Attention Hoarder Hordes: TAMI Wants (Some of) Your VHS Tapes

There’s a really special group here in Austin that is helping to preserve Texas’ moving image history every day. It’s called TAMI – the Texas Archive Of The Moving Image. This October they are doing their latest Round-Up. This is a mass digitization collection in which people are encouraged to send in Texas-related home movies as well as – this strikes our fancy with a resounding gong – local television programs that you or your parents or grandparents may have taped back in the day. Those DESIGNING WOMEN episodes that Grandma (or Grandpa) taped might be full of news bulletins or TV commercials that are now historic in their importance. TAMI is accepting film, camcorder tapes, VHS tapes, you name it.

You can find out all about how to participate – it’s a mail-in event this year for obvious reasons – here. And while we’ve got you, here are some of the best local TV oddities from TAMI’s site.

A local news piece debunking misperceptions about dangers to pregnant women, some of them of medieval vintage but still going strong.

A couple of different cuts of a 1987 commercial for early-generation mobile phones featuring some extraordinarily happy phone owners, underscored by two increasingly frantic versions of “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.”

And from way back in the day, here’s a Pearl Beer commercial that features a bunch of people square dancing. Presumably, just after this the director called cut, they all got totally housed on Pearl, but that footage is now lost to history. Is it in a shoebox somewhere in your storage locker? If so, you know what to do!