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The lack of awesome posts about awesome stickers for the last week is due to the simple fact that I've been away and unable to blog. I am back home now, which means I am happy

 

if dead tired. 

So, to the five of you who are reading this (and I know who you are), I appreciate your patience!

Jazz hands!

Just because.

What the eighties mean to me

Anyone who gets the title of this post without Googling it gets a sticker!

Anywho, when perusing my old sticker collection I realized that there are certain stickers that have a kind of retro cachet (like rainbows, unicorns, and Strawberry Shortcake) and then there are those that stay stuck in the 1980s. There are just certain things that we all liked in the 1980s that seem unlikely ever to be revived. A short list:

1. Mimes. I went as a mime for Halloween twice, in 1985 and 1987. I was very into the face makeup.

This was my "favorite sticker" for a while. I think I was impressed that it was made in France (but purchased in Quebec on a family vacation):

Now I look at it and think, supermodel posing for Summer's Eve print ad.

2. Teddy Bears dressed up like humans and photographed. This was actually a thing for a while, but I haven't seen it in years.

Jogging, naturally.

3. Dressing up like punks. Again, me, Halloween: 1984. Better of course if you can get teddy bears to dress up like punks and photograph them. 

Or whatever.

4. Junk food as art form, for junk food's sake. This was clearly before the obesity epidemic. It was before cholesterol became a household word. It was the era of McDonald's ads supporting the 1984 Olympics on TV, Webster as the spokesperson for Burger King, and ...

 

worrying not just about Star Wars but Junk Food Wars.

This sticker is an airbrushed image of a double bacon cheeseburger. Let's just think about that for a minute.

Nobody combined junk foods like Lisa Frank. What could possibly improve an airbrushed bacon double cheeseburger?

Only airbrushed layer cake, teddy bears, and ice cream, that's what.

Don't forget the unicorn on top!

The digital age

When Steve Jobs passed away, and everyone began to pay tribute to him on Facebook, I wondered if I had a sticker that would honor his memory in some way. Unfortunately, and with no disrespect intended, this is the closest I can come:

In point of fact, this in no way honors the memory of Steve Jobs himself. Instead it honors Olivia Newton-John. And...really big calculators. Oh, and leg warmers.

Which, actually, I wish were still around because it's October and getting chilly.

But I digress. I think the "let's get digital" sticker is really all about the dawn of the computer age. With that awesome, Wargames font and a desktop computer that needs to lose some serious weight, it's a sign of the birth of an era: in 1983, people (even Hallmark shoppers!) were ready--excited, yet--to get digital. And the rest is history... from playing Lemonade to blogging on my laptop, it has been an amazing 30 years.

You can and should read the text of Steve Jobs's beautiful 2005 Stanford commencement address here.

Hello Kitty is ready for Halloween

Halloween is a big, big deal in New England, so it goes without saying that I like to collect Halloween stickers. You know who else is ready for Halloween? Hello Kitty:

 

According to the Sanrio web site, Hello Kitty lives in the suburbs of London. Who knew?! Despite this, she is evidently very into the American holiday.

She has many costumes. 

I have to say these two are my favorites:

WHY IS SHE WEARING A SEXY CAT SUIT? 

What is this, Mean Girls?

I think she likes Halloween so much because she cannot stop dressing up.

These kind of freak me out a little.

She has also dressed up as a snowcat:

 

And on Easter, she dresses up as a bunny:

Raising the eternal question: what is the difference between Hello Kitty dressed up as a bunny and My Melody on Xanax?

Why is My Melody so sad??

 Better. I'm totally going as My Melody this year for Halloween.

People who dress like their stickers, part 2

Looove the white pants these t-shirts are tucked into. It is a flattering look for everyone.

I could so rock one of these shirts.

People who dress like their stickers, part 1

The year was 1982, and these were the stickers I collected:

 

This was a time when hearts had wings (there is no foundation for this iconography in all of western art history), shooting stars left rainbow trails, and hearts, stars, clouds and rainbows all existed in the same sky.

And this was how I dressed, too!

That's right, I seem to be saying. I'm wearing rainbows and hearts. You wanna make something of it?

Things I don't remember from the 1980s

The Snorks (see below) were an obvious rip-off of the Smurfs.

