The Tiki paperback cover art thread

That is a VERY original night stand book, I say !

Noting the contrast between the chaste British South Pacific cover above (I am assuming it is) and the American versions, I wanna put forth this theory:

While American pulp publishers were cigar-chomping choleric types in rolled up shirt sleeves who would foam at their mouth if a cover did not have enough sex, their European counterparts seemed to be banking more on Adventure themes for men, and Romance for women. Of course the level of sex had to do with the fact if it was literature, or if it was porn prose --not to say that classics like Maugham and Conrad didn't get the sex treatment in the transition from hardcover to paperback, as seen previously.

Hi All,
Third post here, here are a couple of others gotta love the Wahinis, also have the yellow covered wayward wahini..

CheersNBeers Don.

BANG AGENTE "000"
Lester Maddox

Las alegres chicas del Tabu

I love these old paperbacks, great to see titles I don't own. Here are a few.

Also, on my bibliotiki blog (link below) I have slowly been scanning my south pacific book collect (new and old), which will include some paperbacks. I started it because some of the old books have such great illustrations.

witchcraft in the South Seas - various covers - unusual icons

some mexotica

Here's a couple of covers for the same book, whose story one book dealer describes as:

"The attempt of the Russians to capture Hawaii by force and by treachery in the great days of King Kamehameha I."

I looked for bio details on the author and found the following:

Served as an intelligence officer in Great Britain and the United States during World War II.

After various writing careers, became executive assistant to the President of Dole Pineapple in Hawaii.

Hardcover dust jacket.

Paperback.

When Bigbro mentioned that there were no tikis in Grogs books I had to scan back up and look them over.

this can be rhetorical but Anyone think the pully was added to make up for what they covered up?

Wait, Grog said "no Tikis" and not "no titties" :)
But I think I see your point.
Subliminal massaging, I mean messaging, just like the pomegranate on the Trader Vic's bottle label.

The many ways of artistically blocking full frontal nudity is one of the fun aspects of the classic paperback covers.
There are a lot of back views, the lei is a favorite nipple protector, and heads and others body parts come in handy sometimes.
Here is one of the few exceptions, albeit only ONE -the other being covered by a strand of hair:

Keep in mind that many of these novels had been published as LITERATURE before,
and to sell them to the sex-starved mid-century man, paperback publishers had to spice up the content

• by putting tempting titillation's on the covers.

This here work for example was first published in 1941, written by travel writer Ernestine Hill, who dedicated the book "For My Mother"
Its sexual aspects are wonderfully clad in (now dated) prose, here is an excerpt:

Now that second line could be considered Tiki-porn...
...but she couldn't have known then how it would excite us Tikiphiles now :)
To continue:

So "they drank deep of the perfume of the Tiare flowers"....and"Matthew was shy of tar-brush charms" ...Huh!?
Gotta love it. :)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-06-30 10:08 ]

"The many ways of artistically blocking full frontal nudity is one of the fun aspects of the classic paperback covers.
There are a lot of back views, the lei is a favorite nipple protector,"

A very good point, Sven and I think this cover is yet more evidence of the lei as a "modesty protector".......

Another version of THE MOAI MURDERS.

GROG
Get better soon Tiki-Kate and Marie.

[ Edited by: GROG 2010-06-30 16:27 ]

This one has been posted elsewhere

I gotta start looking through the paperback sections at my local thrift stores.

Ron, what an excellent selection. Just when I thought the subject had been exhausted (because compared to other paperback cover themes, South Seas ones are fairly rare), a whole new batch is posted!

Judging by the quality of the scans, I take it these covers are from your own library?

Here's a promising but ultimately disappointing find:

Turns out that 95% of the jokes in this book are from the fertile "Stranded on a Desert Isle" genre...

...which, with not one Hula girl or other South Sea icon playing a part, at best could be termed "Castaway" Cartoons.

The other 5% are from the equally rich "Whitey in Cannibal Cauldron" joke genre, which is clearly African pop, nowhere near the South Seas.

So even back then, confusion and arbitrary-ness about labeling the genres reigned...Sigh!

(And NO, this thread is not about the above joke genres, so don't post any more, please!)

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2010-07-01 13:19 ]

I don't think anyone has posted this one yet............

Sorry, someone did earlier. And it's also in the beginning of the BOT...

But it's a great one, so as long as you don't fill the rest of the page with it.. :D

On 2010-07-01 12:01, bigbrotiki wrote:

The other 5% are from the equally rich "Whitey in Cannibal Cauldron" joke genre, which is clearly African pop, nowhere near the South Seas.

There are south seas cannibal cartoons...but I won't post them in this thread.
I think I recall reading that some ship in the 17th century didn't bother landing on Hawaii or Tahiti because they thought it was inhabited by maneaters.

