Liam's Yeti

Glazed Expectations, a ceramic studio in Chapel Hill, NC, has after-school classes for kids.

A boy named Liam made this awesome yeti.

See the gallery for more ceramic art works.

DO NOT MISS: Ryan's Wolf Fury

It is Unmistakably the Greatest.

Brendan's print

Brendan of Paperbag Design is getting points with this one.

Not Yeti Friday - Littlefoot

Oh sure, it looks like yeti.

But as Professor Ichbonnsen explains, it isn't.

This is Littlefoot.

"Yeti is a catch-all moniker for several supposed animals, which include the Meh-Teh (the "classic" Yeti), the Teh-Lma (a three-foot-tall frog-eating Yeti), and the Dzu-Teh (a giant half-bear, half-ape creature, which walks on all fours). When people discuss the Yeti, it is almost exclusively the Meh-Teh that receives their attention. My own research confirms that the Meh-Teh is most likely a product of the imagination... But the Dzu-Teh is quite real. It is what the Littlefoot eats."

I urge you to read more about this amazing animal that is COMPLETELY DISTINCT from yeti in so many ways that I will have to leave it to the professor to count them all.

Daye Yeti

Nice painting by cartoonist Steve Daye

Yeti Hammer Throw

This bashful little guy is supposed to be a yeti, but I'm not sure I buy it.



What's with the cape and boots?

By "hammer", they must mean a sentient black ball with eyes.

You can play the online flash game here.

And they would have gotten away with it too...

...if it weren't for you meddling kids.

Yeti on Your Shirt

Yeti Jr. Kids Baseball Jersey

By Daniel M. Davis

Available at Monster Shirts




Yooo Hooo for Yeti! T-shirt

By Paige Pooler

Available at Cafe Paige

It was so cold that month, the Yeti come out to say hi

A yeti said hello to Silent Kimbly & friends in her web comic on a cold day last December.

DC's Snowman

A recent comic book, Justice League Adventures # 12, featured the Snowman as one of the Cold Warriors, a group of ice-themed villains led by Mr. Freeze:






Click to see bigger.



So who is this Snowman of the DC Universe?

Why, it's Klaus Kristin, the hybrid son of a male yeti and a human woman.

The Snowman's first appearance was Batman # 337:



Later, he would fight Batman in Tibet in issue # 522 and presumably die.

However, he mysteriously shows up on the cover of Supergirl # 7, but I'm not sure he's even featured in the story.

And now he's back even more mysteriously as a member of Mr. Freeze's gang fighting the modern-day Justice League.

Rejected Beasts

Two artists chose the yeti as the subject of their submission to Jacob Covey's follow-up to Beasts!:



1) Jason Raish




2) Steven Russell Black


The other submitters' work that didn't make the cut have been collected here.

More Zelda Yeti

A better look at Mr. and Mrs. Yeti from the new Zelda game.

Not Yeti Friday - L'abominable homme fromage

I'm on some kind of French kick.

Véronique D., alias Miss Gally made this picture.

I asked my friend Nate, who knows French:

Do you know what the Abominable Cheese Man is saying? I mean, besides the obligatory "RAAAAA"?

Nate: The monster is saying "raclette" (RAAAAA-clette), which is a melted cheese dish (not as melted as fondu, like still stringy, cooked in little pans), usually served with bread, meats, and small pickles called cornichons. It also refers to some types of cheese that are in the dish.

Thanks, Nate!

L'Abominable homme des neiges

On the French Drawmadaire sketch blog, the theme for one week was L'Abominable homme des neiges. These are two of my personal favorites, but see the rest here.



Nicolas "Nils" Rivet can be acknowledged for creating this very kid-friendly painting. (Note: The rest of his work isn't necessarily kid-friendly).




And on the not-so-kid-friendly front, Mikl Olivier made this homage to Tintin.

Olivier explains in his post that he chose to make his yeti closer to one of Jean-Louis Mourier's trolls from the French comic "Trolls de Troy" (example here), rather than keep him as the timid, kind-hearted chimpanzee of the original Hergé.

Here is what the yeti is saying: "Mille sabords!"

