What's On My Desk- Super High Score Edition

Sweaty palms, chocolate milk, lazy Saturdays, offers by mail and a Polaroid camera. Today's What's on My Desk again takes a fast train to geektown and presents some badges of honor so rare that most people are unaware of their existence- Activision Atari 2600 high score patches.



Gamers have always tried to achieve the near impossible. The high score on the Frogger arcade game at the pizza shop, beating Super Mario Brothers straight through without warping, or unlocking the full 1000 gamerpoints for Halo 3 on the Xbox have led to countless sleepless nights, numerous skipped classes, and a pile of undone homework that would reach sky high. There was nothing better as a kid than being able to boast of indeed beating Contra, and doing it without the infamous cheat code that all of your loser friends had to use to make it through. Your usual reward for the monumental, the herculean, the sheer impossible of gaming milestones? Usually just bragging rights. However, back in the day so to speak, Activision rewarded Atari players for their achievements with something much more tangible.



In a move which doubtlessly inspired Microsoft's current digital Xbox achievements, Activision offered a mail order reward program for its most hardcore, high scoring players. Each game had an established high score or objective and players meeting the qualifications could take a photo of their TV showing the score, mail it to Activision and receive a truly spectacular corresponding patch for the game (list of games and corresponding hi scores for patches here). Additionally, as below Starmaster patch illustrates, some games had multiple tiers of achievements, each being rewarded suitably.



As you can probably surmise these patches are rare. Most Gamers were unaware of the program and those in the know not only had to actually earn the patch (which for some games was incredibly difficult), but also go through the hassle of photographing and mailing a photo in the days before digital photography. Couple that with the fact that some of the games were fairly obscure even by 1980s standards (You may have heard of Pitfall and River Raiders but how about Dolphin or Plaque Attack?) and it becomes near impossible, and pricey to assemble a complete set.



I can't think of a more suitable or charming reward for a million points in Laser Blast or twenty thousand points in Pitfall. Each patch is a mini artwork standing in testament to a hard fought digital victory that will last through the ages. Or at least until the patch fades.



So with sore thumbs, red eyes, and a heavy dose of nostalgia I sign off from today's What's on My Desk. With a quick salute to Activision and all those high scorers of gaming's golden age I wish our readers as many track records, win streaks, 1ups, and flawless performances as they can muster.

U,U,D,D,L,R,L,R,B,A,START

Alphabet Drawers

Holy Moly! I was surfing on the Poppytalk blog and found the sweetest piece of furniture ever. Behold, the Alphabet Drawer chest! It's apparently produced in the UK by Kent and London, and is made from solid oak with exactly 26 drawers. This thing goes for £2700.00, which really isn't that bad, but it's currently out of my need and budget range. Bummer, I'll just have to drool over it for now. 

Images from the Kent and London website.

What's On My Desk: Halo 3

Being a man I have been societally conditioned to have an aversion to certain things: romantic comedies, form fitting male underwear, Rosie O'Donnell and most of all couple's date night. Oh yes, couple's date night. The phrase that strikes terror into the hearts of men followed by sweating, a burst of cold adrenaline and a fabrication of the most outlandish of excuses. Yes, I was this man but my friends- no more.

Our double dates have been revolutionized by the white monolith of internet fueled fury, oh thee of the all seeing glowing green eye which peers into the deepest corners of a man's soul and speaks softly and suggestively "I can give you what you want". I speak of course, of the siren song of the Xbox 360. No more couples walks on the beach or trips to the shopping mall for us. We have traded flowers for a crushing blow from the gravity hammer, Lionel Richie for the staccato pops of small arms fire, and dressing up for a dressing down of those unlucky enough to oppose us all delivered via Xbox live. We have walked the plains of post apocalypse DC, stormed the beaches of Normandy together and tasted the saccharine sweet victories as well as the most heart rending of defeats. Most recently we have tested our mettle against a never ending horde of prepubescent warriors in the most vaunted of online arenas- Halo 3.



For those not familiar with the game one of the coolest features is the ability to take in game screenshots of your exploits and then upload them to your computer. The resultant images are both haunting and beautiful with jarring colors and the occasional capture of a sweeping panorama.



So reload and aim high while their shields are down, I present to you What's On My Desk:Halo 3 Screenshots featuring the exploits of us here at Product Superior in conjunction with our good friends Moo and Matt.

What's On My Desk: Great Oudoors

Summertime is here and for most folks that means mosquitos, aloe vera, and sand stuck in unmentionable places. For us it means loading up the truck and fleeing civilization for some solitude in the great outdoors in the form of biking, camping, and hiking. As a salute to the dog days What's On My Desk! will be throwing some mud, spraying some deet, and hoping for the best with some outdoor related features.

Now I like trail mix, fear of bear attacks, and filthy clothes as much as the next dude, but what really sets off camping for me are the gadgets. Size matters and in camping you want small. Waaay small. You also want to eat. Combining the two is today's piece de la resistance- the MSR Pocket Rocket camp stove.



