These nutcracker heads were very popular in the 1950s. You hold a nut in the mouth and twist the notched wooden peg that comes through the bottom until it squeezes the nut so tight that shells spew out like machine gun fire. Handy but messy so wear protective goggles while attending to nuts!
Oftentimes glorifying politically incorrect characters, this breed of nutcrackers usually consisted of carvings of personality types with notoriously big mouths like the sailor on leave you see here.
Made in the 1970’s, Fleer Quicksand Bubblegum also came in Strawberry and Sour Apple. I never had the guts to pour this down my throat so not sure how it worked but the concept of powder turning into bubblegum is Kitsch enough for me. Yuck and fabulous in one fell gulp!
These Party Pickers were all the rage in the 1950s – women poised to fulfill male fantasies, their high heels spiking popular canapés like Pigs In Blankets, Bacon Wrapped Olives and other fanciful party faire born in modern kitchens powered by the postwar Atomic mentality of style and convenience.
My favorite thing about these Pickers is how the end of the women’s hair pokes out from behind her shoulder almost looking like another arm. Or maybe the end of a scarf. Or maybe just another sharp point to spike a raisin, caper or some other miniscule hors d’oeuvre enhancement.
I went to a lot of parties this weekend and the candy corn, the official candy of the season, was laid out in style. A big mound of it at one affair, tasteful scatterings of it around a jello mold at another – yes, many of my friends have the same kitschy eating habits as I do! I’ve had this refrigerator magnet trapping my favorite candy in resin on my frig for about 20 years. I’m not the refrigerator magnet type but candy corn is so at the top of my list I decided to stick it on the freezer door in 1988 and and see what happens as things like sunlight and feather dusters hit it .
I thought it would crumble long before this but, in fact, it has aged gracefully. Its highly saturated, screaming loud Halloween orange has dimmed some but the street lines yellow still shines bright and the white tips have faded the same way teeth start to gray over the years. I can see the sugar or whatever the main substance of this foodstuff is start to coagulate but otherwise the corns look perfect in their Esther Williams synchronized swimming formation, preserved forever here in my kitschen.
Made of plastic and 6 inches high, this anthropomorphic apple has sat next to my coffeemaker for years greeting me with a smile and supremely curled eyelashes every morning as I pour a cup. I have a lot of fruit with faces, many freestanding like this happy gal as well as a plethora of plaster ones that hang on the wall. Apples, oranges, pears and red and green peppers seem to be the most popular in the plastic genre, joined by grapes and bananas in the plaster category.
I especially like the full-bodied fruit people made of a continuous string of fruits or vegetables. But multi-purpose Alice, both bank and cheery kitchen accessory, is one of my favorites because she’s so pathetically and kitschily plain. Not much else going on besides the exceptional way the curl of her eyelashes echoes the upturned sweep of her flower and leaf hair.
I love Jell-O! I love all colors. I love it plain or with things floating inside except when people suspend stuff like little sprigs of broccoli or carrots in it that interrupt the smooth chew. I especially love Jell-O when it comes from a little individual mold. This vintage set of six is the real deal made by the Jell-O company itself. Made of aluminum, the all-ruling metal of the 1950’s, the scalloped sides make for an impressive sculptural mound of Jell-O but I wish the Jell-O name on the bottom (or top depending on which way you look at it) was embossed on the inside as opposed to the outside so that the brand name was gouged into the mound when it popped out. I know I’m not the only one who would eat around everything and leave the Jell-O logo until last.
I’ve actually made Jell-O birthday cakes using these molds by pouring different colors of the gelatinous stuff into each cup and unloading them around a giant peak of whipped cream with shredded coconut scaling down the sides. They look like futuristic condominiums surrounding a snow-covered volcano.
Resin grapes were a huge thing in the late 1960s/ early ’70s but none so succulent or popular as those that were fashioned into pineapple table lamps. I have the red one pictured here as well as a yellow one and a purple one. It’s a bitch to change the bulb though. I always have to call my electrician when one burns out. If I were the inventor of these I would have had one easily decipherable grape that popped out for an easy change. But for all I know these lamps have that feature because as adventurous as I am in my life and career that’s how unadventurous I am when it comes to figuring out anything mechanical or that involves following detailed instructions of any kind. Lucky for me,these grapes look fantastic whether they’re turned on or off.
Nothin’ tastier in the morning then to slip on a nice pair of bacon shoes and go about your day. As someone who loves the meaty stuff, this is the perfect way to avoid all that grease and and keep your feet looking crisp and scrumptious all day. I have bacon bandages, bacon scarves, designer bacon everything, but the printing is so cheap on most of it it just looks like pink and red wavy stripes. But on these Keds it actually looks like the real thing.
What was the marketing guy thinking when he hooked up The Supremes with a bread brand deal? Pumpernickel maybe, but white bread?!
I own the plastic sleeve the bread came in. Made in 1966 by Schafer Bakeries, Inc. of Lansing, Michigan, in partnership with Hitsville Merchandising, where someone should have caught the irony of the bread match.
Please play the film for optimum Kitsch pleasure!
This is one of the first things I found when I started collecting vintage accessories. I also collected matching TVs, real ones like Predictas, Halo-Visions, hanging spheres and the like. I LOVE television and televisions. So this ‘Tiny-TV’ S&P set has been the main condiment carrier at my place for years.
The S&P containers raise up and down by turning the gold ‘on/off’ knob. It’s also theoretically a photo holder. You’re supposed to be able to push the screen in and slide in a photo. But this part of the TV is completely ill-conceived as the plastic, as I’m sure it was even back in its day, is unbelievably brittle so the slightest bit of pressure shatters the screen. And even if you could get the photo in there to be a real TV it ought to be behind the screen and not in front of it where grease and everything else going into your body can spatter it. Despite its shortcomings, this, one of five I’ve collected over the years, is still one of my favorite S&Ps.
