The big lava lamp information thread

[Autumn]

This is a huge post containing a compilation of everything lava lite.                                        

 

"We're sorry. The maximum number of characters is 100000." Time to split the post. The second half of the post is now located here. PLEASE DO NOT POST THERE. IF YOU POST THERE YOUR COMMENT WILL BE IGNORED AND DELETED.

 

When me and lamphead finish these sections we will make a nice new post that has all sections under their own reply and the main post will have links to them so we wont have this problem.

 

Me and lamphead decided to open this post for people who want to add info to the thread. Keep in mind once your work is incorporated into the main post it will be deleted and credit will be given to the author(s). I got some of these pictures from ebay or other places that I dont remember so If you see a picture up here that belongs to you and credit has not been given please ask for credit here.

 

About Lava Lite

1960 - 1990

Lava Lamps invented. XXXXXX lines introduced.

 

1990 - 2003

The 1990's seen the birth of many new models from LavaLite. They introduced the Electrick lineup where they paired colored bases usually with a corresponding color globe. The Swirl series was introduced with blue, red, green and purple colored bases in a psychedelic swirl paint job and were also made in rare Haze Swirl models. The Safari series was added with 4 different animal pattern colored bases, some of the Snake models came with the ultra rare brown colored wax globe. The Icons made their way onto the scene as ceramic bases depicting anything from a Devil to Santa Claus. The Aristocrat and Century lines seen the introduction of silver and black colored bases to go with the normal gold color and a new line of globe colors.The Aristocrat base was used for the Americanna model where a American flag wraps around the base and was also used in the special edition "2000" lamp which was chromed and featured a "2000" stamped out of the base cone. Several promotional lamps were also available like Camel and Budweiser, some were geared towards movies such as Austin Powers and TV shows like That 70's Show.  The Wizard was introduced which was a similar shape to the old Carlisles but the new Wizard had stars and moon holes stamped in the base, it was available in black, silver, red and blue base colors and a whole new lineup of colored glitter globes. The 250 ounce Giant was released in 5 globe colors available on black or silver bases. LavaLite had a special limited run of 35 lamps on the 4 foot tall Humongo model which was 1,280 ounces ( 10 gallons! ). The liquid wave machines seen a introduction of several new colors and new model sizes.

 

2003 - current

From 2003 to now Lava Lite has consistently produced very low quality lamps. When manufacturing moved to China all models were discontinued and a new line was introduced including: Accent, Royal, Bob Marley, and etc. The failure rate among the china made lamps is very high(probably close to 90%). Issues range from cloudy liquid, bad flow or now flow at all, poor quality glass, or damaged bases.

 

As of November 2010 Lava Lite claims to have fixed the quality control issues, but some people claim to have bought lamps of poor quality.

 

What is my lamp made out of?

What we know

The lava lamp was found to contain water, 38% by mass; chlorinated paraffin, 36%; low molecular weight polyethylene glycol, 13%; kerosene 7%; and microcrystalline wax, 6%.

https://oozinggoo.ning.com/forum/topics/lava-reverse-engineering

 

Lava lamps flow optimally at 45-50 C.

The wax contains paraffin wax, a mineral oil such as ondina 17, carbon tetrachloride, and petroleum jelly.

The liquid contains glycerol ethylene, glycol, polyethylene glycol or propylene glycol(30% of total volume).

Info from patents...(See attachments)

What we dont know

The correct mixtures of the above chemicals.

 

How old is my lamp?

USA Screw Caps

Lamps with screw on caps were manufactured with a sticker inside the cap that had the date printed on them. You may also find the date of the lamp printed on the bottom of the base. Screw top caps were used from 1965 until 1995 on 52oz models and until 1993 on 32oz models, after that they switched to bottle cap type tops. Not every lamp will have the tag as they tend to fall out if the cap has been unscrewed.

 52oz model... Nov.1974

32oz model... Sept 1980 Model 205

Rare base sticker with date... Sept 1973

Rare stamped bottom of base.. Nov. 1971

USA Bottle Cap

USA lamps with bottle caps have the date they were manufactured printed on the cap.

This is a bottle cap from a 32 ounce 2002 model, the big 29 is the globe wax and water combo (see color chart below) The first line of small numbers is the 2 digit year followed by the 24 hour time code, 02 is 2002 and the lamp was made at 08:06. The second line of small numbers is the full date of manufacture 08-13-02. Sometimes these numbers will be swapped slightly.

This cap from a 32 ounce 1994 model shows a slightly different stamping just for example of what you might run across. This lamp was made on 05-16-94 at 05:01

52 ounce caps usually had a different way the caps were coded, they added extra digits or letters to the codes due to different production lines and product codes. The cap below shows the big letters 121D , the 1 is for 52oz globe, the 21 is the globe color code and the D is the production line letter. The lamp was made 04-29-02 at 04:22

Some US made globes from time to time will be seen with a gold colored cap. The common misconception is they are China made but the truth is they simply ran out of caps with the LavaLite logo occasionally. They were also used for the final runs of US made globes the last few weeks. This cap shows a 52oz model with black wax clear water globe made 10-05-01 at 10:04

China

The new China lamps use bottle caps with a sticker on top that has the date they were manufactured. The format used for the China lamps changes from time to time. If you have a variation post it.

 

Lava Lite Color Codes

Lamps that are capped with bottle caps have a date printed on them. On 32oz globes there are two big numbers printed on the left side of the cap that have the model number on them.

