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Tiki Central / Collecting Tiki

TEPCO Skull Mug

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T

I saw this skull mug at a thrift shop, it said TEPCO was the manufacturer. It looks like the trader vic skull mug. They may have made them for TV.!?! Anyone know anything about it? Wasn't sure about the purchase.

T

Tepco did make the original Trader Vic's skill mugs.

M

Yep, those early, scarier looking, skull mugs were Tepco, as were many of the early Trader Vic vessels. High quality, heavy, and frightening looking devils.

One of my favorite Tepco pieces was a "Crazy Native" guy, think that is close to what Tepco colectors call it. It has big scary eyes and a sort of "pirate" look to him. The mug has holes at either end of the grimacng mouth; one collector told me often times the mug was served on a piece of dry ice. The "smoke" would come streaming out of its mouth.

Spooky!

midnite

There's a pic of the Tepco "crazy native guy" on my mug pages, top row center:

Tepco crazy native guy

:tiki:


Trader Pup

visit Traderpup.com

[ Edited by: Traderpup on 2002-08-23 17:01 ]

Awesome site...

Turbogod- Man, when in doubt, BUY IT!
At a thrift store you can't really go wrong. I mean, you're making your contribution to the organization and if it's not what you thought it was, there is always someone on Ebay who'll buy it. And you're never out THAT much money.

Seriously, I almost passed up on one of these when a car club buddy called me and said "Get down to this garage sale, I'm guarding one of those mugs you like".
He told me it was a heavy skull, kinda weird and I said, "Ah, don't worry about it".
But the more I thought about it and got out my trusty Book of Tiki, I was like "Crap! Gotta get to the garage sale!"
And, 10 minutes later I had made one of the best purchases of my collection. Never regreted it!

It's always facinating to me that these "artifacts" are so old, and have remained intact all these years, over all the miles just to wind up in the loving home of a collector.
Get your butt back to that thrift store my friend!
-C.
:sheckymug:

M

$20 per dozen?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2135712410

I have never seen that advertisement before. Nice piece of history. Now I know the Sufferin' Bastard was called "Mai-Tai Joe" and the old skull mugs were sold by the dozen.

midnite

On 2002-08-28 22:59, midnite_tiki wrote:
I have never seen that advertisement before. Nice piece of history. Now I know the Sufferin' Bastard was called "Mai-Tai Joe" and the old skull mugs were sold by the dozen.

The Trader Vic's mailing address in that ad is 6500 San Pablo Avenue, which I believe was the address of their original location.

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