The Mark Eden Bust Developer

With six of these fabulous items in my possession, I think I can safely say that I now have the World's Largest Collection of Mark Eden Bust Developers. If there is someone out there who owns more, I sure would like to hear from them.

I bought my first one nearly thirty years ago, long before I conceived of Julie's Tacky Treasures. Something about the audacious claims of breast enlargement appealed to me. I had to laugh at the brazen exploitation of manufacturing hundreds of these useless pink clamshells, equipping them with a heavy-duty spring, and promising that using one would "subtly transform them as a woman."

The Mark Eden Bust Developer was sold in two different versions, the only difference being the wording on the accompanying booklet. The earlier book was so much more effusive in its claims, something it later had to tone down under threat of mail fraud.

"So many women who have been literally 'flat as boards' have achieved higher, fuller, lovelier bustlines in a remarkably short time with the Mark Eden method. And a woman whose bustline is suddenly transformed from the average or below average to a richer fuller development receives more for her efforts than just a larger reading on the tape measure. She is subtly transformed as a woman. There is an incomparable difference in the entire feminine line, shape, and grace of her whole figure. Her very presence takes on a new and subtle glow of womanliness, of sex-appeal, and yes, of glamour that is undeniable and unmistakable."

If you weren't convinced by this florid prose, or by the celebrity endorsement of the forgettable June Wilkinson, then by golly, once you read the directions for the eight different exercises with the bust developer, you knew it HAD to be real. After all, why would there be an Exercise no. 8 if it didn't really work? That was the one you were instructed to do to develop the individual breast, in case one of yours was "lagging behind."

Indeed, the Fabulous Mark Eden Bust Developer is an example of a complete lack of taste with the goal of exploiting women's vanity and insecurity in order to make heaps of money. Before the U.S. Postal Service shut Mark Eden down with a fraud order in 1966, about 18,000 of them sold at $9.95 a piece. Without any research, Mark Eden claimed a "scientific breakthrough," although he had no medical background, and had never contacted medical experts until after the fraud case was filed.

The second version of the exercise booklet no longer featured June Wilkinson, perhaps in response the revelation that she was already known for prominent breasts as a young girl. She and her breasts went back to Hollywood to act in "B" movies.

The Fabulous Mark Eden
Bust Developer
Plastic, metal, and leather
Accompanying booklet, dated 1965, featuring actress June Wilkinson "Famous star of stage and screen, the girl with the world's loveliest bustline"
Page 1 - Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4
Page 5 - Page 6 - Page 7 - Page 8
Page 9 - Page 10 - Page 11 - Insert
Purchased June 2002 on eBay

The Fabulous Mark Eden
Bust Developer
Plastic, metal, and leather
Accompanying booklet, dated 1965, featuring model Heather Adams, "famous model -- noted for having one of the world's loveliest bustlines"
Purchased circa 1975,
at St. Catherine Labouré
Catholic Church

Habemus Popener*

As soon as I heard of the existence of this bottle opener adorned with the picture of Pope John Paul II, I wanted one. It is the perfect blend of a figure of eminence with a mundane item of everyday utility. Even its name reflects this dichotomy: the Popener. It has the same sort of oxymoronic charm possessed by the Chairman Mao cigarette lighter, but it's even better than that because of the way cool name.

What better way to use the Popener than to open a bottle of Pete's Wicked Ale?

In my interview with PopCultMag, I mentioned the Popener as one of two Holy Grails of my collecting efforts. Now all I have to do is find that porcelain lung ashtray...

* For those rusty on their Latin or Catholic Church history, when a new Pope is elected, it is announced to the waiting masses in St. Peter's Square by the dean of the College of Cardinals, who shouts, "Habemus papam!" (We have a Pope!).

Popener
Gift of Splendor Breckbill
Purchased at the Vatican
February 2004

20,000 Rubber Bands

For two years in high school, Carolee went everywhere working on this vest, in class, on the bus, anywhere she had to go where there would be time to work on it. During the course of this project, she learned everything there was to know about rubber bands...she could even identify them by touch.

Despite all the teasing and complaints she took from her fellow students at Lincoln High School in Yonkers, New York (and you know who you are!), when she finally wore the finished product to class, no one said a word to her about it. Carolee still sighs with disappointment over that.

After she finished her magnum opus, she started a rubber band skirt. But she lost interest after the first few inches, so she cut her losses and called it a belt.

The vest and belt were her last creations in the medium of rubber bands. Long gone are her abilities as a rubber band connoisseur, and she now makes her living maintaining a large computer system for a government agency.

Rubber band vest
Crocheted by
Carolee Rand over a
two-year period in the 1970s

Porto Baradio

Every collector has his or her Holy Grail. Mine is just a little tackier than most.

This is a tube radio with a complete bar built into it. It comes with two decanters (helpfully labelled "Scotch" and "Bourbon," in case you're at a loss for what to do with them), six highball glasses, four shot glasses, and an ice bucket. The ice bucket, incredibly, is positioned right over the main "works" of the radio, with nothing but a piece of cardboard to protect it from moisture. I think this must have been designed before Underwriter's Laboratory was established.

I did briefly own a Baradio that I purchased on eBay, and it is pictured above. I had to send it back because it had cracks in a few places, and was not the mint condition radio for which I had paid top dollar. So, back to the seller it went, and I'm still looking for one of these beauties. I want to have a swell cocktail party where I turn on the radio and have it play big band music and I'll fix drinks for all my friends. A girl can dream, anyway.

Porto Baradio
by Stewart Warner
circa 1948

The Awkward Years

Near as I can tell, I was awkward from about age eleven until well into my thirties, when receiving a graduate degree in Library Science gave me the respectability I craved. Of all the years that I was awkward, I think that 1972 and 1973 were the most, well, awkward. Yet this report card shows a little of the spunk and mischievousness that have characterized my forties (and beyond).

Student Evaluation Report
Elizabeth Seton High School
Religion, taught by Sister Monica
Senior year, 1972-1973
NCR (no carbon required) paper

The Early Years

When I first told my mother a few years ago that I was taking a writing workshop, she assembled and presented to me an amazing array of my early work. Julie Says This Is An Angel, executed when I was a mere three and a half years old, is not my earliest work, but it is the earliest one my mother deemed worthwhile enough to save. Someone once called this drawing "Eamesian in its whimsy." Okay, it was me, but I'm sure everyone I know would say the same if indeed they knew who the Eameses were.

The verso of the drawing contains a contract amendment on the electrical work on the State Department building in 1957. I don't actually remember writing it, but considering how I turned out, such precocity doesn't surprise me.

Julie Says This Is An Angel
April 30, 1958
Pencil on paper
Verso