An example:

03010609P

      061801A

Lamp Model Number: 03

 

 Color code # 29

Color code # 13

On 52oz globes the numbers also have some characters with the big numbers such as "D" and sometimes an extra number in front of the color code. So you might see something like 103D. The code for this would be 03.

 

Color code # 21

 

Picture made by Dr. WHAT?!

 

 

Very rare or unreleased color combinations

# 01 clear/white- Very rare combo never sold publicly. Versions were made for test markets/employees

# 06 clear/red- Very rare combo which was later replaced with the # 10 color. Later came back as a # 18 clear/cranberry

# 07 clear/peach- Very rare combo never sold publicly. Versions were made for test markets/employees

# 11 clear/neon yellow- Very rare combo only seen in the first runs of Electrik models and was later swapped for the regular # 08 clear/yellow

# 23 blue/green- Very rare combo that was dropped for unknown reasons

# 36 green glitter- Limited quantities were made

# 37 orange glitter- Limited quantities were made

 

See custom lamp section regarding how to create rare or unreleased colors.

 

Models by year

1960

Century

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Ralph Hughes, LampHead, RyTouch

 

 

Capri

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Dawn, Galaxy 9

 

 

Aristocrat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures courtesy of LavaLite, Don Souliere,  LampHead

 

 

Decorator

Picture from Lava Lite.

 

Regency

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Lava Lite, Bohdan

 

Empress

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Lava Lite, FogRider

 

Consort

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures courtesy of LavaLite, Nick

 

Mediterranean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from THE INTERWEBS, C*O*O*L*S*O*X, Manix5

 

Meditation

Picture from Lava Lite.

 

Nite Lite

Picture from Lava Lite.

 

Continental

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Lava Lite, ???, Manix5, WeeboTech

 

Imperial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture courtesy of LavaLite, Mark Goo, FogRider, LampHead

Imperials came in the following color combinations:

Liquid/Wax

Clear/Red

Clear/Orange

Clear/Green

 

 Very rare and hard to find model made from 1965-1968. Original list price of $ 149. Only 4 or 5 have ever been seen and all are owned by members on this site.

 

1970

Enchantress planter

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Lava Lite, C*O*O*L*S*O*x, Erin

 

Elegant Enchantress Planter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from ???.

Picture from Lava Lite.

 

 

Elegant Enchantress.

Picture from ???.

 

Princess

Picture from Lava Lite.

 

Carlisle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from ???, Erin, dave p.

 

Saturna

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from ???, Bohdan, Jim

 

White Squiggle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture courtesy of Jim, Bohdan

 

Black Squiggle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture courtesy of Wizard of Ooze, goodude26

 

Coach Lantern

 

 

 

 

 

Picture from Jeff Goo, Don Souliere

Coach Lanterns came in three base variations.

 

Aladdin

Picture from ???.

 

1980

Aztec

Picture from ???.

Aztecs came with either blue liquid and sun gold lava or clear liquid and sun gold lava.

 

[Autumn]

If you posted and asked for something to be changed or added to the post, and it has been done; please delete your post. I am trying to keep the thread clean until it is close to being finished.

[Autumn]

Hey I just wanted to let everyone know I will get around to adding all of your info, be patient. I am very busy right now with huge homework assignments. College>lava lamps ya know?

[Autumn]

I know I said I didnt have much time but I made some edits after watching lamphead spend a lot of time editing tonight.

 

Anyways I think we have reached the point at which we have enough pictures, for the most part anyways. If anybody has anything rare that we dont have let us know.

 

What we now need is information about lamps. If anybody has any historical information about a specific lamp please let us know. Stuff like "The icon lamps were made by XXX company and were hand crafted and painted by XXX." Thats what we need!

[Autumn]

Yes, please get some good pictures of the box and the lamp. Thanks.

dave p. said:

I have the music box squiggle lamp if you want pictures of that. Let me know and I will take some pictures for you. It has the original music boxes, although I don't know what they play as I can't make the sound out!

[WeeboTech]

Advisory, I was asked by the thread starter to prune some subject matter that was drifting off topic. 

If your post is missing, it has been incorporated into the informative initial post or was read, acknowledged and removed to keep the thread concise and on topic. I'm open to suggestions if you would like to discuss with me further. Just PM me or the thread owner.

[THIS REPLY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN 2 WEEKS TIME]

[Chow]

If it helps I have a Santa Icon.

I will take and post a picture with the box tonight.

[Autumn]

We have a picture of the lamp, if you have the box we could use a picture of that.

Chow said:

If it helps I have a Santa Icon.

[Autumn]

Got them in the overflow post.

[Chow]

It got posted with a Pimp lamp

[WeeboTech]

I'm wondering if it's worth whiile to divide this further.

1. Major informational thread.  High level over view and reference material.

    links to subordinate Decade based Picture threads

    I.E.

    1970's picture thread.

    1980s picture thread

    1990s picture thread.

etc, etc,

 

It would be nice to see historical picture threads on Mathmos products too.

Thoughts?

[Autumn]

Thats been the plan all along but we have to get the sections done first because once they are split into another post I cant edit them after 15 minutes.

[Kempton]

I also suggested this but it was shot down. Maby sombody could start an English lamp history thread

WeeboTech said:

I'm wondering if it's worth whiile to divide this further.

1. Major informational thread.  High level over view and reference material.

    links to subordinate Decade based Picture threads

    I.E.

    1970's picture thread.

    1980s picture thread

    1990s picture thread.

etc, etc,

 

It would be nice to see historical picture threads on Mathmos products too.

Thoughts?