FACT! #67

Courtesy of jimscoins.
I don't recall ever seeing Washington with a copper visage. Probably just a spray tan or something.

No, what you're seeing isn't Photoshopped. That is indeed a US quarter minted on a penny planchet. This kind of error is one of the more jarring and unique ones out of the dozens of errors out there. The error is happened when the wrong kind of planchet is fed into the wrong coin stamping press. In this case, the planchet for pennies was fed into a stamper meant for quarters.

Courtesy of coinquest.
"In your face FDR! My coin is bigger than your coin!"

There are numerous cases of this error out there; different denominations, different combinations of material and sometimes... The same denomination with different composition. That's the case with the insanely rare (and very, very valuable) 1943 Copper Cent and 1944 Steel Cent.

Courtesy of Wikipedia.
In 1943, the US Mint switched to steel for pennies that year due to copper being used for the war effort.

Courtesy of coinsdig.
In 1944, the US Mint switched back to copper planchets for pennies.

All of these coins go for premium prices, with the 1943/1944 composition swapped coins going for insane prices. The 1943 Copper Penny fetches in the tens of thousands, with some examples going for around $100,000 in mint condition. The 1944 Steel Penny tends to fetch a slightly higher average price, with only 25 - 30 known examples; they tend to fetch between $75,000 and $110,000.

Courtesy of jimscoins.
Penny stamped on a stamped Dime. "I am an abomination!"

Slightly related to the wrong planchet strikes would be double denomination coins. When a coin has already been stamped, it sometimes ends up getting stamped again with another die. The last die to stamp the coin is usually the strongest (in the case above, the penny die was the last to stamp), but details of both are visible (such as the "ONE DIME" to the top right of the above coin.)

FACT! #66

Courtesy of Wikipedia. The original prototype burned the retinas of artists using it.

Perhaps best known for his creation Betty Boop and his work on the Popeye and Superman cartoons; Max Fleischer (b. 1883 - d. 1972) also pioneered a number of techniques used in animation and was quite the innovator. Today, we'll be focusing on one of the more elaborate techniques he created, along with the machine named after it; Rotoscoping and the Rotoscope.

Rotoscoping is the process of tracing the outline of live action footage and was first used in his "Out of the Inkwell" series in 1915 when he filmed his brother, David, in a clown suit as he performed... Which led to the creation of his first major character, Koko the Clown. Max designed and patented the Rotoscope and went on to use it quite extensively at his animation studio. The Superman cartoons from the 1940s used rotoscoping heavily. Though a personal favorite use of it would have to be in 1932's Betty Boop cartoon "Minnie the Moocher" where he used the technique to animate Cab Calloway's dance moves.

Courtesy of moviefest2012. Why Cab Calloway was rotoscoped into a walrus ghost is beyond me. Then again, pot wasn't exactly illegal until 1937. Mystery solved?

Though Fleischer Studios used it extensively, they weren't the only animation studio to use it. Disney used it in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Ralph Bakshi used it quite a bit in the 1970s, most famously in 1978's "Lord of the Rings." Later uses could be found in a-Ha's "Take on Me" music video, "He-Man and The Masters of The Universe" cartoon, both in the 1980s, and Don Bluth's "Titan A.E." released in 2000. Even Star Wars got into the game using the technique to add the glow to the lightsabers.

The prominence of rotoscoping has waned quite a bit, but it has lasted the test of time. It's still being used and is fondly remembered as a unique technique. There were other innovations made by Max Fleischer (which I'll get around to eventually), but this was perhaps the most inventive.

FACT! #65

Courtesy of Wikipedia. They didn't even believe in truth in marketing, the soda wasn't even OK.

OK Soda is what happens when you try to can the alleged essence of Generations X/Y and their anti-corporate, apathetic, angst-filled and disillusionment. Conceived by Coca-Cola in 1993 and test marketed in a number of "hip" cities that summer, OK Soda had a limited life span on grocer's shelves.

The marketing campaign was created by Portland, Oregon based Wieden & Kennedy and centered around a sense of irony that only the teens and 20-somethings in the 1990's seemed to grasp. Unfortunately for Coca-Cola, it turns out that they were the victims of irony when their campaign was met with apathy and a general anti-corporate attitude.

