bubbledog blog

foods with faces

So, I don't know exactly what it is, but I cannot resist anthropomorphic foods.  I have countless figurines, erasers, and stickers of smiling fruits and vegetables from my childhood and I am always on the hunt for more.  I get a lot of inspiration from that kind of stuff for the crafts that I make in my etsy shop.

I found this set of Crazy Crop plush characters on ebay a couple of weeks ago.  They were made by Hallmark in 1984 and I had never seen them before.  I don't know exactly what I will do with them, but that has never stopped me from buying something like this in the past :)  In addition to the fact that I love seeing the group of them smile up at me, I also love their ridiculous names like Cole Q Cumber, Georgia Peach, Pearl E Onion, and Scarlett O'Radish.

Of course, now I am looking out for the missing characters....

bubble yum

I was so happy to get this vintage Bubble Yum bank in the mail today!  I found it on ebay last week and purchased it immediately.  It was made in 1980 by The Idea Source.  It is about nine inches tall and made of metal and cardboard.  It looks like a giant pack of old school Bubble Yum and I can't wait to figure out where I will display it in my house!

Speaking of old school Bubble Yum... after finding the bank on ebay, I was looking for some other related items when I found this completed auction.  $350 for a box of gum that is nearly thirty years old!  Wowzer!  It looks so cool and it totally nostalgic, but I could never keep it sealed like that.  It sounds crazy (and gross), but I would have to try it :) 

richard scarry's best rainy day book ever

I just got this book after looking for an inexpensive copy for the last year or so.  We had this book when I was a kid and my mother would let my brothers and I do an activity out of it when we were home from school on a holiday or on a snow day.  It was extra special because we only got to see it on those special occassions.  I remember spending a considerable amount of time coloring in and cutting out the flags from around the world with my brother.  I also have to admit that, at thirty eight years old, I was just as excited to see the section on cut out cars, trucks, and buses as I was when I was eleven!

You can find a reasonably priced used copy on amazon, but you might find a good amount of coloring in those books.  If you had one when you were younger, you might remember that it was split up by activities for each month.  February includes a calendar (as does every other month) and has some Valentine's Day cards:

If you are like activities like this, you can check out my downloadable Valentine's Day set as an alternative to buying those packs of Valentine's that you can get at the grocery story. 

another vintage score on etsy

 
Anthropomorphized food characters and puns all in one - ding, ding, ding... we have a winner!  Just thought I would share these cute little vintage Hallmark magnets (from 1981) that I found on Etsy the other day.  I couldn't get them in my cart quick enough when I saw them.  "The Beet Goes On" may be my favorite... on top of everything else, it has rollerskates! 

rainy day retro craft

A couple of weeks ago, I found a bunch of old Makit & Bakit SunCatchers from the early eighties on Etsy.  I bought them and put them aside for a little nostalgic rainy day project.  It was gross out all day today, so the time had come to make it and bake it!

I only remember making these once when I was a kid and after I got started today, I realized why... it is so tedious!  If you don't remember making these, the fun ends when you basically have to use tweezers to get all the little edges of the metal frame filled with the colored plastic bits.  Well, tedious or not, I did enjoy myself and it brought back some childhood memories.  I had purchased four of these, but I only ended up making one... it would have taken all day to do all four!  

Elliot and ET are hanging in the window of my craft room.  It's pretty cute...even with nothing but gray skies lighting it up today.

 

   

ronald joins the family

I haven't posted much about my little collections lately, but that is mostly because I haven't had the time to even think about that kind of stuff.  Well, all of that changed during the last two weeks with a couple of snowy days.  There is nothing better than being in my pajamas, snowed in, and splitting my time between crafting and searching for goodies on the interwebs.  Ahhhh... heaven :)

I recently found this Ronald McDonald on etsy and it just arrived in the mail this morning.  I had been looking for him for a while and though I had seen it come up a few times on ebay, I didn't feel like spending $25 on it.  Ronald now joins my Hamburglar where they keep each other company on my shelf of knick-knacks.

 

oh yeah...

My friend Laura and I did some mid-week antique flea marketing yesterday.  I found some great stuff including a 1950s vinyl armchair, an old magazine stand end table, and some other little decorative pieces.  I also found a few little adversting characters to add to my growing collection.  This little Kool-Aid Man got me thinking about all of those Kool-Aid commercials where he would always come bursting through a wall like this one...

 

For some reason, I didn't remember his voice being so scratchy... if they ever do a movie version, I suggest Harvey Fierstein for the role.  Anyway, after watching a dozen or so commercials on youtube, I remembered this parody from The Family Guy and figured I should post this too...

 

 

a&w restaurant guys

After seeing my friend Laura's collection a couple of years ago, I had started casually buying little advertising figurines whenever I came across one.  I've managed to aquire quite a few, but they are really hard to come by and additions to the collection are infrequent at best.  I had some success a couple of weeks ago at a townwide yard sale and since finding all of those figures, my intersted has been re-ignited.  I went on the hunt and scoured ebay last week and was lucky to find these little A&W Restaurant figures which just arrived in the mail.  They are from 1998 and they have a hole cut through them so that you can stick them on a straw.  Now, I think I just need to the root beer guy to finish the set. 

trend stinky stickers

I just got these vintage Trend scratch and sniff stickers in the mail today.  Though I do have a rather extensive collection of scratch and sniffs from the 1980s, I don't really have many that are still in the original packaging.  Now, I just need to resist the temptation of ripping these packs open and feeling like I am ten years old again.

I get a lot of emails through the scratch and sniff collection portion of my website from people having reactions to seeing these stickers again some twenty-plus years later.  Maybe I will share a little bit and do a scratch and sniff giveaway on my blog this summer.  Would that be of interest to anyone?

hamburglar

About a month ago, I posted about re-discovering Fisher Price Sesame Street figures and starting to collect them.  I sure didn't waste any time as that collection has already begun to grow (I'll post some more pics soon).  I started looking around to see if Fisher Price made any other "character" related items back in the day and the only thing I could find was a McDonald's set.  Unlike the Sesame Street set, I never owned the McDonald's set as a kid, but I immediately went on the hunt for the Ronald McDonald and Hamburglar figures.  I found this Hamburglar on Etsy and have him displayed alongside my vintage McDonald's french fry AM-FM radio.