This is "A Thousand Portholes!" in French, and is a shortened form of "Mille millions de mille sabords!" (Ten Millions of Thousand Portholes!), something the Tintin character Captain Haddock said all the time as a curse in the original French version. A 'sabord', as I am led to understand, is a hole in the hull of old wooden ships through which the guns were fired.

In the English version, this bit of real nautical slang was changed to "Shiver me Timbers!".

So now you know.

Hey, if you've got a sketch blog, please consider making the theme "L'Abominable homme des neiges", and then send me a link. Would love to see what people come up with.

Yeti Crab lives!

Although not the first to do so (that would be Kristen McQuillin), SappyMooseTree aka Mandy Jouan has made an excellent yeti crab plush.

Where McQuillin's kiwa hirsuta went for accuracy, Jouan's goes for cuddliness.

More of this please!

Let's have more yeti crab fan art in general. Just because the scientists aren't down in the ocean depths taking more photos of it doesn't mean we should forget. Let it never fade in our Cultural Memory. Remember the yeti crab!


P.S. Super-Artist Jouan is talented at everything and is even a champion Lego Builder. Learn more:

The artist's Flickr page with more pics

Her home page

Her blog

Her Etsy shop

Article about her Lego Building

Green Bay Blizzard's Bruiser

Not to be outdone by the Canadians, professional arena football team, Green Bay Blizzard, has a yeti mascot named Bruiser.

Darkstalkers' Sasquatch

Sure, his name is Sasquatch, but check out his white fur and all his many ice-based attacks.

Dude looks like a yeti.





Were you aware?

He can...

...surround himself with icy spires.

...ride his opponent around like a sleigh.

...fire a beam of frost.

...breathe out a small, slippery pool of ice onto the ground.

...swallow people whole, then belch them out encased entirely in ice.




                          







For your viewing pleasure, footage of Homer Simpson beating him up.




And a snippet of the really, really bad American cartoon. The least of its crimes is that they changed his name and the name of his people to "Bigfoot".

I made a comic

I am trying out Bitstrips, where you can make your own characters and comic strips. They provide all the tools to do so. You don't do any drawing.

This is the closest I could get to a yeti. It wasn't easy.

Stay tuned for more bitstrips starring The Yeti. Maybe.

Wooly Yetis

An uncredited employee of Chragokyberneticks, a graphic design bureau in Switzerland, made Disorientation Man In the Woods Of The Wooly Yetis for his/her company blog's Illustration Friday.

The theme was "superhero".

Kudos to the artist for throwing in some yetis in there anyway.

Dzu Teh

The miniature wargaming system Heroscape has a Thaelenk Tundra Expansion set, which contains ice terrain and three yeti miniatures!





In the fantasy world of the game, they are called "Dzu Teh".

It is interesting to note the origin of the name Dzu Teh. In the real world, it is another name for the Himalayan Red Bear and translates to "cattle bear". According to the Dzu Teh's Wikipedia Page, it is:

"often associated... with regard to the Yeti myth. The Dzu-Teh, a Nepalese word, has been part of the Yeti, and later the Abominable Snowman (circa 1921), phenomenon from its early inception due to the location of its Himalayan habitat."

People makin' Plush Yeti!

Yeti-In-The-Box by Bags That Bite




Yeti T-Hugger by kungfumonkeyrobot




Yeti-pie by Heidi Kenney




marvin the silver yeti by little black forest




yeteenies also by little black forest




Rare White-Fanged Yeti by katiekylie designs

Yeti and Spaghetti

I've blogged about Noah Kroese's storybook idea and Fat Robot's sauce can. But there are other artistic works of art exploring the combination of yeti and spaghetti, two unrelated elements that go great together.


This is the graphic you can get on a Hoody from Lenko's Boutique:




I found a yeti actually MADE of spaghetti on Flickr:




And the immensely talented illustrator and sculptor Matthew Roby graciously sent me the following two pictures he made:





Dig those sandals.

19 Girls and Me and the Yeti

The picture book "19 Girls and Me" features a snowball fight with yeti.

Canada, Athleticism, and the Yeti

The Edmonton Rush Lacrosse Club has, not one, but TWO yeti mascots.

There is "Slush".







