Post #661834 by Bay Park Buzzy on Tue, Dec 18, 2012 2:16 AM

I used to count the Benihana's mugs as Tiki mugs, but that was because I bought a couple at a rummage sale in either 1984 or 1985, and have kept them amoungst my crap all these years. They came in handy when I was a newbie in the tiki scene a few years ago. I would try to impress my new tiki friends by saying that I've been a mug collector for decades. Most people were really impressed, because I found most started collecting in about 2004-5, a full twenty years after I started mug "collecting". Truth is, in 2005, I knew so little about tiki, I thought it was spelled "tikki." The liberal application of the Tiki handle to those mugs helped establish my credibility, at a time when I had truly earned little of it.
The declassification of those mugs as Tiki came about rather recently to me. I was going through some old stuff I had from my childhood, when I came across some postcards that I got in Chicago in 1978. One of the post cards was of an Easter Island Kava Kava man. This predated my original Benehana's "tiki mugs" and added another six years to my tiki collecting timeline. So, it was no longer necessary to use the Asian guy mugs to establish my tiki guy timeline, I had my postcard to do that for me.

I can honestly claim that I've been collecting tiki stuff for over 85% of my life!
Buzzy Out!