STAR WARS: 30 DAYS FOR 30 YEARS

May is Star Wars month at Neato Coolville and everyday you’ll find a new Star Wars post to help celebrate the 30th Anniversary!

That’s right kids, it’s 1977 all over again! Theater memories, kid drawings from the mayor himself, magazine scans, props, toys and even a countdown of the 30 greatest Topps Star Wars cards ever produced before 1980.

PUDDIN' HEAD

FLEA MARKET FRIDAYS #10

Today’s find I got free!

No, I didn’t steal it, but instead the proprietor and good friend of one of my favorite Antique stores gave it to me when I visited her store last week. The cool thing about it is that it’s a keeper for my collection.

His name is Puddin’ Head and he’s a plastic pudding shaker container. (Try saying that three times fast.) He’s from the 1960's and is really an odd looking little fellow with a Beatles haircut and a two sizes too small witch’s hat. This is the brown version that my pal Allie gave me and here’s a photo of his orange brother that I’ve had for many years.

Nice that they’re finally together and now I can only assume they have over forty years worth of catching up to do.

Here's a link to a photo of the box and another link to one of the packets. Both of these are from Dan Goodsell's collection.

Flea Market Fridays will be postponed until June for a special blogging event during the whole month of May.

IT'S THE BLACKHAWK KID

This happy comic reading kid is one of my favorite snapshots in my collection!



The kid picked a good Reed Crandall action cover to pose with! It's Quality Comics' Blackhawk #23 from February 1949.


Scan comes from the Grand Comic Book Database.

THE CAMERA CURSE OF ANIMAL WORLD

Animal World was located in Eldon, Missouri at the Lake of the Ozarks and was opened from sometime in the 1970's until the late 80's or early 90's.


I celebrated my 10th birthday at Animal World back in 1980 and made some lasting memories. We spent most of the day petting and feeding all kinds of animals and watching the various animal shows. The most popular show was the parrot show that featured a talking bicycle riding parrot. I even made friends with a burrow who followed me around the whole park.

1980'S LAKE OF THE OZARKS COLORING BOOK PAGE

I remember feeling sorry for a animal freak five-legged cow who was kept by himself in a small fenced off area. Actually, I felt sorry for most of the animals as the living conditions were probably not the best.

My Mom took two rolls of photos of us kids running around the park, but unfortunately the rolls were ruined by the developer. (As you read on you’ll notice this place had a photo curse!)

After the park closed, it sat vacant for years and nature started to reclaim it. In the late 90's, I finally took some photos. Driving up to the front, I noticed the Elk statue that sat on top of the sign was missing. I was aggravated since it was just there a week before. Anyway, I started taking photos and then as I entered the park my camera stopped working and it stopped working permanently!

Here are those photos –

I revisited this camera cursed place again in 2005 and I was now packing a digital camera. I had planned to walk the whole park and finally document the ruins. After taking basically the same photos of the front as before, my brand new digital camera quit on me. Luckily, this camera was still under warranty.

Here are those photos –
















Next it was spring of 2006 and again I had my camera ready to take some photos. This time I was with a friend and we entered the park thru the back. We entered a small structure that used to house the reptiles and rodents. It was really creepy as we were surrounded by rusty cages and broken fish tanks and we had to wade thru old trash that had been thrown in. It was time to take some photos and again I wasn’t able to. This time it was my fault, as I forgot to put in the memory card and I didn’t have any extras with me. I just couldn’t believe it as I always have a spare card and I always have one in the camera. Again, the Animal World camera curse continued. We snooped around a little longer until I almost stepped on a big venomous copperhead snake. My foot was just a few inches from that snake and I was lucky that he didn’t bite me.


Photo from Missouri Conservation (It was much bigger than this one!)

We decided to call it a day after that episode.

I snapped one more photo in the fall of 2006 and it was a nice wide shot of the dilapidated park from the side of the road. Naturally, I’ve been looking all over for this photo all morning and it’s nowhere to be found.

This spring Animal World finally won at not letting me take any photos, as it was completely torn down.

It must’ve been haunted by that five legged cow. “Boo Moo Moo . . .”

