As All Hallow's approaches And bats hang from e'ry tree It's time to tell a tale O' the most monstrous tiki!
Universal Monsters and Tiki/Retro culture go hand in hand, so when thinking about who to go to for designing Tiki Mugs for the classic horror icons, only one name came up - Doug P'Gosh. Doug has been doing amazing work in both monsters and retro for years, both with his company Retro-a-go-go as well as his personal art P'Gosh.
Working with Doug to nail the overall look, we started with Creature from the Black Lagoon. As you can see here, there were several ways to go, and these are just a selection of what Doug sent over!
Finally settling on a bust-like look composition that would work for all the various Universal Monsters, we then decided that it would be a fun idea to add a scene from each film to the back of the mug in bas relief, in order to tell a bit more of a story about each character and their respective film. Here are Doug's four designs for the mugs we'll be making available for pre-order this month:
One a personal note, while Creature is my favorite of the Universal Monsters - and one of my favorite mugs we've ever made - I'm really excited about how well The Phantom turned out, as not only is his Mask of Red Death costume my favorite version of him, but also how much character Doug captured in the back scene. I love how the scene's border is a curtain being drawn back!
Once approved and locked, we then turned to one of the most talented (and spooky) sculptors we know, Matthew Black. Having good designs are one thing. Having good designs that translate into great sculpts is another. And Black delivered!
And finally, our friends at Tiki Farm took in our sculptures, and work with us on maintaining the details, while also providing us with some of the most dynamic glazes yet!
All four of these mugs are available for pre-order this month. In addition to those four, we'll also be offering two more mugs up for pre-order, which we'll tease you with below. And don't forget to check out our full line-up of spooky releases here!
Happy 31 Days of Halloween!!!
