weird

Vintage Quick Magazine, Jack Benny Cover

Quick magazine was a “news weekly” published by Cowles Magazines, Inc., part of Cowles Media Company (now a subsidiary of McClatchy Newspapers Inc.). The pocket-sized publication (4.5 X 6 inches and 64-68 pages, plus covers) were available at newsstands each Thursday, where folks were encouraged via cutesy back covers to “carry it in your pocket or your purse… and read it wherever you are”.

Quick was started by Gardner Cowles Jr. (called “Mike”) in 1949 and, despite a circulation of 1.3 million, the magazine was ended in 1953 when it was decided that Quick’s subscribers could be transferred to Look, where the circulation numbers would help Look maintain a lead in the big battle with competitor Colliers.

When I first spotted a handful of copies of the vintage magazines I knew none of this. But the the small size appealed to my rationalizing collector self (“Hey, we won’t take up much room!”) and the covers (front and back) were cute. But, flipping through the pages, it was the glimpses of odd “news” items which beckoned the most seductively…

Vintage "Of The Week" News Bits

Like in the July 31, 1950 issue, the “Shoe Shine Man Of The Week” (Toni Tomasulo, who apparently had landed in New York back in 1892 with just 20 cents and earned a name for himself with his Broadway shoeshine stand), the “Labor Union Of The Week” (the Burmese Royal Family Association, formed in Rangoon, Burma, to negotiate higher allowances for the elderly descendants of King Mindon (Burmese princes and princesses), and the “Freckled Kids Of The Week” (Joe Cassidy and Frances Brucato — who were winners of the New York Children’s Aid Society’s annual freckle contest).

These “Of The Week” dealios had me wondering if such awards were really handed out each week. Sadly, no; tagging on “Of The Week” is just a cute way of profiling a quick item — just like bloggers do today. But still, I kept flipping through the old little magazines, squealing over each page — sometimes over each paragraph. It reminded me of being a little girl in our local drugstore, thumbing through the magazines until Mr. V would creep up on me and say, “If you want to read it all, you’ll need to buy it!”

Memories of Mr. V. can still make me jump, so I had to buy the four vintage mags; blame him for my latest collection.

At least these vintage weekly magazines are small and there’s only four years of them to collect. If the four year run was complete years, I only have 204 more issues to go.

In the music world, a good bootleg is worth its weight in gold: they’re a recording of a live performance, or an obscure recording that was never really meant to make it to public. Somehow, somewhere, a bootleg finds it’s way into the hands of a collector and becomes much sought after.

Other collectible industries, however, know ‘bootlegs’ as the knock-offs, the poor-quality alternatives. The pottery and glassware markets see the most convincing and least valuable of the counterfeit collectibles, but one genre has a booming industry, one that’s overlooked yet available almost everywhere: the toy industry.

I doubt there’s a kid today who hasn’t played with a ‘bootleg’ toy, the gift from the distant aunt who didn’t know what to buy, the toy bought at the grocery store to stop the kid from complaining, the four things that allowance money can buy at the dollar store instead of the one at Toys R Us: bootleg toys are sometimes more available than the regular brand-names, because they’re the toys that end up at gas stations, grocery stores, in vending machines and at flea markets.

The fun in collecting bootlegs is the sheer variety of what can be found: often, to skirt the legality of the knock-offs, the packaging and name is completely changed, making it all the more difficult to locate a ‘genuine’ bootleg. Consider these bootlegs, bought at the local dollar store:

(click to view larger image)

To many people, these look like they were created after 9/11 to feed of the whole anti-terrorist genre: action figures belonging to the “Counter-Terrorist Units” of Extreme Troop. It’s an international team of good guys, each skilled in fighting terrorism in his or her own way, according to the back of the card — but an expert eye knows exactly who these figures are. What is sold here as “Extreme Troop” are knock-offs of GI Joe figures. Have a look:

The woman, in GI Joe parlance, is “The Baroness,” one of the bad guys of Cobra. The bootleggers didn’t even bother to remove the moulded cobra-heads on her wrists, belt buckle, and backpack – - aside from the poor quality of the duplication, she’s a dead-wringer for the original Baroness toy. The other is a Cobra Commander variant, one I don’t own the original for, but, again, is a dead-on duplication of the original, and collectors will recognize Snake Eyes, Mutt, and a number of other famous likenesses on the card back, relabeled and repackaged as something completely different.

I wasn’t out on the hunt for cool toys that day — I think I was looking for stocking-stuffers, actually — but I still ended up with the thrill usually reserved for finding a rare figurine at an estate sale. It’s the rush of the unexpected, and given the multitude of cheap imported toys on shelves today there’s no reason not to stop by the dollar store. For collectors who feel their collection already has ‘everything’ (or at least everything they can afford), adding bootlegs gives the collection a texture that purists lack. The inexpensive nature of the toys also makes it an easier direction to get started in without requiring a huge investment. For the price of one rare GI Joe figure, I could have filled my trunk with the entire rack of Extreme Troop toys. All kinds of toys are bootlegged, but they are rarely well organized or easily found, and it is actually the sign of a well-trained eye to notice a bootleg despite the wrong paint colors and being labeled something entirely different. Iin fact, some of the rarer bootlegs end up more valuable than the original toy! If running back and forth between thrift shops, rummage sales, or auctions is wearing thin, take some time and stop at the truck stop. There might be some treasure to be found!

More on bootleged toys:

• Bootleg Toys The Undiscovered Playthings
• RTM’s Bootleg Watch
• Bootleg and Just Plain Weird toys.
• An unbelievably thorough Star Wars bootleg list