Weighing in at 7 oz (including fuel cell!), and priced less than $40, it will boil a liter of water in about three minutes and has a wind clip to prevent blow outs. All that is great but the real reason I love this stove is the fact that it handily folds up ala the Transformers to be stored in it's own tiny, form fitting red carton.







Oddly enough it is packaged with nine, yes nine, individual instruction booklets for every conceivable language. Informative- yes, over the top- maybe.





So get out there and get cooking! Oh, and are you going to finish eating that freeze dried icecream?

NSS coverage on Oh So Beautiful Paper

Nole over at Oh So Beautiful Paper was kind enough to include us in her extensive coverage of the 2009 National Stationery Show. Stop on by and make sure to peruse her tremendous blog- it's a veritable encyclopedia of paper goods so vast that it's almost overwhelming. Some really beautiful objects from a lovely lady who has a tremendous passion for paper. Thanks Nole!

Product Superior business cards on FPO blog

We've been lucky enough to have our fancy new die cut business card featured on Under Consideration's new blog FPO: For Print Only. For those unfamiliar with the blog, FPO is dedicated to interesting and solid graphic design with a focus only on objects destined for print. We here at Product Superior definitely believe that print is still very much alive and doing just fine. We'd like to extend or thanks to Bryony and Armin at Under Consideration/ FPO for including us and doubly so for their inspirational blogs.

"Paper People" by Sycamore Street Press

Just after my delight of finding the Sycamore Street Press blog with helpful posts, I was contacted by Eva Jorgensen to participate in a series of Q&A's she is running on her blog titled "Paper People." Check out our Q&A here as well as many others!

I've seen a little of their work before and loved their alphabet poster print (below).





Thanks a bunch for inviting us, Eva! We can't wait to meet and see the new things in store for Sycamore Street Press.

What's On My Desk!

In what is sure to be the most talked about edition of What's On My Desk! ever, I present to you a selection of objects so charming, so amazing, so wonderous that I actually have no idea what they are. Let me explain:

About a month ago, Jennifer spied a set of these at an unnamed resale shop in Houston, Texas and immediately purchased them. They're about six inches long and appear to be slides of some kind for an antique Viewmaster style device. Each slide is sandwiched between two pieces of glass taped together with red paper tape. They seem to depict various battles and incidents (with the exception of the 4th slide down) from the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s and the Opium wars of the mid 1800s and have notes about the contents of the slide in German. Unfortunately, they are not a complete set and a few are heavily damaged. Nonetheless they definitely are like nothing I'd ever seen before. The illustrations are amazing and the colors are still shockingly vibrant when viewed with backlight despite their age.

What's on my desk!

Ahoy and welcome aboard for the highly anticipated, sophomore edition of "What's on my desk!"- a fascinating, drama charged voyage through the stacks of sometimes interesting, wildly nerdy, and frequently disorganized possessions which litter my worktable. Today's entry is so scintillating, so sensational, so OMG (for you texters out there) that I feel the subject announcement should be accompanied by the crack of a whip or the roar of a wild beast. I present to you...... POSTAGE STAMPS!


Alright, alright I *may* have implied a bit more excitement than philately usually arouses in folks but I, for one, have always loved stamps. I have decided to quantify the things I love about stamps into an informative, concise list designed to persuade you, my occasional reader, into loving them too. The aforementioned list is as follows:


1. Stamps are an excellent way to attract finer specimens of the opposite sex. Who doesn't want to hang out with someone who rummages around old, dusty, faintly cheese smelling books in search of something someone may have licked years and years ago? This is the number one reason, although frequently unspoken, that people get into stamps- sex appeal. Ask any stamp collector. They'll tell you

2. They're amazing pieces of period graphic design and illustration shrunk into a highly portable, easily stored format. Most countries try to be current and cutting edge with their stamps (much more so than currency) and as a result they act as a really great retrospective of the current aesthetic at the time of their manufacture.

3. *Most* stamps are cheap. You can get a handful of art deco stamps- many MNH (which means Mint Never Hinged) for a few dollars. A book featuring full color plates of art deco design would cost considerably more, take up lots of space on that overcrowded book shelf, and likely not have designs as interesting or well executed as the postage stamps.

4. You get to act like you know what you're doing. You get to move everything with tweezers, look through a magnifying glass, and catalog everything in those awesome little plastic holders. It's like being an anthropologist without that pesky degree or all that damn dirt. Plus no airplane food! Additionally, unlike your closet, you can organize and maintain your stamp collection.


Today, my occasional reader, I'd like to share a few photos of my unsorted stamps in my stockbook. These are a collection of stamps from all countries, in all conditions that I've collected because I like them on an individual basis as opposed to the usual desire to obtain a complete set of a certain kind of stamp in a specific condition(for instance non cancelled Swedish special delivery stamps or all US stamps with geese on them). I do have a large collection of US airmail stamps but that will have to wait for another entry! I hope you can restrain your anticipation.

"Enough talk! Let's see those photos already!" you say. I agree.