Post #389302 by TorchGuy on Tue, Jun 24, 2008 7:52 PM

Tipsy McStagger, I'm a Lava Lite collector too. Your Lava Lite is a Carlisle, series 300, produced from the early- to mid-1970s until about 1982 or 83. Yours is red lava/yellow liquid, a model 306 - in the 70s this was marketed as orange lava in yellow liquid (older ones have light orange lava) and in the early 80s, was renamed as red/yellow. This is a common 70s model, but very uncommon without dents - the very thin aluminum dents easily. A few notes, just in case you're new to lava:

• Don't put in direct sun
• Don't use for more than 8 hours at a time
• Don't move or shake while hot
• Don't add anything to the bottle. The air space is there for expansion
• Use a 40-watt "hi-intensity" C-9/intermediate base bulb, and if the lamp won't start flowing in two hours, gently bend the socket a few millimeters higher

Congrats on finding a very nice vintage model. The catalog put this one nicely: "Stylishness with simplicity; Beauty without blandness". And the pinholes in the base will put sparkles on the walls.

Not a big find, but cool for me as a beginning tiki collector: A few pages back I mentioned finding a Four Seas, Seattle mug shaped like a wise old monk. Today, the same dealer gave me a freebie she found, a rubber Trader Vic's Menehune on its square wooden stick. I haven't examined one of these before - this one is male with a tiny white mustache, a yellow lei, and a black ring of hair with a black crest on top, and a head that can be rotated 360 degrees - I assume this is the standard style, and that a female exists as well. His loincloth strap is stamped in back "(copyright symbol) Trader Vic's Menehune". Was this only used in the Menehune Juice, and is it a recent thing, or have they been around a while?