It's been 10 years since I last posted a Children's Play Mate magazine, so I guess it's due. This one dates from October of 1949. I didn't scan it completely, but hit the highlights. The cover features an illustration by Fern Bisel Peat whom I profiled in the 2016 post.
This 1995 Mummy mask by Cesar was a find from over the summer. It dates from 1995 which doesn't sound that long ago, but is 31 years old now. The rubber has held up well, despite somebody cutting up the back to make the opening wider.
There's something about old portraits, particularly in period frames, that gives me spooky vibes. It's probably related to old movies and television shows where human eyes peered through the portraits:
Or portraits of ladies that had gardening sheers stuck in their throat. IN THE THROAT!:
Last week, I made a post as an experiment to demonstrate AI's tendency to propagate inaccurate or completely false information by indiscriminately scraping whatever is posted on the internet. Like the "Hog Waller Hollerer", it took the bait, but called me out.
This morning, I decided to follow up on my post by Googling: "The Hog Waller Hollerer Cryptid" and was presented with this:
This is a fresh find from this past weekend. It's not exactly Halloween, but it's orange and black and it once contained candy, so fair game.
Today we have a napkin to go with our paper plate. Another purchase from the same sale, this napkin predates the plate by at least 20 years. While the witch interpretation is cuter than scary, the style of art dates it to no later than the 1950's. I love the Jack O' Lantern and demonic cat. It leaps into the scene seemingly bowling our little witch over.
One of my posts this season set off a flurry (okay a few comments) about the use of AI.
As I said, I have a love/hate relationship with it. I mostly hate AI imagery and I don't like AI being used as a competent substitute for skilled workers because in its current state, it's not. It does have its place and I've used it for humorous purposes as well as a lead when researching things. But I don't stop at the AI overview like many people do.
Where I work, our managers actually encourage us to use AI and when I'm shown some "answer" to a complex question by a person who simply Googled it and relied on AI, I push back and explain how AI works, how anything on the internet can influence the answers and that you have to check sources.
One of my blog posts has proven my point. A friend of mine, after reading that blog post about my memories of Bigfoot mania in 1977, Googled, looking for why there may have been an increase in attention in Bigfoot in the St. Louis area in 1977. He found this:
This Ghost die cut from Peck raises the question, do ghosts have teeth?
I love coming across vintage latex masks at sales (or anywhere). They remind me of my childhood, looking through bins of them at our local Ben Franklin dimestore. Plus, any that have survived this long are fairly rare as the latex tends to degenerate quickly over time (see my Creepy Crispy Critter post from 2019).
I found this one at a sale this summer.
I didn't recognize it and had to reach out to a Facebook group I belong to. It was identified as the "Demon Sandy" character from the 1985 movie "House". I've never seen the movie (I plan on rectifying that this season), but apparently it is a doppelganger for the main character's (played by William Katt, believe it or not) ex-wife.
The mask itself is in fairly supple condition with only a few hard edges.
I found these "Monster Feet" at an estate sale this summer. It reminded me of the Bigfoot scare/mania of the 1970's when Bigfoot seemingly waited around every tree in every forest around me.
I was scanning this season's decorations around my home and came across this tray. Surely, I thought, surely I've posted this tray before. I hadn't.
I found this tray several years ago at an estate sale for $5. I loved the design and artwork. Two martini-drinking ghosts? Why not? Those owls have seen things.
My content seems to be very witch-centric this year. Here's another one.
I don't recall where I found this little blow-molded and flocked witch, but it reminds me of the Christmas ornaments from Hong Kong in the 1970s.
Another piece of ephemera today is this Halloween paper plate featuring another witch and her familiar along with bats for good measure. It probably dates from the 1970's when Halloween was softening from the prior scarier images. I do like the bright neon orange colors which don't show up as well in this photo as in person. I bought this in a stack of 6 identical plates from the same estate sale as yesterday's nut cup.
I found this Halloween nut cup at an estate sale for $4 which might sound like a lot for such a small piece, but you have to remember how ephemeral something like this is.
I never read Child Life magazine as a kid. In fact, I never even saw it until I began finding them at estate sales. But anytime I find an October issue of anything, I'll pick it up. For your perusal, here are the better parts of the October 1978 issue of Child Life. The cover features a witch and her familiar being terrorized by jet-pack wielding Elves. Kind of a metaphor for how stores push Christmas during Halloween these days.
I came upon this framed print of Ichabod Crane at an estate sale this past summer. The person whose estate sale it was had a house filled throughout with shelves of books.
"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys."-- Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