I have to admit, I have no recollection of the Astrosniks:

And while I have a fairly good grasp on the repertoire of Sanrio characters, when I found this sticker I wondered who on god's green earth Jodie was?

Thank heavens for the internet, which tells me that Jodie is a friend of Hello Kitty's, whose dream is to become a researcher someday. Truly a prophetic sticker acquisition on my part--in fact, I think Jodie will have to become a new favorite of mine.

A snork with an ice cream cone

That is all.

Strawberry Shortcake: Fallen Woman

Can somebody please tell me what happened to Strawberry Shortcake? I feel I robbed my friend Julia of her innocence when I informed her of the recent whorification of this classic children's character. We all remember her as the red-haired country girl with green-and-white striped tights, bloomers, an apron, clunky shoes, and her cat Custard by her side. Oh, and the big, fluffy bonnet topped by a strawberry! She is wholesome Americana personified--in a sweet-smelling vinyl doll.

I mean, what could be cuter?

Bad things started happening to Strawberry Shortcake around the 1990s. 

A little nip here and a tuck there, but the basic elements remained intact. Although, she did not have a dog. That was Huckleberry Pie, and the dog's name was Pupcake.

The Blossom hat, rolled-up jeans, and cinched waist were not a good look for her.

Then by the late 1990s things started getting weirder. Here she is doing ballet:

Clearly the coke use and anorexia have taken a toll on her at this point. 

Apple Dumplin', who was no more predisposed to a ballet class than Strawberry Shortcake, did NOT have a duck. She had Teatime Turtle.Where is he--and isn't he the real victim here?

Blueberry Muffin, by the time of Y2K, tried to improve her street cred by losing the pigtails, letting her hair go natural, and adopting a pony:

The lighting is off in this photo, but I assure you Blueberry Muffin remained Caucasian.

And that's as far as my sticker collection goes. It hurts me to share with you what Strawberry Shortcake and her friends are doing now. You can follow the links if you want to, but it isn't pretty. It strikes every feminist nerve in my body to see them carrying shopping bags and serving lemonade in their Bratz-inspired outfits.

I prefer my childhood to look like this:

Fall in New England

It's October in Boston, which means the leaves are turning; the Sam Adams seasonal beer is delicious Oktoberfest; Halloween decorations are going up; and City Feed and Supply is making pumpkin lattes. Fall in New England is such an experience that Mrs. Grossman's paper company made this lovely sticker:

Details:

 One of New Hampshire's covered bridges, obviously.

The barn has to be in Vermont, while the white house nestled among the trees is probably Martha Stewart's Connecticut home.

The white congregational church is classic New England college town (I'm thinking western Mass). The suburban house with the gazebo is in...Rhode Island?

One of Maine's beautiful lighthouses on the Atlantic shore.

Monday

Monday can mean only one thing: back to work, and back to school. I will write more about Lisa Frank in the future, but for now, only one question: why where there never pink unicorns prancing outside my school? (And a second question: what kind of drugs are those teddy bears on, anyway?)

  

Retro stickers

There is a big nostalgia factor in collecting stickers, so I've been thrilled recently to find new stickers being made in the old-school style, that is, full-on 1980s rainbows and unicorns. At the time that I first liked rainbows and unicorns (and let's be honest, I never stopped) it never would have occurred to me that they were an 80s thing, rather than just a girl thing. Maybe they're both? In any event, Mrs. Grossman's sticker company has these lovely rainbow shooting stars:

These (hard-to-photograph) rainbows look like they're right out of a 1983 sticker album:

Sandylion came out with these recently:

And Hallmark with these puffy, sparkly rainbows and rainbow stars:

I guess rainbows for the 21st century have to be sparkly or shiny to sell, while back in the day the ROYGBP sequence was enough. The same sparkle factor apparently goes for unicorns:

Where did I get these?! I can't remember but you can FEEL the sparkle on the stickers.

The other thing that has made me happy is that some old-timey sticker companies are re-issuing classic designs, like this butterfly by Hambly Studios:

Hallmark, which has never been a focus of anyone's collecting interest, but which nevertheless was prolific with its designs in the 1980s, has reissued these super-cute frogs through their "stickeroni" series (available at your neighborhood pharmacy!)

You know you traded these!