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Tiki Central / Locating Tiki / The Tropic Isle Restaurant and Cabaret Ltd., Surrey, B.C., CANADA

Post #329965 by TabooDan on Mon, Sep 3, 2007 6:42 PM

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Glad you are enjoying the research project!!
Here is a picture of a few of the mugs from The Tropic Isle. If you have any of these marked like this and didn't know where they were from, now you know.

The above mug was used to serve "The Famous Island Drink Mai Tai" as it states on their drink menu. This mug has the one Ku Tiki face on the front and "Tropic Isle Surrey BC" on the reverse. Had quite a crazy glaze on it and no two are the same! This mug I have seen in the wild before but is seldom scene.

This hard to find, cool little bucket mug is smaller than the last one and is an awesome green color. It is also marked Tropic Isle on the reverse. I have never seen this one around and it is not directly noted on their drink menu.

Here's the reverse:

The next picture is of the two bucket mugs beside each other so you can see the difference.

Not too much but just enough to make it a completely different mug. The red colored one is pretty much the same size as the OMC 3-Face Bucket Mugs. The OMC is what it would have been molded from by the local ceramic artist as he used existing Orchids of Hawaii mugs as well to produce these mugs for the Restaurant. No two of these mugs are the same as the glazing process is very unique to each one. Some have darker colors, more colors, and runs in the glaze which makes these very cool and different mugs.

Here's kind of an interesting point that I was thinking about as I write this. The Hawaiian Village (Tiki Road Trip P.230) was once located in New Westminster which was about 15 minutes from where The Tropic Isle was located in Surrey. They both were serving drinks in Tiki mugs at about the same time period. I think the Hawaiian Village had them a bit earlier (they did have there custom mugs first designed by Erneli) but they both had a local ceramic artist make their mugs.

The Hawaiian Village used Orchids of Hawaii mugs to serve their drinks. Later on they had these molded and then had their own name and phone number put on them. The Tropic Isle had this done as well but yet I have only ever seen ONE of them that actually was the same style mug. The red bucket mug above I have seen in a brown/yellow color with "HV" initials on the reverse and the Ku face on the front but that is the only one. This mug by itself is very hard to find (one sold on EBay at the end of last year).
All the other copies have been different.
Actually, I wonder if the artist was told to keep them different so the Restaurants did not have the same mugs?

Okay, this next photo is of a Tiki mug that was offered at The Tropic Isle and according to their menu, served the "Head Hunter".

This one can be found in a yellow, green, and also a dark brown/green mix color. This mug does surface once in a while but is still quite hard to find, especially in the darker colors. It has "Tropic Isle Surrey BC" on the reverse.

This next mug is different to the first coconut mug I posted (previous post) as the detail of the coconut itself just isn't there but still holds up to be a cool mug.

It is finished in a brown color with the "Tropic Isle Surrey BC" and a palm tree beside that in white paint with green leaves.

Here's a scary shot of them and how they were resting in their box all these years:

This one is very thin walled and therefore is very fragile. I have never seen this style in the wild. I have only seen the thicker, more real looking coconuts as stated above. I don't think too many of these (besides the ones I managed to get) survived at all! Not too many of these may have even been used at the restaurant as they are quite fragile.

More to come soon so keep checking back!!
Mahalo, TabooDan

[ Edited by: TabooDan 2009-05-02 12:18 ]