scrounge lizard

 

I wanted to tell you about this shop (which isn't a shop anymore) in Preston. The internet doesn't say much about it except that it was a recycled furniture store between 1994-2005. I was told, or perhaps I got confused or am misremembering, that the shop's logo is an early piece of Philip Brophy design from the 1970s. I will look into that further perhaps as I recall who told me and I can ask them again. Ok talk then. 

pinecone

That old joke/cliche about you buy your kids an expensive present and they play with the box. Well, Perry has a hankering for pinecones which I guess makes sense for a creature who is not that food motivated but still compelled to do the things puppies/young dogs/dogs generally do, which is destroy something they can easily manipulate. It's all about texture I guess. 

Yesterday we went to Eaglemont and Preston, I might treat you to some pictures from that trip later, although really it was fieldwork for work so there was a lot less quirk. As you can imagine, less quirk than the usually fairly quirkless pictures series I typically post is pretty nonquirk. I will say this: Perry was very well behaved. There's light at the end of the tunnel. He certainly deserves to decimate this pinecone, which he picked up in Eaglemont yesterday. 

toppa the world

You might remember in 2006 I reminisced about how fond my feelings were towards the Toppa Ice Cream company. Perhaps my affection is linked to the fact that, as of 1966, the company was owned by British Tobacco - might also explain why I still get a slight yearn when I smell cigarette smoke (I've never smoked). What I don't really understand is why, when that company was doing such great guns in 1966 when (according to the Bulletin, anyway, which I suppose might have had some rationale to promote something that wasn't as hot as it seemed, though surely the Bulletin wanted cred) 'several... firms would welcome the Toppa fold under their wings', it basically disappeared in the early 70s.*  One of the things Toppa did in the mid-60s was move its factory from Brunswick to Preston...

Melbourne Age 12 May 1971 

and then wait five years to sell the old one, or something. That space is now, I gather, occupied by these townhouses, although there might have been something else in-between:

This is where they were at in 1970, looking for a mature man. Perhaps immaturity was a problem they faced? Hard to tell. Branching into diary products might have been a mistake as well. 

Toppa disappears from the pages of the Age in the mid-70s, and I gather at some point in there they were bought by Paul's, who always pissed me off because I assumed they were named in response to Peters, which didn't seem fair. But there was a two-hour moment in early 1972 when Toppa really got into the groove:

The Age 16 December 1971

How rad would that be? Yeah, I reckon they used words like 'rad' then. 

Anyway, if I can think of any other avenues to find out what happened to Toppa I will go down those avenues, though possibly what happened to them is they were bought by another company which shut them down, that's the end. 

* 'Expansion in the food industry' The Bulletin 8 January 1966 pp. 48-49