Little Golden Book Monday #50

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's The Rescuers Down Under. The book came out in 1980, the same year as this, the 29th animated Disney feature film was released to theaters.
I remember seeing this movie when it first came out, and I remember that I really liked it. I still do. So, it would seem that my taste in Disney animated films does not follow the norm. Some of my favorite Disney films include Atlantis The Lost Empire, Home on the Range and The Rescuers Down Under, all of which seem to be considered lesser films by most Disney fans.
But, come on, this one is just simply a fun movie, and it has some great voices, including; Bob Newhart as Bernard, Eva Gabor as Miss Bianca, and John Candy and Wilbur. What's not to like.

Here are some fun facts I found about the film on the IMDB.com web site:

* Disney's first animated sequel.

* This was the first 100% digital feature film ever made. The animation and backgrounds were done traditionally but all of the coloring, many effects and the final film printing was all done digitally. This was the first film produced with Disney's Academy Award Winning "CAPS" production system.

* The first Disney animated feature to use fully-rendered CG backgrounds (for the aerial shots of the UN building and the Sydney Opera House, and the globe for the relay sequence).

* Adam Ryen, the boy who voiced Cody also dubbed the same character in his native Norway.

* A third Rescuers movie was planned for 1996, but after the death of Eva Gabor, this and all future Rescuers movies were scrapped.

* The failure of this feature discouraged Disney from releasing later sequels theatrically.

* Originally meant as a straight-to-video production.

Little Golden Book Monday #49

In honor of Easter, today I present Fozzie's Fabulous Easter Parade from 1998. The story sees the Muppet game getting reading for the annual Most Beautiful Easter Egg Contest. Unfortunately, Fozzie's egg was nowhere to be found. Sounds like a pretty exciting story already, huh!? Turns out Camilla Chicken was sitting on Fozzie's egg, and it ends up hatching into a cute little chicken. Without an egg to enter in the contest, Fozzies decides to change the name of the contest to "Most Beautiful Easter Egg or Easter Chick Contest", and this year, the winner is Camilla and her very own egg-stremely egg-stra-special Eater parade of chicks.
O-yeah... and there are Easter eggs on the cover! Happy Easter.

Update to Yesterdays Post

After my post the other night, I was really keen check out a package of Corn Nuts. I am sure I have had them before in the past, but not in many, many years. So, last night on my way to see Ace Frehley in concert, we stopped at a 7-11 and I picked up a package of "original" Corn Nuts. After one bag, I was hooked.
On the way home from the show, we stopped at 7-11 again, and I picked up two more packages, which have both now been consumed. I tried to get my friends to try them on the way home, but both said that just the smell of them was enough for them. To me, the smell was quite intoxicating. To them, it was quite awful. At least I tried.
I finished the last package of Corn Nuts this morning while watching Woody Woodpecker cartoons with my 3 year old son Kaden. He gobbled them down as quickly as I would give them to him, so it looks like both of us are now hooked.
I also spent some time on the CornNuts.com web site, where I they have a great collection of their print ads. Click here to check out all 7 of the Corn Gone Wrong ads, along with a few others.

More Corn Gone Wrong

I bought a pile of used comic books today, and while flipping though them, I found a few more Corn Nuts ads from 2000. Back in March of last year, I posted a Corn Nuts ad, with the slogan "Corn Gone Wrong". Turns out, there was more than one ad with this campaign slogan.
Tonight, I present two more of the very funny Corn Gone Wrong ads.
The first is "Biker Corn" which is from Action Comics, issue #779.
The second one, "Fiery Corn" is from the back page of Superman, issue #168.
If you would like to check out the first one I posted, check out this link.
Now that I have found these two new Corn Nuts ads, I will be on the lookout for more whenever I am flipping though any comics from 2000. And I still stand by my thought that these Corn Gone Wrong characters would make for a great animated cartoon on Adult Swim!

