Angry Eyebrows Pixie

This guy is one of my favorites.  It’s the angry pixie.  At least his eyebrows and sinister grin suggest to me that he is angry, or maybe a sociopath.  I first saw one at the National Christmas Center in Paradise, PA (Go if you are in the area!).  They have a pixie tree in their Woolworth’s Display (which is awesome!), and probably have no idea how excited I got when I saw this pixie.  I wanted to track one down.  Thankfully my mom found one in her travels, and I got him as a Christmas present last year.  If Elf on a Shelf isn’t getting your kids to behave at Christmas, this terrifying little guy might do it!  His eyebrows will haunt my nightmares!

I will haunt your nightmares!

Wind-Up Drummer Pixie

This one is truly weird.  It is a pixie head on a wind up drummer toy.  This toy is made in India, which is not something you see everyday.  It has a few condition issues, but I had to buy it since I had never seem one like it.  Pixie heads got used on everything!

Flat Pixies

Yes, the pixie head was even flattened for Christmas stockings and wall decorations.  Take these two decorations with flat pixies.  One is a stocking and the other is just a wall decoration.  Both are kitschy to the extreme!

Giant Headed Pixies

I have some big headed pixies, but none are quite as impressive as these.  While there are a lot of pixie designs that you see many times over, these are a little bit more unique.  I don’t think it makes them much more valuable, but it does make them more interesting to me.

Mrs. Claus Knee Hugger

I see Santa knee huggers occasionally, but rarely do you find a Mrs. Claus.  Here she is in all of her glory!  Again, not terribly valuable, but just fascinating that she exists.

Winking Devil Knee Hugger

Not all Knee Huggers are for Christmas, and this guy eluded me for some time.  More, I didn’t want to pay eBay prices.  He is a more valuable pixie, and fairly coveted by knee hugger collectors.  This one is missing his collar, but he was $1 at the flea market.  I will upgrade him eventually, but I was just happy to find one in the wild.

Ridiculous Looking Hillbillies

For some reason there are a lot of hillbilly dolls that use pixie heads and/ or are knee huggers.  I could do an entire article on hillbilly knee huggers, I am not even kidding you.  These fellas are a bit more unusual since they have unique head sculpts.  They have a bit of a Mortimer Snerd vibe going for them.

Big Eye Knee Hugger

With the big eyed paintings and dolls of the 60’s also came some big eyed knee huggers.  While this one doesn’t have terribly sad huge eyes, the aesthetic is definitely there.  She has some literal flower power going on there.

Witch Candy Container Knee Hugger

This one, I think, is pretty special.  Halloween knee huggers tend to be a bit more desirable, and the Witch with the black body from my last article is pretty well known.  I had never seen one with a clear body until we found this one, though.  She has a zipper on the back, so I assume she is a candy container.

And finally, to bring it back to Christmas in my favorite pixies I have found in a long time I present to you…

The Three Wise Pixies

Yes, someone thought that these were the appropriate heads for the three wise men of the nativity.  Not only are they pixie heads, but they are the “Dopey” style heads often used on hillbilly knee huggers.  In a Kitschmas miracle I found these a few weeks ago, and I was way more excited than I should have been.  Now I have to wonder, though, if there is an entire pixie Nativity.  I can dream, can’t I?  These are in such poor taste!  Ultimate kitsch!

Are there even more ridiculous pixies out there for me to collect?  Absolutely.  Have a Merry Kitschmas from all of us at The Collector Gene!

The post For The Love Of Christmas Pixies: Part II appeared first on The Collector Gene.

Gumball Machine Monster Jigglers

So if you haven’t been clued in to the world of jigglers yet, let me bring you up to speed. Jigglers are toys made out of a springy and flexible rubber that literally jiggles when you move it. If you were a kid between the 60’s- the 80’s, you probably had at least one. Though they came into popularity in the 1960’s, you can still find toys made like this today. In fact, you can still find some of the same jiggler designs of 40+ years ago in stores if you look hard enough, but I will address that later. Russ Berrie is famous for making larger gift ware jigglers that were sold in novelty shops and gift shops in the 60’s and 70’s. Most of their jigglers are animal characters with plastic inset eyes. They are made out of an oily rubber that will stain anything it touches if you leave it long enough, but they still have a following today regardless. Ben Cooper also made some cool jigglers including Marvel and DC super heroes and Universal Monsters. Yes, this is the Ben Cooper that made cheap Halloween costumes, but they also did dime store toys in the form of rubber jigglers. The rubber used by Ben cooper is more like the rubber on the toys I am talking about today (less oily). With the success of jigglers in the 1960’s, cheap-toy companies decided to jump on the band wagon and create small jigglers that could fit into a capsule in a gumball machine. You could fold the flexible rubber into a capsule and it would spring back good as new when the toy was removed.  Many of them are in the form of bizarre monsters, and those are the jigglers I am discussing today.

Flat Monster Jigglers just like the ones I had as a kid!

Now I should make it clear that these jigglers weren’t only sold in gumball machines. Some were also sold bagged and carded, and you could probably buy them individually in your local dime store. I remember the ones that my mom gave out at Halloween came in a big bag filled with a couple dozen of them. They were cheap to produce and kids loved them. The ones above are like the ones I had as a kid. They are what I would call flat jigglers, and they were still producing them up through at least the 1980’s when I had them.

Finger Puppet Jigglers.  That sad red fella on the far right is totally a new Jiggler.

One of the most incredible aspects of these small jigglers is that some of these designs, or bootlegs of these designs, are still being produced today. They are often sold as party favors for kids birthday parties. That means that some of these toys have had a consistent run of production for at least 40 years. In many ways that puts them in a league with Barbie, Hotwheels, and G.I. Joe when it comes to longevity, but because they are small and innocuous we never see them that way. The finger puppet jigglers are still made today. Though the designs have changed a bit over time, the concept remains the same.

It can sometimes be very difficult to tell an older jiggler from a new one, but there are a few tricks to help you decipher age. One of the easiest ways to tell age is to look at the markings. This trick I am about to mention will help you date a lot of toys besides jigglers. If the jiggler is marked “Hong Kong” it was made 1985 or prior. If it is marked “China” it is made after 1985. Another way to tell is the rubber. This is hard for me to describe in a blog post, but there is a different feel to the older rubber. When you have a China jiggler and a Hong Kong jiggler to compare you will see what I mean. They feel different. Finally, not every design has been produced over and over for years. In general, the octopus jigglers or spider jigglers aren’t being produced today and probably haven’t been for decades. The frog looking ones are the same. The main two still being produced are the finger puppets and the flat jigglers.

