Allee Willis Blog » Kitsch O’ The Day

11Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Hartz Mountain Song Food Can

11Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Hartz Mountain Song Food Can

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This can of Song Food has stared at and inspired many a singer at my place including Bob Dylan, James Brown, Cyndi Lauper and hundreds more. I’ve never owned a canary (though my trained parakeet, Pepi, was one of my favorite pets ever), but the can has sat atop every pair of speakers in my recording studio since my very first hit. It first adorned a set of Auratones, excessively cheap but vital sound boxes that no matter how great of speakers you had you always had to play your mixes through to know what they’d sound like on the radio. It’s still sitting on one of my Mackies today.

I love the side of the can that says “MASTER RADIO CANARIES ARE FED EXCLUSIVELY ON HARTZ MOUNTAIN BIRD FOODS.” What’s a Master Radio Canary?

And I love the top where you can send away for a free “canary care” booklet. They had the same offer on the cans of parakeet food. I ordered at least 20 of them and read aloud to Pepi all the time.

This may be my most favorite can I own.

10Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Uber Macho Chest Rug

10Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Uber Macho Chest Rug

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A great kitsch Kristmas or Chanukah gift for your folliclely challenged male friends, this Burt Reynolds-like hair rug would look great protruding from a polyester disco shirt or anything that unbuttons to reveal the beauteous cheese beneath. The chest rug attaches to skin or sparse hair with three pieces of double stick tape and looks pretty until you pull it off, in which case the rash it most likely leaves behind still gives the chest a very distinctive look.

Made by Accoutrements. Fresh patch available at Archie McPhee.

09Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Debbie Reynolds Dress Designer Kit Colorforms

09Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Debbie Reynolds Dress Designer Kit Colorforms

Debbie-Colorforms

Why I love thee – 1) The fact that this is a Dress Designer Kit and Debbie’s wearing pants? 2) The twisted organs pixie pose that 3) Debbie’s striking in the middle of the street? 4) Her matching hair and lipstick? 5) The shoe/sock combo whatever-it-is on her feet? 6) The Technicolor hues on the box? 6) The perfect Atomic Age font? 7) The fact that it includes “a gay selection of town & country clothes”? I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that the answer is all of the above!

This beautiful bit of Kitsch is the winner of the prestigious Classique d’ Camembert award, the highest honor bestowed upon an object submitted to the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at awmok.com. I thank aKitschionado Slazz for her excellent and discerning taste.

Complete submission at http://www.awmok.com/2009/10/08/colorforms-debbie/

08Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Panasonic Panapet Transistor Radio

08Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Panasonic Panapet Transistor Radio

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Although it’s all a little worn, this Panasonic Panapet 9V R-70 is one of the most popular transistor radios in history. Music boomed through it throughout the ’70s and it continues to hiss out AM reception like the day it was born. The 4″ high Panapet came in white, red, blue, yellow and green as well as a much rarer lavender and was known for having less static than other transistor radios. It fit comfortably in your palm but if you were really cool you used the handy chain to hang it on your pole lamp or doorknob.

I had a bunch of these but through the years my lust for round electronics focused more on portable hanging ball Videosphere TVs with matching radio/8-track players. Each TV had its own matching Panapet.

06Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Teapot Wool Cap

06Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Teapot Wool Cap

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It just got freezing in LA. The skies are getting dark and gloomy, you need a heavy coat, it’s very un-LA like. The only thing that makes me feel okay about the cold invading the gorgeous, sunny west coast is that I get to wear my hats. I have a bunch of them that look like objects. This teapot cap keeps my head warm just like the real thing keeps the brewed stuff piping hot. I love this hat because it always stands up proud no matter what rains or snows on it. The only thing I don’t like is tea. Never could stand it, never will. I don’t care if it’s flavored, in ice cream, has 3 pounds of honey in it or what. When it comes to tea, this hat is as close to my mouth as it’ll ever get.

03Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Sunflower Light Switch Plate

03Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s Sunflower Light Switch Plate

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Completely oversized for the two light switches it’s designed to decorate, this textured fake wood plastic switch plate adorned many a wall in the 1970s, with any luck a wood paneled or flocked wallpaper covered one for optimum viewing pleasure. Light switches are usually designed to be only slightly larger than the hole in the wall they’re meant to cover but this Andre The Giant of one stretches to 7″ to accommodate a flower pot sprouting a completely overgrown freak of nature sunflower plant with multiple blooms.

02Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Jolly Chef Spoon Rest

02Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Jolly Chef Spoon Rest

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Plastic chef kitchen aids were all the rage in the 1950’s. Most popular among the S&P’s, note pad holders and mixing spoon hangers were these double spoon Jolly Chef spoon rests. In the postwar leisure class spending fury that modernized kitchens all over the world no one wanted their Eggplant Parmesan, Beef Stroganoff or Campbell’s Tomato Soup dripping on their new Okeefe & Merritt so the population of these little guys exploded. Of course, many a noxious fume mixed with the cooking smells as spoon rest after spoon rest melted from sitting too close to a burner. So finding one of these in mint condition is a fantastic gastronomical find. This guy has a scarred lip from a tragic spaghetti accident. chef-spoon-holder-yellow_1672

Made by Reliance in the USA, the original paper label on this 6″ x 5″ Jolly Chef reads “Heat resistant Styrene. Keeps Stove Top Clean…Attractive Wall Plaque product.” His chef’s hat has a hole for convenient hanging in case you want to keep him out of harm’s way.

01Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bubble Gum Dental Floss

01Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bubble Gum Dental Floss

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There’s nothing more I’d like to pull through my teeth than long strands of Double Bubble but this barely bubblegum flavored dental floss is as close as I’m ever going to get. It always amazes me that things like bubblegum, bacon, french fries and other foodstuffs that are not necessarily a tooth’s best friend are the products that are made to nurture it. One of the most fascinating things about this, though, is how they arrived at a price of 78 cents. Was 75 too convenient and 80 too round?

This dental floss meal was prepared by Oral Care and manufactured in Québec by Innovadent Technologies.

30Nov 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ultra Cheap Donny and Marie Microphone And Song Sheets Set

30Nov 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Ultra Cheap Donny and Marie Microphone And Song Sheets Set

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Donny Osmond may have won Dancing With The Stars and a whole lotta money for his favorite charity but a whole lotta money was the last thing that was spent on manufacturing this toy microphone and song sheets set at the height of the Donny & Marie Show frenzy in 1976. Despite the claim on the package that you too can “CREATE YOUR OWN SONGS • MAKE YOUE OWN MUSIC” the non-working plastic mic attaches to nothing and won’t get you much farther than singing into a candle or a shoe or anything else remotely microphone shaped.

The “song sheets” are literally blank sheets of paper that you write the notes to your own song on should you have enough songwriting chops to pull one out of the blue and be blessed with the knowledge of how to notate music, the latter of which I don’t even know how to do.

To make matters worse and even lower-rent, the song sheets are stapled together at the top and the bottom and it’s next to impossible without surgical instruments to remove the staples without ripping the one-ply-thick-thinner-than-toilet-paper paper it’s printed on.

Made in Hong Kong during the heyday of the bro/sis acts’ ABC variety show by the family’s own Osbro Productions and distributed by Gordy International (how did Motown get into the act?) it also appears that Donnie got the shaft on the shaft of the microphone as Marie’s name got bumped up to all caps and Donny’s remains crushed into diminutive lower case letters.

All around, this belongs in an express elevator up to the Penthouse of Kitsch because it is sooooo totally and completely cheaply made, meant to be dumped into bargain bins at all of the dollar discount stores that were just starting to get a smelly toehold on the American merchandising scene.

29Nov 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Ice-O-Mat Ice Crusher

29Nov 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Ice-O-Mat Ice Crusher

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Long before it was de rigueur for refrigerators to come equipped with automatic ice makers a contraption like this hung in almost every kitchen in the world allowing homemakers to crush fine or coarse ice without lifting a hammer, the previous method of accomplishing such a thing.

9 1/2″ tall, this most revolutionary of kitchen appliances was made by by the Rival Corp. of Kansas City, Mo., the company that also relieved kitchen misery with their forward thinking Can-O-Mat, Juice-O-Mat, Broil-O-Mat and other O-Mats which graced the product line until production ceased in the 1960’s. Thankfully I still have this one to remind me of my excellent past ice experiences. It’s been in full use this Thanksgiving weekend as many drinks preceded the bird and it’s leftover flock.