Who ever thought that opening teletext doors could be so much fun? Yes, on today’s episode of Teletext R, Dan and Carl revisit that childhood thrill, the teletext Advent calendar.
Prising open those doors is a simple case of pressing the REVEAL button on your remote, or even just waiting for your page to load up. It’s almost the bare minimum of interactivity, yet the eager anticipation of those pixellated icons is almost unmatched.
And through the years, most major teletext services have featured their own calendars. If you were lucky, they even changed up the icons from year to year.
Today, we’re going to explore some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the humble teletext Advent calendar.
Note: Apologies for the fact that Dan’s audio tops out at a few points in the episode. It resolves itself after a while.
Listen
Direct download link for this episode (62mb, 50 minutes)
Listen on iTunes here.
Listen on Retro Unlim here.
Timecodes (spoilers!)
0:00 Festive intros
4:20 Ceefax’s 1996 Advent calendar
10:40 ORACLE calendar from 1992
17:51 MTV Pop Star Portrait Calendar, 1992
22.00 Digitiser’s parody pop star portraits
24:00 Teletext40 calendar to celebrate 40 years of Ceefax, 2014 (and Xmas quince)
27:17 ARD Text Advent calendar, 2016
34:00 The 2016 Teletext Advent Calendar Renaissance
36:05 Discord Textmas Advent Calendar 2020
40:00 Chocolate Orange Grand Prize Winner!
45:30 Out-takes: Wiggly’s Advent Calendar from 1983
Calendars/artwork featured
Links
Special thanks to Wayne Dearden for the introduction!
Teletext R iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teletextr/id1445105820
RSS Feed: https://www.retrounlim.com/series/teletextr/feed/
Teletext Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TeletextGroup/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/teletextr
http://twitter.com/that_other_carl
http://twitter.com/illarterate
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