On the Web

A few things relating to Mr Toast and the Misfit Toys show have turned up on the web.

First off a nice write up and big group of photos on Vinyl Pulse about the Misfit Toys show. Vinyl Pulse covers the world of collector and designer toys.

Vinyl Pulse article
MacKat on Flickr has a set of behind the scenes photos of the Misfit Toys opening including some great ones of the desert foods that were served (and which I never got any of).
MacKat's Flickr Photos
Erica at Tarte cosmetics featured Mr Toast in her Musings column.

Lastly our good friends at Old Man Musings gave us yet another kind mention.

Mr Toast Contest

Already two of the Mr Toast contest winners have checked in with some great candid shots of Mr Toast. First in was David Hall of Plan59.com. David runs a cool site that rescues classic advertising images and makes them available as high quality art prints. Mr Toast is making himself at home with David and learning a little about scanning and computing. He set up a page of those adventures.

In the case of Tom Gill, Mr Toast has moved in with his family and even goes with Tom to work at the Library. Tom has set up a photo blog to share those photos with more to come. Tom also has a personal blog where he is sharing some of his personal slides from the past including some great ones from Tiki Gardens and Six Gun Territtory.

It is so cool that Mr Toast has been welcomed into these great environments.

New York Comic Con 2006

The con was a complete success. I took the red eye Thursday night to arrive in NY Friday morning. A nice insane drive through rush hour traffic got me to the show about 10 AM leaving me 2 hours to set up. I had my own 10x10" booth so I hung shirts and signs on the back curtain and covered one table with comics, dolls, books, etc.

The show opened to the trade at noon and the public got in at 4 PM. By about 2 PM it had gotten busy and it never let up for the rest of the weekend. My friend Brian had come down from Pennsylvania on Friday to help out but I was on my own the other 2 days. From what I heard the show was so crowded on Saturday that they had to stop selling tickets and letting people in. A collector friend of mine Jim Rash tried to get in on Saturday but was turned away.

I met a ton of great people including Rebekah (see photo below) who is Mr Toast's new #1 fan. I got to talk to cool people from Del Rey Books, Nick Jr Magazine, IFC, Mirage Publishing, Capt Blue Hen Comics, CultureCatch, MOCCA, Harper Collins, American Greetings and so many others I am forgetting. Thanks to everyone that came.

This is the first show I have done with the Mr Toast dolls and they went over big. I sold over 100 dolls including every last small doll (even a few that has small fabric imperfections). A couple people told me that the dolls were the hit of the show. One person came by the booth on Sunday and said that they had seen someone on the subway with one and had to come get one for themselves! It is a small, strange and generally amazing world.

Happy to be Home

Well I am back from NYC. Got in at midnight and finally went to bed at 1:30 and had to get up at 6 AM to do today's comic.
The show was a complete success. I will write a show report and post some pics later on today. Thanks to everyone that come by my booth.

off to NYC

Well I am leaving for NYC to do the NY Comic Con so I will probably not be updating the blog until monday. If you come to the show make sure and say hi - I am in booth #472.

NY Comic Con

Battery Family

The insanity continues

Sunset Strip at Misfits opening

SunsetStrip.com was at the Island of Misfit Toys opening and they made a cool video of the goings on. I don't do any talking but our esteemed curator Meg Linton does. You can view it on their site -

Sunset Strip

Hunny Munch

While Nabisco had the license for Winnie the Pooh cereal in the US, Quaker Oats had it in Canada. They released Hunny Munch around 1966 and this great promo folder did a great job of showcasing it. The folder has a cool diecut of Pooh and when you first open it he pulls a box of cereal out of honey pot. Inside are all the facts needed to convince grocers to stock the cereal. I am still looking for the point of sale posters and shelf talkers.

Vintage Disneyland

Here is a roundup of some nice old Disneyland shots. All taken from slides. For more vintage shots visit Patrick's great blog -

STUFF FROM THE PARK

and my Flickr group devoted to old Disneyland

VINTAGE DISNEYLAND

and my photo tour of Disneyland at

The Imaginary World

Lil Pranksters comic

I don't condone this kind of activity.

Swift's Meats Space Premiums

In the 1950's Swift's Meats offered a great series of premiums all related to outerspace. They made trading cards, space maps and space travel guides. They also constructed a Rocketship that traveled the country on the back of a semi.

Household Funnies

I am not sure what this means but it just kind of came out. It is sort of an homage to all the Hot Stuff and Little Dot Harvey comics.

1950's Mickey Mouse candy boxes

This set of candy boxes seems to be never ending. We have been buying them for about 10 years and have 16 different. I think they might have issued them a couple times with varying characters since there are 2 different boxes with Captain Hook. So who knows if we will ever finish the whole set.

Mr Toast Photo contest

Thanks to everyone that participated! We had entries from as far away as China, Canada and Alaska. I loved everyone's effort and can't wait to see what they do with their Mr Toast dolls. Photos by the contestants coming as soon as they get their dolls and start shooting.

Flea Market Finds

It all begins at the PCC flea market, we were digging through some paper and found a small pile of old drawings. They were very Nutty Mad & Underground comix inspired. Looking more carefully I notice a couple are signed "Jim Woodring 1967". I end up buying them and a few other things the person has.