Octopus/ Spider Monster Jigglers.  These are some of my favorites.  Look at those crazy designs!

Frog Monster Jigglers.  Two eyes would just be too normal.  It’s either one or five with these guys.  The frogs are also some of my favorites.  I mean, just look at them.

One of my favorite aspects of jigglers is you can see their progression through time as different companies rip each others designs and make slight alterations. They shrink and grow, and they gain limbs and they lose limbs.   They come in different rubbers and plastics, and they change color as they go. As I find jigglers digging through bins at flea markets I watch them evolve over time, and I feel like a biologist finding a new species when I find a slight variation on a design. Flea markets are the Galapagos Islands of jigglers! It makes them particularly fun to collect. I never find the exact same jiggler twice.

The same jiggler can take on many forms.  Clearly these are the same design, but the one on the right has a horn.  Based on the rubber, the one on the right is also probably the older one.

These two have very similar faces, but different legs.  Another one of my favorite aspects of these toys is their evolution over the decades they were created.

These two may be the closest yet, but if you look carefully you will see that they are two totally different sculpts.  One is most likely a shameless rip off of the other.  They weren’t even trying to make it something different!

That tiny guy on the left was probably created in the 80’s and is clearly based on the guy on the right.  That being said, they made a lot of changes in the leg department.  What a crazy evolution!

I also want to take time to point out how weird and awesome some of these designs are. They are brilliant! As an artist, I love every one of them as these incredible and interesting sci-fi monsters. This is because many of these designs are based on work by well known artists such as Wally Wood and Basil Wolverton that were done for a line of Topps trading cards (the jigglers are clearly bootlegs). Others are based on other toy line such as The Outer Space Men by Colorforms, and some designs were done in house at the cheap toy companies based on these designs. Of course, as bootlegs of work by popular artists, these toys have garnered quite a following.

Does Barry look familiar to you? His doppelganger is in the top left corner of the photo of the spider/ octopus jigglers.

My fried Ed is in the top row second from the right.  You can probably thank Wally Wood for these nightmares.

Remember those multi-eyed frog jigglers?  You can call them Steve!

Finally Iris shares a striking resemblance to the rat bug jiggler in the next photo down.  This is the least obvious of the bootlegs, but the idea is still present.

These Jigglers are more figural.  Two monkeys, a bootleg of a larger jiggler line called De Horribles, and a rat bug.  I like the rat bug (but really, I just like them all).

Thanks to having a bag of flat jigglers as a kid from a Halloween party, I became hooked on monster jigglers. Their wacky and wonderfully disturbing designs intrigue me and keep me searching the depths of dirty boxes at flea markets to rescue them from obscurity. It is a worthwhile pursuit as far as I am concerned.

Some teeny tiny jigglers.  I put a big one in the back for comparison.  These guys are less than half the size of their counterparts, and therefore are even harder to find!  They are less than an inch long!

Finally, some really cool jigglers that probably weren’t in gumball machines.  These are probably from a dime store based on their size.  Still, these are really great and were well worth sharing!

The post The Amazing Variety of Gumball Machine Monster Jigglers appeared first on The Collector Gene.

As an artist it is always my goal to own original art work from people I admire.  Of course, original art tends to get very expensive.  The two pieces I am showcasing today were relatively inexpensive, probably because they are unsigned, but their provenance is what I liked most.  They are a fascinating snippet of Disney history that a lot of people don’t know about, and kind of go against the family friendly, squeaky clean, Disney image.  This post is a little bit NSFW (Not Safe For Work since we don’t tend to post this kind of stuff on The Collector Gene).  You have been warned.  Don’t blame me if your boss catches you reading this nerdy article (Bet you never thought you would read Disney and NSFW in the same sentence!).

Disney animators worked long hours every day tirelessly animating those classic films of your childhood.  Sometimes those guys needed a break, and what did they do?  They drew pictures for fun.  It’s what working artists do.  They create art for someone else all day, and then in their time off they create art for themselves.  The Disney animators were known to draw caricatures of each other fairly regularly.  They would slip them under each other’s office doors to egg each other on, or comment on the events of a day.  These caricatures are highly sought after by Disney collectors, especially if they come from Disney’s Nine Old Men, his top group of animators from the 30’s- the 60’s.

I do not own one of these caricatures (though I happily would), but what I own is another fun tradition from the studios in the 40’s and 50’s.  Pinup drawings.  We all know the classic pinup girl paintings from the 40’s and 50’s.  Varga girls and Bette Page are well known today.  Well, the young men working at Disney Studios were just as fascinated by these paintings as any other red blooded heterosexual male of the time, but when they just drew them it happened to be with a Disney twist.

This one ain’t too naughty.  Well, on today’s standards it ain’t so bad.

Here’s the NSFW picture.  Again, not too bad on today’s standards but pretty racy for the time.

Okay okay.  Insert cartoon wolf howling and stomping his foot on the floor with his tongue hanging out.  Firstly, you might notice the holes in the edge of the paper.  These lovely ladies were drawn on perforated animation paper.  That’s the paper the guys at Disney had laying around.  These are beautiful quick sketches by a Disney artist who was happy enough with his work to add a little water color as well which makes them that much more beautiful and dynamic.  They have a ton of energy and life to them, where you can almost see their movement as they strike their permanent pose.  Clearly this artist was well versed in pinup imagery.

Unfortunately my Disney pinups are unsigned.  There is reference in the book “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (two of Disney’s Nine Old Men) that references artist Fred Moore drawing pinups in studio, but looking at his work I don’t think these are his.

I have seen a signed Ollie Johnston pinup on eBay once before, so we know more than one artist was drawing these pictures.  In fact the eyes on both of my drawings remind me of the eyes on the Centaurettes in Fantasia, which were animated by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, so it is possible one of them could have done these.  This is probably wishful thinking on my part, but I’ll tell myself it’s a possibility.  I can only attribute the works at this point, but it is fun to think an important animator could have worked on them.

