LOOKING BACK

The Haves and Have Nots

“I got really excited because he came up the aisle and stood at my row.” My sister Lauren has described the scenario for me at least a half dozen times over the years. “He started moving in and stopped right in front of my chair. I was sure it was me… then a second later he shifted a single space over.”

I was four years old at the time, and I still remember feeling an empathetic sting of outrage for her. To come so close to a Ladmo bag only to watch it handed over to your neighbor was absolutely intolerable. “I really, really, really wanted that Ladmo bag,” Lauren recalls.

When her kindergarten Daisy Scout troop visited the Wallace and Ladmo set in 1985, the long running Arizona sketch show was at its zenith, destined to end production for good a mere four years later. Between 1954 and 1989, The Wallace and Ladmo Show was an Arizona institution, featuring classic cartoons intercut with skits and hi-jinks by Bill “Wallace” Thompson, Ladimir “Ladmo” Kwiatkowski and Pat McMahon.

Through its 35 year run, the show left an indelible mark on generations of locals, underscored by the introduction of the Ladmo bag in the mid-sixties. The plain brown bag consolidated all the sponsor prizes into one intensely coveted sack, heavy with plunder. Writes Steve Hoza on WallaceWatchers.com, “From then on, the entire known universe of creation became separated into those who did and those who didn’t win a Ladmo Bag!!!”

Learn more

Thanks for Tuning In: The Wallace and Ladmo Show exhibit
Mesa Historical Museum (through May 31)
2345 N. Horne St., Mesa
480-835-7358
mesahistoricalmuseum.org
Visitors will automatically be entered in the museum’s monthly Ladmo bag raffle.

WallaceWatchers.com

Photos courtesy of the Mesa Historical Museum