PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Three Robbers by Erik Smit and Gene Deitch

 
Funny how unexpected links pop up and lead you down an interesting road to a new surprise. I always say the more you know the more jokes you get. Erik Smit adapted a children's book to bricks and posted the story to Flickr.  The Three Robbers by Tomi Ungerer is a 1961 illustrated children's book about some robbers that collect a vast treasure by robbin' coaches. Sounds like fun to me. During one robbery they find nothing in the coach but a small girl who's delighted to meet them. Rather than let he go off to live with her wicked aunt they take her with them to their hideout where they hoard their gold. She gets them to use their treasure to help orphan kids. The whole story is depicted in those 20 pictures above. I like the micro castle and town. The coach looks intriguing. Erik puts a link to a short 1971 film adaptation by Gene Deitch. The film was entertaining enough. He didn't mention it on Flickr so I am betting Erik might not know that Gene Deitch is the father of underground comic artists Kim and Simon Deitch. Kim is still producing entertaining comics of an oddly strange nature.

One Less Nail In My Coffin

Even though my doctor would disapprove I couldn't resist picking up a bag of Sweethearts. I was interested in the new flavors, though I had a bad feeling about this purchase. I should have put the bag back on the shelf and went home. I did not like the new flavors at all and I'm not alone. Here's a guy who didn't like them. He has a poll. The Candy Blog has a good review of the new product and some pictures of the new candies. That's where the pic of the new candies below came from. It's a pretty entertaining blog about candy. Me like candy. The food guy at the Chicago Tribune rated each flavor, and he's not too happy either. They make me think of SweetTarts, there's a bit of a bite to them, and I don't care for SweetTarts. Here's the email I sent to the company.

Contact Reason: Complaints
Comments: I purchased a bag of sweethearts candies today. This was even after seeing the list of flavors on the back. I do not like the new flavors at all and feel that I wasted my $2.29. I will feed them to the squirrels so they would not totally go to waste. I miss the old lack of flavors.

 

It's snowing too much right now to leave them out for the squirrels. Maybe after it stops. We'll see if they take them back to their nests. I got a response today from the New England Confectionary Company, who changed the flavors after 145 years. According to Terry it was because their customers asked for it. Here's her response.

Dear Garth:

I wanted to personally thank you for all of your input on our new Sweethearts.  They are a great US made product and I am glad to hear you are a longtime fan. Over the years, our number one product requests have been -around producing a more flavorful and softer product. Sweethearts have been America’s favorite Valentine’s Day candy for over 145 years now and we needed to ensure that Sweethearts continue to delight people of all ages.

It’s never easy to change something that hasn’t been changed for a very long time and we appreciate your support as we continue to come up with new flavors and ways to say “I Love You”. Here’s more information about all of our exciting changes:

Our new softer Original Flavors now include: Green Apple, Blue Raspberry, Strawberry, Lemon, Grape and Orange. The color of the hearts were changed to match the flavors so people could tell what flavor they were eating before they even tried them. The new expressions on the Sweethearts were chosen by over 10,000 Americans at mysweethearts.com back in the summer. The complete list of the top new sayings includes both contemporary expressions like Tweet® Me and Text Me and beloved classics like “Love Me” and “Sweet Pea.” The packaging was changed to make the product easier to find at shelf. And, our little 1oz boxes are now slightly smaller with no window, to be more sustainable and easier to handle for tiny kid’s hands. The back of our 1oz boxes was also changed so that kids could write in their To/From names in pencil.  You can find the old flavors at the following locations: Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Family Dollar, 99 Cent Only, Freds, Odd Lots, Wakefern, and Sav A Lot.

If you are looking for something to share with the little girls in your life be sure to check out our new Sweethearts Dazzled Tarts with flavors including: Pink Lemonade, Wild Berry Grape, Sour Apple, Watermelon, Extreme Tangerine and Blue Raspberry. These new Sweethearts are dazzled and have crowns and shoes on them!

So, thank you for your feedback and please stick with us. Let us know what you think of our other Sweetheart products. Also, check out mysweethearts.com for free recipe ideas and craft projects.