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

1970's Woodsy Owl PSA



Originally uplaoded by daftmahatma

1970 SILVER DOLLAR CITY SLIDES

FLEA MARKET FRIDAYS #9

Have you ever stopped in an antique store right before closing? It's a real challenge to race thru in hopes of finding something before the shop owners start shutting off the lights. Of course you don't want to be rude and keep lingering around after closing time, that's just bad flea market etiquette!

Well, this happened to me last weekend at a shop. As I was rushing to see everything I found a box of personal photo slides. Since it was almost closing time I took a gamble and purchased them without looking to see if they were worth buying.

Unfortunately, the majority were boring baby slides, but I did find a few fun photos of Silver Dollar City. The Ozark 1880's theme park in Branson, Missouri. A place that's been opened since 1960 and is always a super-fun place to visit. We usually go a couple of times a year.

So travel back in time to 1970 when these slides were taken and see this family travel back in time to the 1880's at Silver Dollar City! (I only wish they would have taken more and better photos of the park!)

TONY THE TIGER SKY RIDE

This is one of the coolest Kellogg's premiums from the 1970's. Tony the Tiger's Sky Ride has such a sleek look that it must have been inspired by Disneyland's Monorail.

I finally put mine together and after locking the battery in place and turning the switch, it zipped over the track. As I watched it race around and around I could picture some early 70's kid sitting on a linoleum floor in the kitchen doing the same thing.


Here's a link to a scan of the box back from The Imaginary World.

1960's COCOA PUFFS BALLPOINT PEN

FLEA MARKET FRIDAYS #8

I'm just cuckoo for this find! The antique dealer had a nice display of old ballpoint pens from the 1960's mounted on a board. This was probably an old saleman's display to show potential clients how snazzy their advertising would look on a ballpoint pen. Luckily for me the dealer was selling the pens individually, instead of the whole display. There were a lot of missing pens so the display had already been picked over, but luckily a cereal collector hadn't been by or they would've snatched this one up, just like I did.

It's a mint green and red Cocoa Puffs pen! I've never seen one and it's now a nice addition to my cereal collection.


The font on the pen matches the font on this 1960's box.

THE NATIONAL COIN-OP & VIDEO GAME MUSEUM

Back in 1995, my wife and I and another couple visited The National Coin-Op and Video Game Museum that was located at the Laclede’s Landing just a few blocks from the Arch in St. Louis.

(CLICK FOR A CLOSER LOOK)

(CLICK FOR A CLOSER LOOK)

When I walked inside I thought it was arcade heaven as they had a super selection of vintage games from the 70's and 80's. I wasn’t able to pull my money out fast enough to exchange it for some of tokens.

We were roadtripping our way to Graceland and this was our first stop. Stopping here was almost a big mistake since my pal Mike and I were going to stay until our tokens ran out. Of course our poor wives didn’t realize Mike only needed one token to play forever on Ms. Pac-Man and the same with me on Tron.

The museum was nicely put together as they had info signs posted about each game along with the original game posters. The transparent Ms. Pac-Man was nice touch and I really enjoyed seeing for the first time a Computer Space machine. Needless to say our roadtrip was delayed quite a bit, but it sure was worth it! Anyway, Elvis could wait since he wasn't going anywhere.

The museum unfortunately went out of business a few years later.

I wasn’t into taking pictures of everything like I am now, but my wife snapped a couple.

Also, I found this great article and collection of photos from the museum at the coinop.org site. You can even look at the list of games that was part of the museum.

(I'm trying to blow up the Death Star!)

SPIDERMAN, SPIDERWOMAN THE FOUR COB WEBS?

I was going thru a box of old postcards that I had stashed away and this card was in mixed inside.


I'm guessing that this is from the late 60's and it advertises a band called The Four Cob Webs. At least I'm assuming this was a band and if it was they jumped on the popular Spider-Man band wagon and came up with a fun gimmick. Now the question is/was there four or six people in the band? Also, I wonder if they wore kooky spider-web outfits? I like the individual names of the Cob Webs: Spider Boy, Bam-Bam, Bumble Bee and Demon.


On the back there's an autograph by Spiderman and Spiderwoman. Of course we can see the same person signed it. Spiderwoman probably did all the signing for Spiderman.

Add a comment if anyone knows anything about this!