Little Golden Book Monday #147

While trolling Amazon.ca for new Disney books to add to my collection, I found two new Little Golden Books that are scheduled to come out next week (August 9, 2011).
The first is Tractor Trouble, based on Disney / Pixar's Cars. The second is The Pet Problem, based on Disney / Pixar's Toy Story.
The thing that makes these a little unusual, is that neither is based on the current film, but rather on the franchise. This will be the fifth Little Golden Book based on the Cars franchise, and the fourth based on the Toy Story franchise.
Hopefully I will be able to find copies of these at my local book store next week, but I won't be surprised if I am back at Amazon.ca to order my copies.

Apple & Saturn both like to Rethink

I became a Saturn owner today! We purchased the 2009 Saturn Vue Hybrid and I absolutely love the car and the experience of buying it. I remember all those ads on TV years ago telling us that each Saturn owner was a part of the family, and showed them all attending the big Saturn Family Picnic.
There were some that questioned our judgement of buying a Saturn now, with all the stuff going on with Saturn and parent company General Motors. But after test driving well over a half dozen SUV crossovers, the Saturn Vue Hybrid was by far our favorite, and with all kinds of incentives and loyalty discounts, the price could not be beat.
The other day while out driving with my wife, she mentioned that while driving around she had been looking at all the other cars on the road and had not seen very many Saturns. I told her that I really didn't care if there were not that many, and then went on to tell her how I thought that the Saturn brand was much like the Apple brand. I have always been a huge Apple fan and although I have been using them for over 20 years, its only recently that they have started to become mainstream. So Saturn being the small company making great cars was fine with me.
The next day I was at the library checking out the magazines, and I noticed a two page Ad for the Saturn Vue on the inside front two pages of a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine. I found that interesting, as I collect Apple ads, and they love to put their ads on the inside front two pages of magazines such as Entertainment Weekly.
I decided to scan in the ad for my collection of ads on my computer. While scanning it, I noticed the Rethink logo in the ad and remembered an Apple poster I have up on my wall at work that I received from Apple about 3 or 4 years ago. The poster is a simple black poster with the word Rethink spelled out upside down in the center and the slogan "Rethink the Possibilities" at the bottom. I quickly opened up iPhoto and looked for a photo of the poster on my wall at work, and I managed to find a photo that showed the poster.
Above you can see the recent two page Saturn ad along with the older Apple poster which I have added to the top left of the Saturn ad. It would seem the two companies have more in common than I would have ever guessed. Those Rethink logos are extremely similar. Just click on the above ad to make it larger and see for yourself.
I can't wait to head out to the garage tomorrow to slap an Apple sicker on the back window of my new Saturn!

Little Golden Book Monday #96

In keeping with yesterdays CARS theme, I have a brand new Little Golden Book that I just picked up a few days ago. I love how they have Mater and Lightning McQueen on roller coaster tracks on the front cover. It's also interesting to see that Mater has now had two Little Golden Books to Lightning's one.
It's also amazing to see how the Cars movie is still producing new merchandise 3 years after its release, pretty good considering that many were calling the film a flop when it didn't initially preform as well as the previous Pixar films. And for those keeping up on their Disneyland news, as well as of the new merchandise, there is a whole new land being built at Disney's DCA called Cars Land set to debut in 2012.

Jonny's CARS Wash

I recently drove by a local car wash that has been in the same location for about 30+ years. I'm not sure what they used to be called, but their brand new signs say "Jonny's Car Wash", and the images and fonts used looked extremely familiar! I had been meaning to stop by and get some pictures for a few weeks but never seemed to remember, until one day a week or so ago I was out driving around town with my wife and son and I happened to mention the car wash. My wife asked if I wanted to stop by to get some photos and I quickly said "Yes!" She parked in the empty parking lot of the next door business and I hopped out of the car with the camera to take some photos. While I was trying to get a good shot of the main sign, I walked over to their drive way and stepped though the open fence to take a photo. I was quickly greeted by a woman working there who told me that I could not take photos. I stepped back onto the sidewalk and continued to take photos. She then came out to where I was now standing and informed me that if I didn't stop taking photos she was going to call the police. Wow, I didn't realize it was illegal to take photos of a business that could be plainly seen from the sidewalk! I made my way back to the car, all the while taking more photos, and all the while listening to her threaten to call the police on me for illegally taking photos. When I finally got into the car, she held up a piece of paper and let me know that she had my licence plate number and was calling the police.
I hadn't thought much about it, but after all of her fuss over me taking photos, I have to wonder... did they get permission to use the Disney/Pixar logos and images on their signs... I think not!

