Oozing Goo - The Lava Lamp Syndicate

I just found an Astro Baby on Ebay UK where the seller says "Green with yellow lava".

Does anyone know, if Mathmos had this combination in the past? On the photos it looks different than the standard blue/green, but I'm not sure if this isn't an artefact?

I attached pictures, any comment would be highly appreciated...

............................................................

Furthermore: Does anyone have a list of all the color combinations Mathmos used to have in the past? Or even better: A color chart with pictures?














http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Mathmos-Astro-baby-Lava-Lamp-/182564527117?h...

Views: 530

Attachments:

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

And just for comparison, here are two pics of the widely sold blue/green Astro Baby, looks very similar, especially the 2nd one.

And an Astro that's really green/yellow, but I think it's custom made?

Attachments:

Yes, looks like a faded blue/green astro. 

faded blue/green, that sounds plausible. I won't buy it anyway.

and here I just found a pretty fucked up green-yellow Astro. With 25 Euro plus sending fee much too expensive.

The lava split in two parts, one flowing upside, the rest sitting at the bottom. Much worse than a just clouded, but running lamp.

Nevertheless I managed to get two Astros working again, that were as destroyed as this green-yellow one (even cloudier I suppose, you could see barely nothing in it after hours of heating, beside a white, looking like damaged polystyrene (after months swimming in the ocean) 2cm disk swimming on top)

I disposed the liquid and also the white stuff, filtered the small lava breaks from the liquid, put them back in to the rest and let that boil in a water bath 4 times (in the bottle), than let harden again and always after that discarding the resigned rests of cloudy water from the lava.

And then put distilled water into the bottle, only some drops of SLES, some more drops glycerine, and dishwasher salt solution until it really started to flow!
(Dishwasher salt is very pure and without clouding additives like table salt, much cheaper than epsom salts, but a bit hard to dissolve cause it comes in big crystals. makes it easier to use a mortar before)

I was absolutely sure the lava was destroyed, cause it had lost so much stuff.

But it works fine, even doesen't look like much wax was gone, and now I have a nice lime green-clear Astro. Unfortunately a bit clouding up agin (after ~30 8 hour runs). I might change the liquid again and this time use PPG, which I ordered recently.

Will post Photos later, here is at first the fucked up green - yellow Astro (and no, I won't buy it !!!)

I have to be careful, I'm at high risk of addiction in nearly any field, that fascinates me. (In my student times I had a 106 piece typewriter museum built up in my WG, together with my flatmates. And I own about 90-100 german police car models, cause I like the green-white so much. From younger days I got over 500 soft drink cans from the 80ies on my parents attic. I hunted for every book ever pubilshed by Philip K Dick (English and German) - stopped at about 300. And so on, and so on - I always was a hunter for the shiny, plastic, cheap, but orgiastic colorful and psychedelic Kitsch, Mindfuck and vintage Hippie Trash, if you know what I mean :-)

here the cloudy oldschool lamp...

Attachments:

Personally I think the replacement mathmos lamps are so reasonably priced now, that I'm not sure it's worth the trouble and effort trying to restore old mathmos bottles, especially when they've gone as far as the one in the picture you've attached. 

You can get away with topping a good bottle up, but once you start replacing/filtering significant amounts fluid on top of wax that was previously in a cloudy fluid, then they typically cloud again. Not necessarily to the same degree, but just enough to remind you that it's not as clear as you'd like!

Heads up though....lava lamps don't come with an addictive warning label, but if you have an addictive personality then watch out!  

^^ I totally see your point and agree, you have to pay to play like we say in the car modding world!

Well, "addictive" was self-ironic and worded drastically, I am a collector, and like to seek around for occasions on fleemarkets, online auctions, social welfare shops etc., and in Berlin there's a lot of this shit (many poor people...)

Somehow I have more fun in redoing things, then just buying something new. And you know, the purpose of all these wonderful lamps is not to sit 7/24 in front of them in a darkened room and make my psychedelic sessions with music, drinks and spliffs. They are more of a handyman hobby for me, with lots of research and trial and error experiments, lots of different actions to do -  it simply makes a wonderful pastime!

Besides: An new Astro (standard version) bought directly from Mathmos cost me 90 Euro, a new bottle alone 39 Euro, base and cap alone 67 Euro.

And so when I buy shredded Astros for a maximum of 20 Euros, I have at least another keen base for further bottles, if I can't recycle the whole thing.

Most times it works, and then I can do my own color schemes. For example the limegreen of this old, scrapped bottle I mentionend, is not available anymore. It's a pleasure when my recyclings work. And the phenomenon of ever again clouding up bottles is only occurring occasionally. (Use SLES!! It's the dish soap, that tends to cloud up, and could also make the lava blebby, if you use too much. And even 4,5 drops can be too much!)

I believe that Green/Yellow was a late Crestworth colour option. My dad has a jet in this colour with a box that confirms the colour.

I agree that the ebay listing looks like a Blue/Green gone wrong though

No I understand completely!
Have had hours of 'fun' myself trying to resurrect old bottles, and yes, I lost many bottles too due to the addition of dish soap!
Personally I just haven't got the time these days, and found that I was spending almost as much trying to save some lamps, as a replacement bottle would cost (and then still failing sometimes!).
Each to his own though :)

Peter Panussi said:

Well, "addictive" was self-ironic and worded drastically, I am a collector, and like to seek around for occasions on fleemarkets, online auctions, social welfare shops etc., and in Berlin there's a lot of this shit (many poor people...)

Somehow I have more fun in redoing things, then just buying something new. And you know, the purpose of all these wonderful lamps is not to sit 7/24 in front of them in a darkened room and make my psychedelic sessions with music, drinks and spliffs. They are more of a handyman hobby for me, with lots of research and trial and error experiments, lots of different actions to do -  it simply makes a wonderful pastime!

Besides: An new Astro (standard version) bought directly from Mathmos cost me 90 Euro, a new bottle alone 39 Euro, base and cap alone 67 Euro.

And so when I buy shredded Astros for a maximum of 20 Euros, I have at least another keen base for further bottles, if I can't recycle the whole thing.

Most times it works, and then I can do my own color schemes. For example the limegreen of this old, scrapped bottle I mentionend, is not available anymore. It's a pleasure when my recyclings work. And the phenomenon of ever again clouding up bottles is only occurring occasionally. (Use SLES!! It's the dish soap, that tends to cloud up, and could also make the lava blebby, if you use too much. And even 4,5 drops can be too much!)

Peter I am in the same boat you are in terms of liking to find older things and fix them and redo them but with these lamps I am still learning the basics so that might come for me later down the line but will not pass up something that seems like a good deal and store it away for a rainy day :)

Many many years ago back in the early 90s Mathmos made me a astro with green liquid yellow wax , it was awesome, i wish they brought the yellow wax back as a standard colour, these new colours  yellow n pinky wax just dont get me going i want bold wax colour red / orange / green / blue and YELLOW

Reply to Discussion

RSS

About

Autumn created this Ning Network.

GooHeads

Groups

© 2024   Created by Autumn.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service