Coco Joes melting?

Aloha all,

okay, this is new and weird for me. I recently won a nice big Lono on eBay, described in glowing terms. He arrived and (see image) is "bowing at the waist". I thought something was amiss, and SweetDaddyTiki who has the same Joe confirmed it.

Has anyone else had this problem? Can this happen just from leaving a Joe in the sun? If so, has anyone tried what I'm going to, roasting him slowly to see if I can straighten him out (yikes!)? I should be bowing to Lono, not the other way around!

:(, emspace.

I think it was something he ate. He might need a bucket.

A Tiki Cheers To You!

[ Edited by: Unga Bunga on 2003-10-30 10:20 ]

I've seen the same phenomenon on other Coco Joe's tiki's advertised on eBay. I have one that bows just a little.

:drink:

what's your diet like? are you under considerable pressure? have things gone sour (or stagnant) w/ your significant other?

keep in mind that after a certain age, it's not as easy to keep your nice big Lono as erect as before.

you may need to see your local kahuna for help.

Let me know how your "roasting" goes. I have a figure with a similar problem and if your method works, I might try it.

....hmmm, you might try boiling water...I've never tried it myself, but I would be afraid that dry heat like that might crack it or make it brittle....even worse it might curl up like a shrinky dink!

On 2003-10-30 11:57, Tiki Chris wrote:

what's your diet like? are you under considerable pressure? have things gone sour (or stagnant) w/ your significant other?

keep in mind that after a certain age, it's not as easy to keep your nice big Lono as erect as before.

you may need to see your local kahuna for help.

heeheeheehee...that's so awful!
You know, scar tissue can do that to, I hear.

On 2003-10-30 11:57, Tiki Chris wrote:
keep in mind that after a certain age, it's not as easy to keep your nice big Lono as erect as before.

ROFLMAO! This is what I love about TC: practical advice AND a good laugh!

Mattfink, I will try boiiling first, and not just because of potential shrinkage :) - maybe dry-roasted Joes release toxic vapors, who knows?

thanx all, will report back,
em.

Hey Em!

I have seeen this with many Coco Joe's Tikis and what I have been told is that there was a fire at one point in the Coco Joe's warehouse. Obviously some merrchandise was destroyed while other items only suffered slightly in the heat.

I'm surprised at what they considered "saleable," but I imagine they had lots of orders to fill so they sent out the statues that could still stand on their own.

I have never heard of a good remedy for FTS (flacid tiki syndrome) and I'd be aprehensive to try and "melt" one back into shape myself (plus I think it's a cool part of its history). But if you give it a try, please let us let us know how well it worked.

[ Edited by: boutiki on 2003-10-30 13:55 ]

That warping happens on a lot of cocojoe and HIP tikis. I've had that happen to some of the older cocojoes I bought in Hawaii years ago - straight and tall new, and now stooping and cracked. I wonder if it's a Dorian Gray effect.

Anyway, it may be the case that some were affected by a fire (although the legendary fire I know of was in the HIP warehouse), but it may also just be old age on cheap plastic. Some buyer tips - the older, heavier cocojoes do not warp, but the newer plastic ones often did. If you're looking at them, especially like in a photo on ebay, the less shiny ones tend to be older. Also, sometimes you can see little white cracks showing in the details of the "carving", revealing how the plastic has stretched or contracted. And if you see the back, if it looks liquid-y like someone pushed it in with their thumb, then it probably did or will warp.

Who knows what kinda crap went into the plastic composition of the newer ones, so if you wanna melt it, you might do it outside. I used to play around with melting LPs (you can make them look pretty bizarre) and learned pretty quick that doing it indoors was a dumb idea. In addition to smelling bad, burning plastic can play some mean tricks on you like dripping little burning fireballs on your carpet. Luckily my experimentation was mostly done in a college dorm.

-Randy

hey emspace,
have not had that happen with a joe.
i work with resins, acrylics, urethanes, and plastics often in my line of work. though i can not tell you what particular resin or urethane they use to pour up the peices, i can tell you a little general info about them. the cheaper the resin or urethane, the more filler. the more filler, the weaker and more crack/chip prone it is. heating up most of these products in an oven can release gases, in a small amount that will not make you keel over. but they can smell bad, and can also inundate your oven so as to make food you cook in the future taste like chemicals. when shaping plastics,acrylics, and hard waxes, we usually use the hot water method. boil or heat up your water first, turn the fire off and dip. the other option is to carfully use a heat gun, preferably on low. this gives you a more focused heat. Back to the filler, the more there is, the less likely you can bend it without fracturing it.
if you have already counted this statue as a loss, try it out.
good luck

[ Edited by: tikitanked on 2003-10-31 00:03 ]

Wow, thanks for all the input people! Hmm, if it's from a historically important fire, it stays. If it's age/shoddy materials, it gets the hot water treatment. What to do?...it does look soft and squishy in back (it isn't, but LOOKS that way, not flat and smooth at all). I have older Joes and certainly know the difference. Maybe they put more boar dung in the newer ones, eh MTKahuna?

