During the Midsummer weekend visit my daughter, Miss Moonbase, left this fortune card, which she'd been vended [is that a verb?].
As soon as I saw it I recognised it as similar to the the card Tom Hanks gets in the film BIG from the Zoltar Speaks machine. which I think was on Coney Island [maybe it's still there?]
The Zoltar Speaks fortune cards were and still are issued by Characters Unlimited of Boulder City in Nevada, USA, as are the machines themselves!
You can read all about their Zoltar here...
and watch their neat video...
It reminds me of an uber-cool vintage Japanese toy from the Sixties called the Gypsy Fortune Teller by Ichida.
A fabulous companion to the battery-operated Mod Monster, I first came across this beautiful toy in one of the very first books on vintage toys I ever got, in 1990:
Yesterday's Toys 3: Robots, Spaceships, and Monsters Paperback, 1989, by Teruhisa Kitahara (Author), Masashi Kudo (Photographer)
[have you got this book too?]
The Ichida Fortune Teller is in action on several You Tube clips. Here's one showing the card being palmed.
You can even get a repro pack of the Ichida cards from repro specialists Toy Tent on Etsy!
Have you ever owned this or another firtune telling toy or game readers or maybe you've actually been to the Zoltar Speaks vendor in Coney Island?
I've never seen the Ichida Gypsy Fortune Teller before. Looks like a great toy though. Is the ref book worth looking out for, Woodsy? :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post. This is excellent information. It is amazing and wonderful to visit your site.
ReplyDelete