I find these fictional portraits to be very beautiful and well executed.  Frankly, I see most pin up drawings and paintings that way.  I also love that they represent a seedier side to the Disney animator.  Yes, Disney animation is family friendly and made for “children of all ages”, but I don’t think the goal of the artists was ever to make things perfect and squeaky clean.  I think they were artists trying to create the best possible quality of work that was possible at the time they were working.  The family friendly nature of things was more for marketing to make the money to create such elaborate and beautiful animation.  I think just like most young men of their day, they enjoyed thinking about naked women as much as the next guy.  Remember, Playboy didn’t come out until the 50’s, and these drawing seem to predate dirty magazines.  What’s an artistic lad to do but to draw naked women for himself?  It was a simpler time.  No one associates Disney with gratuitous sex, which makes these pieces of Disney history all the more interesting to me.  They are proof that these guys were human and had normal human flaws and needs just like you and me.  I guess when you stare at pictures of cutesy animals all day, you gotta do something to bring yourself back to reality.

The post Disney Pin-ups. appeared first on The Collector Gene.

When most people start collecting little rubber and plastic figures, part of their reasoning for buying tiny toys often stems from the fact that these collections don’t take up a lot of space. You can fit hundreds of tiny figures in a shoe box if you want to, and they don’t take up a lot of shelf space if you choose to display them (and why wouldn’t you!). Beyond their ability to occupy very little space, most little figure toy lines have dozens if not hundreds of designs to collect, as well as tons of color variations. They also tend to come in all sorts of wacky and wonderful character designs, which make little rubber figure collecting very popular with both kids and adults.

One of the more popular little rubber figure lines from my childhood was Monster in my Pocket. They came out in 1990, and found success all over the world. The line consisted of a bunch of small, solid colored rubber monsters based on popular monsters from international folklore and popular culture. Everything from Frankenstein’s Monster to Baba Yaga are represented in the line. If you don’t remember Monster in my Pocket yourself or you want to know more, here is a quick pictorial crash course on the line.

A Sampling of Series 1 Monster in my Pockets.

A Sampling of Series 2 Monster in my Pockets

A Sampling of Super Scary Monster in my Pockets

U.K. Kellogg’s Sports Monsters in my Pocket

A Sampling of Monster in My Pocket Wrestlers

Now that you have met some of the Monster in my Pocket gang, I can get to the main focus of this article. Clearly I have spent a little bit of time collecting Monster in my Pocket. The photos above represent a small fraction of my collection. Monster in my Pocket were made by Matchbox and were sold in retail stores everywhere in the country. They were popular and cheap to produce, so they naturally found their way into promotional tie-ins with restaurants and food products. Most of the Monster in my Pocket figures that were produced for product tie-ins were Series 1 figures cast in different colors than the red, green, yellow, and purple seen above. Many were produced in Series 2 neon colors, with occasional oddities in slightly different shades of bright colors, or a dark forest green color.

Monsters in strange colors.  These Monster in my Pockets were packaged with food tie-ins and other Monster in My Pocket products other than the main figure lines.

Monster in my Pocket had an American cereal tie in with Nabisco Frosted Wheat Squares. They also had a promotion with Bob’s Big Boy.

The tie in that is really the point of this article is a promotion run with Spaghetti-O’s. Every kid loves Spaghetti-O’s, and what could be better than getting a free toy with your purchase? Of course they didn’t put a Monster in my Pocket in the actual can of Spaghetti-O’s. That would make a mess. You had to mail away to get them. Since kids are impatient, and Spaghetti-O’s needed to get you excited to have to wait to receive your toys, they had to find a big way to get kids attention. Behold the inflatable Spaghetti-O’s Monster that is the size of an actual child!

This inflatable display is based on a Series 2 monster design, Dryad. I wouldn’t call this figure the obvious character choice that kids could relate to, but it kind of looks like it could be made out of spaghetti when you color it red-orange like this, so I am going to go along with Spaghetti-O’s decision making process on this one.

When this 4ft tall pile of inflatable awesomeness found its way onto eBay several years ago I made it my mission to make him mine. In a collection that could otherwise fit in a shoe box, he is certainly a stand out. I have always liked store displays, and when I can find a display based on something I specifically collect it becomes a must own for my collection. I only wish that my local super market had had one of these guys on display when I was a kid. I am pretty sure a Monster in my Pocket taller than I was would have made my day. It sure made my day when I found one as an adult.

The post Spaghetti-O’s Monster in my Pocket Display: One Monster That Won’t Fit In Your Pocket… appeared first on The Collector Gene.

I love monsters.  I always have ever since I was a kid.  They are colorful, creative, weird, and interesting.  The great thing about growing up in the 80’s and 90’s is that there were all sorts of cool monster toys not only in toy stores, but floating all over the flea markets and yard sales just waiting to come home with me.  “Gross” and controversial monster toys found a market during my childhood in the form of Mad Balls, Weird Balls, Savage Mondo Blitzers, and all sorts of other smaller toy lines that caused a stir with concerned parents, but kids couldn’t get enough of.  I was lucky enough to have parents who didn’t see the problem with ugly and disgusting monster toys, so I had many of them.

When I walk down the toy aisle of my local departments stores I have to say that I find myself a little bit disappointed.  It is great to see some of the classic toy lines of my youth still thriving and exciting kids today, but there is hardly anything new and interesting happening in the mainstream toy world.  Small toy companies hardly exist as the giants buy up as many licenses as possible to cut out the little guy.  No one wants to take a chance on the next big idea when they can just re-market the same things year after year and make money at it.  I grew up in an era where everyone wanted to find the next big thing, and they would throw out any idea that sounded interesting to see if it stuck.  Then the small companies would make weird copycat toys to capitalize on those popular lines, and it was awesome.  Creativity was everywhere, and whatever you were into as a kid, there were plenty of toy lines capitalizing on your interests.

Recently some dealer friends of mine asked me to identify a toy line.  They are very knowledgeable on 80’s toys, so I was surprised that there might be something I knew about that they didn’t.  I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on the 80’s, but they knew I liked weird stuff so they thought I might have come across this toy line before.  I hadn’t.  I was just as stumped as they were.  We showed the toys to a few other very knowledgeable dealers in the room, and no one knew what they were.  This is a very rare occurrence as even a lot of the obscure and weird toy lines from the 1980’s are fairly well documented and researched among the collector community.  All I knew after seeing these bizarre plastic figures was that I wanted them for my collection. I needed to own these things.

The only information we had to work from was a toy company name and a date on the bottom of each figure.  They were marked “Creata 1986″.  If you haven’t heard of Creata, it is because they were a very small company that didn’t make much.  They capitalized on other successful toy companies by making knock offs to fool grandmothers and weird aunts who had no idea what the kids in their lives were really looking for.  Mostly what you will find if you do a Google search on Creata is a Gem doll knock off that they made.  Now, hopefully, since I am writing this article you will be able to find this incredibly weird toy line that they created called “Ugglies”.

