Baker’s Coconut Animal Cut-Up Cakes

I’ve had this up on my photo pages for a while, and it’s perfect for Junkyard Clubhouse. This Animal Cut-Up Cakes booklet, put out by Baker’s Coconut in 1959, has full-color photos and instructions to make about a dozen different animal-shaped cakes by cutting up standard size round and rectangular cakes — and then encrusting them with unnaturally tinted Baker’s Coconut, of course. That’s Dandy-Lion pictured there on the cover, I had him for my fifth birthday. My brother had Fanny the Fish for one of his early birthdays.

My grandmother probably ordered away for it, it wound up with my mother, and I’ve had it with me since I moved out of the house. Aside from my sentimental attachment to it, I also think it’s beautifully designed and photographed, and it is just so 1959 (right down to the illustrations of a housewife baking in a dress and high heels). I have the whole thing scanned and up at Humuhumu’s Life in Photos, where you can see Tortie the Turtle, Ella Elephant, Quack-Quack the Duck, and all their coconutty friends.

This booklet inspired me to create a cut-up cake of my own design, a hula girl — you’ll find directions for her there, too.

UPDATE: Looking for Easter Bunny Cut-Up Cakes? I’ve got some here: Baker’s Coconut Easter Bunny Cut-Up Cake

Fanny the Fish Cut-Up Cake

The wonderful Disney Blog 2719 Hyperion has a great piece on the Man In Space episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color, (the episode turned 52 just a few days ago). The episode is a peek into what the 1950s envisioned the future of space travel to be like. It features both live action lectures by Disney animator Ward Kimball and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, as well as some animated futurist visuals that are not to be missed. 2719 Hyperion does a better job than I do at really coveying the impact of this midcentury science film:

Perhaps the most interesting footnote about Man in Space is the largely unnoticed impact it had on the development of the U.S. space program. President Eisenhower was so impressed with the program, he requested a print of the film to screen for high-ranking Pentagon officials, which was evidently instrumental in kick starting the country’s space initiatives.

Check out 2719 Hyperion’s post on Man In Space. If you’re nuts about it like I am, be sure to pick up the Tomorrowland DVD, which contains Man In Space along with a few other not-to-be-missed Space Age edutainment shorts from Disney’s timeless TV show.

Saint Patrick’s Day is coming up — that means it’s nearly time for one of my very favorite movies: Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Darby O’Gill is a live-action Disney film from 1959. It doesn’t get as much attention as I think it should.

Darby O’Gill fiddles a tune for the Leprechauns, ©Disney

Reasons you should watch the Darby O’Gill and the Little People DVD:

Read the rest of this entry »

“Protein Synthesis: an Epic on the Cellular Level” is a short film created in 1971 at Stanford University. The intro features Dr. Paul Berg, who would go on 9 years later to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. As much as I enjoy Dr. Berg’s intro, things really start to get running a bit past minute 3, when the hippies show up, demonstrating protein synthesis “using the dance idiom.” And balloons. And smoke. And a drum circle. It’s actually a very good demonstration of how protein synthesis works, and apparently it’s still shown in classrooms today. I first saw this film a bit over a decade ago, when I was working at ZymoGenetics.

For my first post here on Junkyard Clubhouse I’d like to celebrate one of my favorite staples of the Space Age: The Nixie Tube. The Nixie Tube is the vacuum-tubesque ancestor of the digital readout. Once the mainstay for counting down Moon Launches and Doomsday Devices with, the Nixie Tube is now pretty much only favored by many a retro-minded hobbyist.

There’s some really cool commercial and homemade projects out there, including the Nixie Tube Wristwatch, some very cool clocks, and even some super old calculators. You can find a ton of cool Nixie-related auctions on eBay, and Wikipedia has a great entry for them too. Yay Nixie Tubes!

The Hacienda Barmobile, from Tikiranch’s blog

I want this. Doesn’t it look like a life-size version of a kid’s toy? An alcoholic kid’s toy. Found at Tikiranch’s blog.

This has been burning a hole in my pocket for a while now. It’s an animated advertisement for drive-in movie theaters, pushing an intermission trip to the snack bar, sponsored by Dr. Pepper. It was created by Keitz & Herndon, a little animation studio in Dallas, in the early 1950s.

I first saw it on the Cartoon Modern blog. If you dig this, you’ll also dig the book Cartoon Modern. How can you not dig something so… frosty?

Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation [Amazon.com]

Classic Drive-In Theater Intermission Film Clips

[UPDATE] SideShowCarny, who uploaded this clip to YouTube, reports that it came from one of the volumes of “Hey Folks! It’s Intermission Time!” from Something Weird. They sell them on DVD for $10. Do a search on “intermission” to find them.