Little Golden Book Monday #114

Here is perhaps one of the most famous inside covers to a book ever. I have seen this so many times that I don't really even notice it anymore. It wasn't until I was scanning in some book covers and I was noticing all the various children's names written inside on the "This little Golden Book belongs to" spot that I decided to scan in the inside cover for today's Little Golden Book Monday.
Its kind of funny that although I had many Little Golden Books as a child, I don't recall ever writing my name in any of them. Even at a young age, I think it was the collector in me that wouldn't let me deface my books by writing in them - even it it was just my name, in a spot specially made for me to personalize my book.
Now Im really curious if I ever did write my name in one of my books. I am going now, to dig through my collection to see if I can find any of my original Little Golden Books with my young signature inside!

Little Golden Book Monday #113

Today's Little Golden Book is Disney's 101 Dalmatians, Rainbow Puppies from 1998, and based on the 101 Dalmatians animated series. As I was scanning the cover I started to recall the cartoon being on TV. I went looking but didn't find a ton of info on the cartoon. I did find out it came after the live action 101 Dalmatians movie and ran for two seasons from 1997 to 1998.

Little Golden Book Monday #112

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, The Kitten-Sitters from 1976. This book features a few of my favorite Disney characters; Pluto and Figaro the kitten. It also features two of my least favorite Disney characters; Mickey's nephews, Morty and Ferdie. To be fair, I also dislike Donald Duck's nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie. There is just something unsettling about introducing 'cute' little characters alongside my favorite characters that has always urked me - need we go any farther than Scrappy-Doo!?
This book features typical '70's Disney illustrations, not really up to Disney's usual standards from previous decades. Here is one of the illustrations that happens to feature Pluto & Figaro.

Captain Canuck 1979 Reintroduction Letter

Back in 1980 when I was just learning of the enjoyment to be found in the pages of superhero comic books, I had a neighbour who showed me his modest comic book collection. In it he had 3 or 4 Superman comics and one Captain Canuck comic book. Something about that Captain Canuck comic seemed really cool and I asked him if I could have it, to which he asked, "Do you have anything to trade?" I don't remember what I ended up trading him for it, but the end result was I got to go home with my new copy of Captain Canuck, issue #6. I read it 3 or 4 times, and just couldn't get enough. On my next visit to the Bookaneer book store (which sold comic books), I asked is he had any Captain Canuck comic books and he pointed me to the rack on the wall behind the cash register. On it was all the newest comic books, and there in amongst all the other super hero comics was issue #7 of Captain Canuck!
I was so captivated by my first two Captain Canuck issues that I asked if I could subscribe to the comic. My mother who was always trying to find things I would read, was more than happy to pay the $3.90 for a years subscription.
Ever since I wrote my post about my first two comic books I have been wanting to find my copy of Captain Canuck #6 so that I can display it along with my Rom and Silver Surfer comics as my very first comic books. Today I decided to hunt though my comic boxes for the issue. After spending a while hunting though boxes, I was not able to find that particular issue - I did find a few copies of #6, all were in much to good condition to be that first issue I traded for. What I did find was a copy of issue #4 that I bought at a thrift shop years ago. What made this issue interesting was that inside it was a letter from CKR Productions, LTD that was addressed to "Original subscribers of Captain Canuck".
I think its pretty cool that a Captain Canuck fan (myself) just happened to purchase an old issue in a thrift shop that still had this letter inside. I would guess that there were not that many subscribers to the comic during the first 3 issues, so this letter would seem pretty scarce, and finding one still tucked inside the comic book years latter, priceless!
PS: I'll have to keep hunting for my first copy of Captain Canuck #6.

Little Golden Book Monday #111

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Dumbo. This edition was originally published in 1941 in slightly different form by Simon and Schuster, Inc. This is the first Random House Edition from 2004 and features the original artwork from the 1941 edition and it is absolutly wonderful. Along with the cover I have scanned two images from the inside. One is a great full page illustration of Dumbo being pushed out a window of a burning house at the circus. The other is an illustration of the crows from the story. The crows have always been some of my favorite Disney characters and I love their song in the film "When I See an Elephant Fly".

Scratch N' Sniff Colgate Toothpase Packaging

I bought this a year or so ago and kept the box with plans to post it on my blog. Sometimes getting a good photo of something can be a real pain, and the results can be less than desired - just check out the Delgo poster in my last post.
I found this box under a pile of stuff in my office while I was rearranging stuff and thought it was time to take a crack at photographing this toothpaste box. Of the 10 photos I took this is the one that turned out the best. Kinda artsy actually!
Anyway, the reason I bought this toothpaste in the first place was the box. On the front of the box, as you can see from the photo, it has a Scratch N' Sniff spot for you to check out the vanilla mint smell. Like most scratch n' sniff, I didn't really smell much more than cardboard, but then I guess it really didn't matter, as they sold me the tooth paste anyway... cha-ching!

One of Worst Openings in the History of Cinema

Recently while at our local cheap theatre my son asked for the poster from Aliens Vs Monsters. Since we go to the theater so much the owner is more than happy to help us out with our poster requests. On this particular day he brought out two posters, the one my son had asked for, and another animated film poster that he thought my son may like. When I opened it to have a look I found it was for the film Delgo. I remembered reading about the film on Cartoon Brew. Check out what they had to say about the film:

The CG animated feature Delgo opened last weekend and nobody went to see it. According to Box Office Mojo, Delgo had the worst opening ever for a film that opened in more than 2,000 theaters earning just $511,290 or $237 per theater. Moments like this really make one pause and reflect. What is the world coming to when an animated film with the voices of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Chris Kattan, Anne Bancroft, Eric Idle, Val Kilmer, Lou Gossett Jr, Malcolm McDowell, Michael Clarke Duncan, Burt Reynolds and Kelly Ripa isn’t a box office blockbuster? A story that makes sense and visuals that don’t make you want to heave are quaint touches, but the filmmakers behind Delgo understood where it really counted: celebrity voice actors. They hired every B- and C-list actor this side of Dancing With the Stars and somehow still failed. You know the recession is affecting Americans deeply when they no longer want to see Chris Kattan and Kelly Ripa voicing their CG characters.

The theater owner who game us the poster said that it was the ONLY kids movie that he had ever played for just ONE week before removing it for another film. So not only did it do poorly on opening weekend, but it did just as poorly when it moved over to the cheap theaters.

I was going to toss out this poster as neither my son or myself really want to put it up on our walls, but I thought, with the film being so poorly received, that someone might actually want it. If anyone reading this wants it, just email me and if you are willing to pay for postage, its yours!