:)
pondering,
em.

I heard the same legend that boutiki spoke of. We have a few in our collection that definitely look like they spent too much time in the sun. It gives them character, and even if it is a legend it's a fun story to tell when folks ask why they are slumped over. We have also told people that's what can happen when you have one too many Zombies at The Bamboo Lodge!

Em, I'd keep it as is, but this also brings 2 questions to mind for you fellow CCJ collectors:

I have some CocoJoe's items that say "made with Lava". Is 'lava' just a niche-word for them or is there actually a certain lava-to-resin ratio in them? Did the earlier pieces actually incorporate some real lava then transition to resin only?

Enter The SoCal Hoity Toity Schedule

[ Edited by: SugarCaddyDaddy on 2003-10-30 16:33 ]

SCD, I am leaning that way, and no pun intended.

I would love to know what changes were made to the compostion of the Joes. When I was a kid and got my first ones, I thought at first they were carved out of lava (!), then that someone went to Kilauea and spooned fresh lava into molds. Hey, I was a little kid, what can I say? :)

aloha,
em.

I think he'd look great perched by the bar. The heaving tiki !

Hey emspace...
I have a Lono that was doing the same thing.
I tried the slow roast in the oven... It workd kinda o.k. He did soften up and I was able to press him back into nearly straight standing form, but the problem was that little cracks did form along the edges. Like along his face and head-dress. They are minor and I figured I could fill them in with a little wood stain but once he got back up on the shelf and the lights are dim... you never know.
Aloha,
:tiki:

I've got two hula girls approx the same size but the older one is much more dense and almost twice as heavy. The recent one, even though I love the design just seems really lightweight and chintsy to me.
It also does not stand correctly so I was tempted to file the base so that it did.
Wasn't sure if it was even solid all the way through it's so light.

I had 3 cocojoes that I sold in a lot on ebay that leaned like that. I thought it was odd but since the lean wasn't TOO bad I figured maybe it was on purpose?

Weird! Now the mystery is solved...

The lights have gone on in the occasionally empty house known as emspace's head. I realized today I have 3 other Joes in the same condition, from the same era. All my older Joes are ramrod-straight :), but two of my Kamehamehas and my one hula girl are leaning. I thought they were supposed to be this way (doy!), cuz they aren't so grossly obvious as the Lono, but now I know.

dang,
em.

Another leaner. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3249932071&category=29460

[ Edited by: mrtikibar on 2003-11-02 10:50 ]

Here's another leaner. Em, maybe you can collect a few of these and display them in a circle with a miniature volcano in the middle...sort of like 'the gods' are looking down into a live volcano!

Ha! It's not just me/mine! I had a leany-Lono and tried boiling him a while back, but to no avail. He started getting a little whitish, the way chocoalte does when it goes through temperature changes.

I too wrote it off to it-must-be-that-they're supposed-to-lean. Now I know. They're just cheap-ass!!

This bites!

I was so miffed about my leany Lono I went and found another that's upright, and won the auction. The other...I dunno, I think I'll give him to bro Matt who doesn't have OCD.

:)
em.

[ Edited by: filslash 2008-09-06 19:01 ]

On 2003-11-03 16:37, emspace wrote:
This bites!

I was so miffed about my leany Lono I went and found another that's upright, and won the auction. The other...I dunno, I think I'll give him to bro Matt who doesn't have OCD.

:)
em.

Hey, that's the best solution yet...no boiling water to scald you, no toxic fumes to choke you...just pure shopping bliss!

Filslash, not a HIP definitely, Joe's logo on bottom. This is not too rare a Joe, I managed to find another right away. It's biggish, 8.5" high. I only have one HIP, found here in a thrift.

This whole fire thing has my head spinning. Boutiki said it was Joe's that had the fire, then aquarj said it was HIP, you say HIP too. I am fascinated by the amount of mystery surrounding one of the most popular tourist-item companies in the Islands. Surprised there isn't a big tribute book or at least website out there. Is Joe's closed down like HIP? My bro got me a Lono at a Hilo Hattie's on Maui just a few years ago, so I assumed they're still up and running - but I've seen something about a bankruptcy sale at one point in their history. Anyone know when that was? Pretty sad to think they're gone.

aloha all,
em.

Em,
Coco Joe's is gone. However, you can still find there stuff on the islands. I believe there's a gift shop that still has a lot of left over Coco Joe's stuff at the Honolulu International Airport.

I too, have a leaning Lono. My guess is the fire was at CocoJoe's because mine is made of resin and I just can't see how a fire could "warp" the original HIP tikis the same way.

Now that I've read all this I want to know about the "lava" question. I had a lava tiki when I was little too. It said it was made of lava and I believed it.

