Robot Claw – Page 65 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Antiques & Fireworks

June 24, 2024

The predominant goal of our recent weekend trip was to buy fireworks. In addition to the Frazetta museum, we also visited a few interesting stores along the way.

The first was a ‘country store’ which is a rural ‘corner shop’ that sells more or less anything. Such stores are uncommon these days, and we love discovering ones that are cluttered and dilapidated and feel a bit like retail time capsules. But at the one we stopped at Saturday I wasn’t at all prepared to find shelves full of vintage Star Wars!

I learned from the shopkeeper that these items were on consignment from a man with an enormous collection. There was such a large selection you could have assembled a close-to-complete collection of vintage figures and playsets/vehicles. Even rare items as the Ewok Village, Droid Factory or Star Destroyer playset! There were two Millennium Falcons and two Sandcrawlers. It was truly an incredible assortment.

It was surreal seeing such a selection in a small shop in the middle of nowhere, but then we explored the rest of the shop and amidst the Christmas decorations, books and typical miscellaneous ‘gifts’ they also had loads of plastic model kits, wrestling figures, train sets and even dozens of Smurfs:

I should have bought one for Bernard 🙂

I’m happy to say I bought a vintage R2! The middle leg is 3D printed and the decal is a retro but the metallic dome is original and I’m more than happy with a bit of repro when the cost is a quarter of what it otherwise would have been.

As I wrote when I was in Oz, antique shops can be wonderful places to find treasures, and we don’t hesitate to stop at them when we see one these days. Does it mean I’m old when items from my childhood are now sold as ‘antiques’?

Yesterday we stopped at a large antique mall on the way to the fireworks shops. It was an old factory that now contains over 110 dealers and moments after we walked through the door we knew we’d found something special.

The building contained aisles and aisles of independent dealer booths like the above, and the variety of items was extraordinary. We didn’t have a lot of time but could easily have spent many hours just browsing since most of the stores were packed with stuff and the feeling treasures were waiting to be found was strong!

The above was $29, but had it been $10 or less I would have bought it in a heartbeat!

This Burger King glass was only $20 and since it was in extraordinary condition I was a fool for not buying it!

The place was an antique heaven, and every few booths had unexpected items like boxed Colecovision games just chilling on a shelf! We bought some magazines, (exactly) 86 postcards, a model kit, a flexidisc, a small dish and this:

A 27-year-old box of trading cards! At $0.15 a pack when released, this was $5.40 worth of packs in 1977, but I think I got a deal at $65. These cards had been on my ‘list’ for years and I could barely believe I’d stumbled upon a full box for such a comparatively low price. The dealer even had two of these and I nearly bought both! I’ll open it on the blog one day 🙂

I think these won’t be the last antique shops we visit this summer…

It was time to go and (finally!) buy some fireworks. Once again we’re going to have a fun July 4th in Rochester with the oldies, and as usual we were determined to deliver to them some high quality explosive entertainment.

The Australians will be looking at the above photo and wishing they could buy the entire thing! And they wouldn’t hesitate to spend a mere $1.49 for this guy:

Alas those little guys are noisy as hell and Kristins mum had requested we only get quiet fireworks. I’d say there’s at least a 50% chance we’ve succeeded 🙂

The Frank Frazetta Museum

June 22, 2024

We’re in Pennsylvania! We’re on our annual fireworks shopping trip but we extended it a day so we could visit the gallery of famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta.

Frazetta was an illustrator that initially worked in comics before a career painting paperback book covers that would influence fantasy and science fiction artwork to this day.

Most of his paintings were oil on canvas, but he was a talented artist that also used pencils, watercolor and ink and painted on various canvases including masonite (as seen above).

The museum is on the property he lived at in The Poconos, and displays 37 original oil paintings as well as a large amount of sketches and other paraphernalia related to his life and career.

Frazetta painted covers for many Conan and Tarzan novels, and his artwork was so recognizable and iconic it sold the books. His depiction of Conan in particular was archetypal, and to this day the usual image of Conan is based on Frazetta’s depiction.

Anyone that’s read any fantasy or science fiction written since 1970 has likely held a book with a Frazetta cover, and it was quite a thrill to see the original art used on so many of these books. In the photo above you can see an original oil painting of a wizard menacing two warriors, and the same image used on the cover of a 1979 calendar and a paperback from the 1970s (which I own).

