Melbourne Museum – A Day In Pompeii exhibition

Here is a post that I have been trying to make for a while, but it seems that WordPress, Firefox, AOL and Photobucket have all conspired against me to make posting this as difficult as possible. I have had all sorts of problems with this post and it has taken me two and a bit days to finally get everything posted.

Last Sunday Priscilla and I set of for the A Day In Pompeii exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.

First of all I have posted a photo of the criminally underutilized Royal Exhibition Building. This building which was built especially for the grand exhibition of 1880, and was the federal parliament house of Australia between 1901 and 1927, is really beautiful, especially when compared to the modern museum building that stands beside it.

The Exhibition Building did once serve as the Melbourne Museum, and I feel that it should be used in some way for a museum type purpose. The current premises cannot display the whole of the Museum’s collection, so perhaps it could display items relating to Melbourne in the 19^th and early 20^th century. (Items that don’t get much love by the current museum’s curators!)

Here is a piece of the Colonial Mutual building that stood on the corner of Elizabeth and Collins Street between 1896 and 1960, when it was demolished to make way for the current National Australia Bank building. It is very surprising how many grand old buildings were demolished between 1950 and 1980. We tend to think that this sort of barbarism is a more modern thing but at least now we try to recognise a buildings historical value, rather than just call in Whelan the Wrecker.

There were a lot of interesting items in the Pompeii exhibition.

The saddest thing at the Pompeii exhibition were the casts of the people and animals that died after the explosion of Vesuvius. Especially the cast of the dog (at right) and of the slave who was still in his shackles.

It was a really interesting exhibition.

Chiquita Bananas

Here are some Chiquita Banana ads from the 1940s.

(This one’s not very politically correct.)

I think that a DVD featuring these animated commercials would be most interesting indeed. More info can be found at ASIFA’s website.

The Joker’s Rumpus Room Revenge!

This Joker story, which to my knowledge has not been reprinted since it was first published in the early 1980s, was written by Gerry Conway and has art work by the late Don Newton. Gerry Conway is the man who while writing for Spider-man in the early 70s, was responsible for the death of Gwen Stacy. His most notable contributions to Batman during his run as writer was the creation of Jason Todd and Killer Croc. Nowdays he is the creator and executive producer of Law & Order – Criminal Intent.

Don Newton is an artist who doesn’t get a lot of recognition, perhaps because he did not do a great amount of work before his untimely passing in 1984. For those who want to know more about Don Newton, visit the Art of Don Newton tribute site.

I Like Ike – Animated Eisenhower Presidential Commercial

Not being American I don’t know fully how their political system works but during last year’s election, which seemed to go on for ever, I did notice that most of their campaign ads just seemed to be more about picking out the faults of the other guy than showing their own virtues. (I hope that makes sense!) This seems to be the whole ideal of political ads the world over these days, especially here in Australia too.

How refreshing it is to see this Eisenhower campaign ad from 1952 which just features Disney animation and an annoyingly catchy song.

Happy Birthday Popeye

Today Google celebrated E.C. Segar‘s birthday with a Popeye related Google Doodle.

Aeroplane Jelly

Here’s some different Aeroplane Jelly ads to the famous one I’ve already posted.

From 1942

From 1954

On a related note, here’s a Bushells’ ad from 1941 which looks heavily inspired by the Fleischer/Famous Superman cartoons. I think this is British/English.

Freddo The Frog

Image via Wikipedia

I was just browsing the internet when I discovered an article from the Age on Freddo Frog, who is not just a delicious chocolate amphibian but was the star of Australia’s first animated television series. The series aired in the early 60s and was featured on the Tarax show on channel 9.

Other than the aforementioned article I have never read anything else about this cartoon series. I would love to view an episode or see some model sheets or sketches. Does any of the animation art from this series remain? Perhaps someone from Cadbury or GTV 9 or the animation studio who produced the series could shed some light on this. This is something that should be preserved as it is almost as ground breaking for Australian animation as Eric Porter’s Aeroplane Jelly commercials.

This commercial is from around the same time as the animated series.