Best,

Theresa Denis

Customer Service

New England Confectionery

 
Back to me.I thought it was interesting that the older of the candy is available at those dollar stores. They changed the flavors in the middle of the production run. I read that in the Candy Blog. It doesn't really matter, they lost me as a customer. The other thing I found interesting was her mentioning that they changed the packaging to "make the product easier to find at shelf." I couldn't see it to easily at the local Walgreens since the new package blended in with all the other pastel packages on the shelf. That distinctive red package of the old conversation hearts was a stand out on the shelf. I also liked seeing what was inside the package. I liked the yellow ones best. I did read on one or another of those pages that they changed the NECCO Wafer candy too. More natural. I haven't seen those yet. I don't know where that picture of the gal in the underwear came from but it made me laugh. Here's a nice picture of an old NECCO Wafer Truck. I like cool advertising stuff like that.

 

Avon Fantasy Reader Covers

 

 

I found these covers to some Avon Fantasy Readers online. I thought they were great. I used to have some of these but I can't remember which ones. They were reprints in paperback form of 1930's pulp stories. They came out in the 50's. I have a feeling that the covers are reprints from pulps too but I don't know which ones and I'm too lazy to go check. I have a feeling there are sites that have more covers for many of those old science fiction and fantasy pulps but I haven't checked that. Just another thing to get suckered into collection 'cause it's there. I'll enjoy these for now. 
 

Song of the South

 
For some reason Disney hasn't had a nice dvd release of Song Of The South yet so the bootleggers will have to do if you want to see this 1946 film. You can find copies all over the place. Most seem to be from the Japanese Laserdisc or the British DVD. Someone gave me a copy of what I think is the British DVD. You can find a copy here, here's a place that has it for $7.99. Perhaps someday Disney will do up a nice disc and we can buy that too. It's a tough one, people are unhappy no matter what you do. I'm prefectly happy to watch the one I have right now, but I'd sure like a nice Platinium Edition 2 - dvd set that had lots of production art and the like on it. It could happen. I know it's a hot potato, but once you explain how to handle them, they aren't so dangerous.

It's post Civil War and Johnny and his Mom go to live with his Grandmother who lives on a nice plantation in the south. Lots of black people live on the plantation, working as share croppers. Johnny takes a likin' to Uncle Remus and his stories but mom thinks the elderly man is a bad influence on her son. It gets worse and worse and Johnny is knocked down by a bull. It's sad but he'll be ok. Uncle Remus can fix it with a dose of Brer Rabbit. Johnny makes friends with two local children, both of them poor, one black and one white. You can read a more detailed synopsis of the movie at Christian Willis's site. There's a puppy in there too. It's sentimental melodrama, and I got a tear at the end. It's pretty to look at and the animation is some of the companies best. I even like the songs by Johnny Mercer.

    
That's Uncle Remus in his cabin with the three kids, then it's Johnny, Toby and Ginny. They're all pretty cute. Uncle Remus tells the Brer Rabbit stories to illustrate a moral lesson. The kids learn. There's some conflict with Johnny's mom and just about everyone else. She'll get over that eventually, fixed by singin' and story tellin'. I like stories.

    
 
I really developed an affection for the Brer Rabbit that Paul Murry drew in Walt Disney Comics and Stories. Murry drew a ton of art for Western, all kinds of characters and stories. Western Publishing was the company that made Disney Comics from the 1930's to the 1970's. Disney tried doing comics back in the 1990's but it was a failure. I'm mostly interested in the old books. That's Dell Four Color 129 from December 1946. That's pretty old. It adapts some of the animated parts of the Song of the South. You can read the rest of the tar baby story plus another whole story here. The inking is by Carl Buettner. I really have a great respect for both Murry and Buettner. They created some very entertaining stories and some really nice artwork in their comic stories. For me Paul Murry is right up there with Carl Barks as a comic creator.

Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant - Illustrated by Andrew Colanga

   

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Andrew posted this 2 part YouTube video and I took a look. I used to listen to that song a lot back in the 70's. It's enjoyable and there's a good melody and chorus. Andrew has illustrated the song with a shit load of black and white drawings. They are pretty enjoyable too, a nice compliment to the song. It's a long song, over 18 minutes, and there are a lot of drawings. Took him a month. I'm getting tired thinking about it. I see Arlo revisited his song 30 years later. I'm kind'a missing the hat. Great job, AC. Have a crime free Thanksgiving everyone. 

Dead Smurfs

  
I recently scanned in some pictures of Dead Smurfs that I had made back in the 1980's. I had been wanting to make some sculpture back then and was out looking at self hardening clay at the craft stores. I found could buy a half kilo brick of Das for $2.50 or I could buy a Smurf Molding Kit for 99 cents. It had a half kilo of clay in each kit. I can't remember which store it was but I think it might have been KayBee. They were in the Malls, they had a craft section, and there were plenty of them back then. Besides the brick of Das clay in each package, there were some accessories and a smurf mold.

 
 
I got about 20 of them. I drove all over the Twin Cities over the weekend. I didn't keep a box that I know of and most of the molds are gone. I still have a couple of them and the Pac Man. I had a girlfriend at the time, Karen Trego, who hated Smurf's for their bad grammer. It was like a death sentence for anything Smurf. I always thought they were cute but like a rabid dog I turned instantly to slaughtering the little blue guys. There were plenty of instruments of destruction in the kit. Knives, swords, ski poles, bindles, clubs and ice picks. More than 50 ways to kill your smurf. We made some for Christmas and people seemed to enjoy them.

 

Not content to use just the supplied accessories I started using other action figures and their accessories. I found a bunch of Rocky's cheap and soon he was blasting or chopping or slashing some poor smurf. I made a half dozen with Rocky. I must have made more than 100 pieces. Some were given away and many were sold at science fiction conventions. I don't know where they went, hope people enjoyed them. There were even earings. Someday I'll get the slides scanned. You can see the rest of the pics over at Flick'r. 
  

I got more elaborate, using doll house furniture and other toys, to create scenes of mass destruction. Then I stopped with a few unfinished. They are still in the box. Maybe I'll get them finished some day, probably not. I don't miss the sanding and painting. I never was a good painter. I like that you don't have to paint LEGO.  

Red Shark by Andrew Colunga

The whole title is Red Shark - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson. I think it looks pretty darn cool. I love the eyes on Hunter and the way the car seems to be popping out of the picture. You can see more pictures over at Andrew's MOCpages post. I read that book back in the 70's and a couple of other Thompson books. Haven't read anything since. Never felt much need to. It's almost better in my memory. I like the movie versions, both of them for different reasons.

Jade Mountain

The Jade Mountain is one of the reason's I still occasionally visit the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. One of the biggest pieces of carved Jade outside China, at least according to the sign. You can see more pictures at the new Photo Album that I created. My pictures do not do the color of the piece justice. It's a more subtile green in varying shades.

Alice In Legoland by Legohaulic

This guy sure can build the heck out of his parts. There's a wild assortment of interesting parts here. I'm so much more literal in my parts useage and this twisting of the pieces into something amazing is thrilling. There's power miner helmets, a chrome lightsaber, space helmuts, hair pieces, tentacles, skeleton heads, a batarang, tan legs, hydraulic hoses and a gold colored bowl. Alice is partly brickbuilt with odd parts including white rubber bands and lots of minifig hands. The caterpillar sure is fun to look at. Every now and then someone comes along and pushes the envelope a bit. Makes my head hurt. Be sure to check out Legohaulics Brickshelf gallery and his Flickr page.

Color Your World - Erik Smit

Every now and again someone makes something more artistic with their bricks. Erik Smit pulled this rabbit out of his hat and I'm not sure what it all means but it's a good trick. What the hell, it's entertaining to me. You can see a few closeups on his Flickr page where he goes under the name eti. It's hard keeping all these people and their fake monikers straight. Here's his MOCpages page and his photoblog.