Art History :: Rat Fink and WIERDO vs Monster Source

Cultures Lost -- Slot Cars

Retrievances by Pat Darnell

[SOURCE]
SECONDS: Rumor has it that Ed Roth stole the Rat Fink from the work you were doing –
MOUSE: Well, he stole my mouse image and took my character Freddy Flypogger and turned him into a rodent. You take the tail, ears and nose off and you have Freddy Flypogger.

I was painting on the East Coast car show circuit and Roth came from the West Coast to a show in Pittsburgh. He was showing his car off and said, “Hey kid, can I paint at the show with you? You’ll learn how to make three hundred dollars instead of a hundred.”

I said, “Let’s do it.” He set up next to me and he had a pair of Levis, a giant stomach and no shirt on and he sat on his little stool that was about a foot high and started painting.

He was painting snakes and skulls, groovy stuff, but he was real slow and he only painted in black and white. I went fast and colored everything in and wound up making a thousand dollars. He made three hundred.

He took a bunch of my catalogs back to L.A. and had his artists copy all my stuff and they created Rat Fink out of my characters.

I called my shirts Monster shirts and he called his Weirdo shirts. Then he started calling his stuff Monster shirts and even stole the pointed hat idea from me and called them Rat Fink hats.

...Back to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth...Greg Holland has a tribute to him: [read article HERE -- VSRN Tribute to Ed "Big Daddy" Roth]

More on Freddy Flypogger and the Monogram Model kits can be found on MENOOSHEA'S Blog