There were a number of different cans styles that were released, above is just four of them. The artwork was done by Daniel Clowes and Charles Burns. There was also an "OK Soda Manifesto" that was released with the soft drink:

1. What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?
2. OK Soda emphatically rejects anything that is not OK, and fully supports anything that is.
3. The better you understand something, the more OK it turns out to be.
4. OK Soda says, "Don't be fooled into thinking there has to be a reason for everything."
5. OK Soda reveals the surprising truth about people and situations.
6. OK Soda does not subscribe to any religion, or endorse any political party, or do anything other than feel OK.
7. There is no real secret to feeling OK.
8. OK Soda may be the preferred drink of other people such as yourself.
9. Never overestimate the remarkable abilities of "OK" brand soda.
10. Please wake up every morning knowing that things are going to be OK.

Don't worry, that feeling of your brain melting out of your ears is really just blood. Okay, maybe you should go to the hospital. It's definitely a natural reaction to reading something like. For the kids of today, imagine that in hipster speak... It's essentially the same thing. This is precisely why you don't try to corner the market exclusively on the counter-culture, you really just end up lampooning yourself.

Since it left the shelves in 1995, it has attained a bit of a cult status. The flavor is, apparently, more like Diet Coke than the supposed, marketed taste of "fruity." Though I haven't been able to find anyone or any reviews of the taste back from 1993... Then again, I didn't exactly do much research into this one.

FACT! #64

Yes, there was a time many, many moons ago that a game like this could be created. Released by Spectravision in 1983 for the Purina Foods and based off of their massively popular Chase the Chuck Wagon advertising campaign.

The game was a standard maze game, the player controlled a dog, named Chuckie, that had to make its way from the center of the maze to the chuck wagon that sat at the exit of the maze. The game has a time limit of either 60 or 30 seconds, depending on exactly what difficulty was chosen. There to thwart the player's efforts are a "dog catcher" and a "bone" that, if the player touches them, stuns him temporarily to make it more difficult to accomplish the goal.

If the player makes it to the chuck wagon, the second phase of the level is reached where the player has to control the dog as it attempts to eat the food... Seriously. All of that work (well, "work") just to help a dog whose depth perception is so shitty that they can't accurately judge where its food bowl is. What a riveting experience.

Anyways, at the end of the second phase the points are tallied up. The point totals are based on how fast you got to the wagon and an additional 100 points were awarded for accurately getting the dog to eat from its bowl. Then the whole thing starts all over again with a different map!

The game was only offered to people who redeemed their proofs of purchase from Purina dog food, as was common for many, many years back in the 1980s. The promotion wasn't successful, has been considered one of the worst games from a period of time that crappy titles flooded the market and the game has become a sought after title.

So bitch if you want about the current gaming market (I know I do) but there was a time that almost every game on the market was absolutely terrible. When that happens, it causes an industry to completely sink.

A Return?

I'm not going to make any promises but after much consideration and thinking, I am planning on returning to this blog and expanding it by attaching it to an actual website! The long pause wasn't necessary, but it certainly feels like it was. I don't know how to explain it, but I suppose that's the best way to put it.

Life just happened. Things got in the way, my naturally lazy personality chiefly among them... And I guess I may have been burned out. But I don't think that's an apt description. Really, I just sort of lost touch for this blog.

In the time between my last post and this one, I have seen one of my all time favorite sites go through a long content drought and after several months, the owner of that site finally admitted that he was bringing an end to the site and announce that he was going to be starting on another site. Then another site I absolutely love has been on an indefinite hiatus since 2010 and while there are signs that they're going to continue with it, nothing has happened yet.

Both of those (not quite) ends have made me a bit upset. Not angry, just... A bit like a part of my ritual has been blocked. I joined those sites in midst of their creation frenzy, cranking stuff out on a regular basis that was all quality. Then they just stopped. No notice, no warning, just gone. When contact was made, it was to announce that one was going down and well, there's been no information on the other.

Of course, I am talking about www.x-entertainment.com and www.homestarrunner.com. Anyone who knows me knows how much both of those sites have influenced me and how important both of them were to me working on this blog.

It got me to thinking, though. I have wanted to restart this blog and get the actual Virtual Vintage site up and running for some time now. While x-entertainment is going to continue as another site... I feel as if there is a lull in new content on the random crap that site and my blog have in common and now was the time to continue work on my blog.

