The first Barbie doll was launched in around the same period as the award winning television show Mad Men depicts. So what could be better than to combine the two and release a special Mad Men collectors series for adults. Here's a fun chance to act out what adventures could happen with Don Draper with wife Betty and ginger bombshell Joan Holloway in the same bedroom... or then again, maybe not. For anyone who still has a childlike mind the doll versions of Don and Betty Draper, Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway will be available to buy in July with a suggested retail price of $74.95 each. Cigarettes and Martinis not included.

For those of you who saw the posts about the Disneyland home movies taken in 1956, only a year after the park opened will most likely appreciate that the author of those videos have found another treasure from his grandparents home movie archive, San Francisco in 1958. The movie guides us around a few urban scenes, trolley cars and the Golden Gate bridge among many other things. The scene from inside the trolley car reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's movie Vertigo made in the same year. Let's hope that he next time finds a home movie from New York around the same period. Mad Men anyone?

American company Big Chill came up with the brilliant idea of launching a line of kitchen appliances that have modern functionality, efficiency and dependability but that look like they are straight out of the 50s. If you always wanted that pink retro kitchen, here's your chance – with the added bonus that you don't have to venture out on a long and slow quest to find those over priced retro stoves and fridges found at various thrift stores, which turns out they barely work once installed.

Big Chill offers newly manufactured fridges, stoves and dishwashers that come in various retro pastel color schemes circa 1955. If you recognize them it could be because they have been featured in both Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray and Oprah. Prices range around $1695 for the dishwashers to $4295 for the stoves. Who said living a retro lifestyle is cheap? For more kitchen styling and renovation madness, be sure to visit the great Retro Renovation blog. [Thanks Cam]

Various television commercials for cars, shaving products, food and everything else that made this decade great! What are your favorite commercials from this period?

Boeing 747, also known as the jumbo jet was first introduced in 1970. With Pan American airlines as one of its major investors they had the possibility to influence the design and development of the aircraft. It was deemed that the world needed a jet plane of massive size that could transport hundreds of passengers fast, efficient and with style. Juan Trippe who was the CEO of Pan Am at the time predicted that the 747 would be "... a great weapon for peace, competing with intercontinental missiles for mankind's destiny." (Source).

Here is a taste of various photos found at the great airliners.net website, depicting how it was like to travel with a Pan Am jumbo jet in the early 1970s. For anyone who hasn't been able to experience it first hand, I recommend getting the Space Age Lounge Volume 3 compilation and then read the article about former Pan Am stewardess Valerie Waterman. What are your memories of jet traveling in the 1970s?

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Anyone who has ever enjoyed a movie at a drive-in theater in the US back in its heydays, knows that seeing the movie was just one part of the enjoyment. Families made the drive-in a weekend adventure, filled with food, laughter and goodies that dad picked up from the concession stand during the intermission. These intermissions were mainly a product of a Chicago based company called Filmack Studios, that has been in business since 1919 and are still alive today.

Often they debranded the beverages and treats seen in the short films so no manufacturer was favored over another, it also made production cheaper and in a way timeless, seeing that many of these intermission rolls were seen up until the late 1970s in many theaters. Animation was usually preferred for these clips and many of them were designed by Rocky & Bullwinkle creator Jay Ward. The intermission ran on a 5 or 10 minute reel and with every minute it would remind its patrons how long until the feature movie starts. Above is a example on one of these 10 minute intermissions circa 1960, styled to make it look like more authentic. Which was your favorite intermission movie?

This book looks really swell! There are probably no one left in the world who hasn't heard about IKEA with its affordable build-it-your-self-furniture concept. Ingvar Kamprad, the man behind IKEA was only seventeen when started his soon to be blooming enterprise in 1943. Ten years later he opened his first IKEA store in Sweden. Today there are over 200 stores worldwide and as much as I love IKEA I also think it's too ubiquitous and consumer driven. People throw away their furniture to buy new every two years because it's so inexpensive, not stopping for two minutes reflecting on the design and functionality.

The book is titled "IKEA Design och Identitet" and can be bought from Adlibris if you live in Sweden. Which is your favorite IKEA piece?

IKEA's catalogs are like a photo book of the Swedish home. Here contemporary living is reflected from the 1970s brown corduroy couches and painted pine kitchen tables to todays modern design of the PS-collection of top international class. It's retro, nostalgia, present and future vision, all at once. But what lies behind such a strong concept that allowed them furnish almost every Swedish home for decades?

This short promotional film, produced in the early 1970s gives us a insight into how the classical compact Polaroid SX-70 camera functions.

The SX-70 included many sophisticated design elements. A collapsible SLR required a complex light path, with many mirrors (including one Fresnel reflector) of unusual, aspheric shapes and at odd angles. The film pack contained a flat, 6-volt "PolaPulse" battery to power the camera electronics, drive motor and flash. The original flash system, a disposable "Flash Bar" of 10 bulbs from General Electric, used logic circuits to detect and fire the next unused flash.