Little Golden Book Monday #91

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Goliath II. I am not sure of the date of the book as the inside front page is missing from the book, but the Goliath II short was released in 1960, so I would guess that this book was released around that time. I usually don't bother purchasing books in such poor shape, but as soon as I took a look at a few of the pages inside, I knew I had to have this one for my collection! The artwork is obviously done by Bill Peet, who just happens to be my absolute favorite children's book writer/artist.
Once I started writing this, I decided I needed to stop at watch the Goliath II short, so I popped some popcorn, and popped in disc 2 of the Walt Disney Treasures "Disney Reties" DVD set. It turns out the short was written by Bill Peet, but after watching the short, I didn't find that the artwork was very Bill Peet like, and since he didn't receive any credit for art, it would seem he didn't have much if anything to do with the artwork for the film. The Little Golden Book version however was obviously drawn by Bill Peet. You can see the obvious similarities to the artwork in his 1959 children's story "Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure" which is the illustration right below (the other two illustrations are from the Goliath II book).
Something I learned from watching the Leonard Maltin introduction to the Disney Rarities disc 2 is that the Goliath II short was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, in 1961.
All in all I would say this book was well worth the 10 cents I paid for it at the local thrift shop!

Disneyland's Summer Nightastic!

With Disneyland's Nightastic! opening up this summer, I have been seeing lots of Nightastic artwork on the net, and they all feature the two Disney dragons from Fantasmic and Pete's Dragon. Here is the recent covers of the free guides at Disneyland and California Adventure withe the Disneyland guide featuring the dragon from Fantasmic and the California Adventure one featuring Pete's Dragon from the Main Street Electrical Parade.
I have always loved the dragon from Sleeping Beauty (my favorite Disney animated film), and Fantasmic is a favorite of mine. When I was at Disneyland back in 1992 when the show opened, I picked up a very cool Fantasmic! soft cover book for $5.95. The book is 8 1/2 inches square and has 26 pages, and and the front cover folds out with 3 panels to reveal a great drawing of Mickey battling the dragon. Inside is a nice pictorial souvenir of the show along with the story behind the show.
The inside fold out has a great 2 page drawing which looks like it may have been a promotional sign promoting Fantasmic, with the words "Opening Spring '92".

Family Circus... What a Mess!

The wife has gone out of town for the weekend and left Kaden and I to look after ourselves... Amazing how much of a mess an old guy and a 4 year old can make in just two days! We've played with our Hot Wheels cars and race track, we've played with just about every superhero action figure ever made, we've played with our vintage set of Lincoln Logs, we've sat around reading piles of comic books, we've watched a ton of cartoons on Teletoon Retro, and now the house looks a lot like the covers of these two old Family Circus books.

Little Golden Book Monday #90

Today's Little Golden Book is a great one from 1959. It's Hanna-Barbera's Ruff and Reddy. I actually do not remember ever seeing these characters on TV as a kid, but as an adult, I have an appreciation for all things Hanna-Barbera. Their cartoons did not always contain the best animation and the characters could be pretty weak at times, but as a kid growing up watching cartoons in the 70's Hanna-Barbera have left a lasting impression on me. I am always pleased to find an old 50's or 60's Little Golden Book in amongst a pile of otherwise lame books. This is one of those great finds... well wroth the 20 cents I paid!
After choosing this particular book for today's post, I remembered that I had also picked up a Dell Comics Ruff and Reddy comic book in a pile of old comics recently. This issue is #981 from April-June 1959. So apparently as well as their cartoon series, they also had their own comic book title. I still don't remember them though!

Angelina Jolie / Tomb Raider Got Milk?

I picked up a bunch of old comics the other day and as I was going though them, I noticed that a bunch of them had great ads on the back covers. Here is one of those ads. It is a 2003 Got Milk? ad with Angelina Jolie / Tomb Raider.

Little Golden Book Monday #89

I just about forgot about Little Golden Book Monday tongiht. Its getting late, so I just went in and grabbed a handful of books from my shelf to pick one for today. This one, seemed perfect. Its Margaret Wise Brown's The Sleepy Book, originally from 1948. This edition is from 1975. The little bear on the front reminds me a lot of the Travelodge / Sleepy Bear Motel logo that was on a drinking glass we had at home when I was a kid. I tried looking for the logo I remembered using a Google image search, and was surprised that I could not find the logo I remembered (now I can't wait to talk to my mother to see if she still has it!).. The Sleepy Book is filled with short stories, poems, and songs about sleep. As if I wasn't tired enough already, flipping though this book has almost putting me into a coma... Good night!

Batman comics score!

Today my son and I went to a comic shop that we do not visit very often. I was looking for the Boom Studios Incredibles comic issue #2 (which seems to be sold out everywhere!) as well as any cheap old Batman comics and any comics for Kaden - he likes Batman, Spiderman and the Teen Titans. There was a sign outside the shop which said "hundreds of comics for 25 cents each!" We had a blast going though the 25 cent and dollar boxes and found a ton of great stuff for Kaden and myself, including a bunch of 70's, 80's & 90's Batman and Detective Comics, which are the two titles that I am currently having fun trying to collect. Check out the photos of my Batman comics score!
Unfortunately we did not find a copy of the Incredibles comic we were searching for (cue disappointment music).

