his brother was not a coward, or a husband wants to die to get an insurance payout to support his family. Most held some lesson for the wisher.

De Plane was a 1951 Grumman G-44 which once belonged to Johnathan Livingston Seagull author Richard Bach. The ownership sequence is fuzzy, but at some point, De Plane was used by drug smugglers. It was confiscated by feds, auctioned, used by a different drug gang, and confiscated again. It hit the airshow circuit for a while, and was ultimately bought by an unknown party in 2016.

De Plane then, and in 2008 repainted to minimize its link to the show. Presumably so people would stop pointing at it and yelling, "De Plane! De Plane!"

De Plane De Plane

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[–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

How to summarize my childhood... I had undiagnosed ADHD, Texas wanted my parents to sign custody of me over to them and they said "hell no" and ended up homeschooling me with basically no other choice. In hindsight, dad's ADHD which is still technically undiagnosed...... caused my mother and he to have marital issues. She left to stay with her family one autumn, so while dad went to work every day, I was 12-13ish years old in the house by myself all day, supposedly doing my school work, but having undiagnosed ADHD, mostly NOT doing any school work...........

All that to set up: I would watch television. We just had antenna at that time, so it was just the local stations. The LEAST crappy shows I could find to watch included Dallas and Fantasy Island during part of the afternoon. I never liked either, but they were better than soaps and movies that weren't old classics but merely out of date and chopped up for ads and run time.

The better parts of those days included CHiPS, Emergency! and Dukes of Hazzard. Even The Price Is Right.

One time I was rummaging around in my parents' bathroom and found a box with some dollar and half dollar coins and two dollar bills. Rode my bike down to the convenience store and got soda and candy. Clerk questioned if I really meant to spend that money (it wasn't actually valuable, but it was OBVIOUSLY being saved), and after my reassurances, took it. He really didn't have a good reason not to, although I'm sure he guessed I hadn't come into posession of it rightfully one way or another. heh.

Yeah. That was not a great summer. I was (in hindsight) rather stressed and got into the habit of setting my toys on fire on the stove - little matchbox cars - because fire was fascinating. And dad had to put a lock on the pantry because I was bored and stress-ate a bunch. heh.

Okay, I didn't meant to make this take THAT dark of a turn. At the end of it, we flew to go visit mom and basically bring her back home after Christmas after they'd patched things up a bit. The only time in my life I've flown - about 45 minute flight from Dallas to Baton Rouge.

But yeah. Seeing Fantasy Island always takes me right back to the autumn.

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