Grin 'n' Barris

I'm celebrating my return with a Halloween appropriate entry that involves my last weekend's finds, an original unbuilt in box AMT Munster Koach & a Drag-u-la built-up with box. These are both mid-sixties originals, and the original design was by George Barris. George is of course the father of television & pop culture cars (King of Kustomizers), with so many iconic designs that this whole blog and every post before and after could be about him, but I don't have time for that...so here are the two biggies, the Batmobile & the Munster Koach, and the Batmobile can wait for another time.

I was going through Craiglist last week and noticed a simple ad that read somebody was going to be having a model kit garage sale. I sometimes like to take the road less traveled, so on Saturday I made my way to it. It turns out the gentleman having the sale had worked for Revell for many years as a builder, and built many of the kits you see on the box covers. He built cars, trucks, planes, even sci-fi (like Robotech), mainly stuff throughout the '80s. He also had a few vintage kits at his sale, and these two Munster's classics caught my eye. He told me back in his Revell days, there was a sale at the Barris estate. It sounded like maybe not so much an estate sale, but a thinning of the thousands of items George had stored away, so he bought some stuff there. So to make all that a short story, these two original kits came from George Barris himself...and to quote Caddyshack "So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

I don't have to tell you how awesome the Munster Koach is, and this one is pristine, complete with instructions and decals. The art on both boxes is killer,
and from what I understand the Drag-u-la is a tough kit to find (original Koaches aren't exactly easy either). At first I was sorta bummed he had built the Drag-u-la but he is a master builder...and it shows. It is completely unlike most 60's built-ups, no crappy gloss paint, no smeared glue, really nice. I'm not complaining about it now, it looks fantastic.

To celebrate Halloween, The Munsters, Hot Rods, and all things Ghoulish...here's Rob Zombie with Dragula...

Vari-Vue & Kohner

I found these cool little Kohner "Color T.V." flicker toys over the weekend. One is Yogi Bear, the other Huckleberry Hound. Kohner Brothers made some great stuff in the '60s, although they started much earlier with wooden toys. I like the later plastics because they did a lot of Hanna Barbera (which is what these are), and also Disney and other famous licenses. Kohner's push-puppets are the most common find, and some of them are highly sought after. I really dig these little TVs and didn't have either one of them yet. They use the Vari-View technology, which basically makes a 2D image move (most people call it "flicker"). If you like Hanna-Barbera stuff, Kohner is a great place to start if you want to collect. Fun, bright, movement, and great characters...what more could you ask?