And the more elusive "Freez".






And for a few years, the Quebec Rafales hockey team had this flaming yeti surfing a hockey stick as its jersey logo.

Not Yeti Friday - Doomsday

The monster that killed Superman looks like yeti to me!

But he's not.

Toth's Snowmen

I thought the closest Alex Toth got to the yeti was Gorr from the Mightor cartoon.

But it turns out he created the Snowmen for Space Ghost 2 years before in 1966.

They are the minions of the villain Zeron the Ice Man and hang out with him and his giant evil wolves on his planet. They were only in the one episode.

Two Etsy artists named Ryan examine the Yeti / Bigfoot Relationship

Ryan Bird's Bigfoot and Yeti Print




Ryan Berkley's Fighting Sasquatch Brothers

Fearing card

Here's a panel from a comic-strip holiday card by illustrator Mark Fearing, featuring Bigfoot and Abby the Abominable Snowman.

The Great Ten's Yeti

I found this "micro-hero" from here, where yeti appears to be the member of a superhero team called China's Great Ten. What comic book is that from?

Turns out it's from DC's 52.

The Great Ten is what a superhero team might be like if sponsored by the government of the People's Republic of China. A roll call reveals some fantastic names, many as if they were literally translated from the Chinese: Accomplished Perfect Physician, August General in Iron, Socialist Red Guardsman, Mother of Champions, Ghost Fox Killer, Celestial Archer, Immortal Man in Darkness, Seven Deadly Brothers, Thundermind, and Shaolin Robot.

The Yeti is a reserve member of the team. A genetic scientist named Hu Wei unlocked a gene that can turn people into monsters. After self-experimenting, he can now "hulk" out as a yeti. Unfortunately, he's filled with rage when he yetis out and has to wear a kind of electro-amulet to keep from killing everybody. Sadly, Hu Wei was killed by supervillain Black Adam in issue # 50.



It's not a huge loss for the Great Ten, IMHO, since at least once before, Hu Wei discarded the amulet for some crazy reason and went on a rampage, killing 30 people. The Accomplished Perfect Physician had to go stop him and make him put his amulet back on. He was something of a liability, I figure.

Just wear the amulet, yeti! Is it that hard?

For the curious, here's a gallery of some of the characters from Great Ten, but not yeti.

Looking back on this blog, I now realize that:

This picture is of The Yeti's fight with Black Adam.

The Great Ten's Yeti is the first to say Snnaaaurr.

This is the cover of one of the issues of 52 that he's in.

Sophisticated Sasquatch Yeti

There are some 12" plush yeti available at Sophisticated Sasquatch.

A Made Yeti

Look at this lovely yeti statue once on display at the Western Australia Museum.

It was part of an exhibition called How to Make a Monster: the art and technology of animatronics that ran back in 2006.

Here's the article where I found the photo.


And it is interesting to note:

This is perhaps the only depiction I've seen that has the yeti be BOTH white and brown.

(Kinda like a certain diminutive non-yeti hominid of no real relevance)

Holiday Party

Holiday Party is a humorous animated cartoon about the Abominable Snowman chatting with an actual snowman at a party.

At the site, click on "WATCH THIS MOVIE" to, well, watch this movie.

S.I.L.L.Y. = Somewhat Intelligent, Largely Laconic Yeti

Two of my favorites, cartoonist Richard Sala and author Lemony Snicket aka Daniel Handler, teamed up to make a yeti story for the kid-friendly comic collection Little Lit: It Was a Dark and Silly Night...

Here's a snippet (click for larger view):

Doctor Who Yeti

Peter Sebeckis kindly sent me these photos of the Doctor Who yeti.
Check out Peter's blog, New Animals.




From the wikipedia entry:

"The Yeti of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, although resembling the cryptozoological creatures also called the Yeti, are in actuality alien robots."



Also:

"The sound effect of a Yeti's roar is created by slowing down the sound of a flushing toilet."

Matsuda Yeti

Yeti by Leo Matsuda

Batman vs. Yeti

Not Yeti Friday - Sasquatch

Maxwell Fuzzton by Emory Allen




Quatchi is one of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic mascots. He is co-mascotting with a mythical sea-bear and a thunderbird-bear spirit. Pretty cool.




