Hello readers! No, I’m not dead. As my laborious day-job contract draws to a close, I’ll pick up where I left off and get back to slagging off stamps and stamp collectors. Only, I can’t right now, because some of Australia Post’s current and soon-to-come issues have me absolutely purring…

Take this Signs of the Times issue that lit me right up on September 1.

Aussie Post has touched me in the special spot with this tribute to the art of commercial neon. Not only do I love neon art – especially retro-style – but when I was a child, the long drive home from my grandparents’ house was often briefly illuminated by a swing past Melbourne’s Skipping Girl Vinegar sign. I still love catching sight of her jumping her rope, this much-loved icon adored by all despite the fact that she’s a monstrous zombie child with glowing alien eyes and vinegar for blood.

The Dandy Pig is another wonderful Melbourne creation, though not one I saw much of in my childhood. I guess we didn’t drive through Dandenong much in the 1980s because our parents wanted us all to live to adulthood.

The Pink Poodle was part of a motel on the Gold Coast. It was built in 1967, and everyone said “Hey, that’s really tacky. Let’s make tacky our thing!” and thus Queensland’s tourism industry was born. The motel is gone now, but you don’t have to look for long on the Gold Coast to still see pink bitches getting around on all fours.

My big question is: why only three? Surely the nation that brought us the Big Banana AND the mowable Parliament House embraced the kitschy potential of neon?

For example, I can’t believe that Aussie Post snubbed the dame hovering above the ‘discreet’ entrance to the Crazy Horse Adult Cinema in Melbourne, coquettishly lifting her skirt to bare her lovely neon bum. It’s Hot indeed! Put her on a stamp before France beats us to it. A lenticular one, so you can wiggle it up and down and watch the butt cheeks come and go. How am I not running this show? Perhaps a Series II is in order, AP?

(That beautiful photo is from Neon Blues, a WordPress blog which appears defunct to the point where they’re not checking their emails from polite philatelic bloggers who’d like to borrow their photo. Please follow Neon Blues if you love neon as much as I do, so that if they ever return, they will be delighted by all the followers I sent them and won’t mind a bit that I borrowed their photo with full accreditation.)

The Signs of the Times issue comes with the usual range of pointless variations, plus a minisheet that is eye-catching but perhaps not quite as interesting as it could have been.

You can, of course, use that whole minisheet if you need $2.80 worth of postage on a parcel. And as we have discussed before, you bloody should.

So it’s an overwhelming Respect rating for Aussie Post on this one. I’ll be back with more philatelic fnar fnar soon. Promise. x

This has been fun, hasn’t it? You should share it with your friends, shouldn’t you? I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Thank you! x

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