Holiday Greeting (by noctrnlcry) - ** Please read the fine print **

Yeti by ~noctrnlcry on deviantART


I'll be back posting in early January!

Oh NO! It's GIFT Giving Time!

Don't pull your hair out!

Every year around this time, I try and do a little bit of good in the world. By which I mean to say, I post about yeti related gift ideas so that you don't have to ever think about such things. Who would want to think about anything? Don't answer that! It would require you to think. I don't want to think either, but since I only have to do it once a year, I am not complaining. No sir.

And for you folks celebrating who celebrated Hanukkah, I apologize for being a whole nine days after the fact.

Without further ado...

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You can't go wrong with this 2 1/2 inch high figurine of a white gorilla yeti. He has "MADE IN CHINA" blazoned across his chest. National pride?

At $2.00 a pop (and a charity to support), buy twelve and make your giftee an ARMY, or at least a basketball team.

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Why not procure a plastic facsimile of Hugo the Abominable Snowman? He comes with a giant TV set for no reason.

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You could do much worse than get this little cuddly, fuzzy pal for the toddler in all of us. It would look great all dolled up and sitting demurely at fake, miniature tea parties.

At least think about it.

Note: mostlymade mostly made it.

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Yeti Loves Sea Monster is a great place to look for hand-made goods for sale, like this Yeti Stocking. Note: the stocking is already sold out.

Be sure to check out their great coloring book pages to download for free.

I am actually serious about this one.

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This little character's name is Oishi and he's some kind of ninja samurai. I don't think he's supposed to be a yeti. In fact, I'm fairly certain his creators thought of him as a humanoid snow monkey. But really, what yeti fan (particularly one in the 9-28 age range) is going to know the difference? Pass it off as a yeti and reap in the gratitude.

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As of this posting, Threadless still has some kids tees of this snazzy Hooray for Cryptozoology shirt.

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And this concludes the annual gift-giving guide!

Hooray for the Holidays!

Oxley Yeti

Designer Simon Oxley can be held responsible.

Everybody Loves A Yeti

T-shirt design entitled "Everybody Loves A Yeti" by Scott Bartlett.

Yeti in the Sixties

The 1960's were the golden age of yeti depictions.

In 1961, the Warner Bros. cartoon The Abominable Snow Rabbit was shown in theaters. The world received perhaps the first ever imagining of the yeti as a white-haired creature. None of the purported sightings of the yeti in the Himalayas that I've read from the 50's describe a white hue to its fur, and both the 1957 Peter Cushing film and a Japanese one the following year depicted the snow beast as brown. So does this mean that Chuck Jones is the reason the yeti is white like a polar bear? Looks like it to me!

In 1964, three years after "Snow Rabbit", Rankin/Bass made the stop-motion Christmas classic, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which featured a white-haired, blue-faced yeti.



I believe the Chuck Jones and Rankin/Bass yetis have defined the look of yeti in popular culture for the last 40 years. Yeti hasn't changed much!

Turns out there was another yeti made in the Sixties, but it's hardly known about at all.

In 1968, legendary cartoonist Alex Toth created the yeti-esque being known as Gorr for Hanna Barbera's Mighty Mightor cartoon.



Gorr, ruler of the Ice Creatures, was an enemy of Mightor, a cave man superhero with a magic club.



I'm not sure it's in the cartoon, but Gorr must have wanted to get his hands on that stave. All yeti's covet staves. Look it up; it's in a book somewhere.

Oddly enough, the show was paired with another cartoon about the adventures of the whale named Moby Dick, and Mighty Mightor was even given second billing.



Click to get a larger look at this model sheet by Alex Toth. Note that the Ice Creatures ride white pterosaurs. Awesome. I think that more yeti should ride winged creatures. In fact, this may be the only representation of a yeti I've ever seen where it rides a winged creature. Gama-Go's Battle-Axe Yeti may have rode in on that pegasus, but he's already off it before Biskup painted him.

Frostbite and his Frozen Arm

Character designer Ben Balistreri created this yeti character named Frostbite for the popular Nickelodeon cartoon "Danny Phantom".

Ben explains:

"The script had him described as an abominable snowman/wampa type creature. I tried to think of something to distance him a bit from every other snow creature we've seen so I came up with the frozen arm. I don't know if it makes much sense, but I thought it looked cool. (no pun intended!)"

According to Wikipedia:

"Frostbite is a yeti-like ghost in charge of the Realm of the Far Frozen. Frostbite and his race (known as the Far Frozen), despite their fearsome appearances, are intelligent creatures capable of many things--including medicine and technology. They refer to Danny as the 'Great One' or the 'Savior of the Ghost Zone"', and treat him like a king (Frostbite introduces himself as Danny's "humble servant"), due to his defeat of Pariah Dark in the episode 'Reign Storm'."

For Danny Phantom fans, here are 2 exciting pieces of trivia:

1. Frostbite helps Danny develop his ice ghost powers!
2. Frostbite is the one that gave Danny the Infi-map!

Despite the fact that Frostbite is an ally, you can actually play as Danny trying to defeat him in hand-to-hand combat if you select the "Scary" option in this online game.

Nate Wragg Update

I've blogged about Nate Wragg's yeti before.

And he's still at it!