Is this a full set of ” Ugglies”?  As far as I can tell, it is not. According to the card back for the Ugglies, there are twelve in the set. Since these are the first I am seeing, I cannot tell you for sure whether or not every single figure was made, but if they were it will most likely be a long a tedious task for me to try and hunt the rest of the set down. The carded examples I am showing below were sent to me by another fan of the toy line. The figure examples they show are all among the figures that I bought, so until I see examples of the other six in the set I can’t be completely sure. It is not uncommon for toy companies to show toys on the back of a blister card that were never made. If anyone has any of the other figures I would love to share them with the world, and if you ever want to part with them I know a good loving home you can send them to.

Here are some individual shots with names so you can get better acquainted with the Ugglies that I was able to obtain.

Ol’ Blue Eyes

Ol’ Blue Eyes is one of my favorites, though it is very hard to pick a favorite. I think with the overalls he is wearing that Creata might be trying to make Ol’ Blue Eyes out to be a child? What a weird and wacky toy!  Also, he has a bolt in the back of his head.  I just wanted to make sure you noticed that.

James Gag-Me

I think the name of this figure simply comes from the fact that the creators felt very clever for coming up with the name “James Gag-Me”. I love the eye in the back of his head. It kind of makes the figure for me. Also the fact that he has one giant foot.  These things are great!

Fly Speck

This figure is a little more basic and a little less gross than the first two, even though it is eating bugs and has worms for hair. You know a toy line is weird when one of the “less gross” figures is eating bugs and has worms for hair.

This is another one of my favorites. I go back and forth over which one is my favorite. Clearly I can’t choose. I am pretty sure Reject will haunt your nightmares. That poor cat.

Split Head

This one is most gross in concept, yet most simplistic in execution. For a second I thought all of these were supposed to be children, maybe knocking off of Garbage Pail Kids more specifically, but this one is wearing a business suit. Maybe I am over thinking the Ugglies a little bit…

Phoul Pharoah

You might be thinking I spelled “pharaoh” wrong in the name there. Well, Creata spelled it wrong on the package. Maybe they did that on purpose, but I doubt it. A mummy isn’t exactly a creative concept compared to the other figures in the line, but I think this guy has a great design.

Creata managed to reference all sorts of great gross-out and monster images in these weird toys.  They are a little bit Garbage Pail Kids, a little bit Mad Balls, a little bit Weirdos, and a little bit of a whole bunch of other interesting monster ideas from the 1980’s and the few decades prior.  I think these things are so cool and I am so lucky to have been able to obtain such a large group in one shot.  Now that I have met the Ugglies I am definitely obsessed with them. Now that you have met the Ugglies, you are probably at least a little bit obsessed with them, too.

The post Meet the Ugglies! appeared first on The Collector Gene.

Yes, that toy is constructed of a tiny baby doll shoved inside a larger doll leg. This little beauty was made by legitimate toy company Uneeda toys. Uneeda made dolls from 1917- 1991. They also made Wishniks, which were knock off Troll dolls, but were still very popular and are sought after today.

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall in the pitch meeting where someone pitched the idea for the Toe-Kin, which sounds like a clever name until you think about the fact that this doll is in a foot, or even more a lower leg, not a toe. Uneeda toys tried to disguise the fact that this toy is clearly made out of a left over baby doll leg by putting a pretty yellow ribbon around the mushroom plug at the top of it, but they aren’t fooling anyone. For those of you who might not be as familiar with toy construction techniques, mushroom plugs are often placed where two movable joints connect on a toy. If you have ever pulled the head off of one of your Barbie dolls or action figures, you will most likely find a mushroom plug where the neck connects to the body. It looks kind of like a mushroom most of the time, hence the name. In the case of this doll leg, it probably would have been sewn onto a soft doll torso and the indentation from the mushroom plug would be where they stitched it into place. Now, if you thought that the cute little doll sitting inside of the foot, which is about the size of a Kiddle doll, was removable you would be WRONG. That little lady is permanently fixed to that doll foot for better or worse.

There are so many questions I have about this ridiculous toy. Is the concept of this thing supposed to represent a little girl with a hideous deformity where instead of having a normal lower torso she just has one giant leg? Is she piloting a giant leg as her own mode of completely awesome transportation? Is she just chillin’ inside a giant leg just because she can? The poor execution and lack of a back story make it impossible for us to truly know. Do Toe-kins come in both right and left feet? Are there more Toe-kins in the series? Probably, but I haven’t found any more to prove whether or not that is true yet.

I know it might seem like I am hating on Toe-kins, but I can honestly tell you that I was truly excited when my brother found this for me at a toy show. Yes, Uneeda toys deserves to be scolded for trying to market such a lame concept to children. And I pity the poor kid whose grandma or weird aunt gave them one of these things for their birthday. At the same time, this toy is hilariously bad, and any object that can make me laugh or put a smile on my face is worth owning in my book. That is why I am sharing the Toe-kin with you, internet community. I hope it makes you laugh and puts a smile on your face, too. If so, the Toe-kin is doing its job.

The post One of the Worst Toys I Have Ever Seen: Toe-kins appeared first on The Collector Gene.

I purchased this skull a few years ago at a Pennsylvania flea market.  I walked into the market with $52 in my wallet, which doesn’t usually go a long way at an antique flea market.  So of course I found this piece in the first booth I went in, and it was priced at $50.  Needless to say, I was frustrated.  I really liked the skull, but buying it would wipe me out before I was even finished my first row of dealers.  We were also going to check a few more flea markets and shops later that day, which made it even tougher to fathom spending all of my money immediately, especially on an object I knew nothing about.

At first I left it on the table and walked away figuring I would probably go back to buy it after I made sure that there was nothing I wanted more at the flea market.  However, a few minutes later and about half way down the second row of the market, I realized that I didn’t want to risk it.  I really liked the skull, and I knew I would be upset if someone else bought it while I was walking around.  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it.  I cut back to the dealer’s booth again and bought it, and I have had no regrets about blowing all of my money in the first booth I went in at the flea market that day.  There was nothing else I wanted more, and in my opinion this piece would have been hard to top.  A lot of people like to collect what they know, but I find that the objects I tend to like best in my collection are the objects I didn’t know I needed until I saw them.  Some of the fun of collecting, to me, is finding an object you love, and then finding out you love it even more as you learn more about it.  The Le Macabre skull did that for me.