Last trip to Hawaii I picked up a little brown tiki key chain obviously made of plastic.

So anyway, at the M Modern gallery tiki show in Palm springs, one of the owners had a black "lava" tiki around his neck that his mom had given him when he was a kid. It was the same as my plastic one! ('cept his was black lava stuff)

So what's the story? Does this mean that there weren't Hawaiians frantically molding tikis out of hot lava for us mainlanders? Say it isn't so!

Also, I looked, but did not see any tikis made of "lava" while I was there. I can't believe there's a shortage of the stuff. What gives?

my understanding is that the lava products are made of a plastic resin that has powdered lava in it as the filler. kind of like "cultured marble" countertops, you need the goo that hardens but you also need the material that gives it heft and opacity. so it is techincally lava in the same sense that cultured marble is marble.

Oh, I always thought they were meant to lean forwards. I figured it was to make them look for menacing! Has anyone has one that leant backwards?

Trader Woody

Tried the boil method with a large hip tiki today. It was leaning forward almot 2 inches, got it to 1/4 inch. Stoked!

Hey Congrats BK627!

That's kinda like the guy who leveled my 1929 house for me (leveled as in jack up in spots to make level, not as in remove-from-the-face-of-the-Earth "level". It's something everybody has to do on these old homes in my neighborhood)).

He said my home formerly had 5" in difference between the middle and the two ends, now brought to only 1/2"! Woo-HOO!

No chocolatey white surface from your successful boiling adventure?

I had a small Coco Joes that lived in my parents fish tank for decades.
When I moved to the New Mexican desert for twelve years it slowly bent forward and lost portions of it's black surface, revealing a bubbled gray material, like a hardened sponge. I figured it was pining for the salt water so when I moved to Mission Beach I threw it off the end of my local pier!

Perhaps a keen eyed diver will spot it someday.

On 2006-04-09 13:58, hodadhank wrote:
I had a small Coco Joes that lived in my parents fish tank for decades.
When I moved to the New Mexican desert for twelve years it slowly bent forward and lost portions of its black surface, revealing a bubbled gray material, like a hardened sponge. I figured it was pining for the salt water so when I moved to Mission Beach I threw it off the end of my local pier!
Sorta like "Titanic" where she throws the giant blue diamond over the side of the boat.

Except not as stupid.

And a lot more believable.

On 2006-04-09 19:08, Formikahini wrote:

Sorta like "Titanic" where she throws the giant blue diamond over the side of the boat.

Yep... but definitely just as stupid.

"Oh my god! Look! Next to that giant blue diamond...I think it's a Coco Joe's Tiki!"

Wow, it's so great to have other people wondering and discussing the same things that have kept me up nights; I was in the Honolulu airport as a kid in the late 60's and I saw a very small Coco Joes Tiki made from or with lava and in my mind I too pictured native Hawaiians dipping small molds on long skewers into the actual lava flows from an active volcano! The cooled lava rock seemed far too brittle to carve so smoothly, I figured it was made the way a candle was with certain modifications! Anyway, I tried to persuade my mother to purchase the Tiki for me, it cost about $3.99 or $5.99 I think, but she refused explaining that if I still wanted them when I grew up I could go ahead and buy all of the Tikis I want! Hmm, I wish! About a week ago I tried to heat and reshape a leaning Kanaloa model76-043 in the oven but I accidently overheated it, melted the eyes, cracked the surface and stunk up my house! My idea now is to display all of the leaning CCJs from a high shelf lite from below so that they seem to gaze down from on high, sort of lika a gargoyle or perhaps a perching vulture! OK, Chuck

[ Edited by: ChuckM 2009-08-28 04:21 ]

You're probably wondering what kind of guy responds to his own post, but I have a quick update: I've been sitting home, waiting for the mail (my carrier has an unfortunate tendency to hurl my packages over my gate and into my rock garden!) and it's just like Christmas now with five Ebay parcels surrounding me, all Tiki related Ebay stuff. The first thing I opened was a Coco Joes Hawaiian dancer figure #059 1990, and the bend in the figure was obvious before I even got it out of the bubble wrap! Today was really hot here, so hot that I wonder if these figures were simply laid on their backs in the sun, say on a Pyrex plate, perhaps after a few hours they might settle back into their original or intended shape. I think I will try that tomorrow and if it works I will post the results here. OK Chuck

How about just following Buzzy's perscription for straightening the backs of your tikis? Get an oven thermometer at Ace Hardware or something so you know you've got the temp right. And keep an eye on it!!!

Mind you, mine are on a shelf, looking down from above....but some days I'm tempted to throw them in the oven. But then again, they will go back on the shelf above, but will they look as good?? I kinda like them looking down!! Surveying their surroundings...planning on how to get across the room to the rum in the bar without being seen...

:drink:
Tacky