Worried about packing on a few pounds this holiday season?

Research has shown people who chew sugarless gum throughout the morning consumed 67 fewer calories at lunch and then never make up the difference over the rest of the day.

Hope you find this under your Christmas tree this year!

Once you’ve retired, experts say it makes less sense to lease a car than to buy it outright.

Here are their reasons:

1.) While lease payments may be lower than purchase payments, buying costs you less over the long run. That’s because after you pay off your car (typically in 5 years), you can drive payment free for as long as you care to continue owning the vehicle.

2.) You don’t have to worry about mileage. Typically, when we retire, travel is one of the activities that tends to increase. With a leased vehicle, you pay penalties for driving more than 12,000 to 15,000 a tear.

3.) Should your lease vehicle be involved in an accident that totals the vehicle, you may be liable for an “early termination fee.” You may be able to avoid such a fee by purchasing gap insurance, but that insurance also creates an additional expense you don’t have with a purchased vehicle

4.) Typically, your regular insurance may be higher as well as the leasing agency requires you to carry a higher accident liability than you might purchase if you are buying the car. This is because the lease vehicle is still legally the property of the lease company. If it’s involved in an accident, lawyers for the other party usually go after the lease company, figuring they have “deeper pockets” than the driver. To protect themselves, lease companies require you to carry higher liability insurance.

However, if you’re the type that likes driving a fancier car than you may be able to purchase or if you like having a new vehicle every 3 years or so, then leasing might still be the way to go no matter your age!

Look at these exciting "new" releases!

There were 7 regular cast members of that deathless TV classic Gilligan’s Island; yet during the first season, the show’s catchy theme song only mentioned 5 by name. The Professor and Mary Ann were just lumped together as “the rest.”

When the show was renewed for a second season, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells asked that their characters’ names be included in the song. At first, the network flatly refused, claiming re-recording the song would be too expensive. Then suddenly, they changed their minds and had the song revised.

What happened?

The show’s star, Bob Denver, had gone to the network and said if the song wasn’t changed, he wanted his name removed from the opening credits. The network panicked and gave in.

The rest of the cast did not find out what Denver had done until 20 years after the show went off the air!

For some reason, this companion magazine to Tiger Beat never caught on...

It’s that time of year again. Many of us will be traveling from our “regular” homes to spend the winter in warmer states like Florida or Arizona.

Be careful. Law enforcement warns that you may at risk at home and away.

Before you leave: Make sure you have one of or more timers set for the lights in your winter home. Also, recruit a friend or family member who’s staying put to check your house periodically to make sure the driveway is shoveled and to pick up any “penny shopper” type newspapers that aren’t held or forwarded by the post office.

When you arrive: If possible, confine all your purchases to a single credit card. That will make it easier to monitor to ensure that no one you encounter during your winter stay has stolen your card number and is making unauthorized purchases or using that card to open other accounts under your name.

Before the Thunderbirds were GO… before David Hasselhoff got behind the wheel of KITT… there was Supercar, the first of the Supermarionation series produced by Gerry Anderson!

Supercar was a bit of a misnomer because the vehicle had no wheels and spent more time flying like a plane or diving underwater like a submarine than it ever did cruising down the highways like a car.

The main character on the show was Supercar’s pilot, Mike Mercury, but the car itself was supposedly the creation of Professor Popkiss and Dr. Beaker who helped guide the vehicle from their headquarters in Nevada. Actually, the car was a way that Anderson could avoid having to have his puppets walk – which never looked very convincing.

In the first episode, Supercar rescues a young boy named Jimmy Gibson. Jimmy has a pet monkey named Mitch (because why not?). They are then invited to live at Supercar headquarters and take part in the adventures. A young boy living alone in the dessert with 3 grown men apparently raised few eyebrows at Child & Family Services back in the day.

The show’s main villain was Masterspy. (You would think his parents might have given him a different name.)

Although the TV series was made in Britain for ITV, the setting for the show was America. That’s because Anderson and his moneyman, Lew Grade, wanted to get the show aired in the more lucrative American market.

They succeeded. The show was syndicated across the United States and led to a line of Supercar merchandise.

The show ran for 39 episodes, produced in 1961 and 1962. Anderson met and married one of the show’s voice artists, Sylvia Thamm, who provided the voice for Jimmy and all of the series’ female characters.

Because the series was filmed in black & white, it was syndicated less and less as color took over and the Andersons moved on to Fireball XL-5, Thunderbirds and eventually, the live-action Space:1999.

The series including its wonderfully cheesy theme song is available on the home video market.