When I got home, I fired up the computer, did a little research and sent off an email to famed comic artist Jim Woodring telling him about the drawings I found. Within a few hours Jim and I are communicating via email and he confirmed that the drawings were done by him in junior high school. He figures he had given them away at that time and now amazingly they have resurfaced. Generously he offers to trade me a brand new page of his artwork for these unusual curios from his past. I happily agree and the trade is done.

The piece I got from him is quite amazing. It is page 11 of his new book "The Lute String" and features Frank, Pupshaw and Pushpaw. Quite a nice deal.

Newspaper Article

The Argonaut newspaper in Venice ran an article about the "From the Isalnd of Misfit Toys" show - I got a nice little mention at the end of the article.

ARGONAUT ARTICLE

Mr Toast in NYC

I will be at the NY Comic Con on Feb 24-26. I will be in booth #472 with comics, dolls and other fun Mr Toast stuff. If you want me to bring anything special send me an email otherwise hopefully I will see some of you at the show.

More show info - NY COMIC CON

Tastee Freez Fun Books

I go this pair of FUn and Games books in the mail today. There must have been a big find of Tastee Freez stuff somewhere because there is a lot of it on ebay right now.

Love

Happy Valentines Day

Here are a few vintage Valentines. Hope everyone has a great day.

Walking Animation Test

If you want to see the first test of Mr Toast animation click HERE

This animation was done by Charles Barnard and boy did he do a great job. More to come.....

From the Island of Misfit Toys

Well it is the morning after and I have survived. I worked on the show for about 3 months and created 26 new pieces just for the show (and about 6 more that didn't make the cut). I want to thanks Meg, Kathy, Jinger and the rest of the staff at the Ben Maltz Gallery for their help and support in getting this project done. The whole show is great and it is well worth the time to visit and see it all. As usual click on the photos to see larger images. Now on to the photos....

Show Opening

Against my general policy, I am posting this one picture of myself at the show. They did little interviews with each of the artists and I rambled on aimlessly for a few minutes. Otherwise the show was a great success, with tons of people coming through and saying hi. We also had a table set up with merchandise and a lot of little Mr Toast dolls were sold to young and old alike. Tomorrow I will post photos of all the stuff in the show so if you plan on going and being surprised don't look. And thanks to everyone that came by.

Opening Tonight

Well the big show opens tonight. I have 37 pieces in my little section so there is a lot to see. Opening is from 7-10 PM for more info go HERE. It should be fun....

Freedomland

A quick visit to the short lived theme park Freedomland USA in July of 1960. The park was in New York and was open from 1960 to 1964. More Freedomland info can be found HERE.

Hot-Chu Bubble Gum card

Hi Monkey

One of the most fun sites on the web is Hi Monkey. It follows the life and adventures of a small terry cloth monkey aptly named Monkey! Fun things Monkey does include a trip to the Chicago Art Institute, Valentine's Day recipes and even a visit with Tibetan Monks. Mr Toast is a fan and friend and so check it out

Hi Monkey

1962 Hanna Barbera ads

Since I just did some 70's Hanna Barbera, I thought I could follow it up with this group of newspaper ads from the Arizona Journal in May 1962.

Decision

Hanna Barbera - The Late 70's

I am not here to judge the output of the Hanna Barbera Studios in the late 1970's but these syndication sheets give a nice overview of their productions. Laff-A-Lympics, Blast Off Buzzard, Robonic Stooges are just a few of the classics that still need to be released on DVD. Still we wait.....(actually it would be cool to see the Skatebirds again).

Show Install

Today was install day one for the group show I am in at the Ben Maltz Gallery. It was one packed car load of stuff but everything made the trip safe and sound. I got about 90% done but the other 10% of the art still needs to be finished so I will be finishing up the art tomorrow but right now I am going to take a long nap.

Flea Market Finds

This Sunday was the local PCC flea market and it turned out to be a good one. Right when we got there around 6am with it still dark out I bought 4 small vintage frames. I didn't really look to see what was in them since I am always looking for cool old frames. As we walked away I realized that there were Mary Blair Hallmark greeting cards in the frames. I was quite pleased with myself. Awhile later we walked up on a booth where everything was $1 each. I looked down and on the ground, under someone's foot, was a Meadow Gold Dairy 1958 Calendar with the classic Mary Blair little girl on it. I picked it up and paid the dollar and moved along. Two nice finds for my collection.

Drink Aid

Some of the coolest kid's food items of all time are Zany Zoo Drink-Aid packages. I am sure these came after the introduction of Funny Face to try for a piece of the drink mix market. Flavors included Turtle Tangerine, Cheetah Cherry, Cougar Punch, Lion Lime, Ape Grape and Rhino Raspberry. Super cool circus animals in cages graphics.

Giant Character Drawing

Well it is not actually giant, it is only 24x29" but it is pretty big compared to most of my watercolors. It is meant as an introduction to the characters for my show. Installation starts next week and I am trying to finish up 3-4 things and I am just starting one! Since the show opens on Friday, this should prove to be a busy next seven days.

Fire

Cereal Box Spotlight

I don't have alot of Japanese cereal boxes and those that have seem to shown up were all Kellogg's. Well this is the odd man out and it is even more amazing because it is from 1969. CIscorn cereal looks to be a frosted flakes rip off but to spice things up they have 2 animal characters, a bear and a toucan. Then on the back is an illustration of a faux Beatles rock band. The box is an unused flat and had gotten sent back from Japan by a guy who worked at a factory that printed cereal boxes. Then it sat in a filing cabinet until the 90's when I got it. It is sometimes a very odd path that an item takes to get into a collector's hands.