Original Pulp Paintings from the Robert Lesser Collection

The William Benton Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition of Robert Lesser's voluminous collection of original pulp paintings. The show runs until March 14, 2010, and includes artwork from the covers of such magazines as Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Astounding Science Fiction, and Planet Stories, as well as those of other genres, including Western, detective and crime, and war stories.

To learn more, visit the exhibition's web site: www.thebenton.org/exb_current.php?inc=31

There's also a slide show of artwork, including the covers of the magazines for which it was used, here.

It's a great opportunity to see some great, uniquely American pop art, and I highly recommend anyone who can make the trip does so.

I had a chance to poke through much of the art when I visited Lesser's apartment a few years ago. It was stacked four, five, six, seven paintings deep against every wall of his small, New York apartment. The art hung from every flat surface -- including the ceiling! Overwhelming. Scary and impressive at the same time. Lesser always said that he wants people to be able to appreciate the art, so it's great to see that it's found a home for a while. (I know he plans on donating it to a museum in New Britain, CT, sometime in the future.)

Robert Lesser at the preview of the auction of his vintage robots and space toys. (Photo by Karl Tate)

Lesser's art was on display a few years ago at the Brooklyn Museum. They did a pretty weak job of mounting the exhibition, though the scope and grandeur still came through. I hope this time the museum does the collection -- and the collector -- justice by putting some more thought into how they hang the art.

Back From A Foreign Land

I was away on vacation for the last week and a half, but new posts resume tomorrow. And I promise that, in the future, they'll appear more often than once every two weeks!

A Picture's Worth A Thousand... Toys?

Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of playing host to artist Steven Skollar, who was over at the Attic to take some photographs of my robots and ray guns. Skollar's a painter -- and a very good one, at that -- and needed the pictures to use as references for an upcoming series of portraits.

Painter Steven Skollar taking a reference photo of Irwin's Shooting Man From Mars.

Of course, when he contacted me a few days ago, I'll admit I'd never heard of Steven Skollar. But after digging through his web site (www.stevenskollar.com) and seeing his art, I knew I wanted to help him out. He works in oils and his style evokes art by the past masters. We're talking classic portraiture -- weighty, heavy, realistic stuff that both scrutinizes and celebrates its subjects in a way you just don't often see anymore.

However, he applies this technique to the most whimsical of subjects: Toys! (How freakin' cool!)

This is great pop art, no doubt about it. And what I really love about Skollar's painting is that he avoids the overwhelming irony that's infected so much of today's pop-, low-brow, and underground art scenes. (Irony's fine, don't get me wrong, but too much of it gets annoying. I'll leave that rant for another time, though.) The pop-ness of it all stems from, among other things, the juxtaposition of technique and subject, of the serious and the playful, of the meticulous and the goofy. He embraces it all with equal amounts of passion, and it comes through in his work.

So yeah, you can understand why I was so happy to help him out.

But there were other reasons to have him over -- besides my being a big ol' (if newly minted) fanboy.

For one thing, I was curious about the toys he'd choose to paint. He was interested in their aesthetics, he told me. Which robots and ray guns did interesting things with light? Which ones had funky shapes? Which ones looked fun? He wanted to strip away discussions of rarity, age, manufacturer, variations, and especially monetary value and get to those things that make toys toys.

I love that. We collectors put up walls between ourselves and these things by placing them on pedestals. We treat them like museum pieces. But if we're really going to appreciate them, I think it's important to remember that they're playthings designed for kids. They were meant to inspire imagination, and then to be consumed and destroyed so that parents would run out and buy more of them. With this in mind, the fact that they can function today as objects of art and historical artifacts just makes it all so much cooler.

(Look, I'm not a complete maniac. I know these toys are often delicate and -- sigh -- expensive, and I know they need to be treated with care and respect. I'm just sayin' that they're still toys, and let's try to not lose sight of that.)

On top of all this, I was looking forward to watching Skollar take his photos. I know the picture above makes it look like he's set up a little display with a couple small lights. But believe me, there's much more to his technique. However, it's top secret, so I can't get into it. Suffice it to say, I learned a lot of tricks that I'll be trying out on some upcoming photos for the blog.

So what's it all for? Why's Skollar doing all this work? Well, that's also top secret for now. But as soon as he's released all the information, you can be sure I'll post it here. Let's just say that as a fan of both toy robots and Skollar's painting, I'm very excited about what's in store for the next year.

Space Toys Online: Video Profile of Justin Pinchot

My friend Justin was profiled by a show called So-Cal's Best, which runs on Time Warner Cable in, well, Southern California. It's a neat little piece that does a great job of introducing people to space guns and robots. Of course, my favorite part was seeing Justin with short hair -- the last time I saw him in California, he was sporting a pony tail. Lookin' good, J!

To all my friends, new and old...

It's 2010, an appropriately futuristic-sounding year. A year for inspiring bright accomplishments, eyes-wide wonder, and, I hope, fantastic opportunities for us all. So as we slip just a bit more into the future, I want to wish everyone all the best in the New Year!

Keep happy, keep healthy, and, of course, keep collecting!

Zetaray (Pifco / Early 1960s / U.K. / 4.5 x 7 inches)

Sorry for the delay, everybody. The holidays can be a busy time... and a lazy time. But we're back, and ending 2009 with a bang! Get it? Hm...

The Zetaray, by a British company called Pifco, is definitely one of the gee-whizziest ray guns in my collection. Its sleek, slick lines and sweeping fins make it look more like a space ship than a space gun, and the metallic blue plastic is probably the most beautiful finish you're likely to find on any toy.

Of course, like so many of these ray guns, the looks outweigh the functionality -- this one clicks and has a flashlight in the barrel. But it's still enough to have made the Zetaray a fun toy for kids to play with back in the day.

The gun is clearly modeled on the Radionic Resonator Beam Gun (which I wrote about here), which was made by the British manufacturer Multum. Pifco modified the tail fin and ditched the more complicated, multi-color lens array. They also offered up the Zetaray in a second color, metallic bronze, which is quite striking. Still, I've got to say I like the blue one more. It's definitely less common.

The basic Pifco version of the design was reused a few other times. There's version from Argentina called the Linterna Espacial, which is available in both red and green. And I recently saw an amazing version from Australia called the Supersonic Space Shooter that includes a color-changing mechanism similar to the one found on the Radionic Resonator Beam Gun.

Australia's version of this classic gun. Pic via eBay.

While all these variations might be tough to get, luckily for collectors, the Zetaray isn't that hard to find, and can usually be had for a reasonable price. Which is nice, because it's a great piece that looks stellar in any collection.

R-35 Robot (Linemar/Masudaya / 1955 / Japan / 7.5 inches)

Back in the day, toy robots had style. Take, for example, the R-35, a personable little fellow with funky, bulging eyes; a dapper cap; and artfully applied lithographed gears and doo-dads. He's a far cry from today's robots, which often seem to substitute hulking menace for clever design, and imposing weaponry for charming personality.

The R-35, which gets his name from a label lithoed onto his back, abandoned some of the boxy, blocky elements that defined his cousins and replaced them with circles and cylinders. There's a great attention to detail, from those eyes -- which have their blue dot painted on the inside of the glass bulb -- to the strange, tubular ears to the piece of lithoed tin that serves as a mouth. It's definitely a robot that stands out from the pack. The blue and silver finish, which on the head has a bit of a hammer tone to it, doesn't hurt either.

The toy is one of the earlier, battery operated tin robots. In action, it ambles forward and backwards using a pin-walking mechanism, while his arms swing and his eyes light up. Fairly run-of-the-mill for toys from this period, but that doesn't make it any less fun. The robot's controlled by one of the nicest battery packs in the hobby. Whimsical graphics offset the industrial design, making this battery box as fun to display as the robot itself.

