(1)What did the original lamps look like, and (2) my blobs are yellowish and messy

[muddysock]

First, the question. I've been collecting what I thought were the original lava lamps. I remember them as having a black base and top and a slender, pleasing shape. The color varieties were not many. A yellow/red combo, a green/yellow combo, a blue with white blobs, and blue with purple blobs. What I see now being called vintage include all manner of color combinations and silver and other color bases and odd shapes. Am I remembering wrong or what?

Second, the problem. I bought a used lamp on Ebay. It's got light blue fluid with combination white/pale yellow blobs. The blobs almost look like peeled hard boiled eggs that've been burned. It has nice action and the blobs move freely and are of good size but after it warms up miniscule pieces fall off the big blobs and become many and profuse pinhead blobs. It's an odd look. Has something happened to this lamp? or is that just the way it's supposed to be? Can I do something to consolidate the miniscule blobs into the others ones so it doesn't look so cluttered and messy. I hope this is clear enough. Thanks for your help.

[muddysock]

You really are a font of information. But what you say conforms with what I'm seeing on the net.

As to my lamp, the bottle cap reads Lava Lite with a large 13 stamped on it and then smaller stamped numbers 94080 and 0812. The 0812 is below the other so I don't know if they mean for it to be a separate number or just a continuation of the other because they ran out of room. It takes about 1-1/2 hours to start much activity, but then it's really active and soon after the small blobbing starts. The bulb is a frosted 40 watt appliance bulb, which as best as I can tell is the right bulb for the lamp, which is 16-1/2 inches tall and about 4 inches in diameter. I haven't run it longer than 8 hours, but being used you never know what might have been done to it in the past. I'd wondered if someone could have run it too long before or used an appliance bulb of higher than 40 watts, if there is such a thing. If overheated by one of those two methods, can the wax burn, so that the yellow in my wax mixture is really just toasted white wax? But that still doesn't explain the multi mini-blobs. Any thoughts?

[muddysock]

Been trying to get a decent picture, but I need a new camera with a zoom. I guess the description is too vague. But has anyone had the wax burn or become discolored - is that possible?

[muddysock]

Thanks for your help, Spencer. I guess I'll just have to learn to love it the way it is. It kind of reminds me of eggs over easy flopping around in light blue gravy:)

[muddysock]

Thanks for the link, Astrobaby. I think my memory has been faulty. It looks like I just bought 3 "vintage" 90's lamps. Oh well.

[muddysock]

That's kind of a sneaky code. I wonder if the 12 at the end means it was made at noon (or midnight - nah, probably not). Thanks.