The Le Macabre skull is made out of plaster, with the name of its place of origin, Le Macabre, Meard Street SOHO, stamped into its forehead.  It is just about life-sized, though it is stylized and kind of elongated if you look at the skull from its side.  The back of the skull is flat and hollow, and the eye sockets are hollow as well.  It has a little metal hook imbedded in the plaster so you can hang it on the wall.  The skull is probably from the 1950’s, which is part of what made it appeal to me, and for some reason I like skulls, so it had double appeal.  The damage to his chin was there when I bought him, and even though I could totally restore it myself, I haven’t done it yet.  I don’t know why. Maybe sometimes I like to think that he received his battle scar in some really epic way and it is a part of his history.  He is a very intriguing advertising piece, and the more I learn about him, the more I love him hanging on my wall.

One of the biggest mysteries with the Le Macabre skull is this: How did it end up in the United States?  Le Macabre was a coffee and espresso bar in SOHO London.  This I knew when I bought the skull because it is stamped on his forehead, and I got an original postcard from Le Macabre with it.

I love this postcard.  The imagery is great, and it adds a sense of humor to the skull plaque.   I have it framed and hanging under the plaque on my wall.  None of this, however, explains why these two pieces crossed the pond and ended up in New Jersey, and the more I research Le Macabre, the more I still don’t understand how these two ended up here.

When I first went to research this piece on the internet back when I bought it, the only information I could find out at the time was that Le Macabre existed from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, and that it offered a place for London jazz musicians and rock musicians to perform.  There was also some reference to Orson Wells hanging out at Le Macabre, which I thought was pretty cool.  Le Macabre had coffin shaped tables and skeleton murals on the wall, but there was never any mention of skulls like mine hanging in the bar anywhere.  I was happy to know that Le Macabre played an integral part in the early history of jazz and rock n roll in England, but there were no pictures to help me understand what part my skull played in the bar.  Were there more than one?  Was it for decoration or a souvenir?  For several years I just assumed that I would never fully understand the skull plaque, but that was okay because I liked it, and I liked that it represented pre-British invasion rock and jazz in London.

It wasn’t until late last year that I decided to research my skull again, and a lot more information has surfaced on Le Macabre thanks to two British news reels, one from 1958 and one from 1959, that have since been posted to the internet.

The first newsreel I found in the internet was the 1958 newsreel called “It’s the Age of the Teenager”, and I couldn’t believe what I saw when I watched it.  If you go to the 00.32 minute mark right in the beginning of the film and look behind the bartender’s head, you will see a skull just like mine hanging on the wall!  Mystery solved!  Well, sort of.  If you keep watching through the rest of the “Le Macabre” section of the film, you will see several other skulls hanging up throughout the joint.  Some are used over light fixtures, and others are just hanging on the wall as decoration.  I still can’t believe that these films exist, and that through them I could finally learn in some capacity why my skull plaque exists.  The rest of the film is an interesting look at British teenagers in the 1950’s.  It doesn’t spend too much time in coffee bars outside of Le Macabre, but it is definitely worth watching and kind of funny by today’s standards.  Follow this link to the website for Pathe to watch the filmstrip.

The 1959 strip is in color and called “Look at Life: Coffee Bar”, and it shows Le Macabre at about the 07.01 minute mark.  If you look towards the ceiling in one of the early scenes, you might catch skulls like mine hanging up near the ceiling.  They are covering light fixtures that will make the eyes glow when they are lit.  The whole news reel is a rather interesting look into the rise of the coffee bar in London and its clientele and significance.  It is fascinating and worth watching if you want to learn more about the “coffee craze”.    Apparently there were dozens of coffee and espresso bars in SOHO in the 1950’s, but there were so many that it became difficult for them to thrive with all of the competition.  The “coffee craze” in London was certainly not a point in history on my radar before buying the Le Macabre skull, but this is why I love buying pieces of history that I know very little about until I get them home to research them.  You never know what you will find out.   Look at Life: Coffee Bar

Of course, there are still a lot of things I do not know about this skull and about Le Macabre.  I still don’t know if they sold these skulls as souvenirs or if my skull was salvaged when Le Macabre shut down in the 1970’s.  Are there many other skull plaques still in existence out there?  I have never seen another one, but then again, I am nowhere near London.  If anyone out there has any more information about this skull or Le Macabre itself, please share it on the comments section of this site.  I would love to know any information that I can get.

It is very rare to buy an object with very little information and to find out as much as I did from the Le Macabre skull plaque.  Most of the time you aren’t that lucky, and you are left to speculate as to the purpose of an object.  I certainly never could have dreamed that somewhere along the line someone, and in this case more than one person, would post video evidence of my find in its original context.  When we first started this website almost a year ago, I was planning on writing about the Le Macabre skull. However, because I knew very little about it, I was just planning to post a picture and what little bit I knew in hopes that somewhere along the line a person who knew more about it would comment on the site and I would have an answer.  Then the internet surprisingly answered a few of my questions for me.  It has been a fun ride so far figuring out the origins of Le Macabre and the little piece of it I hang on my wall and look at every day, but I have a feeling there is still a lot to learn.

Article Update:

Hey everyone!  This is the first time I have had the opportunity to update an article after gaining some valuable information on its subject matter from another passionate collector.  Hopefully this will be a trend!  Since posting my article about Le Macabre and my skull I was contacted by Del Fuller, another fan of Le Macabre who was actually fortunate enough to visit Le Macabre before it closed in the 70’s.  He and his friend Keith Ryan have supplied me with the following images of other Le Macabre memorabilia and were generous enough to let me share it with the internet.  Please enjoy!

This is a different post card made to promote Le Macabre.  Skeletons and naked ladies were kind of Le Macabre’s thing.

This is an original menu from Le Macabre.  They used the same image from my postcard on the cover.  It is kind of fascinating to see how they made changes to the menu by just crossing things off and adding other things in.

This is a smaller skull than mine measuring about 3″ by 2 1/4″.  We aren’t quite sure of its practical purpose, but it was used on the tables at Le Macabre and has “Saturday 17^th Jan 1959″ written in ink on the bottom.
We still aren’t sure as to whether they sold Le Macabre skulls or if patrons just swiped them, making Del, Keith, and I lucky enough to own what we have.  Either way, it is a fascinating place, and I am so grateful to learn from other collectors and fans about the objects I am passionate about.

The post The Le Macabre Skull appeared first on The Collector Gene.

