FREE TIME: “For your father, who is a mountain-lover, Free Time is a necessity while he is climbing.”

by Rich Watson

by Rich Watson

Rich Watson runs the movie blog Wide Screen World and has been making comics for many years. His newest webcomic, City Mouse Makes a Movie, got off to an intriguing start a couple of weeks ago. Read it here.

Free Time is still available (the candy bar, I mean; but I’m also of the opinion that it’s always possible to make free time for the important things) and still marketed to outdoorsy dads.

You must keep in mind, the All Your Base reference was pretty fresh at the time.

EGG COOKIE: “The best quality soft cookie with daddy’s love and mommy’s true heart”

by Ben T. Steckler

by Ben T. Steckler

Ben Steckler writes: Egad!  I really have to stop sketching when I drink at conventions. …or stop drinking when I sketch at conventions… or stop convening when I drink wearing skechers. Part of my twelve steps will have to be apologizing to all the fellow artists whose sketchbooks I’ve befouled over the years.   It’s a good thing I have the Skechers,  because those are going to be twelve LONG steps. My name is Ben T. Steckler and I’m a hack cartoonist.

Ben is the creator of SKA-Toons, Get BenT!, Unshaven Chi, f-Artjoke and many more comics. He’s been performing stand-up comedy in recent years.

Egg Cookie is translated as “Egg Biscuit” nowadays.

New sketchbook theme. Sweet.

In 2001, I started a new sketchbook based on product descriptions from the Haitai Confectionery Company’s English website. If you poke around that site today, you’ll see clunky Korean-to-English translation in a few places. Twelve years ago, the translations were much rougher and, in my opinion, much more amusing.

Many of the snacks you’ll see described here are apparently no longer marketed. I’ve had the occasional pleasure of seeing some on shelves of Asian-import grocery stores, but others are sadly lost to the ages, without even a mention on the web. All connoisseurs of South Korean snack foods are encouraged to leave a comment and enlighten me on the products you recognize. The descriptions, as you will soon see, are not particularly helpful.

To give credit where credit is due: I originally found the Haitai site via the long-defunct Misterpants.com. To see what he said about it back in the olden days of blogging, scroll down to the end of the 07.04.00 entry.

First sketch from this batch is coming up soon. Stay tuned!