Not to be confused with Squatch, the mascot of the Seattle Super-Sonics.

Christmasville

Christmasville is a hidden object game for your PC.

You play a detective investigating the disappearance of Santa Claus. A very Bumble-esque Abominable Snowman has a leading role.

Mystery of the Yeti statue

Somewhere in Utah is/was this sculpture, the photo of which I found on this site.

According to the site, the yeti is the "official mascot of Winter." Huh?

This must be the sketch the statue is based on:



Can anyone shed any light on this? Is the statue still around?

Update: Kevin Scott alerts me to the following web site for "Ski Utah" promotions.

Yetisburg

James Davis alerted me to this upcoming card game from Paizo
Publishing/Titanic Games.

From its description:

"On the bloody fields of Pennsylvania in 1863, two great armies collided to decide the fate of a nation. The South rose, and the North responded with fervent mettle."

"As every schoolchild knows, at the forefront of the battle stood the mighty Yetis, white-furred giants imported from the wilds of Canada to shred the opposing front lines. From the rear, powerful mastodons hurled boulders into the fray. From even further to the rear, great generals engineered the destruction of the opposing forces, and quite often their own."

And I think its supposed to involve exploding mastadons, too!

Correction!

A commenter named Grey Not Grey on the BoingBoing post points out that the 1956 movie Man Beast has a white yeti and predates the Abominable Snow Rabbit cartoon by 5 years.




All hail the Man-Beast!

Here's my original post about the Man-Beast.

You can find out more about it and other yeti films at this site: The Abominable Snowman & Other Cinematic Yetis.


Thanks Grey Not Grey!

In Conjunction with Cryptomundo

I am honored to have Loren Coleman of Cryptomundo post an essay in conjunction with my own Yeti in Popular Culture post.

It's a must-read:

Evolution of Yeti


Coleman writes:

"In conjunction with ongoing discussions with Henry Stokes, the creator of the thoughtful archival trendy site “I Love the Yeti,” I contribute my end of our bookend blogs."

...

"How has the imagery of Abominable Snowmen changed over time? What is
the ultimate reason for the modern popular cultural shift? A mutual
blog publication in conjunction with the “I Love the Yeti” website."


The question is posed:

What's up with yeti being white and not brown?


(Painting by Nate Wragg)

Snow Drift

Snow Drift is a cute game you can play in your browser.

Look at that yeti. That is one cute little guy.

And it's fun to make him jump and slide around. I approve.

Yeti in Popular Culture

As you can see by this time-line, the yeti hit it big in the 1960's - but by the 1990's was completely off the radar. In the current decade, he's back and bigger than ever.

These are the yeti's biggest moments in popular culture in the last fifty years as I see them.

'60s:

The Sixties started it all. After a 1954 expedition brought back a conical piece of fur thought to be a yeti scalp, Hergé gave his yeti a pointy head in "Tintin in Tibet" (1960). And he gave the story a twist: "the yeti is secretly friendly". This same twist of the Misunderstood Lonely Creature has been repeated ever since. A year later, in their cartoon, "Abominable Snow Rabbit", Chuck Jones and co. decided to paint the yeti white. They also made him friendly, a little too friendly. His whiteness never really went away after that (an exception in the same decade is the brown, faceless blobby creatures from 1967's Doctor Who episodes). But it was the stop-motion holiday special "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1964) that, in my opinion, had the biggest impact on yeti in the popular culture. Many of the yeti's being visualized today are nostalgic attempts to give a nod to Bumble, that classic, blue-faced, lovable monster from childhood, who goes from angry predator to helpful Christmas friend over the course of the special. Most of the yeti's today share many of his characteristics.

