World of Mr Toast Comic

Starting this week I am cutting down on my comic postings on the Imaginary World. I was doing A Slice or Mr Toast, the Imaginary World and GAGS each once a week. From now on I will continue to do GAGS every Friday and just one World of Mr Toast comic on Monday. I have just been getting busy with so many other Mr Toast projects and I want the quality of the strips to remain at the same level.

Cereal Concept Art

I was digging around in some boxes this weekend and ran accross this art. The first 3 piece were for Kellogg's cereals. The owl character was never used but Kellogg's used the same sort of idea with Newton the Owl on Cocoa Hoots in the 1970's. The final 3 pieces are from Post cereal and show some of the artists thinking about names and animals for a numbers cereal similiar to Alpha-bits. It is very cool to see the artist thinking about all the possibilities.

Sunset

Under the Sea

The Final Clown Posting

Tony the Tiger

Dubble Bubble ads

Pablo

Spotlight on Goopymart

I don't know what Goopymart is but I want to go there and shop. Pure visual goodness. Open 28 hours a day.

GOOPYMART SITE

GOOPYMART on Flickr

Happy Bark Day

Matchbox Car Cereal Offers

From 1968 to 1970, Quaker cereal teamed up with Matchbox to offer mailaway diecast cars. In 1968, you could choose between 6 vehicles including a Ford Mustang and Greyhound Coach. The 1969 you had 6 new choices including Ford GT Racer and a Merc Police car. By 1970, each different Quaker cereal had a different vehicle you could order including the King Size Pipe Truck on Cruchberries. By 1972, Matchbox was out and Marx was in with an offer for their Elecrtic Lightrucks.

Clem Lemon

Lemonhead's goofy cousin. What hijinks will occur when he comes to stay for the weekend?

1962 Playground Catalog

Nice old catalog of playground equipment.

Most Horrible Clown

CLOWNS

MORE CLOWNS

Uglyart

As part of a secret project, Uglydoll artist David Horvath is trading Star Wars figures for original artwork. I sent in some of the figures and got a bunch of cool art. The details of the project are on the Kidrobot discussion board.

Cover Band

Happy Earth Day!

Vernon Grant Fairy Tales

Vernon Grant was one of the great American illustrators of the 20th century. I think because most of his work dealt with Mother Goose fairy tales, he is not as well remembered as others of his time. For me his work is timeless and exceptional.

During the 1930's, he had a relationship with Kellogg's that involved his creation of premiums and artwork for the backs of cereal boxes. During this time he also created Snap, Crackle and Pop. Most of his work for Kellogg's involved fairy tales but he also did an amazing series of box backs that covered important American landmarks. This art in particular shows what a singular talent he was.

Funny Face Fun Club

I loved Funny Face as a kid. I saved packs and sent away for mugs and iron ons some of which I saved until I was an adult. Mailing away for stuff as a kid was both fun and frustrating but I am sure any kid that got the Funny Face Fun Club kit in 1970 was more then happy with the wait. I never had this kit as a kid so for the last 12 years I have been trying to piece together a complete one. I just finished by getting the mailer from a good friend of mine, Jim Rash. I have to say it was worth the wait.

Ooof!

Artist Spotlight

I just love Flickr because of the wonderful artwork you can run across there. My latest favorite is the art of Suda Chen or "sudabox" on Flickr. She is in Shanghai, China and is doing a series of daily watercolors that are quite beautiful and amazing.

Watercolors of Suda Chen

Quik Spook Group

In 1975, Nestle Quik did one of the coolest monster promotions of all time, the Spook Group. Single serving packs of Quik had a series of monters on their backs and the box they came in touted collect all 32. Different monsters appeared on the backs of Strawberry and Chocolate Quik (except Countess Vampira who appeared on both flavors). In my years of collecting I have found 26 of the strawberry monsters and 24 of the chocolate. The box they came in featured a very cool haunted house on the back. Be prepared for monster overload!

Planet Q magazine #4

For those of you into Cereal and Rocke and Roll the new issue of Planet Q is just for you. Full color cover with 38 b/w pages tracing the history of Rock and Roll on cereal boxes. Covered are the Banana Splits, Monkees, Beatles, Archies, etc. To order contact Robb at toygalaxy@juno.com

Mr Toast Art Store

I just added a new Mr Toast Store on Etsy where I am going to be selling some of my artwork. Right now it is just acrylic paintings but I am going to add some drawings in a few weeks and maybe some watercolors. Feel free to check it out.

MR TOAST STORE

Thinking of Easter

Happy Easter

Casper in 1970

In 1970, Harvey Comics went to town with licensing Casper to food manufacturers. There were cookies, candy, drinks and cereal. It was kind of a burst on the scene but it quickly faded. I don't think most of the products lasted more then a year or two. But the products looked good and for collectors they are hard to find and highly coveted.

Last Chance

Saturday, April 15th, is the closing day for the show I am in "From the Island of Misfit Toys" at the Ben Maltz Gallery. It will be sad to see it come down because I have gotten a lot of positive exposure from the show.

In related news, Juxtapoz magazine is doing a layout on the show but it looks like no photos of Mr Toast are in the article. Kind of a bummer but I got great coverage in the LA Times so I guess all things even out.

Also it looks like I am going to do an appearance at Metropolis Comics in Bellflower on May 6 from 12-3PM for free comics day. I will be giving stuff away and doing drawings. Stop by if you are in the area.

