The B-47s and a Cold War Interlude

That incredibly helpful  hint narrows it down to a 60 year period.

 I spotted this great remnant from the Cold War at a local antique mall.  I had to do a little Wikipedia and web searching to determine the make of these bombers.  These B-47s predated the B-52.  The result of early post-WWII research, they were designed to drop atomic bombs on Russia.

The societal and economic impact of defense operations on small cities is significant.  But finding a phone book with this cover art surprised me.

There wasn't much in Topeka, Kansas in 1963.  Forbes Field was formerly a Strategic Air Command base and later home to horizontal silo ICBMs.  I love this action shot.  Good to know that our nuclear bombers could be scrambled in a hurry.  I'm glad they were never used for their intended purpose.

Up in the air over Wichita, Kansas.  Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Having grown up in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction, I have an odd fascination with the mechanics behind the Cold War and still love aviation history.  My wife's cousin interned at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum while working on his Doctorate in the history of technology.  I was more than a little jealous.

The B-47 was produced in Wichita, Kansas.  Up until last month, Boeing was a major presence in Kansas.  It recently repaid the efforts of our Congressional delegation and the Brownback administration to land a lucrative refueling tanker deal by announcing their departure next year.  Basically, the politicians were pwned by the corporation.

B-47s on the Flight Line.  Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.

Editorial Comment:  Done well, vintage black and white film photography was just gorgeous!

Wrong era, but I still love this graphic from Jordanoff's Illustrated Aviation Dictionary

These aren't the Droids you are looking for.

I made a big mistake.  I forgot we were in the depths of Winter when I posted the sad tale of Annabelle the bear in the "Princess Doesn't Live Here Anymore" post.  I've decided to change up the order of scheduled posts in order to bring you, kind reader, something relentlessly cheerful.  And what could be more cheerful than toys?

Maybe bootleg toys?  Or, wait for it... bootleg Star Wars toys!

Being prototypical Nerds, we are, not surprisingly, Star Wars fans.  I say that in the best way, as in having watched the films in the theater and seen the lost Luke-hanging-with-his-worthless-friends-at Toshi-station footage at a small Con in 1981.  In our world, we can still remember the matte outlines around the Tie fighters and distinctly remember Han shooting first.  Greedo didn't stand a chance.  By the way, Han never stepped on Jabba's tail and Darth Vader distinctly does not cry out in anguish.

Alright, we are militant, purist Nerds.  Guilty as charged.

Star Wars brought a lot of cool things into the Nerd underground.  The whole concept of fully functional robotic servants and spies was pretty awesome.  Of course one of the fundamental principles of economics is that success breeds success.  Sometimes that takes shape in one of my favorite things:  bootleg toys.

Behold the madness that is Hong Kong bootleg Star Wars toys!  Creating bootlegs is easy.  Making them memorably strange takes a bit more effort and a pinch of creative insanity.

Step 1:  Copy basic forms from a popular film.
Step 2:  Rummage through the molds of knockoff toys your company has already made.
Step 3:  Mix and mutate!

The image below comes from a Hong Kong toy trade show catalog from the early 1980s.  I was fortunate to snag three years worth of these on ebay a couple of years ago.

Following the "mix and mutate" principle (which I just made up), the cleaver toymaker combined the body of a knockoff Horikawa rotating robot with a brand new stormtrooperish head.  This toy was actually made (more below).

On the other hand, I have never seen any evidence that the funky R2-D2 ripoff was actually distributed.  Remember that the purpose of a trade show is to get people to buy your stuff and put it in a private labeled box on a shelf.  Some concepts don't make it that far and R2 appears to be a lost toy.  Too bad- the chest guns might have come in handy on the first Death Star.

Below, we have evidence of another lost toy.  I wish this one had been made.  The body is a mishmash of semi-bootleg design.  While the form emulates Japanese toys of the '60s, I can't pin down one in specific.  This combination in black with a stormtrooper head is pure genius!

The Silver Warrior (left) and Super Astronaut (right) are among the favorite toys in my collection.  The mechanical systems are pretty poor and none can be expected to walk and rotate, but they look great.

I've been fortunate enough to find these at a decent price.  Many of the Japanese tin and plastic robots are scarce and valuable.  Increasingly, collectors have turned their attention to the Taiwan and Hong Kong robots of the late '60s through early '80s.  Prices have gone up and Star Wars is always a strong draw.

If you interested in the wild world of robot toys, you can find more on my Fotki site at
http://public.fotki.com/coyotesareus/robot-toys/

I'll leave you with some insanely fun box art.  By the mid '70s, many toys had transitioned to window box or photographed front panel boxes.  These were packed in something resembling classic Japanese robot boxes with a creative twist.

You only think you are hallucinating.

I love the Death Star style moon on this panel.  The mixture of photography and hand done graphics is only a little over the top.  It reminds me of 'zine art.

If you think this looks crazy, check out the box art collection for Horikawa toys on the Alphadrome site at danefield.com.

Just because one space toy is never enough...

"These aren't the droids we're looking for.  Move along!"

Update, March, 2011:  Thanks to the joys of traffic monitoring on the Blogger platform, I tracked back to a great blog featuring other variations on this Star Wars rip-off theme.  Go here to see the ultra-cool gloss black variation of the Silver Warrior:
http://strangestarwars.blogspot.com/2011/04/galaxy-warrior-robot-toy.html

Analog Record Keeping and Kansas City History

I'm plucking out cards from cancelled sales for typing use.  This is the back of a card like the one below.