Long, rambling story short, I'm going to try and start posting new content here and will be launching my actual site soon!

I don't know when any FACT!s will return, I hope soon. I won't do the FACT! a day speed I was going at, but I am hoping to continue with them as well. It's not that I don't have enough information to share, it's that I am really lazy and doing one a day was killing me.

So expect some new stuff to be popping up here, and it'll again be worth stopping by every day or so to see what else is new.

Thanks for sticking with me. I'm shocked to see how often I'm seeing references to this blog out there (there are a lot, then again... More than three would be a lot to me) and between the people I know that were visiting and the number of people finding it, even while I was gone, has brought quite a bit of joy to me.

...Oh, and it doesn't hurt that Google sent me $100 to use to advertise this blog and my site. So that definitely helped motivate me. :P

A HAPPY HALLOWEEN POST!

...Or I could totally not make a single posting since the 3rd of this month.

Life hit me like a ton of bricks (or a ton of feathers, whichever is heavier) and it knocked most of the holiday spirit out of me in a single, felling swoop. That was, until, a couple days ago when I caught "The Great Pumpkin" on ABC.

I don't know how many (if any) people have those silly little things that arbitrarily make a holiday season feel "complete." I guess for many people, the Halloween season is capped off with an amazing party (check on my end here) or, for the chit'lins, trick-or-treating.

When I was a kid (until, I believe, I was 17 or so) trick-or-treating was what made my Halloween season feel complete. There's nothing like going out a bit later in the evening when people are just trying to give away the candy and after the kids went home that was awesome. The air seemed crisp, especially if it were cold. There was so much merriment in the annual candy-fetch that I continued doing the tradition objectively years past the date I should have stopped.

Then... I, too, stopped going. It wasn't really a conscious thing, I just stopped going door-to-door asking for handouts. I don't know what made me stop, to be honest; nor do I really care to explore why I did either. All I know is that, after trick-or-treating stopped for me... What made a Halloween seem complete was catching "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on TV.

Those who know me in real life should know my not-so-quiet obsession with the Peanuts gang. I've been a fan since I was a kid and well, watching it is something that helps tie the holiday season together for me... At least, it's something that really sinks it in with me that the holidays are beginning. Admittedly, I have the show on DVD and could watch it whenever I wanted... But there's something that makes it more official, more important, when it airs on television.

Now that I have seen it and have been to/hosted a party... It really does fill me with holiday cheer. Of course, that could just be enough beer to drown the Loch Ness Monster. I kid... Honestly, this is a feeling I can't replicate via alcohol. It's something so honest and genuine.

Anyways... I wanted to wish everyone a happy Halloween. I hope that all of you have found that special spark that makes this time of year seem wonderful... I mean, there's gotta be something special about this if we all put up with the stress and crap that happens... Yet, we find ourselves missing it after it's over.

I'll do my best not to make any promises about updating as, for whatever reason, those promises don't often play out due to various things that seem out of my control. It also sorta helps that we're heading towards a grossly under-appreciated holiday (Thanksgiving to those in the US, outside? Just carry on, I suppose) and it's one that I hold very high in regard (even if it's just for free turkey and enough stuffing to mummify even a jellyfish.)

With that, I shall leave you all with an image that has brought me smiles dozens of times over the years (and no, it's not the chimp drinking his own pee. That's a video.)...

Fact: One of the first signs of hypothermia is seeing the silhouette of a dog rising in the foreground. That dog may-or-may not be Snoopy. It could be a Hell Hound to devour your soul. SWEET DREAMS!

Update Post: 10/03/2011

I'm gonna be doing another FACT! here in the near future. The lack of updates recently is part because of school starting, part because of stress in obligations and doing freelance work for a store in my area. Eventually, there will be an ad up for that store as part of the agreement I have made with them.

As for the future of the site? Well, we've entered one of my favorite times of year: the long holiday season. I want to add graphics to the site that will be set to a theme for each holiday... So orange/black and "spooky" for Halloween. Red/brown and I don't know... Turkeys... For Thanksgiving. Red/green and the abominable snowman for Christmas. Just preliminary ideas and God only knows if I'll actually act on it.

Anyways, expect continued postings on the site and more themed posts related to the holidays we are approaching.