Drummers

Shaky Bacon and Joe the Egg are keeping the beat.

The Library Kid

Plus a few other new paintings.

Fun Graphics

Mad Libs and Impko postcard stickers. Fun from the 1970's and 1960's when graphics were bold and not overworked.

5 Miles to the Imaginary World

Before I did "Mr Toast at the Circus", I did this group of drawings for "Mr Toast at the Imaginary World". It would have been Mr Toast visiting the Imaginary World Amusement Park. He would go on rides and meet the colorful characters that worked there. These drawings were real loose and really an attempt to try to understand what my whole project meant. As it turned out, I changed my mind and did the circus book and put these drawings away. One of these days I will have to try to clean these concepts up and do them in pen and ink. One of these days....

In other news, this is the last week for the show I am in "From the Island of Misfit Toys" at the Ben Maltz Gallery. Check it out if you have the chance.

Nuts

Let's Go To Disneyland

Once again I have to commend Patrick for his blog Stuff from the Park for his continued posting of some of the greatest photos of Disneyland from the past. The current photos he is sharing with us are a series of slides taken in the morning before the park opened often showing attractions and signs without any obstructions or distractions. Great stuff.

STUFF FROM THE PARK

Mr Toast Coast to Coast

Mr Toast dolls are getting out there in the world. Anne B. has taken her Mr Toast to see the Cyclone at Coney Island. She has a ton more photos of him at her Flickr site.

Luna is introduced to Mr Toast on Magpie-Moon's Flickr page.

Mr Toast likes Mousse on Tofutti Break's Flickr page.

Lastly we have Madame Gonzaga's photo from the Mr Toast photo contest. Thanks to everyone for their Mr Toast fun.

New Painting

I am not sure what it means - Drunken Carrot with a Calla Lily. Perhaps I am moving into my romantic period.....

Flea Market Finds

Cans Cans Cans

Actually can labels form the 50's and 60's.

A little more Pud

Since Pud seems to be so popular, I dug out this nice old display box from the 1950's. Also a great uncut sheet of comics for the 1960's with Pud, Bubly Bill and others.

Beech-Nut Cereal boxes

I just love this group of Beech-Nut baby cereal boxes. The incredible graphics look like they were done by Richard Scarry. Classic packaging at its best.

No Love

The Long History of Mr Toast

Well in the interest of clarity I have dug through my archives to try to piece together the history of Mr Toast. I don't have a great memory but luckily I have saved a few notebooks, slides and drawings which have awakend a few brain cells to help me put this together. It all started with a photo clipped from the newspaper of a guy dressed in a bread suit. This inspired me for some reason and in a notebook I drew myself in bread costume doing a "Bread Song". This never came to pass but not long after a freind, Greg Kay, wanted to do a 16mm movie and I came up with the idea of Mr Toast, a lonely character who spends all his time writing letters which all get returned because he did not properly use the Zip code when addressing them. I constructed a foam suit and we shot the film in 1988 just for fun. I don't think we ever showed it anywhere and it is now lost to the ages.

Mr Toast's next appearance came in 1989 when I was in a show at the Irvine Fine arts Center. I created a series of dioramas which told the story of a mailbox trying to find its way home. During this journey it runs into Mr Toast who lives in a haunted house. I am not quite sure why he lived in a haunted house but there you go. Mr Toast was made out of a piece of wood with sculpy arms and legs. He was very primitive in appearance.

For the next 10 years, I spent most of my time working and following my interests in collecting. Then in 1999, I chose to start working on my art again. My idea was to create my own amusement park called The Imaginary World. As it went along I realized that I had to have characters to inhabit the park and Mr Toast made his comeback in this drawing from my sketchbook in 2000.

Well things really got rolling with Imaginary World and I wanted to start making silk screened t-shirts and Mr Toast was to be the first. The initial design was trimmed down in the final design. Most of these shirts were given away to friends and family. Since this first shirt I have done about 20 more designs.

This drawing was for a costume that would have be worn around at the actual Imaginary World park. Over the years I have made 3 Mr Toast costumes, the first for the film in 1988, one in 2004 for my appearance on Big which turned out to be too heavy for continued use and a brand new one in 2006 made of foam and cardboard for the Ben Maltz show.

This drawing was the first to really establish Mr Toast as the central character in my artwork. It is ink and watercolor and was done in June 2002. My line work is pretty shaky but it really shows who Mr Toast is going to be.

As the drawings went along, I found that a caption really added to the story that was being told. A perfect caption was usually about 3-4 words and added a bit of information that might not be apparent in the drawing.

By 2003, i was workign on series of drawings and paintings that were inked thematically. The Mr Toast circus drawings all cast Mr Toast in different jobs at the circus. I featured the drawing on the site in a page thorugh format. This led me to the idea of doing the Mr Toast at the Circus book.

I started the "Slice of Mr Toast" com cin February of 2004 and it would really helped me to develop the character of Mr Toast. As the comic went along I learned how the characters interacted and what the stories were that I wanted to tell. So after about 18 years I am finally getting to know who Mr Toast really is.

More Clowns

Flea Market Finds

This nice bag of Kingsford Heart-O-Hickery Smoke Chips showed up at the flea market today. It had been sitting in an old barn since the 1950's. This would look cool next to my fireplace, if I had one.

Happy April 1st

Super Fan Mac

Here is a pic of one of Mr Toast's first big fans. Mac lives in Fullerton and cretes his own Mr Toast art. Thanks for sharing!