Little Golden Book Monday #48

Today's Little Golden book is Colors Are Nice. The date inside is 1962, but because there is a UPC code on the back cover, I am going to guess that this copy was printed after that, seeing as I found this bit of info on UPC codes on Wikipedia.com
"The first item ever scanned in a retail establishment (Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio) was at 8:01 a.m. on June 26, 1974, and was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. The entire shopping cart also had barcoded items in it, but the gum was merely the first one picked up by the cashier. This item is currently on display on the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.."

Little Golden Book Monday #47

I have been on a real Peanuts kick lately. It started back around Halloween, when my son and I sat and watched "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" together for the first time. I have always loved the show, and it was great introducing my song to a cartoon classic from my childhood. And it was great when he started laughing when Charlie Brown said, "I got a rock". We liked the show so much that we downloaded the audio version of the show and added it to my iTunes collection so we can listen to it over and over. And just recently I purchased the "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" Making of a television classic book, which we have already read a couple of times. I have also been borrowing the Charlie Brown DVD's from our local library for the two of us to watch, and I have been borrowing the Fantagraphics cartoon strip books for those times when I have a few minuets to kill.
So, to go along with my current Shultz mania, I present the 1988 "Where's Woodstock?" book, not to be confused with "Where's Waldo".
In this story, Woodstock makes the Great migration and flies South for the winter. After saying he was going to fly South, we see Woodstock and his pals with backpacks, hiking off into the distance. Apparently the trip is much to far to fly for these little yellow birds. After sending Snoopy some postcards from his travels, Woodstock returns to his pal Snoopy. Snoopy is so happy, that he writes a poem on the spot, to celebrate Woodstock's return: "He's no impostor! He's no actor! Woodstock's back - Aboard a tractor!" Now, that's good stuff!

My Own Stretching (Bath)Room Portrait

About two months ago while my wife and I were visiting a thrift shop in Vancouver I came across the painting/poster shown here of a ballerina. I wasn't sure why, but I really liked it and after making my purchases, I went back and picked up this picture and asked how much it was. The woman behind the till told me it was 50 cents, so I dug out two quarters from my pocket and took my new treasure home with my other purchases.
When I got home, I once again wondered why exactly I liked this thing, and wondered why I had bought a picture that looked like it should be on a little girls bedroom wall.
Still, now knowing why I liked it, it ended up on a shelve in my bathroom so that you can see it as soon as you walk in.
Once my wife saw it there, she said, "I know why you like that so much, because it looks just like those stretching portraits in the Haunted Mansion that you love so much!" Once she said that, that was it. That is all I can think about when I look at this thing. All she needs is a bunch of snakes and creepy crawly bugs on the floor around her feet and you could hang this along with the other portraits in the stretching room of Disney's Haunted Mansion.
For those of you not familiar with the stretching portraits, here is a photo I found on the net of someone who has the 4 stretching portrait posters framed on their wall. The yellows lines show what you see at first - just the tops of the pictures are visible (A). Then as the room stretches, you start to see more of the pictures, as they reveal a much different final picture than what we see at first.

Little Golden Book Monday #46

Tonight's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's The Sword in the Stone. This copy is a second printing from 1973, which was 10 years after the movies 1963 theatrical release.
I have always loved the look of this movie, and one reason may be that Bill Peet worked on it. Bill Peet has always been a favorite writer / artist of mine since my early childhood, reading books such as Capybobby and Farewell to Shady Glade. To this day, my favorite classic Disney animated film is Sleeping Beauty, another film Bill worked on.
This particular copy, has a strange thing going on with its cover... it's peeling. There is a shiny plastic coating on the cover which is peeling up in some areas and missing in others (If you look really carefully at the photo of the cover, you can see what I am talking about). This is the first time I have seen this on a Little Golden book, so not sure if this is a common occurrence on older books or not.
What I have seen on many newer Little Golden Books is the Gold spine sticker/tape starting to come unglued and in some cases, falling off the book.
I would love to find a place to purchase LGB bags/sleeves such as the ones I keep my comic books and records in. If anyone knows of such a thing, please let me know.