One of the most popular Krampus collectibles is Krampus postcards.  Krampus became a very popular subject for holiday postcards in the mid-19^th century as postcards became a huge craze in Europe.  Even though Krampus’ job was mostly to punish and scare children, many postcards of Krampus exist that show him reacting more to the sins of adults.  The only card I have obtained (because Krampus postcards can get mighty expensive) is this one from about the 1960’s.  It is a great card with a sort of child Krampus sitting on a pretty girl’s lap.  Clearly, this Krampus is being seen as a more humorous figure than a scary one, and this card was made for adults to send to one another.  Another thing to note about Krampus is that, because he is an Austrian figure, almost everything you find with Krampus on it is in Austrian or German.  “Grub vom Krampus”  translates to “Greetings from Krampus”, and is found on almost every Krampus postcard you find.

This next Krampus piece I have is a paper cutout of the Christmas devil himself.  He is seen here with red skin, but the switches in his hand, the shackles, and the tongue let you know that this is Krampus, not an ordinary devil.  Paper cutouts were used for a variety of purposes in decorating, and there are several designs out there that are being reproduced today.  This piece is one of the more common Krampus pieces that I see, so it is a little bit more affordable for a new Krampus collector.  I found mine in a local shop, but they show up on eBay fairly regularly.

Little fuzzy animals made in Austria similar to this fellow were very popular in the 1960’s, so it isn’t too surprising that they produced a Krampus.  Again, this is a red Krampus, but you still know it is him because he has a little orange tongue sticking out, and switches in his right hand.  This might be the cutest Krampus ever made.  There is nothing imposing about this little guy at all.  He stands about 4 inches tall, which is fairly large for the little creatures made by the ARA company.  Clearly Krampus took on more of a comical role in the 20^th century, which is why some of these cuter and less ominous Krampus items can exist.

My mom found a few of these Krampus ornaments at a flea market.  The dealer she got them from said he bought them in the Czech Republic.  They are really cool, but pose a bit of a mystery.  This ornament is made in the Dresden style, but looks awfully clean and new for a vintage ornament.  I have always heard talk about people finding warehouses with vintage holiday stock and toys in them in Germany and Eastern Europe, but there are also a lot of reproduction holiday pieces that look a lot like the original pieces floating around on the market.  This can make you wonder if the “warehouse” stories are true, or if they are made to fool people into spending more money on reproductions.  Could this Krampus be a great, vintage piece?  Maybe.  Could he be a new piece done to look old?  Maybe.  The bottom line is, he is really cool looking, and I haven’t seen any others on the market to compare him to.   It is probably best to error on the side of caution and say that there is a good chance that he isn’t too old, but he looks great and we love putting him on the tree.  And if he is old warehouse stock, that is a bonus.   There is a whole discussion that could be created right now on vintage a reproduction Christmas decorations coming out of Europe right now, but right now I want to divert into a conversation about some of Santa’s other ominous sidekicks from Europe.

Before learning about Krampus I was in introduced to Knecht Ruprecht, a similar character from Germany, by one of my high school friend’s mom who happened to be a German teacher.  Knecht Ruprecht is a very similar character to Krampus in that he punishes bad children, but he has a beard and looks more like a creepy and mean Santa.  Another similar character is Belsnickle, who is also associated with Germany and the Pennsylvania Dutch.  I think this ornament most likely represents one of those two fellows. He is just another one of St. Nick’s friends doing all of the dirty work, while Santa rewards the good kids.  There are many other mean Christmas characters besides Krampus, but I think Krampus fascinates the public so much because he is so scary and disturbing.  I mean, I wouldn’t want a scary old man hitting me with switches, but I would take that over a devil licking my face and hitting me with switches.  This nice early Knecht Ruprecht/ Belsnickel ornament is a perfect segue into our favorite Krampus piece, a fairly early unassuming box with a fantastic surprise.

This little paper lithographed box holds a secret, and since you already know that we are talking about Krampus, I am sure you figured out that there is a Krampus in that box…

I am a little bit embarrassed to say that we did not know that this piece was most likely a Krampus when we bought it.  The dealer selling it made no mention of Krampus on his price tag, and we just took it for a really neat gag gift with a devil.  After several years of owning this piece, we learned about Krampus and started putting two and two together.  This devil head has black skin and a pronounced tongue, his box has Christmas colors on it, the sentiment of “Think of me” could mean that children should be thinking about Krampus to help remind them to behave at the holidays.  It really makes sense for this piece to represent Krampus.  The one thing that throws me off more than anything is that the box is in English.  Krampus didn’t infiltrate the pop culture of Americans much at all until probably within the last decade.  In Europe his reign of terror was seen only really in Austria, some of Germany, and a little bit of Eastern Europe, but not English speaking countries.  This piece isn’t marked, but is probably German, and the Germans imported a lot of decorations and toys to America.  I propose that this toy might have been produced as a Krampus piece in Europe, but that they sent it to America to represent more of a novelty.  It does work as such.  You don’t have to know who Krampus is to see the humor in handing a person a box with a sentimental message on it, and then laughing at their shock when a devil pops out.  Anyway, that is my thought on the matter.  It is a great Krampus piece, and by far the favorite in our collection.

I am all about festive cheer at the holidays, but I can’t help but be fascinated by Krampus.  Clearly I am, because I made a Krampus knee hugger this year…

…which is sold out on Etsy.com at the moment, but more will be available soon.  There is always something interesting about learning about strange traditions and characters, and that is why Krampus has become a part of our holiday decor.  He is just a scary little reminder to be extra nice at the holidays.

The post When Your Holidays Need a Little Less Cheer and a Little More Fear, Bring in the Krampus. appeared first on The Collector Gene.

In recent years, 1950’s-60’s Christmas pixies have had a huge resurgence thanks to a little book called “Elf on a Shelf”.  That’s right, for all of you hiding a red and white elf all over your house for your kids that don’t already know this, the design of that elf is based directly on the cute little Christmas knee hugger pixies of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  I have been collecting pixies since I was a kid, so I will admit that it can be frustrating at times when people see my collections and say “Oh, like Elf on a Shelf, right?”  No, not like Elf on a Shelf, because the vintage pixies I have been collecting predate “Elf on a Shelf” by forty to fifty years.  At the same time, it is nice to know that a new generation of kids will be growing up with an appreciation for kitschy Christmas elves just like I did.

