Air New Zealand 75 Years Exhibition, Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand 20 Dec. 2014 - 7 June 2015

(The Air NZ plastic tiki, distributed free to passengers from the 1960s to the mid-80s)

Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, is currently running an exhibition celebrating Air New Zealand's 75th anniversary. As an airline that developed initially in the 1940s as a carrier to the Pacific Isles, there is a lot of colour and many items of interest:

TEAL is the abbreviation for Tasman Empire Airways Limited, which was the original name of the company when it was founded in 1940 through to it being changed to Air New Zealand in 1965.

More posters:

Fly-fishing tiki detail:

Well before they were adopted by American airlines, from the 1940s onwards tikis featured prominently as part of TEAL's corporate image, and later were also a major feature in Air New Zealand's identity.

Envelope used from the 1940s to 1965.

Ticket (circa 1964).

Coaster (early 1960s).

Souvenir toothpick (1960), souvenir swizzle sticks (1965 and 1960).

TEAL carved cigarette box (circa 1960).

A wall panel featuring giant recreations of Air New Zealand tiki swizzle sticks (1970s).

Air New Zealand tiki mugs by Crown Lynn (circa 1970).

I'll let these exhibits speak for themselves:

However in the 1980s, Air New Zealand backed away from using the tiki in such everyday items, as it found itself being accused by Maori activists of denigrating Maori culture. The pejorative expression "plastic tiki syndrome" was one that had the Air NZ free plastic tiki firmly in its sights. Consequently, Air New Zealand discontinued providing them to passengers in 1985, and in subsequent decades preferred to associate itself with facets of national identity such as rugby and Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films. The fact remains however that via its plastic tiki, Air New Zealand gave huge numbers of both New Zealanders and foreigners their first contact with NZ tiki culture.

My favourite part of the exhibition was devoted to The Coral Route which, in its day, was the only regular passenger air service to Tahiti, and was operated in its original form by TEAL from 1951 to 1960. As, in those days, Papeete did not have an airstrip, TEAL flew Short Solent flying boats and landed in the harbour there. On one wall, there is a projection with an old film from the 1950s showing what it was like to fly The Coral Route, which went from Auckland to Papeete via Laucala Bay at Suva, Fiji, Satapuala at Apia, Western Samoa, and Akaiamai at Aitutaki in the Cook Islands.

Near the projection screen, there is a recreation of a Short Solent passenger cabin which you can sit in:

And you can watch the propeller spin outside the cabin window and even hear the engine noise:

The Solent carried 45 passengers and I can confirm the seats were very comfy, with leg room to spare. Each Solent also had its own on-board chef, who made individual meals to order. No cattle class nonsense here!

More about the Short Solent flying boat:

http://www.warbirdsnews.com/aviation-museum-news/short-brothers-flying-boats-splash-zealand-museum.html

Here is the link to the Te Papa site on the exhibition:

http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/WhatsOn/exhibitions/Pages/AirNewZealand75Years.aspx

---

Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-01-17 23:18 ]

Wow...great. I visited NZ upper and lower island about 15 years ago. At the time I was not linked into the Tiki scene but was sitting on the edge of it. I brought back a beautiful didgeridoo carved by a famous native musician and a beautiful boomerang. Had I been in the know about Tiki, I would have had to send things back to the states...LOL

Love those swizzle sticks!!!

Those sound like they're from the big island, Vamp. :)

Great post CN, here's a song by the fabulous Daphne Walker that would make a good sound-track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekhlyCEUIqw

^ It's a bit like going on holiday to California and getting some great Canadian souvenirs, but I am glad you enjoyed finding out about the world's first tiki airline - TEAL/Air NZ. :)

That's a nice, easily understood comparison. :)

Another analogy occured to me the other day, in that, "if" the treaty of Waitangi
was manipulated by a bunch of savvy lawyers, in an age of political correctness,
while prob'ly making a shit-load of money out of it, and servicing God knows whos agenda...