The story of one customer and his watch.

Each drawer held hundreds, if not thousands, of customer records.  The earliest were from the 1920s and the latest from the 1960s.  The entries from the '50s on weren't as interesting since they added small appliance repairs.

I have a certain nerdy fascination with forgotten history gleaned from esoterica.  Out of all the antiquities I looked at during the October First Fridays' sale at Good JuJu, this was my only purchase other than a 1960s vintage Girl Scout Handbook for my wife.

There are many uninteresting stories in this collection, but that is made up for by the really interesting customer stories.  I settled on this one because it contained a record of a house call to repair the dashboard clock on a "Ladies Red Buick".  In looking at the customer addresses, I've come to the conclusion that this jeweler generally served the upper middle class and above in Kansas City proper.  There are many monied addresses along Ward Parkway in the file.

The drawer full of record cards was one of many.  In talking to the seller, I found out that the whole lot of drawers came from a single huge estate sale cabinet that was in very poor condition.  So out came the drawers for sale to crafters, creative types and nerds.

I guess since I am using backs for typing, that makes me semi-creative.  The fact that I am blogging about it places me squarely in the nerd category.  At any rate, I have lots of fun reading material to pick through.

Typecast Courtesy of the Royal Futura 800 (Borg Edition)

B-36 RESTRICTED Report - Optima's Cold War Redux

A priceless bit of Cold War Ephemera

Love the cartoon.  At one point in time, letting this book out into the wild probably would have resulted in many years in the Leavenworth Disciplinary Baracks. 

The B-36 was one of the largest airplanes ever built.  It was literally a flying fortress with multiple gun turrets.  The Maintenance Digest details adjustments to make the guns work right while limiting their ability to shoot something off the host airplane.  The drawing is luscious.  Can't you just picture this inside an Oliver?

I scanned some representative drawings.  The text is wonderful and full of descriptive language on how to properly warm up the vacuum tubes in the Thyratron Controller.  This was way before integrated circuits.

I like working with electrical circuits.  I can't say I'm that good with them, but at least I can understand visible circuitry.

I love our paranoid typewriter friends.  They remind me of the Spy vs. Spy cartoons from Mad Magazine.

More information than you can possibly want to know about the B-36 bomber is located on Wikipedia and the Interweb at large.  Yes, they really did have a nuclear powered prototype.  They flew it cross country over America.  It's almost like they were trying to help the Soviets, but the Cold War was a different era and a little radiation couldn't get in the way of national defense. 

This is one of my favorite old technical documents.  One reason is exclusivity:  how many of these could actually have been made?  Most should have been shredded.

This particular copy I found mixed with auto parts on a vendor's table at an automotive swap meet in Lawrence, Kansas.  So exciting to find something this nerdy in the wild!  There were and are substantial air bases in Kansas as well as multiple aerospace producers.  Perhaps someone brought this classified document home as a souvenir.  I'll never know how it came to be at a swap meet, but I'm glad I found it.

Aviation Graphics - 1942 Style

What a great cover.  It is a bit darker in person and roughly the same color as the Olympia SM3.

I found this copy Jordanoff's Illustration Aviation Dictionary in a local antique mall.  It is fabulous condition for a 70 year old book (copyright 1942).

I am kind of weird about vintage books.  I would not have hesitated to buy this book new through Amazon for $22.  Since I run into so many vintage books at garage sales and thrift stores for next to nothing, it felt strange paying real money for this one.

The owner of our favorite used book store is gearing up for a flood of unloved and unwanted books once everyone receives their Christmas iPads and readers.  He sees the coming year as an inventory building opportunity.

And now for some great graphics...

What typecast blog would be complete without Teletype?

The world used to be dependent on vacuum tubes.

Huh?  Paper mail?

Paper mail, explained.

Imagine, radios were as prominent in homes as LCD TVs are today.  Kind of makes me wonder what 2081 will look like.

Interference, or the wrath of vengeful gods?

As promised, here is a bonus graphic from the Slanguage appendix at the end.  Gingercat (Claire) spotted this one first.

Another word comes to mind.

Type and Ephemera Catch and Release

I dropped by a couple of the Kansas City West Bottoms antique malls last Friday night. Good JuJu and Liberty Belle's are only open for First Friday's weekend. I brought home an awesome oak letter and paper organizer that made the typewriters happy and a beautiful 1954 Drexel maple end table. There was a lot of good material for catch and release photos. I'll focus on type and print goodies this time around.

This was a lovely display.  The typewriter was hammered and missing keys, but the typing instructional overheads were fabulous. 

I felt sorry for this Remington Portable.  It's too common to be desirable in this condition so it will probably end up victim to the key choppers.  I loved playing with the sliding typebars (controlled by the little lever on the right side).

This is from a nice cash register sitting outside.

Yeah, ink.  Not all that special, but I love the brand typeface.

Here sits a ginormous and mostly unloved adding machine with chain and gear innards.  It still works.

A fairly common Corona Four priced with a degree of optimism seldom seen.  At least it will be too expensive to harvest keys from.

Great graphics on this counter sales display.  I'm not sure what costs more per character - premium ribbon or HP brand inkjet cartridges.

Fun with letter stamps...

 Another great cash register.