My first Christmas pixie was given to me when I think I was about four or five (I can’t remember exactly when).  My father has two antique cars, and belonged to a local antique car club.  Every year the club would have a Christmas party and my whole family would attend.  Usually it was just an excuse for Ben and I to each get one Christmas present early, as every year there was a Pollyanna and my mom would put a gift for each of us in the pile of presents to make a party with no other children but us a little more bearable (my dad was among the younger members of the club, so he was the only one bringing young kids to the party).  One year the women of the club said that they were going to throw out the Christmas tree that they had been using for years and replace it with a new one, so any ornaments anyone wanted were up for grabs.  On the tree was one small pixie elf that my mom took for me, and that is what started my collection of 1950’s and 1960’s pixies.

This is Elfie.  Yes, I know, what a clever name for an elf, right?  I never was terribly clever when it came to naming my toys as a kid.  Elfie is what is known as a “knee hugger” pixie.  If you look at the picture you can probably figure out why, but if you can’t it is because his arms loop around his knees like he is hugging them.  To me a pixie is a toy or decoration with one of those sappy and cute little elf heads, and not all vintage pixies are knee huggers.  They come in all shapes and sizes, and I have found them with all sorts of different bodies and designs.  Some pixie collectors only go for the knee huggers, but I enjoy all 1950’s and 1960’s pixies in my collection.  Knee huggers and pixies also exist for other occasions besides Christmas, but we will get into that a little bit later.

This is Elfie’s cousin.  I never gave him a name beyond that, but he was the second pixie I got.  He is not a knee hugger.  He just has wires in his legs that make him poseable.  Most of the non-knee hugger pixies I have come across have wire bodies like this one, but some of them have plastic bodies, and others have no poseability at all.  For many years these were the only two pixies I had.  I wanted to give them a little bit of prominence in my Christmas display as a kid, so I took a small log cabin doll house I had and turned it into “Elfie’s House”.  I took miniatures and doll house furniture and tiny Christmas decorations and decorated it, and that is how Elfie is displayed each year.  Now there are a plethora of other pixies surrounding the house since I started collecting them more, but the only two elves inside are Elfie and his cousin.  It is a tradition.  Every time I bring it out it reminds me of being a kid and creating it in the first place.  That is my pixie tradition at Christmas, and now that that story is out of the way I want to talk about all of the other cool and interesting pixies I have come across over the past 20 years.

I put this group together to show the various shapes and sizes that pixies can come in.  Only the drum major pixie pictured is a knee hugger, and the rest are pixies with mostly wire bodies.  They range in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and there is even a cute little snowman pixie in the picture that I found at a flea market.  All of these qualify as pixies in my book, and all of them are equally kitschy!

Here are some weirder pixies.  Even though most pixies were made to hang on a tree, several of these are approached as more traditional ornaments than most.  They are lacking the plush doll bodies, and are lacking poseability.  There is also a pencil with a pixie head on top and pixie head on a wire that was most likely used for some other decorating purpose, though I am not sure exactly what.

Pixies come in all shapes and sizes including GIANT PIXIES!  I threw in a few more traditionally sized knee huggers for comparison, so these guys are pretty big.  They range from 14” – 18” in height.  The large pixies are tougher to come by, and when I see them they are usually not knee huggers, even though we have found one giant knee hugger (the guy on the right).  I think that these guys were more likely given to children as dolls rather than used as traditional decorations in their day.

In this grouping I have decided to show a few more unusual pixies.  The one with the closed eyes in the middle doesn’t have a terribly elf looking face, and reminds me more of Elmer Fudd.  He is not a design I come across too often.  With the little blonde guy next to him, the dealer I bought it from thought it was one of the Rice Krispies mascots, Snap, Crackle, and Pop.  I don’t think so, but it is a bit more unusual a face and I see where he was coming from.  The little red and white guy is an example of a pixie with a plastic doll body.  He is one of the smallest in my collection standing about 2” tall.

Obviously Christmas is the time of year for most pixies, but they do sneak into other uses throughout the year.  Why create new head sculpts for your holiday decoration company when you can reuse the same thing over and over again?  Pixies and knee huggers exist for almost every holiday, and were used for other souvenir doll purposes as well.  Some of these next guys are pretty strange.

None of the non-Christmas pixies are easy to find, but I have come across the Hillbilly knee huggers a few times in the wild.  I love the guy in the middle with the little plastic feet!  I am assuming that these were sold as souvenirs somewhere because I am not sure why else they would exist.

“Mexican Elfie” is one of my favorites.  Why you would put a poncho and sombrero on a pixie is beyond me, unless you are purposely trying to be ironic.  The other little guy is a sailor.  Again, I assume these were sold as souvenirs somewhere because I have no other explanation as to why they exist.  I can just picture Mexican pixies lining the shelves at South of the Border…

I mentioned earlier that they made pixies for almost every holiday.  Well, here are some that I have come across.  The Easter Bunny is a more unusual form, and the Halloween knee huggers like this witch are very popular.  Most of the other holiday knee huggers I find don’t have pixie heads, so the pilgrims are kind of interesting in that regard.  Collectors really go for the non-Christmas holiday pixies and knee huggers, and they are not easy to come by at all.

One great thing about pixies gaining popularity again thanks to “Elf on a Shelf” is that sometimes you get cool new ideas for pixies.  My mom and dad found this alien knee hugger on their cross country trip.  As far as I know, they didn’t make a vintage alien, so this is a really cool new idea.  Of course I prefer the vintage pixies for my own collection, but sometimes the new stuff can be really interesting as well.

Speaking of new pixies that are super cool (get ready for some very shameless self-promotion right now) I have produced my own Krampus pixie!  You know Krampus.  He’s the Austrian Christmas devil that punishes bad children while Santa rewards the good ones.  This little guy is made right in my studio in the heart of the Collector Gene archive (our house).  I do everything myself.  I sell them on Etsy.com and eBay, in case anyone out there is interested.  Now that I am done shamelessly plugging my business (which is called Plastictastic, by the way and you can like it on Facebook) I can get back to talking about Christmas pixies.

One of the best parts about collecting pixies is that, in general, they are pretty inexpensive.  They were popular in their day, and a lot of them show up at flea markets and yard sales.  Of course, the non-Christmas knee huggers and pixies are a bit tougher to come by and that adds some expense and challenge to collecting pixies, but I think it just makes it more fun.  Whether you buy them to hide around your house for the kids for a month, or buy them for the love of kitsch, it really doesn’t matter.  To me, they will always remind me of Christmas because of my silly little tradition, and it is nice to see other kids creating Christmas traditions with knee huggers and pixies today.

The post For the Love of Christmas Pixies! appeared first on The Collector Gene.

