More Fun Photos
I'm continuing a look at some souvenir Fun Photos from the "Photo & Art Gallery" in Tomorrowland.
As I said in the first installment, these souvenir photos were placed in a frame that was also a handy mailer, in case you had friends or loved ones to entertain. Here's one of them!
This particular Fun Photo seems to be pretty scarce; a family ("Honored Guests") has been presented with the key to Disneyland, probably by Walt Disney himself. Say, the mom is quite the tomater!
Here's another envelope variation...
And the photo shows a happy family in the nosecone of the Monorail as it curved through a mountain pass (???). This example shows issues common to these old Polaroid souvenirs, with streaks, blotches, and discoloration. I suppose nobody thought about how they would look 60+ years later.
Stay tuned for more FUN PHOTOS!
10 comments:
Major-
I wonder what happened to the giant Disneyland key-? Now there's a collectors item-!
Thanks, Major.
"Tomater"? The goofy-looking tow truck from "Cars"? I don't see the resemblance. ;-p
I have no idea what that pattern is on the younger brother's shirt. It looks like he just took a felt pen and drew all over it! Maybe it's a pirate's treasure map.
The little kid is looking at, and pointing at, something that has caught his/her eye. Maybe a mountain goat standing on a crag in that "mountain pass" that they're whooshing through. Dad looks like a disembodied head... but he's smiling, so I guess he's OK. The supports for that beamway look pretty scrawny, going around that mountain.
Fun Fun Photos, Major. Thanks.
Hey mom! …”For your safety, please remain seated, keeping your hands, arms, feet, and legs inside the cabin. Watch your children—and no smoking, please."
This is the first time I’ve seen these; thanks, Major.
Is the baby in the Monorail giving the "I Love You" sign, or the "Hang Loose" sign?
And is it just me, or does the mom in the Monorail pic look like a cross between Karen Carpenter and Adrienne Barbeau?
Dad looks like a disembodied head.
JB, he's just doing his impression of "William Holden at the Brown Derby, turning the tables on an obsessed fan."
Thanks for sharing more Fun Photos with us, Major!
These make nice souvenirs. I hope everyone had a great day in the Park.
I’m sure that long life of the photos was not a consideration in creation of this novelty. I’m glad they survived as well as they did. I have some precious color instamatic prints of my Dad that are faded and discolored after years in a desk frame, so the Polaroids aren’t the only photo type that were not archival. I wish I had the skills to improve them.
Thanks Major, good looking families today!
JG
I loves me some Fun Fotos! I think I've seen some others with the Monorail backdrop before, but the Key to Disneyland is new to me!
They key family looks like a fun bunch, full of personality. They look like they just stepped out of an early-60's TV sitcom. What wacky hijinks did they get up to this week on their visit to Disneyland? Did Dad get his foot stuck in a spinning teacup, or did Junior spill grape juice all over Big Brother just before he finally got his big chance to meet Annette? Nevermind, it'll all be forgotten by next week!
Nanook, I thought the exact same thing!
JB, so are you saying that you DON’T find Tow Mater attractive? I don’t even get that! I can’t really tell what that pattern on the son’s shirt is either, maybe color would have helped. I do wonder what the baby girl is pointing at, and if the photographer did something to attract her attention. Poor dad, he really liked his body, but being a disembodied head has its advantages.
Lou and Sue, the safety spiel said nothing about keeping my nose inside the cabin. Think about it. Plus, I love to smoke and they can’t make me stop.
TokyoMagic!, the baby just came from Hawaii, and she learned some cool gestures. This happens to be one of the “rated G” gestures. I guess I can see the cross between Adrienne Barbeau and Karen Carpenter, but it would have never occurred to me! Was William Holden’s head disembodied on that episode of “ILL”?
JG, the funny thing about photo prints is that the ones from my childhood - square and glossy - still look vivid and crisp. Later “improvements” to photo prints made them much less long-lasting. Some have turned green with weird orange spots. And that “linen” texture is the worst!
Melissa, yes, the Fun Photo with the key is harder to find. I wish I could show you some of the even rarer examples that a friend of mine has, but… they don’t belong to me! I hope Dad did not get his foot caught in a spinning teacup, that sounds like a bad situation. Suddenly I’m thinking of ground beef. Meeting Annette would have made it all worth it though!
Major-
"Was William Holden’s head disembodied on that episode of “ILL”?"
In a matter of speaking, yes. LOOK HERE.
In late for the "day" as ususal, being nocturnal and such.
The first photo of the family of four just oozes "mid-western mid-1960s 'nuclear family' that it *really* should be in the dictionary as the graphical definition of the term. Only thing missing is the string of pearls around Mom's neck. :) I adore it as the beautiful time capsule that it is. What a great share for Disney fans or otherwise.
The strange striped toning (tone-ing) in the last photo caught my eye. My first ever job in astronomy was in the "plate vault" at the headquarters for Kitt Peak in Tucson, AZ. Until the mid-to-late 1980s, a photograph taken for astronomy research was exactly that, a photograph on "film", except the photosensitive emulsion was on a thin glass plate as it was more stable than traditional film. All of the glass plates that were exposed on Kitt Peak were (and probably still are) stored and archived in a vault in the basement of the offices there.
In time, folks learned that these black and white emulsions, if they weren't fixed properly after the first processing, would develop this gold coloring around some of the exposed stars and nebulae. This would render the stored plate less useful, so my job was to identify from an old computer printed logbook (dot-matrix on green and white striped paper) those plates in the vault that hadn't been re-treated (just another trip to the stop-bath for these) and archived again.
The stripes in the photo of the family in the "monorail" look like what we called "gold spot disease" and makes me wonder if this might be similar to that. I suspect these photos were processed and printed quite rapidly so folks could walk out of the park with them in hand as a memento of the day. I can see a case where a small rush of photos came through the lab and in a effort to get them out to the guests, the stop-bath and fixer steps were cut a bit short. The photo at the time looked perfect, but add a decade or two, and natural chemistry took over and produced those stripes.
As always, thanks for the photos and daily dose, Major. I'm here daily, just a very infrequent commentator.
-AlbinoDragon
^ Nanook, HA!
AlbinoDragon, it’s good to hear from you….am glad you’re still hanging around!
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