When I began collecting, the R-35 was fairly easy to find. It'd pop up on eBay all the time, and often, collectors could choose from two or three ending in a given week. The number of toys floating around today are testament to the R-35's original popularity -- and the fact that so many continue to work speaks to the quality of the Japanese construction.

Anyway, despite the plethora of available robots, I held off on buying one. I'm glad I waited, because eventually my friend Donald Conner -- who I've written about here -- turned me on to a mint-in-box example with a buy-it-now of only a bit more than the toy usually got when selling loose. Now, I'm not one to generally collect boxes, so I ended up selling this one for pretty much what I paid in the first place -- making the robot itself nearly free. I loved the box, and it was sort of a shame that I had to sell it, but the technique of selling off boxes has allowed me to afford many of the robots in my collection. It's about defining priorities, I guess.

Lately, R-35s have become a little less common. They still appear on eBay and dealers' web pages, but not with the frequency that I remember from a few years ago. I wouldn't go so far as to call the toy rare, but the drop is definitely noticeable.

Not much else to say about this great little toy. He's worth adding to any collection, I think -- a fun toy that looks great, too. What's not to love?

Dan Dare Atomic-Jet Gun (D.C.M.T. / 1950s / U.K. / 4 x 6.5 inches)

Americans had been enjoying the exploits of Buck Rogers for more than 20 years when Frank Hampson created Colonel Dan Dare for for a comic strip in Britain's Eagle Magazine in 1950. Despite the late start, the U.K.'s toy market was quickly flooded with dozens of amazing toys and tie-ins, from space ships to pop-up books to walkie talkies to ray guns. Yes, ray guns. Sweet, sweet ray guns. And one of the best of the lot is the Atomic-Jet Gun.

The Atomic-Jet has a lot of stylistic zing, making it a popular ray gun today. But it's definitely one of the less common Dan Dare toys, probably due in part to the delicate plastic construction. A little rough play and Britain's space cadets would be left with inoperable firearms. Not a good position to be in when the Mekon's hoards attack. (The Mekon, for the uninitiated, was Dan Dare's fiercest enemy.)

That is one thin freakin' ray gun!

As far as I know, the Dan Dare Atomic-Jet has no variations. But then again, I'm constantly being surprised by this hobby, so who can say? Rare in any condition, when it does pop up it often has some cracks, or a broken trigger, or a missing plastic tip. It's almost always missing the black plastic cap on the back of the water tank. In fact, mine is a reproduction that I made out of Super Sculpey. Not half-bad, if I do say so myself! (I did find a company online that makes small, plastic caps that look like they might be a closer match to the original piece. I've ordered a few different sizes, if they work out well I'll update this post.)

Now, while the toy might not have variations, it does have some relatives. The gun is clearly based on an American toy from the 1940's: Hiller's aluminum Atom Ray water pistol.

via toyraygun.com

It's also related to an earlier British gun, also called the Atomic-Jet, which was made out of metal by a company called Crescent (and which was itself based on the Hiller).

via toyraygun.com

All three toys share the same handle, large water tank, and general shape. However, the Crescent version of the Atomic-Jet is a bit more elegant, with a barrel that's been moved up so that it can extend directly from the tank. In one final bit of weirdness, the box for the Dan Dare Atomic-Jet Gun depicts the titular hero holding the Crescent Atomic-Jet Gun. Like I said, weird.

While many collectors favor the original Hiller version of the gun -- and hey, what's not to love? -- the Dan Dare Atomic-Jet is probably the rarest of the three. It just wasn't as durable as the other two toys, whose metal construction helped them survive many an imaginary battle. Personally, I can't say which I like the best. The two metal guns have greater design cohesion, but there's just something compelling about the brightly colored plastic. To me, it screams "mid-century."

Heck, I'll gladly take all three!

This is a gun I've wanted for a loooong time -- it was really a thrill when I finally snagged it. So c'mon, Mekon -- I double Dan Dare you to make your move!