Post #387244 by woofmutt on Mon, Jun 16, 2008 12:10 AM

The statues may also have just been a poor interpretation of the tiki on the matchbook. The matchbook illustrations could have been part of an original design concept done by an artist who had nothing to do with the sign and the tikis. A sign company was probably hired to make the sign and tikis based on the design concept and hence the weird tiki-majigs. (Less likely but still a nice thought: The tiki-majigs came first and some in-the-know illustrator thought "Those suck!" and tweaked the images.)

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The rendering of the Tropicana Lanes interior:

Has some similarities to pictures of Trader Vic's Las Vegas (posted by Ojaitimo):

(Ojaitimo's complete photo tour of Trader Vic' Las Vegas can be seen HERE)

It seems in both cases (and also with the recent Tiki Room NYC...I gave up looking for images of that) they were reaching for a clean and modern version of Tiki. They reached and they reached...