Slides on Parade

I found these in a box of family slides at an estate sale in Oakville a couple weeks ago.  In the box, I found some great slides of the 1982 Veiled Prophet, or VP Parade in St. Louis.  You can read about the parade's sordid past here.  Sordid as it may be, it had some great floats.  Again, I apologize for the quality of the shots.  I'm using a digital camera taken straight from the projection screen.  Still waiting to get that slide scanner.  Can anyone recommend an affordable yet capable slide scanner?

The Missing Piece

I bought this 50's Whitman Jr. Jigsaw Bowling puzzle for a quarter at a recent estate sale.

Of course, as is to be expected, it was missing a piece.  At least it didn't detract from the characters too much.

The other available puzzles appears on the side of the box.  Typical '50's fare, but I was surprised to see "Drag Racing". 

I don't think many '50's parents would condone their children building a puzzle of an amateur drag race down on Dead Man's Curve. I would guess this was a puzzle of a fully-sanctioned drag race at the local track.

I also wonder what "After Tennis" was.  I imagine it was a scene of a young man leaping the net after soundly trouncing his friend in a match.  If that puzzle was from the '70's, it would have had a whole different meaning.
 
I tried to find these puzzles on the internet and Whitman has an impressive and massive collection featuring some great licensed characters, but I couldn't find any examples of these.

By the way, this was my 100th post.  Hundreds more to go.

Tricked!

When I was a kid, I thought magicians were real.  I thought they were really performing feats of magic and that fascinated me.  My brother was also an amateur magician (I fell completely for his old "stretching the thumb" trick.  Always freaked me out.), so that added to the appeal -- I wanted to be a magician when I grew up.  My sister bought me my first magic set for Christmas when I was about 10.  It was a Pressman Magic Show bought at Toy Chest and looked a lot like this:

For the Love of Theresa

Last Valentine's Day, I premiered Charlotte's scrapbook by way of her childhood Valentine's.  Coincidentally enough, I found another batch of vintage Valentine's at an estate sale this weekend.

These date from approximately the same era as Charlotte and are also from a home in Oakville, Missouri.  I had hoped for the ultimate coincidence of coming across Valentine's from Charlotte to this girl, Theresa Perowdosky. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.  I'm not even sure if Theresa went to a local school or simply moved to Oakville at a later date.  But at any rate, here they are for your enjoyment.  In the case where there is text on the interior, I've included it.  Some cards have art of the back and I've included that as well.  I've tried to keep all images together: front, interior and back.  Some are simply fronts.  At some point it appears all of these were tacked up and displayed.

Colorform Snoopy Come Home

I'm about to start into one of my old man rants, so prepare yourself.

When I was a kid, we didn't have video games and movies on demand to entertain yourself!  Okay, we did, but that was later on.  In my day, by which I mean prior to about 1980, if you wanted to recreate scenes featuring your favorite characters, you could draw them yourself or pull out the Colorforms.

Colorforms were invented in 1951 by a couple of married art students who discovered vinyl would stick to their tiled bathroom walls.  They left a roll of vinyl and a pair of scissors in their bathroom and invited guests to create their own artwork while they were otherwise preoccupied.  Though initially targeting other adult art students, Colorforms eventually found their niche in children's licensed characters.

I had a variety of sets when I was younger ranging from Batman and Robin to Mickey Mouse and Peanuts.  So when I came across these sets at a local (and quickly becoming my favorite) thrift store Value Village, the memories came flooding back.  Okay, I know what you're going to say.  Isn't this a garage saling blog?  Yes, but it's my blog and I can bend the rules when I see fit.  Besides, I paid garage sale prices, dropping little over $2 for both sets.  Both are in nearly pristine condition (with the exception of prices written on the box tops by the thrift store -- what are they thinking?!) and surprisingly missing very few pieces.

First up is the incorrectly named Come Home, Snoopy set.  Surely based on the feature length movie Snoopy Come Home, the misnaming may have occurred while the name was still in limbo, a la Revenge of the Jedi, or was simply a typo by the manufacturer.  Missing just one baseball, this set is practically complete with a solid box.

Would You Like Another Plate with That?

As told here, a few months back I came across a couple of McDonald's collectors plates.  At today's estate sale, I made an addition to the set.  Along with a duplicate of the Summer Day plate, I found this one for 50 cents:

"Ronald McDonald likes to have great fall fun...but wait till poor Grimace sees what he's done."

I'd like to see the follow up plate to this where Grimace goes medieval on Ronald with the leaf rake for messing up his leaf pile.

School's In

I went to an estate sale this morning.  I was about number 110 in line (I'm not kidding).  Fortunately (or unfortunately) they were letting a lot of people in the house.  I waited about 15 minutes before I got in.  I was there for a couple items I saw in the online ad.  This: