Thunder Chicken

This is my setup for when my potted trees (not shown) need to come in for winter.

Remember this from Tailwinds: The Catalog of the Skies in late 1980s?

Rummaging through my dad's old stamp collection today and found these (Moon landing stamp from 1989, Apollo-Soyuz from 1975):

Lacquer art:

It was obligatory to get a Russian Pepsi bottle in 1990. This was just a few years after Pepsi started selling in Russia and the famous photo of a Russian Tu-95 crewmember putting a bottle up in his window during an intercept by a U.S. fighter was in recent memory.

Some aerospace related souvenirs:




Buran key chain (forgot I had this, pretty sweet):

Souvenir pins were sold everywhere. Several of the folks in my group were exploring the market in the old fortress of Zagorsk and we looked at the prices and pulled out fistfuls of U.S. dollars, each of us buying a full set of pins, which made the babushka running the stand very happy. The ice cream stand next door similarly did very well.

Supporting the Moscow black market in purchasing used Soviet uniform items

Souvenirs from trip to Russia in 1990. I forgot to pack a towel so I went full-communist. But it was in fact made in Ireland:

Souvenirs from trip to Russia in 1990.