If Small, Return to Sender
Hot off the press last week--and just in time for Christmas--is the new holiday gift catalogue from the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, which proves that basketball stars and Hollywood moguls don’t have a monopoly on the use of the term dream team.
The new catalogue includes two T-shirts for $18.50 each that read “The Dream Team” and feature a picture of the late President with Elvis Presley. A $45 Dream Team quartz crystal watch features the same photo.
The snapshot was taken in 1970 when Elvis dropped by the White House unannounced to chat about the nation’s drug wars.
In addition to offering Dream Team merchandise, the library for the holidays has scheduled a special lecture on Dec. 10 by former White House lawyer Egil (Bud) Krogh, eyewitness to the summit between the President and The King. Krogh’s account of the meeting, “The Day Elvis Met Nixon,” has been added for the first time to the catalogue at $18.95.
The library, which receives no government funding, has become an especially active marketer of its merchandise. Officials there say sales of memorabilia have been especially heavy in recent months with the surge in interest about Nixon’s career after his death earlier this year.
Returning to the holiday catalogue again from past years is the “birthplace birdhouse.” The item, which sells for $45, is a miniature model of Nixon’s boyhood home and is described in the catalogue as “redesigned as Presidential quarters for your fine feathered friends.”
She’s the One
Also new from the Nixon library for the holidays is a “personal shopper” to fill memorabilia orders during the shopping rush.
The catalogue reads: “Call Debi, our own Nixonette (yes, really; she waved the flag in the ’72 campaign) to help out with your gift chores.”
Monkey Business
Another Nixon-era gift possibility comes in the form of authentic costumes from the “Planet of the Apes” movie series that was popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The costumes, marketed for $2,995 by Beverly Hills-based The Planet Co., “have been locked in a warehouse for nearly two decades,” according to company ads.
Featured are costumes of orangutans, which were the city elders in the film; chimps, which were the doctors and lawyers, and the military gorillas.
Briefly. . .
Boldly going for the $$$: Corona-based Autograph Collectors magazine says that signed photos of Leonard (Mr. Spock) Nimoy currently sell for $95 to $150, slightly more than the $75 to $125 range for William (Capt. Kirk) Shatner and the $50 for Patrick (Capt. Picard) Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation. . . . A San Francisco company is marketing for $59.95 a pen purportedly filled with disappearing ink once used by the KGB, touting it as a way to “hide all traces of clandestine weekends, love letters, hotel registrations” and other sensitive matters.