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.