I Find Melmac

...and I buy it.

Tonight at the thrift store I stumbled upon a cache of old Melmac.

It's vintage stuff.

I'm assuming they're early 60s, but I didn't research it yet.

Most of the pieces were either thirty cents or fifty cents. Some of them were twenty cents. I think the larger bowl was sixty cents.

I was really happy to find these. Fifties and sixties melmac gets snapped up with mad speed in those stores. You rarely see it anywhere.

I only find fun vintage melmac stuff less than once a year.

There's a lot of contemporary reissues and stuff floating around.

The only thing that pissed me off was that some eedjot had written the prices in grease pencil on these, so I ended up spending more than an hour cleaning the pieces up in the sink.

Some red and some black grease pencil. And some came off instantly, while others took forever to remove.

The worst thing is they've started to do this with books too.

I feel like telling them that I love them, but I'm going to boycott them if they don't go back to stickers.

How much can that cost?

They ruin so many books. It's really frustrating.

Most of the melmac is Aztec. At least one piece of Boontonware and some Laguna melmac out of Los Angeles back in the day.

Many pieces are immaculate, scratchless.

I think they are cheerful and I love some of the designs.

Of course, some of the plates have the inevitable slight knife marks.

Some of the saucers have square sockets in the center of them and some of the cups and even the creamers you see here have square buttoms so they fit right in like square pegs in...well you get the idea.

I love the really shallow bowls. They're weird.

I love those colors that everybody loved in the fifties and sixties: salmon and aqua or turquoise were big melmac favorites.

Target's realized that retro melmac is in so they always put out a shitload of melmac.

I've admired some of the stuff they produce, but I think it was only once that I felt compelled to actually buy anything.

It was a revival of a design for kids' lunch trays. I did buy a few of those. Maybe something else. I can't remember.

There is a big oblong bowl for like potato chips or pretzels or something. Rolls. Whatever.

Speaking of potato chips, look at the photo in the entry above this.

Well, you probably already did on your way down the page.

I got these for Lee for his little side business.

The cute little ladybug is chocolate you can get at Gertrude Hawk.

Or for any U.K. readers, ladybird...

She has little cardboard legs.

I gave most of the ladybugs to my niece for her child, but I kept two.

And yeah, I saw the potato chip crumbs on the tablecloth.

What about it?

I don't eat the things, so don't look at me.