By Lisa Hix

Here we are, in 2011, a.k.a. “The Future.” We’ve made leaps and bounds in science that we couldn’t even imagine 50 years ago. You’d think the science toys of our age would be mind-bending in their ability to awe and inspire young chemists and biologists. Instead, kids today are being protected within an inch of their lives, while adults apparently live in dread of unsupervised children running amuck with the powers of modern science at their tiny fingertips.

So how do these new educational toys compare to those made back in the …

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By Lisa Hix

What would jazz look like if it had a physical presence? According to Sherry Ann Byrd, a celebrated quilt maker who posts on Show & Tell, it might look something like the hand-made “M-provisational” quilts produced by six generations of her family, who descended from a former slave named Edward “Ned” Titus in Freestone County, Texas.

Her family’s creations—like the improvisational quilts of so many families of former African American slaves across the U.S.—are explosions of fabric and colors with sometimes hard-to-discern …

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By Ben Marks

On February 26, 1955, a Cleveland deejay named Tommy Edwards became the first music promoter to book a Southern singing sensation named Elvis Presley north of the Mason-Dixon line. The event was the Hillbilly Jamboree at Cleveland’s Circle Theater. That fall, Edwards brought Presley back to the Cleveland area for several more shows, including one on October 20, 1955, at Brooklyn High School. On that date, Pat Boone was the headliner (“Ain’t That a Shame” was his big hit), with Elvis, Priscilla Wright, the Four …

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By Ben Marks

People are always telling us about their collections. Some even send us links to Web pages they’ve built. Naturally we encourage them to post their stuff on Show & Tell, but every once in a while a collection stops us in our tracks.
“Mint-condition cars don’t have the same kind of soul.”
That’s what happened when we heard from Michael Spengler, a German photographer who is hoping to publish a book devoted to his collection of diecast and metal toy racing cars. Spengler …

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By Lisa Hix

A beer is served in a glass with a pretty woman on the front. As you drink, something catches your eye—inside your glass you can see the bare butt cheeks of the same glamour girl presented fully dressed on the outside. Maybe you’re a little startled; maybe it makes you smile.
“The earliest peek-a-boo glasses feature a cartoonish woman with a freakishly big head and eyes, like Betty Boop.”
It’s hard to feel scandalized today by these so-called “girlie glasses,” which had their heyday in the 1940s and …

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By Ben Marks

When we started inviting people to post items from their collections on Show & Tell, we knew that sooner or later we’d be faced with a Nazi swastika. At first, we simply followed the lead of eBay and deleted anything with a Nazi swastika on it that was not a coin or a stamp. But then we noticed that the handful of people who were uploading these World War II medals, helmets, and badges appeared to be sincere militaria collectors, not neo-Nazis trying to sneak an …

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By Ben Marks

Most serious movie-poster collectors search for that perfect copy of “The Bride of Frankenstein” from 1934, “Casablanca” from 1942, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” from 1951, or Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” from 1958. But for the last half-dozen or so years, a new type of collector has appeared, one whose sights are set on contemporary, limited-edition, signed-and-numbered, screenprinted posters designed not by the marketing departments of Hollywood studios but by some of the biggest names in rock-poster art.

The King Kong, if you will, of this …

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By Lisa Hix

Good news: The hottest look on the beach this summer is vintage. Retro pin-up style swimsuits that cover more flesh and flatter the figure have been seen on everyone from Megan Fox, Ke$ha, and Taylor Swift to Lindsay Lohan, Meg Ryan, and Marisa Tomei.

At last, we can all breath a sigh of relief after sucking in our bellies for a decade. Remember ye old days of 2000? Some platinum-haired R&B singer named Sisqó proclaimed his obsession with …

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By Ben Marks

If your pop is of a certain age, his rock-star dreams probably got no farther than his parents’ garage. You know why: He regularly stumbles over the lead notes of “Don’t Stop Believin’,” turns the snarling main riff of “Enter Sandman” into a train wreck, and butchers the ringing power chords of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Instead of suffering silently through his atonal cacophony, give the old guy an incentive to sharpen his game with these rock ’n’ roll gift ideas. They may not make him a rock idol, but …

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By Ben Marks

The last time we spoke to Justin Pinchot, he took us on a guided tour of his collection of toy robots. Recently, Justin sent us photos and a video (see below) of his latest toy, a 1959 Goggomobil TS 250 Coupe. According to Justin, less than 67,000 of these German microcars (it’s just 10 feet long) were manufactured between 1957 and 1969. Like other Goggomobil models, the Coupe is powered by a two-stroke, two-cylinder engine, manages a top speed of only 52 mph, and gets …

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By Lisa Hix

Time was, humans didn’t have to worry much about getting exercise. When we had to kill, gather, grow, or herd our own food, working out happened naturally. Of course, as soon as we figured out how to avoid those laborious chores, we did. Not long after, we had to come up with new ways of staying in shape; hence, exercise.
“Kellogg had some unorthodox ideas about health.”
Exercising is a laborious, energy-draining, and time-consuming process, so the minute we started making machines to do our labor, we also made machines …

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By Lisa Hix

These days, “snake oil” is synonymous with quackery, the phoniest of phony medicines. A “snake oil salesman” promises you the world, takes your money, and is long gone by the time you realize the product in your hands is completely worthless.

But get this: The original snake oil actually worked. Save this one for the next cocktail party; it will blow your friends’ minds.

In the 1860s, Chinese laborers immigrated to the …

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