This atmospheric piece, which would later be given the name “In London,” was part of an improvisation session featuring Greek synthesizer musician Vangelis and Spanish electronic group Neuronium. Filmed in 1981 for Spanish TV program Musical Express as part of “Serie Amigos” (the “Friends Series”), the performance was recorded at Nemo, the London recording studio that Vangelis had established in 1975 and where he would continue to work until 1983…
Ocean Pacific was founded in 1972 by Jim Jenks, a San Diego-based surfboard maker and former sportswear rep. He had developed the logo in 1969 for a surfboard line, but found much greater success with surfwear, OP’s corduroy “walkshorts” becoming an immediate hit with surfers and, in short order, men everywhere (the high-waisted style was popularized by Tom Selleck in Magnum, P.I.)…
Episode four of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
When it was first published in 1982 by Puffin Books, the children’s imprint of Penguin Books, copies of adventure gamebook The Warlock of Firetop Mountain came with a bookmark announcing “The Great Warlock of Firetop Mountain Competition.” The book’s authors were Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, the co-founders of Games Workshop…
By Ben Schwartz
Ultra-prolific board game designer Sid Sackson made his first game when he was six years old; he militarized Uncle Wiggily, a 1916 children’s game based on a series of children’s books. In it, players race from the titular rheumatic-yet-cheerful rabbit’s house to Dr. Possum’s office, for reasons not elaborated upon in any rulebook I can find. It’s cute, in a turn-of-the-century, butterscotchy kind of way—calming, quaint, woefully unbalanced, and entirely luck-based…
By Tom G. Wolf
Few Lego themes have infiltrated the wider public’s consciousness in the same way as Space. A mainstay of the company’s range since the 1970s, Space has captured the imagination of millions of children across multiple generations and made numerous appearances throughout pop culture. Most notable in recent years is the character Benny from The Lego Movie…
Episode three of a dark sci-fi tale by Łukasz Kowalczuk and Maciej Czapiewski. Ultra Minion runs every Friday at We Are the Mutants…
Dolphins, of course, were not the only cetaceans that were of concern to environmentalists in the ’70s and ’80s. Whales, the victims of a mass, human-engineered extinction since the Age of Sail, were also being studied, the intelligence in their massive brains quantified…
From the 1960s on, we saw a kaleidoscope of depictions of dolphins and whales in novels, films, and television as wise, immanent intelligences: co-existing on a planet with the rapacious homo sapiens, yet somehow more worldly and wise than the “superior” species…
The mandate of British publisher Usborne Books was to produce beautifully illustrated children’s publications, designed and written by its in-house team. The first wave of books Usborne released in 1975—which included the popular Spycraft—had sold well, and in 1977 the company followed it up with the World of the Unknown series: a triptych that included Monsters, Ghosts and UFO’s…
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