Mad Magazine Fold In

Remember those great Mad Magazine Fold Ins they used to have on the inside back cover of the magazine? I do, and I loved them, which is why I was thrilled to find this ad for Dodge on the back cover of issue #465 (May 2006) of Mad Magazine, which I picked up at a recent library book sale for 10 cents.
Just click on the slick graphic I have whipped up to recreate the all the excitement, without the headache of trying to fold these things just right to get them to work.

CARtoons '69 Camaro

The other day while checking out all the great stuff at our favorite used toy store (Toy Traders), I found this Muscle Machines die cast Adult Collectible '69 Camaro, with a collectible CARtoons magazine collectors card (it actually says "Adult Collectible" on the packaging. It is hidden under the collectible card. You can just see the last 'e' of the word collectible under the ES of Muscle MachinES).
I loved the CARtoons magazine as a kid, and still do to this day. I have even been picked up many old issues of the magazine here and there as I scour the local thrift shops. I always thought the jacked up cars with all the flames on them in the magazine were pretty cool.
This was the only one the Toy Traders had, and it was in the discount bin, so I decided to pick it up to add to our cars collection. My son loves playing with Matchbox / Hot Wheels cars, and has a great collection of cars from the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. I decided to buy this car, so I could have a 'cool ride' when playing 'cars' with my son.
It was really hard to actually bust it out of the package, as I usually keep everything 'mint', but once I did, my son couldn't wait to play with it. I broke the rules and let him play with it, even though it clearly stated right on the package that this is an "Adult collectible".

Check out these photos of the fun that ensued...

Little Golden Book Monday #1

After seeing a recent blog on the Secret Fun Spot about the back pages of Little Golden Books, I thought it might be fun to post the fronts of some of my Little Golden Books. After flipping though my stacks of LGBs, I realized how much I loved the covers (and inside artwork) of so many of them that I thought that it might be fun to start a Little Golden Book of the week post on my site.
So, starting today, I am posting the first (actually two) covers to some of my favorite LGBs. Today I present two books based on the Disney/Pixar movie Cars. The first is the Cars story book which came out just before the movie hit theaters. The second is a more recent release of "Mater and the Ghost Light". This one seems a little more scarce, as I have only seen one other copy, other than the one I purchased. This one is a retelling of the animated short on the Cars DVD release. Both were released in 2006.
I am not sure of the dates, but I know that around 2001 when Disney's Atlantis The Lost Empire was released, Little Golden Books for some reason stopped releasing Disney titles, which was disappointing for me, as I am a big fan of the Atlantis movie and was looking forward to adding an Atlantis title to my Little Golden Books collection. A few years later, LGBs and Disney seemed to renew their partnership, but unfortunately due to the lack of success of Atlantis, they never bothered to release an Atlantis book after the fact. Darn!

My Race Set Mania

Recently I found a great old photo from December 25th, 1967. It's a photo of my father and myself with a super neato racing set! I was just two months old at the time. I wonder if the race set was for me, or for dad?
Then, if you go back to yesterdays blog and click to enlarge the photo of me with my train set you can see on the left is a smaller table with a racing set on it. So that was race set number two, some time in early to mid 70's.

Then in 1979, I got my third and final racing set, the Ideal TCR Total Control Racing, Lighted Blazers Jam Car Special. This set came with two cars that two players could control, and a third card, a slotless jam car that would drive around by itself and get in your way. The race track did not have slots like the average set, so you could flip a switch on the controller to change lanes to pass your competition. And to make things even more exciting, the cars had working headlights and glowed in the dark! It didn't get much better than that for a 12 year old!

Much like the train set, I am sure that at some point, Kaden and I will drag this out of the basement and set it up for some "Slotless track-real passing" racing action!