1957 – The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas

1960 – Tintin in Tibet

1961 – Abominable Snow Rabbit

1963 – Marx Yeti toy

1964 – Rudolph Red-Nosed Reindeer, Seven Faces of Dr. Lao

1965 – Jonny Quest: "Monsters in the Monastery"

1967 – Doctor Who: "The Abominable Snowmen"


'70s:

In the Seventies, yeti mania was still going strong. After his appearance in a Jonny Quest cartoon in the '60s, yeti showed up in Scooby Doo (1970) and got his first action figures (albeit, rather pathetic attempts) from G.I. Joe (1973) and as part of Mego's Famous Monsters of Legend series (1977). A TV movie called "Snowbeast" (1977) helped inspire a new animatronic yeti at Disneyland's Matterhorn ride in 1978. And Mad Magazine put Alfred E. Neuman as the Snowman on the cover of one of their books in 1979. You know you've hit it big when Mad Magazine spoofs you.

1970 – Scooby Doo, Where Are You!: "That's Snow Ghost"

1973 – G.I. Joe Search for the Abominable Snowman

1977 – Snowbeast, Famous Monsters of Legend figure

1978 – Disneyland Matterhorn animatronic yeti

1979 – Abominable Snow Mad (book)


'80s:

Yeti popularity started to decline sharply in the Eighties. In 1980, the Star Wars film "Empire Strikes Back" introduced the Wampa, an ice creature very similar to a yeti but with horns. As Loren Coleman points out, yeti has been depicted with horns ever since. In 1982, the thirteenth 'Choose Your Own Adventure' book was released, starring the Himalayan hominid. After that, yeti went on holiday. For the next couple of decades, you could hear crickets chirping and watch a tumbleweed roll by.

1980 – Empire Strikes Back Wampa

1982 – Choose Your Own Adventure: Abominable Snowman


'90s:

The yeti must have been hibernating in the Nineties. Little shows up on the radar. After exhaustive research, I can confirm he was a boss in the NES video game "Duck Tales" (1989). Then he showed up in a couple of theatrical plays: "On the Verge or The Geography of Yearning" by Eric Overmyer (1990) and "Betty the Yeti" by Jon Klein (1995). The Super Nintendo brought him in for "E.V.O.: Search for Eden" in 1992. Then one of Zod's henchmen from the Superman movie played him in the live-action Flintstones movie in 1994. But by decade's end, he was back to working the video game market: 1997's Tomb Raider II had him playing second tier to Lara Croft. The Nineties were the Dark Ages for all things yeti.

'00s:

But then the Renaissance! In 2001, yeti had a memorable cameo in Pixar's "Monsters, Inc.". This heralded his triumphant return to the world of pop culture. Ever since, he's been making it big. Tim Biskup started painting yeti for the hip Gama-Go line of merchandise (2003). Children started chanting the "Yeti Stomp" song from The Backyardigans (2004). Video games began incorporating him like crazy: World of Warcraft, MapleStory, Urban Yeti, the recent Zelda: Twilight Princess, and many online flash games - the most famous of which is YetiSports (2004). He was brought in to sell snowboards, razors (shavemyyeti.com), PopTarts, and cell phones. In 2005, when a new species was discovered that appeared to have long white-furred arms, it received the nickname "yeti crab". Many of yeti's old friends from back in the day put him back in the spotlight. There's a new and improved action figure from G.I. Joe - this time he doesn't look like a baby gorilla (2002) and a new Scooby Doo cartoon (2007). The folks at Choose Your Own Adventure books chose his title to be their first in the reprint and put him as the star in their new interactive cartoon dvd series (2006). Disney built the mecca for yeti fans with Expedition Everest, a ride at Walt Disney World. The amount and variety of quality yeti merchandise they put out for it is astounding.

2001 – Cameos in Monsters, Inc. and Monkeybone

2002 – G.I. Joe Search for the Yeti, Urban Yeti videogame (GBA)

2003 – Tim Biskup Yeti (Gama Go), MapleStory, The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena (Goosebumps) by R.L. Stine, Lego Yeti’s Hide-Out

2004 – Yetisports, PopTarts packaging, World of Warcraft enemy, Backyardigans: "Yeti Stomp"

2006 -- Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman DVD, Disney’s Expedition Everest

2007 – Chill Out, Scooby Doo!


The yeti is still going strong. There's no sign of his popularity waning.

And if you need any more evidence of his immense popularity:

I never run out of stuff to post about!

My Yeti Collection

This is my own humble collection of yeti figures. Almost every single one of them was a gift from friends. Thanks, everybody!