Vegetable Show

I've blogged about dolls with fruity hats before, but this one is unusual in that she has a crazy assortment of vegetables on her head. Despite her exotic appearance, I expect this doll was made in Britain, as one of those 'Dolls of the World' series, and basically they just picked up whatever plastic fruit and veg they had to hand.  So poor dolly is laden down with an enormous onion, pepper, carrot, chilli, and a very much not-to-scale bunch of bananas.

If she went in for the village show, I think she'd win a prize, as that carrot is bigger than her arm.

Rebel With a Cause

I have recently been unearthing some of my collection of book covers. Yes, just the covers, not the books. In my youth, I routinely just ripped off the cover, if I liked the graphics. To be honest, most of the books were themselves were not great, anyhow.

So I can't really comment on the content of 'Rebel With a Cause - A Teenage Edition of Mark from Living Gospels'. But really, I think the cover tells you what you need to know. Have you ever seen less rebellious looking teenagers? Look at that one in the waistcoat! Sixteen, going on forty-five. And the guy bottom right makes me think of Al Pacino in The Godfather.

It seems like the 1960s God Squad just appropriated the word 'Rebel', in the hope of attracting young people. "Hey, we're rebels, because we're not rebelling!". Yeah, that one's never rung true.

The back cover has a weird arrangement of more square teens in a variety of poses.

Buyer's Remorse

Sometimes, I think my appetite for curious objects takes me a bit too far.  Like these objects. Sigh.

I bought these from Ebay, mainly just because I thought they were very weird, and I wanted to see what they looked like in real life. Answer - they look hideous.

As if they weren't creepy enough with their pixie faces, skinny legs and long pointed feet, the one on the left has lost his sash and his golden robe falls open like a mystical flasher. Thankfully he has no genitals, but instead he is wielding a weird musical instrument, so the whole thing is still very unsettling.

What the heck are those costumes all about, anyway? Looking at them again, they make me think of members of a very badly-styled glam rock band. (I'm thinking of you now, Dave Hill from Slade...)

They're about 9 inches tall, and therefore too big to keep as humorous mascots or whimsical knick-knacks. Made of plastic, they're too light to use as bookends, and they're way too ugly to sell. All I can hope is that one day, I'll open my Museum of Strangeness, and I'll be glad I got them.

Look Kids!

Wow! An 'Atomic Age Air Rifle'! It 'measures a full 10"'! Or, to put it more prosaically, a small plastic pop-gun.

I think children might have been a bit confused by this ad from a 1960s comic, especially if they tried to understand the wonders of the 'Atomic Age' from it. 'No working parts to break', 'Completely safe and harmless'. It doesn't sound very 'atomic', does it?

But if the kids ('Look kids!') were disappointed when it arrived, just imagine how Mom must have felt once those ominous '25 missiles' started to get distributed about the place. If Junior didn't fire a bit of plastic in his sister's eye,  they would at least get trodden on, or trip up Granny, or choke the dog when he chewed it.
All for just one dollar, post paid!

Friday Postcards - Greetings from Poland

By a complete coincidence, I find that I am showing you postcards of Poland, just when the England football team are there for some sort of sporting event. But whilst they are staying in the picturesque city of Krakow, these postcards show us the slightly less picturesque city of Lukow.

I got these in a job lot of cards from Ebay, and was delighted by their grim banality. However, in the hope of discovering more about the city and its attractions, I have translated the back of these postcards, so I can share with you the full excitement of the sights of Lukow.

At the top, we have 'Lukow, Then and Now. Fragment of Chopin Street' (as before-and-after photos go, it's not the most convincing improvement), and below is ' An Insurance Firm General Building Inspectorate' (clearly the throbbing heart of the financial district). 

Above, we have 'Meat Plant, built 1970-1973', (who doesn't like to see a good meat plant?), and the next one is 'Leona Klimeckiego Housing Estate' (a fun place, if ever I saw one).

Wow! Holiday postcards always make you want to go there right now, don't they?

Chinese Lantern

Another strange musical Chinese thing with flashing lights.
With a rabbit on a swing.
(I have had a couple of goes at capturing the splendour of this thing, but they all end up as blurry and shaky as this - sorry!)

Women Who Made History

Finding a place in the history books for women's achievements has always been a struggle in our male-dominated culture.So I suppose we should be grateful for this attempt to redress the balance, which I found in a 1960s magazine.

Unfortunately, the focus of the ad is not really on the many great achievements made by women in history, but instead it promises to reveal 'their fabulous lives and loves, hatreds and scarifices'.  With a free gift of Lucrezia Borgia!

According to this ad, Catherine the Great 'changed lovers as easily as she changed the locks on her chamber doors!'.

Now, have you ever tried to change the lock on a door? By the time you've traipsed round B&Q, got home, had a cup of tea, found your tools, then looked all over the place for the right screwdriver, which seems to have somehow mysteriously disappeared, taken off the old lock, discovered the new lock doesn't fit, gone back to B&Q, discovered they don't do locks in that size any more, so you're going to have to make a bigger hole in the door and quite frankly you've had more than enough of locks for one day, thank you very much - Well, anyway, you get the idea. It takes quite a long time. Whereas I imagine changing lovers could be accomplished in under half an hour, if you're an empress, and you put your mind to it.

But I digress. Do click on the image above, if you'd like to read more of the drivel about 'Women who made History'.

I think in this case, you can judge a book by its cover, as these luxurious volumes are bound in 'leather-like green and ivory Skivertex'. Skivertex? Classy.