Wizard of Oz Lp cover

I picked up some more fun looking records at the Salvation Army on Friday. Among them was this really neat looking Cricket Records version of the Wizard of Oz with the Hanky Pank Players, with orchestra and chorus. I love how the letters in the title look like someone took a pen and doodled in them. Sadly this one album was sans record - but they did give me this nice looking record cover for free!
I have never been a big fan of the movie "Wizard of Oz", but I do remember going to see it in the movie theater some time in the late 80's when they rereleased it. At some point near the beginning I fell asleep and stayed asleep until the credits. Afterwards my wife was abuzz with excitement about the movie she had just seen. Wasn't it grand she asked!? All I could say was, "yeah, and the whole thing was in black and white, right!"

What's UP with this!?

This August, just a little more than two months after the release of Disney/Pixar's UP to theaters, comes the GoodTimes Home Video movie called What’s Up: Balloon to the Rescue. In the past there have been cheapo versions of Pocahontas, Pinocchio, and other classics, trying to cash in on the successful theater releases of Disney films. This one, is such a rip off, its hard to think that the Disney lawyers won't be contacting GoodTimes for something a little less than some good times!

Little Golden Book Monday #88

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's the Prince and the Pauper. This book is from 1990 and is based on the 1990 short feature that featured Mickey Mouse. The film was released to theaters with the feature film The Rescuers Down Under.
I didn't notice this until I was scanning in this book, but I purchased this book at Disneyland on one of our many trips, for the low price of just $1.29.
I was not yet a collector of Little Golden books back in 1990, but I had seen the Prince and the Pauper film along with the Rescuers Down Under in the theater, and I enjoyed the film so much that I wanted to add this book to my collection.

Batman Birthday Cake

Kaden had his birthday a while back and he wanted a Batman theme for his party. There were the usual Batman cups, napkins etc, and lots of Batman gifts including a Batman costume which he wore for the rest of the day! He also had a special Batmobile birthday cake that looked just like the Batmobile from the Batman Strikes cartoon series, complete with Batman and Robin action figures. I especially liked the graphics on the napkins which were also from the Batman Strikes cartoon series, which is my personal favorite of all the Batman cartoon series.

Oswald the (Lucky) Rabbit

At the Seattle Comic Convention a few months back I picked up this neat old Oswald the Rabbit issue #458 from Dell comics for $1.75. I am a little surprised that I can not find a date inside, and I could not find the answer online. There is a small 53 written on the price sticker of the comic, so I am going to assume this issue is from 1953. Again, I could not find much info online about the Oswald Dell comics, but I find it pretty amazing that there were 458 issues!
This post is mostly an excuse to show the two Oswald the Lucky Rabbit items below. There used to be a great Disney blog site that I would visit almost daily to see great new items that the blogger was working on for the Disney stores (the site has since been removed on Disney's request). These two items, the Oswald Big Fig and Plush were both supposedly available though the Disney stores about a year ago, although I phoned my local Disney stores repeatedly to see if they had these two items in, and all they ever had were some awful looking Oswald Christmas ornaments. If they had ever gotten these items in, I would have happily forked over the large sum of cash I am sure they would have been charging to add these to my collection. But unfortunately they never did show up in my local stores.

Moana Mickey's Arcade

My wife gave me a stack of stuff the other day that she had received from a friend who works at a travel agency. There was tons of Disney brochures, DVDs, posters etc. There were a few 11 x 14 inch cards with info on Adventures by Disney and a 2009 Wald Disney Word Product Reference Guide. These didn't interest me and I was going to toss them out, but I noticed this great picture on one of them for Moana Mickey's Arcade located at the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World. I decided to scan this image for myself before tossing out the cards, and I thought I would share it with you!

Little Golden Book Monday #87

On Friday May 29th, opening night, I went to see Up with my wife and 4 year old son Kaden. We chose to see the 3D version, as both were playing at the same cinema. I am not actually sure why someone would chose to see it in 2D when they could see it in 3D - my guess it that once the 3D showings were full, people were forced to see the 2D version. Our theater was so packed that we could not find 3 decent seats together, so Kaden sat on our lap for the entire movie.u I thought the movie was great and loved the 3D. I was very surprised that 10 to 15 minutes into the movie, my son took off his glasses. When I told him to put them back on, he told me, "no, it looks better without them", to which I shrugged and allowed him to continue watching without the glasses. I tilted my head up a few times to look at the screen without my glasses, and found the picture to be somewhat fuzzy looking with the 3D effect on the screen and no glasses. It wasn't until we left the theater that I realized that after eating greasy popcorn for the first few minutes and then touching his lenses repeatedly, it was like looking through greasy saran rap, which is why he didn't want to wear the glasses.
I was pretty surprised that they did not offer a plastic popcorn tub with the Up artwork. There was a time when every kids movie got the popcorn tub treatment.
After the movie, we made a stop at the Chapters book store to have a look for the Little Golden Book version of the film, and sure enough they had a large stack of them, along with all sorts of other assorted coloring books, sticker books, story books etc. It was kind of cool getting to go home from the movie with little souvenir