If you were in my predicament, I’m sure you would have loved to have had a jack o’lantern that required no carving on your part, and once you bought it, you could put out every year and it would look great. And for years, various department stores have given us that option. You have to settle for lame, generic designs, but they get the job done.

But one artist in the 1980s said, “I can do better” (probably…I’ve never read an interview in which he actually said that). His name was Todd Masters, and he created a set of “carved” “pumpkins” that could be displayed year after year that have never, ever been rivaled. Masters’ background was as a Hollywood make-up artist, and if you decide to check out his IMDB profile, you can see that he’s had a long and varied career, working on everything from A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child to Tales from the Crypt to even recent films like The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0557724/

In 1987, a company called Pumpkin Productions produced Masters’ creation, a line of foam, sculpted pumpkins called “The Oh Lantern Family.” It was impossible not to notice these in Hallmark and other gift shops when they were brand new. They all had very expressive, charming, and sometimes, frightening and disgusting faces. They were the most lifelike jack o’lanterns you had ever seen, and they even came with their own story!

“Tucked away in the far corner of the ol’ field was a unique family of pumpkins, unique in that they were able to survive the harvest year after year, going unnoticed by the farmers. They would watch on as their friends and neighbors would pack up and leaf. They had heard through the vine again and again about something called ‘Halloween’ and finally their curiosity got the best of them. They finally got tired of their patch, stemming their desire to leaf the field themselves and to discover Halloween.”

Jack Oh Lantern

James Oh Lantern

Jesabell Oh Lantern

Jesse Oh Lantern

Jock Oh Lantern

Jody Oh Lantern

Joey Oh Lantern

Johnny Oh Lantern

There were eight members of the Oh Lantern family initially: Jesse, Jody, Jesabell, Joey, Jack, James, Johnny, and Jock. Each one was roughly the size of an actual pumpkin. Each one had a tag that told you about when they were born and a little bit about their personality and how they were related to the rest of the family.

I was able to find a story written by Frank DeCaro (later of “The Daily Show” fame) in 1987 and published in The Chicago Tribune as they first achieved popularity. Apparently, they retailed for roughly $10 each, and even when churning out “20,000 members of the Oh Lantern family a day,” they still had a tough time meeting demand. Stores were selling out within days.

Jamie and Jason Oh Lantern

Jennifer Oh Lantern and Jack Oh Lantern Jr.

Jimmy and Judy Oh Lantern

Julie and Josh Oh Lantern

The popularity of the Oh Lantern family was so great that eight new additions to the family were later available. These were Baby Oh Lanterns: Jason, Jimmy, Josh, Jack Jr., Jamie, Julie, Jennifer, and Judy. These weren’t quite as grotesque as the “adults” of the line, but while a few of them were cute, many of them were making upset baby faces. It gave the feel of authenticity.

A few pieces of merchandise outside of the actual pumpkins were made for the Oh Lantern family. We have one example of a finger puppet/pencil topper and we also have one example of a wax candle.

The pamphlet that came with the babies advertises a newsletter, and I’d be curious to see if more than one issue was ever published.

As popular as the Oh Lantern family was in 1987 and probably 1988, they didn’t last. My guess is that sales were really great in September and October and rather stagnant the rest of the year. Like Homer Simpson learned, pumpkins do not make for a great year-round investment. The thing about this fad is that while the Oh Lantern family may have gone away from retail stores, Halloween NEVER goes away. It rears its ugly head each year, and it seems like it’s even more popular to go crazy decorating for the holiday now than it was even 25 years ago.

I am VERY fortunate that my parents purchased the entire Oh Lantern family when they were brand new. While the article mentions Hallmark stores, my parents said they bought the majority of their collection at Spencer Gifts (back when the store was awesome). I vividly remember them on display around the kitchen in our first house around Halloween. I was only four years old when these were first available, so I really don’t remember a Halloween without them. I was dressed up as a pirate that year. Yup, the Oh Lantern family and my pirate costume are about all that I can recall of Halloween 1987.

We moved to my parents’ current house in 1995. Even though my parents prefer their antique and truly vintage Halloween collection, these were deemed cool enough to keep and survived the move. They hadn’t been on display in several years until my sister and I decided to go through our old Halloween decorations and determine what should be preserved and what should be sold. That’s when we rediscovered the Oh Lantern family.

For a line of decorations that had such enormous sales, it’s amazing that they are as hard to find today as they are. They are made of foam rubber, so if not stored properly, these will definitely not last. We always displayed them indoors, so I think that helped. The market is pretty strong for anything related to the Oh Lantern family. Clearly, with sales as strong as they were, a lot of people who were alive in the 1980s must remember these, and it’s clear that many of them are nostalgic for these amazing decorations. It looks like if you have one in really nice shape with its original tag, you’re looking at between $75 and $125 if eBay prices are to be believed. Condition is everything though. A missing stem or deteriorated foam basically kills all of the value.

That is for the regular series. I can tell you that the babies are ABSURDLY hard to find, and in fact, I believe our website is the first to publish a picture of the complete set of eight.

While my family definitely treasures the vintage and antique Halloween collection my parents have put together over the years, the Oh Lantern family is one piece of nostalgia from my childhood that I am always happy to see reappear this time of year.

PLEASE NOTE: Since we’re trying to put together a definitive guide to The Oh Lantern Family, any information you have on the line that is not detailed here would be greatly appreciated!

A Note from Amy:

I could have sworn that somewhere we had pictures of Ben and I as little kids posing with the Oh Lanterns.  Well, if we do I couldn’t find them… but I did find some 1987 and 1988 photos in our personal collection of our Oh Lanterns!

Remember Ben saying that all he remembered about the Halloween of 1987 was being a pirate and Oh Lanterns?  Well, here is little Ben as a pirate at his nursery school Halloween party.  In the background on the table next to an awesome Godzilla figure is Jock Oh Lantern!

It might be a bit hard to see, but the pumpkin kid in the middle there is holding Jock Oh Lantern (by the stem I might add.  Oh the humanity!)  I think my mom must have decided to use him for a party game with the kids.  After this abuse it is amazing that he is still in great shape today.

Like Ben, I always remember the Oh Lanterns being on display in the kitchen, but in 1988 they were in the dining room.

My mom liked the Oh Lanterns so much that she took them out to the back yard and photographed them in 1988.  Here is one picture.  By now I am pretty sure my family looks Oh Lantern obsessed, but I don’t care.  There are a lot of happy childhood memories from these things, and they are just so cool looking!

The post Meet the Oh Lantern Family! appeared first on The Collector Gene.