The Retro Blog

Sometimes writing a classic that’s required reading in thousands of schools just isn’t enough to pay the bills. Here’s science fiction author Ray Bradbury acting as Big Brother to a bunch of folks in the future. At least the ad is funny.

[via neatorama]

“Mars and Beyond” is a 1957 episode of “Disneyland” the tv series in which the folks at Disneyland contemplate life on other planets and man’s quest for understanding of the world around him. I like to think of it as Mickey Mouse’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The episode is introduced by Walt himself with his personal [...]

Concept cars are little dreams about future cars that get produced for auto shows. They’re made to show what cars might look like in the near future, but are almost never actually put into production. Here’s a gallery from the New York Times that shows some gorgeous concept cars General Motors designed in the 1950’s.

If the winner of The Cold War was going to be determined by who had the most awesome looking new technology, I think the Ruskies would have been miles ahead of us. You know Sputnik looked sweet, but what about this lesser known project, EPIK. This flying saucer like aircraft was being designed in secret [...]

It’s impossible to look cool on a Segway. I’m pretty sure those things were designed specifically to make the user look like a dork. They could definitely use some retro flare. Check out this 1965 “Mono-Scoot” design concept. If Segways looked like this I would actually have believed the inventor’s claims that in the future [...]

Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi has posted a series of retro science fiction book covers to his blog. The art is all by Richard Powers, an illustrator whose work looks like Paul Klee in space.

Artist Chris Reccardi has contributed to such wonderful animated shows as Ren & Stimpy and Samurai Jack. These shows regularly exceeded my expectations and showed how fantastic televised animation could be. (Seriously, you might think Ren & Stimpy is all booger jokes, but I think more effort went into the animation of that show than [...]

This Disney Innoventions Dream Home currently in Tomorrow Land reminds me of how there seem to be houses of the future every few years and yet I never see half the stuff in them implemented.
Here’s a look at a kitchen of the future from 1967. Thing is, most of the stuff they showed is very [...]

“Steampunk” is a phrase the internet rapidly embraced and then turned on. It refers to a retro-future aesthetic in which Victorian looking things perform very futuristic tasks. A lot of people like the look of these objects, but now everybody’s getting pretty sick of all the people slapping some brass plates on an iPod and [...]

The Retro Blog readers in Seattle have the opportunity to indulge in some vintage Japanese robot toy worship at the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. An exhibition running now through October 26 features many cute little retro visions of the future, many of which can be viewed in this gallery.

Here’s a whole series of old black and white retro illustrations from Russian science fiction novels. Quite gorgeous! [via boingboing]

Have you ever found yourself singing and dancing because you love your kitchen soooo much? Well you live in the future, so you should. Treehugger has a post featuring 1950’s films about kitchens of the future, and they are simply wonderful.
Here’s a sample:

Space Patrol is a prime example of what fun can be had with plastic rayguns and miniatures. The series aired nationwide from 1950-1955. The whole thing was performed live, which makes the “special effects” all the more thrilling. The show followed the adventures of Commander Buzz Corry through space in the 30th century. Strangely, a [...]

At some point in your life you thought it’d be awesome to live in a spaceship. Some people are living the dream.

This is a spaceship home located in Pensacola Beach, Fl. You might be able to rent it, although the link to do so is broken.

If you’ve seen Woody Allen’s Sleeper, you’ll recognize this Denver [...]

Here’s a video from the 1930’s the predicts the future of fashion, all the way forward to the year 2000. So what will we wear in the future…erm, past? Some interesting outfits indeed. The hair on the girl wearing the net dress is brilliant. It’s like a stylist from the 30’s doing a 60’s beehive [...]

The other night I was watching 60 Minutes when this lovely little segment appeared:

Two thoughts came to my mind:
1. When did 60 Minutes become Jackass with a budget?
2. Why isn’t that ray-gun more awesome looking?
I’ll address only issue two here. This thing looks like a giant black tray with a hole in it stuck on [...]

This brilliant 1953 Tex Avery cartoon parodies industrial films about TV’s of the future. While it mostly has fun with outlandish predictions about where television is headed, eerily, some of its predictions aren’t that far off. [via boing boing gadgets]

I can think of no city symbol more awesome than the Seattle Space Needle. It’s not the tallest structure. It doesn’t even really do anything. Except be awesome. You can just picture a bunch of grown men in a meeting gleefully shouting,
“Yeah, yeah, it’s gonna look like a huge flying saucer!”
“And it’ll spin around!”
“Can we [...]

Here’s a short video of a man going on a quick jetpack ride over Tomorrowland at Disneyland. Why don’t we all have jetpacks in the 21st century? I guess there’s the whole thing about them being extremely inefficient. And judging by the pained faces of the kids in the video covering their ears hard enough [...]