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Sunday, August 8, 2010

The Official Bump Ball Record

Bump Ball
The Official Bump Ball Record
The Bumpers
Pickwick/33 SPC 3112
1968

The Bump Ball was a toy developed and sold by Milton Bradly. Apparently, this album was created to help further market the ball and to help create a "crazy new dancing fad". The fellow in the photos is "Killer" Joe Piro, who according to Wikipedia, was a "dance instructor to high society and popularized steps of the discotheque era of the 1960s and 1970s."

From the back cover: They (a whole new breed of kids) deserted in droves from the flower children to join this new transcedental (misspelled) experience. It was the answer to America's searching youth. It was Anti-Establishment – and a gas at the same time. It keeps you and your partner close. Groovy into this magic land there stepped a sorcerer with dancing feet.

That's pretty heavy and obscure ad copy.

It is interesting to me that aging dancers would be used to market this new "fad" device to the youth market. I'm not sure that parents in the late 60s would buy this album for their kids. And would the 18 and over crowd really be into it?

Also from the back cover: It's time the boys got closer to the girls, and this newest dance craze makes it more fun than any historical fox-trot.

Yeah... more fun than any historical fox-trot!

1 comment:

  1. Fabulously fun! I have a Joe Piro album that I will have to blog. Great cover and dances on it.

    ReplyDelete

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