Little Golden Book Monday #81

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and the Best-Neighbor Contest from 1977. This edition is the sixth edition from 1979. What really sticks out about this book for me is the artwork. It reminds me of all the 70's Disney books I remember from my childhood, when Disney seemed pretty relaxed when it came to the quality of their artwork in books such as this one. I much prefer the classic Disney art from the 30's through 50's and even enjoy the newer stuff which tends to have a very modernized style. The 70's artwork tends to look very amateurish, especially for Disney's standards.

My Frist Video Game: Wallobee Jack

Growing up in the 80's when home video games were gaining popularity with such titles as Space Invaders and Missile Command, I was resigned to visiting friends who owned such things. I don't really remember feeling left out, and I don't remember ever asking for a video game system, so I guess all was well in my childhood even without a game system in my home. I do however remember in the early 90's when CD-Rom games for computers were becoming popular. I purchased my first (and as it turns out, last) video game for the Macintosh 1n 1993. It was called Wallobee Jack: The Bingi Burra Stone as was billed as an interactive toon show. The drawing on the front of the box looked really cool to me and the idea of an interactive cartoon seemed so cool! What a disappointment! The graphics in the game were pretty limited and the actual game consisted of short animated scenes where you had to move the mouse around looking for a hot spot which would then activate the next scene. Obviously games have come a long way since then, but as my introduction to video games, it served to turn me off gaming ever since. To this day, my gaming experience consists of Snood and checkers, both of which are on my Mac and take up less than an hour of my time per week.

A Visual History of the BC Lions Logo

I am a big fan of team logos, and I love seeing the evolution of a team logo. Here is a a short article about the BC Lions of the CFL accompanied by the 5 Lions logos that span from 1954 to present.

Little Golden Book Monday #80

Today's Little Golden Book is When Bunny Grows Up written by Patsy Scarry and illustrated by Richard Scary. This edition is from 1997 and was originally printed in 1955 with the title The Bunny Book.
Growing up I loved Richard Scarry's Busytown books. I could sit for hours looking at his cross section drawings of buildings, vehicles etc. It was so great to get a simplified idea of how things such as a factory worked. I also loved finding Lowly Worm who was hidden on each page page of the Busytown books.
As an adult, I still really appreciate Richard's whimsical drawings. This Little Golden Book is another example of his great work. Here is one of the pages I liked the most in this book. I wonder if little rabbit got in trouble for painting on the wall, or was congratulated for his work?

Firehouse Magazine cover montage

Today while reading the January 2009 issue of Mac World magazine, I became fixated on a two page spread that showed a cover gallery of every issue of Mac World magazine. It got me thinking how cool it would be to have something like that for my magazine, Firehouse Magazine. It didn't take long before I was sitting at my Mac digging though my Firehouse web site folder looking for scans of my magazine covers. Although I didn't have scans of all the covers, I did have issues #39 though 80 (issue 80 was our last issue, in 2000). Twenty minutes later I had whipped up this montage of the last 10 years of Firehouse Magazine covers. Although many of the cover scans are awful, I was still very pleased with the outcome. Perhaps at a later date I will sit and rescan all 80 covers and make a complete cover montage. Until then, this looks great as my computer desktop!

Little Golden Book Monday #79

Today's book is Bravest Of All. This version is the second printing from 1974 with the first printing being from 1973. Not much to say about this one except of note is the 49 cent price on the cover. And, as you may or may not remember, I like anything to do with firetrucks, etc so this is yet another fireman book in my Little Golden Book collection.

Tell-A-Tale Books Day 3

Here are four more great old Tell-A-Tale books. Woody Woodpecker Shoots the Works from 1955, Walt Disney Productions' Robin Hood and Skippy's Best Birthday from 1973, How To Be A Grouch by Oscar the Grouch from 1976, and Roy Rogers and the Sure 'Nough Cowpoke from 1952.

Tell-A-Tale Books Day 2

Continuing from yesterdays post, here are four more of the Tell-A-Tale books I picked up recently. Today we have; Wally Gator Guess What's Hiding at the Zoo from 1963, Sherlock Hemlock and the Great Twiddlebug Mystery (or the Mystery of the Terrible Mess in My Friend's Front Yard) from 1972, Pinocchio not sure of the date for this one as the first page with the publication info is missing, and Tom and Jerry and the Toy Circus from 1963.

Tell-A-Tale Books Day 1

I recently found a large stash of really cool old Tell-A-Tale books at local thrift shop. I don't see these very often on my thrift shop visits, so to see two full book shelves of them was pretty amazing. And at just 10 cents each, I grabbed a couple handfulls! I will post the covers of some of my favorites over the next few days.
Here are the first four books; Dennis the Menace Takes the Cake from 1987, We're Busy, Charlie Brown from 1988, Richochet Rabbit Showdown at Gopher Gulch Bakery from 1964 and The Road Runner and the Bird Watchers from 1973.

Mark Waid writes the Incredibles!

There are some very interesting looking new comics coming out next month from Boom Studios based on some famous characters including the Incredibles, Cars, and the Muppets. I have added all three titles to my comics pull list, but its the Incredibles comic that has me most excited! The Incredibles movie was amazing, and the idea of using that world of characters to create a comic series seems like a natural. And having Mark Waid write the series doesn't hurt. My only concerns are 1) that the art work on many of these famous properties to comics ventures are horrible! 2) Many of these famous properties to comics never get enough buzz to get anyone but comic book fan boys buying them, which usually leads to a mighty short run. Slave Labor Graphics already tried to bring 4 Disney properties to comics; the Haunted Mansion, Gargoyles, Alice in Wonderland, and Tron. None of them made it past issue #7. Hopefully Boom Studios has a better run than SLG did.

Kellogg's Eet and Ern

I noticed this ad in a copy of Disney Adventures magazine from 2000. I am a big cereal box collector and watch tons of kids TV, and therefore see a lot of ads for kids cereals, and I only vaguely remember this advertising campaign. I tried logging into their web site www.eetandern.com, but apparently Kellogg's didn't bother to keep the domain name, as the url is now just some lame link farm. As I said, I really don't remember this campaign, but I do like the two characters Eet and Ern.

Little Golden Book Monday #78

Today's Little Golden Book is "The Little Golden Mother Goose" from 1957. This version is the fourteenth printing from 1977. Not much to say about this one except, 75 favorite rhymes... wow, that's a lot of rhymes!
Oh, and is it just me, or does the kid in this drawing look like he is about to grab that little girls cat and toss it down the well!?

New Aluminium Coca-Cola Bottles

Here are a couple of great new Coca-Cola bottles my wife picked up for me at the T & T Asian Market. They are silver aluminium cans with a shiny red outside coating and white Coca-Cola logo. These are 250 ml bottles. As usual, the cost is about double that of a regular bottle or can of Coke, but somehow they always seem to taste better when not from a plastic bottle or regular can. I have not seen these for sale anywhere else so far, but if I do, I will be sure to buy enough to fill the fridge!