Check out these recent posts from his blog:

Yeti vs. Sasquatch

Happy Birthday Love

Death By Yeti

Luckiest Yeti in the World

Jenny with the Yeti

Jenny of Plants & Animals made these yetis. Each one comes with a pillow mountain companion which she calls "Mt. Frosty".

She sells her artwork on Etsy.

Tiny Yeti

Adam Rex, author and illustrator behind the new book "True Meaning of Smek Day", created this Character in Search of a Story for his blog.

Nice painting of Yeti being huge and battling soldiers

Abominable Snowman by ~VegasMike on deviantART

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I don't think there's enough people out there depicting yeti as really freaking huge. Way back in the day, on one of my very first posts to this blog, I revealed to the world this picture. Since then, I've seen hardly any yeti of the GINORMOUS variety... until now!

Hats off to VegasMike! Tell it like it is!

Upside-Down Yeti

The illustrator Wayne Gage, aka "ienvincible" on deviantART, created this yeti.

Sure, Wayne calls him a sasquatch, but it's a yeti. I'd bet my fortune on it.

Katie's Yeti for Anne

Katie made this for her friend Anne.

If only she'd make one for the rest of us.... or at least me.



Note: If it wasn't obvious, I don't actually know Katie.

A Creature of Shadow

Yes, you CAN get a shadow puppet of the yeti, and it is called The Yetti.

And it is by Owly Shadow Puppets.

And the artist is Andrea Everman and she makes a number of other shadow puppets.

Yeti in the House

In Mallorca, Spain, you can go to a tourist attraction called "The House of Katmandu".

Once inside, you will encounter a big statue of a yeti.

Note #1: These are the largest ears I have ever seen on a yeti (and I've seen a lot of yeti - more than most). Did anyone else think Mogwai?

Note #2: The yeti is armed with a stave. This is important.


More pictures of The House of Katmandu

Guitian Yeti

Unless I'm mistaken, Cristina Guitian is the artist responsible for this imagining.

Beast Quest

In each book of the Beast Quest series, the hero must battle a mythological beast. The beasts in question include a centaur, a dragon, a serpent man, and a flame bird.

Author Adam Blade likes the yeti, apparently.

Of the seven Beast Quest books currently published, THREE of them feature a beast that is yeti in all but name.

Observe:






And coming up in May 2008, Claw the Giant Monkey is probably a yeti in disguise as well.

Simpsons Yeti

Delores alerts me to the following:

"The Simpsons Winter Wingding # 2" features yeti on the cover. The yeti is after Bart's bag of Pork Rinds.

Thanks, Dolores!

Finally, yeti has appeared with the Simpsons (and I observe the artists took a Rankin/Bass approach).

Bigfoot's been practically the star of that show since its beginning. In the seventh episode, Homer was mistaken as a sasquatch, and the Brown Beast has been mentioned over a dozen times over the years.

But the yeti? Hardly even acknowledged.

One did manhandle Homer in the episode "King of the Hill" during a dream sequence. But that's it.

So this appearance on the cover of an official comic book is historic.

Hillgrove Yeti

For more work by this artist, check out Justin Hillgrove's Imps & Monsters

You can learn a lot from a Bumble

Tera sent me this video clip of the first appearance of Bumble, the yeti from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). If you are inclined to watch, the first 2 minutes are applicable to this blog.



Note how the strange lumberjack man cannot pronounce the word 'abominable'. Instead, he mangles it into "Bumble". Don't let his poor English fool you. He knows many things about the yeti. Listen to his old-timey wisdom and you will learn much.

What can we infer about the yeti from this video's bearded hero & friends?

Having a red nose is real drag. It will give you away to horrible snow beasts.

Very few people know of the yeti's one weakness, which is:

DIY Icebergs!

No wait, I am corrected. Yeti's one weakness actually is:

A penchant for sinking.

(Technically, the sinking isn't really a problem for the yeti as evidence clearly shows it quite capable of rising back up again to exit the water. Rather, I believe the amiable, ginger-haired lumber-fellow meant to indicate that yeti's weakness is its inability to swim.)

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At the 2:30 mark of the following video clip, yeti returns to the story....



And what can we learn from the bearded man and his adventures here?

Yeti is nothing without his choppers.

It pays to have a dentist with you.


Once yeti is pushed over the cliff, fast-forward to 7:05, where we learn:

Without teeth, a yeti can be reformed by the companionship of a human, particularly if that human is bearded and jovial.

Reformation may result in a desire in the yeti to seek acceptance and possibly employment (menial chores and the like) within a community of other beings.

Step-ladders are unnecessary items to the yeti. No need to procure them in advance if you are having one over to your house.

The Abominable Snowmen are capable of surviving falls from great heights. Their bodies are apparently similar to elastic balls.


In summation, the following traits can now be applied to the yeti:

yeti cannot swim

But!

it possesses incredible resiliency

is almost impervious to any harm

can track its prey over long distances

needs no step-ladders

However, without its teeth:

it is nothing

will become docile if reformed by outdoorsy types

stops killing everything

will decorate christmas trees


Rankin/Bass, you are enlightening us all.

High-tailin' it...

This painting illustrates what one can realistically expect to see of the yeti if one is very lucky:

A blurry glimpse of it speeding away at maximum velocity.

They are incorrigibly elusive.

Image found here. Artist unknown.