Saturday, April 17, 2010

The Monstore at Six Flags Part 2




The ride photo pickup counter inside the Monstore features rarely seen concept art for the Monster Marsh.  For the most part, the scarier monsters have been "kept in the dark" for merchandise and promotional materials over the years.

I would love to buy postcards (or a book) featuring the creative, energetic artwork on display at the Monstore.

I love the drawing of the Lagoon Goon musicians on the wall here.  There was another member of this Dixieland group--a harmonica player---shown in another piece of artwork that I saw in a Monster Plantation online article written by artist and theme park historian Christopher Merritt (he just released a new book called Knott's Preserved, covering the history of Knott's Berry Farm theme park in California.  I've never visited the park, but I've met Christopher Merritt, and he is such a nice guy, I'm getting his book!).

The Harmonica monster must have been cut early in the design process.

The image of the hillbilly monster with the "accordion monster" is part of a large mural in the museum section of the store.  This must have been taken from an early idea, because there is no accordion monster in the ride.

The cheerleader monsters are featured prominently as part of fixtures in the store.  I am actually shocked that they did not make plush toys out of these characters.

The framed artwork of the cheerleaders also on display includes two characters cut from the scene.  They are featured in The Monster Plantation Coloring Book, so they must have been cut at the last minute.

There's more in store from the Monstore!

13 comments:

  1. Love that concept art for the Monster Marsh section of the ride!

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  2. Hey TokyoMagic! I love that art, too! I had never seen it anywhere else before, so it was a nice discovery.

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  3. The musicians would be my favorite too because I so love music.

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  4. I love fun shops like this. I wonder if the workers ever get tired of people just hanging out and looking at stuff but never buying anything.

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  5. Hey TechnoBabe! I don't think I could get through life without music.

    Hey exotic locale blogger--I don't have the proper keys to type your name, and I don't know what you wrote. Hopefully it's nice, so if it is, thank you!

    Hey Peyton! My guess would be yes.

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  6. I haven't clicked on the exotic locale blogger's links, but by hovering over it and checking out the URLs, I suspect that that post is, in fact, not something nice at all.

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  7. We gotta look out for each other! :)

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  8. The accordion monster looks like a character from "Ahhh! Real Monsters".

    Speaking o which, wasn't there an episode of that show that parodied the ride?

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    1. If there was an episode that parodied it, I don't remember seeing it.

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    2. From what I recall, the episode focused on the monsters finding out about a boat ride at a theme park that featured friendly animatronic monsters. They were ticked off because they saw it as a threat to their "scary" image and sent Ickis to do something about it.

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