He often painted over his works, even after they had been used for book or magazine covers. He did this to change lightning, facial expressions, to add/remove elements (such as clothing) or for various other reasons. Looking at the paintings close up it was obvious where paint-overs had occurred, and the gallery often included photographs of the originals for comparison. In my opinion some paint-overs improved the works but others didn’t, and the fact that originals were lost forever is something I find a little sad.

Frazetta was well-known during his life, and such was his skill and renown that he worked extensively in advertising and in the movie industry as well. The museum had many relics regarding this part of his career, but the letters from Clint Eastwood (above, with his phone number!) and George Lucas (thanking him for selling a painting) were my favourite. There was also a signed letter from President Eisenhower, who Frazetta had done a portrait of.

Frazetta died in 2010 (at age 82) and his works were divided amongst his four children. The museum is primarily the collection of one of the children, which is to say it’s hardly the entirety of Frazetta’s works. As probably the worlds foremost fantasy artist his fame has only grown since his death, and recent sales of three of his paintings for over $5 million will put pressure on his surviving family to sell off his works. I hope the museum can resist the urge since we thought it was a wonderful gallery of his life and works, and very much a place any fan of fantasy art would enjoy visiting.

They had an amazing shop with all sorts of merchandise. We bought some books, two canvas prints and a few other items but the real treasure was the above still sealed 1979 calendar! When will I open it? No man knows 🙂

Japan Pickups: The Weird Stuff

June 21, 2024

I love finding unusual and unexpected things in Japan, and this post shows off a few of them.

This model kit was extremely inexpensive (about $8) and the box is so lightweight I imagine the kit itself is tiny and has very few pieces. But look at it: a kappa! Of course I was going to buy this! And since it’s glow-in-the-dark, it won’t even matter if I don’t paint it. I’ll make this one day and blog it when I do.

In the game center post I did while I was in Japan I showed a photo of Friday The 13th metal rings in a gacha, and as weird as those were they were somewhat common and I saw them in many machines. One day, in a dingy alley in Akihabara, I found another metal ring gacha, only this time it was Star Wars. Here’s the five rings it contained:

This was the only one of these machines I encountered the entire trip, and when I found it there was only one single item remaining in the machine. Of course I bought it, and I think you can guess which one I wanted. Here’s what I got:

It seems the gods of luck were smiling on me that day 🙂

The above is a Magic The Gathering Japanese promo sticker from 2023. It seems these were randomly given to players who played in official events (in Japan) last year although even the official Hasbro announcement only lists 12 stickers (not including the capybara) but the store I purchased it from had many more. It’s a cute and unusual MtG mystery item!

I bought this book at a wonderful bookstore in Akiba, and it’s an encyclopedia of legendary and influential RPGs from the early days of computer games.

This is an incredible book, full of information and details about many games I hold dear, and I’ll be reading this one using my phone translator!

What I particularly love is that it includes many games we didn’t get in the west, such as Seal of Haja for the PC-88 (shown above). This book was also the first in a set of three, and I already regret not picking up the other two 🙂

Here’s another curiosity: a wafer biscuit with ‘chocolate sticker’ that expired 8 years ago and that I paid about $5 for. The packaging will suggest why I bought this, and if you need a further hint you can re-read this post from last year. Suffice to say this will be opened and have its own blog post soon enough…

And last but certainly not least, we have the above article of jewelry. At first it looks like a standard crucifix, but looking closer we see it is actually:

A crucified Ultraman! At first glance this may seem unforgivably blasphemous, but be mindful that this is from a different culture, and the Japanese idea of crucifixion (which was a common method of execution almost into the 20th century) isn’t as singular as it is in the west.

This piece of jewelry is actually in reference to a famous scene in episode 13 of Ultraman Ace, from 1972, where several Ultras were caught and crucified by an alien:

This had not been the first time crucifixion was shown in an Ultraman series, but to my knowledge it was the last. (As an aside you could probably write an academic paper on the use of crucifixion in many different tokusatsu shows up to and including Evangelion.)

A motley and weird collection of pickups then. Which of these would you have purchased?