...that even they would be hard pressed convincing the Americans that Tiki was actually
initiated in New Zealand. :lol:

p.s. Let's not get anyones knickers in a twist, it's only an analogy. :)

[ Edited by: komohana 2015-01-20 22:52 ]

:o

Komohana - careful; they'll be sacrificing you to the (Californian) tiki gods at this rate.

Air New Zealand has a strong claim to being the first tiki airline in any case. Judging from the United Airlines thread on this site, tikis only popped up in their marketing around 1970.

Thanks for sharing about this exhibit. Those posters and ephemera are amazing. Do you know if anyone sells postcards or reproductions of them?

Yes Tiare, they were selling merchandise at the exhibition. I got a small reproduction of that Tahiti poster, and they had various other items there - I recall a tote bag of that Tahiti poster, and there were tee-shirts featuring a couple of the TEAL posters, along with other stuff.

Try contacting the Wharehoko (Store) at Te Papa:

http://www.tepapastore.co.nz/

PS: There is also this recent coffee table book, which I recall has a few TEAL posters:

http://www.craigpotton.co.nz/store/selling-the-dream

In addition to vintage NZ travel posters, there are fascinating photos, like this one of a New Zealand tourism office in the 1930s:

Tiki travel, 1930s style!

The same publisher has released this related book, which has many vintage New Zealand ads of interest too:

http://www.craigpotton.co.nz/store/promoting-prosperity

Including this Texaco Maori chief ad, by David Payne from the Auckland advertising agency Chandler & Co (1933):

And this Coca Cola ad set in New Zealand, published in Life magazine (1944):

Interestingly, such manifestations of Polynesian and tiki popular culture occurred in New Zealand before they surfaced in the USA....

And interestingly too, the two examples above involve an NZ/US cultural cross-over. Further clues that the tiki pop phenomenon did not necessarily start in California in the 1950s....

---

Toto, j'ai l'impression que nous ne sommes plus au Kansas !

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2015-01-28 04:10 ]

Hahaha :)

Thank you for posting the pictures. It looks like a great exhibit.

Ah, fantastic photos! I found one of those plastic hei-tikis on ebay a couple years ago and it's currently watching over and protecting the interior of my car. .... now if only it could clean, too....

komohana...you are correct, my purchases were from Melbourne where I went to visit friends after my stay in NZ. I wish I would have been Tiki savvy back then, as I would have done more shopping in NZ. I did get to go to the Auckland University Museum which was amazing and also to mud pools/Geothermal Park by Rotorua and watch the Maori dance demonstration.

New Zealand is absolutely beautiful, took a bus ride up in the mountains and a train ride up in the Alps, cruised through Fern Forest and saw fabulous beaches. Everyone there was so friendly too.

Love the native tattoos. That Texaco ad is wonderful.

^ Oh that makes more sense now - you got the souvenirs in Australia... :)

A few more photos from the exhibition:

NAC's 100th flight to Rarotonga, 1951. NAC was the National Airways Corporation, NZ's domestic carrier, founded in 1947, and which was merged into Air New Zealand in 1978. The Cook Islands in those days was a New Zealand protectorate.

Magazine advertisement for the Coral Route.

Crown Lynn dinner set used on Air New Zealand DC-8s, 1965-73, including a couple of close-ups.

A bit of merch: one of the various tee-shirts on sale, featuring a TEAL poster from the 1950s.

And as a postscript to the Short Solent flying boat installation, for people in the Bay Area, I should mention that the Oakland Aviation Museum has a real Short Solent. It was not a TEAL plane, but did fly the South Pacific, being owned by an Australian airline that flew a service from Sydney to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea in the early 1950s, and in 1958 it flew a proving flight for a US airline from Honolulu to Tahiti but never went into service. In 1959 it was purchased by Howard Hughes and was later used in the film Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

http://www.oaklandaviationmuseum.org/solent_flying_boat_32.html

I couldn't figure out where this should go so I am adding it here.

The logo for Air New Zealand's Tiki Tour.