On 2010-07-01 16:02, martian-tiki wrote:
There are south seas cannibal cartoons...but I won't post them in this thread.

If you got'em, post'em --in their own thread, under a general title like "South Sea Cartoons" (as there are many non-Cannibal ones). This will inspire others to post theirs, and voila, we got a good thing goin'! :)

Here's a noir story about the seedy underside of Laguna Beach at (that notorious tropical rum bar) The Purple Parrot.

You can order modern reprints and/or read the first chapter here:

http://hardcasecrime.com/books_bios.cgi?entry=bk7&type=excerpt

I think this is about some women that are into tiki culture?

description 1960's sleaze novel Lei Girl - She was all woman and both sexes wanted her! Complete and Unexpurgated

I. a Missionary
by Sixtus Holm
1966 DELL 4388

[ Edited by: martian-tiki 2010-07-03 21:57 ]

From Asia to Polynesia

Bali 1957

Bali 1967

Iwing Wallace's Three Sirens

Great thread and truly inspirational:

Movie 1957

Book 1959

Mosaic 2009

Again, it's all (unfortunately) about covering up the naughty bits.

As Picasso (allegedly) said: "Good Artists borrow, great Artists steal"

:)

Bringer Advice Nomenclatura Gemini
alexis BARCLAY
TABU

Printed in Spain

From the "Science Fiction & Fantasy" category, c. 2010:

Little known Simenon's polar in exotic settings

Cool Euro Sci-fi

And some littérature îlienne

bump

Covers found here http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vintage-books
(I was looking for old rockets actually)

Here's some I don't think were posted yet. Apologies if they were and I missed them...

khan_tiki_mon has a good selection of covers posted on his website below. Some of them we've seen on this thread, but some we haven't:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzep0565/id35.html

On 2011-01-01 22:09, martian-tiki wrote:
Covers found here http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vintage-books
(I was looking for old rockets actually)

Okay...trying to re-populate some of the lost pictures here from the server fail. Here's the ones I spotted on that website. Which ones did I miss?

Man, I can not tell you how much I'm enjoying this thread! I've always love Hawaiian/Exotica LPs for their great source of cool visuals, now, there's a whole new world opening up...Paperback novels! Who knew?

Cool thread! If I had seen this 2 weeks ago I might have chosen a different cover for my faux book :lol:

Here's a few more...

Better known in its film version with Dorothy Lamour, but here's the paperback:

Tiny hula girl on cover:

Finally, the story behind the missionary's downfall:

Apparently this book spawned a TV show as well, but here's the paperback:

More on the TV show here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensign_O'Toole

On 2011-01-14 12:25, Trader Tom wrote:

On 2011-01-01 22:09, martian-tiki wrote:
Covers found here http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vintage-books
(I was looking for old rockets actually)

Okay...trying to re-populate some of the lost pictures here from the server fail. Here's the ones I spotted on that website. Which ones did I miss?

Thanks, Martian Tiki.

Not exactly pulp literature

Better small Tiki than no Tiki

Greenleaf Classic # GC325 PLEASURE ISLAND by Ramon Albars 1968

I just put about 15 new paperbacks that I recently acquired on my website.
http://mysite.verizon.net/vzep0565/id35.html
I also posted 2 new Trader Vic's postcards to my Trader Vic's page.

Cover art by the great French pin-up artist Aslan.

The many faces of...

Anyone old enough to remember this Miriam Linna´s zine?

Fine publication! My copy has worn much better than I have!!

Trader Jim - Make Mine a MAI-TAI!

Better small Tiki than no Tiki

Oh my! I'm in love with that cover... but that isn't the English title is it? I've been diddybopping around ManyBooks.net for a PDF of this book (for those not in the know, ManyBooks has many pulp novels available for free, legal download WITH cover art, ex: The Moon and Sixpence from upthread http://www.manybooks.net/titles/maughamwetext95moona10.html).

Could someone let me know what the English title of "Soberbia" is?

ETA: Whoops, clever Googling later and I discover that it IS The Moon and Sixpence. I'll just slink off in this corner and read it now...

[ Edited by: AExMachina 2011-08-13 12:01 ]

The British and Commonwealth edition of "Long Pig" (the US edition appeared earlier in this thread):

Back cover:

Back cover detail:

The story is set in the Fiji Islands in 1800. The copy I have also has "Lautoka Fiji 1961" handwritten on the inside cover...

[ Edited by: White Devil 2012-12-20 10:47 ]

[ Edited by: White Devil 2012-12-20 13:36 ]

There isn't a tiki, and the Amazon isn't Polynesia, but the headhunter cover art is pretty cool.

[ Edited by: tikilongbeach 2013-04-12 06:22 ]

Great thread, coincidently found "It Happened in Hawaii" book cover this morning but Trader Tom already discovered it. Good hunting TT.