I was totally stoked to find these KLOS stickers inside a book I bought from a garage sale in the mid ’90s. They totally brought back golden memories of my childhood in the late ’70s and early ’80s, when KLOS 95.5 FM was one of the definitive stations of Los Angeles (alongside KMET 94.7 and the Mighty 690). One couldn’t drive around Los Angeles back then without seeing these adorning car bumpers and rear windows.
One could order stickers directly from the station by writing to them with a SASE. I remember sitting down and writing on notebook paper, “Dear KLOS: Please send me 3 large “TOO HIP” stickers and 6 small ones, and also 3 large “KLOS 95.5″ stickers and 6 small ones…” Within a day I’d receive a pack of shiny stickers which I would plaster on my Trapper Keeper, bedroom door, etc. I tripped out that their PO Box was “95.5!”
The best thing about finding these stickers are the band ones. Pat Benatar, Foreigner and Missing Persons are also early ’80s rock icons, and one could not get these from the station, but rather, you could only buy them at the concerts. So if someone had these, that meant they either saw the band live, or were lucky enough to know somebody who hooked them up with the stickers (killer!).
These days, some people tend to mistake the TOO HIP stickers as representing KMET 94.7, KLOS’ rival rock station in the early ’80s. KMET actually had equally definitive stickers of their own, and fans of the station back then would display them intentionally upside-down on their rear bumpers (reflecting the same marketing ploy of KMET’s billboards).
KMET had their own concert sticker packs such as the Van Halen one below, which I found on the net. “Whoo-Ya” was a popular slogan for the station, but bumper sticker-wise it was nowhere near as prevalent as the upside-down KMET 94.7 one.
Tags: Flashbacks
I have a Too Hip Card # 129245 and a KMET stick pen (Lapel Pen).
I also my too hip card from Frazier Smith and many different rock n roll bands stickers including Pat Benatar back in the 80s I went to all rock concerts and collected the stickers ….