Great links: Garage Sale Finds

I've mentioned Garage Sale Finds — http://garagesalin.blogspot.com/ — in passing before, but today I want to give a very deliberate shout-out to this great blog by Tom from Missouri. (We ephemera bloggers have to stick together!)

Over the course of nearly 700 in-depth posts since 2010, he's written about the magazines (with a special affection for vintage TV Guides), action figures, Polaroids, postcards, toys, holiday decorations, mystery items, and so much more that he's picked up at yard, estate and garage sales over the years. I spend a lot of time diving into his wonderful rabbit hole of a blog.

Tom is truly living the dream, and we all get to share in the fun with the items and memories he's preserving digitally.

Last week, he piqued my interest with a post about a 1960s/1970s snack food that I had never heard of — Dippy Canoes from Quaker Oats.¹ The corn chips were most notable, in my mind, for their now-unthinkable use of the clichéd image of a Native American to sell the product.

In his photo-filled post from last Friday, Tom writes about the can of Dippy Canoes that he discovered at an estate sale. If you're like me², it will leave you wanting to learn more about all the crazy snack foods of that time period.³

Here are some other Garage Sale Finds posts that you might dig:

• Facts About Fallout Protection (1961 staplebound pamphlet)
• How to build your kids an outer-space station (1978 Woman's Day article)
• In-depth investigation into a set of plastic superhero figurines
• A collection of Easter Egg dye kits, including one featuring Space Bunnies
• Universal Monsters "You'll Die Laughing" cards packaged with Wonder Bread in the 1970s
• A dazzling mid-century sunburst clock that Tom refurbished
• 1980 brochure for those great hand-held Coleco electronic games

Footnotes
1. Dippy Canoes were once part of Quaker's short-lived and rarely mentioned Nibble Division. I love these little historical tidbits that Tom digs up.
2. And heaven help you, if you are.
3. I think this is a field of "social archaeology" in which the passage of time definitely helps. We might not be all that intrigued today by Starburst GummiBurst, Red Velvet Oreos, Hostess Chocolate Pudding Pies, or Salt & Seaweed Pringles, but give it 40 years and let's see what the bloggers of 2056 have to say.