Kitschy Items for the Kitchen and BBQ

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Hepcats Haven

You are being watched by these little helpers in the kitchen. (The names of the spices on this souvenir set are written in Finnish)

Call me crazy, but I love these little souvenir spice sets. Each one is unique because it was hand painted, usually in Japan. There were soo many makers of these such as Woodpecker Woodworks, Napco, Price Imports, Fitz and Floyd, Westwood Products, Ucagco, Norcrest Standard Specialty, MG and others. Many of these were purchased while folks were on vacation in the states and all over the world. Here are some we recently picked up.

I plan to use this set with the Royal Chef BBQ we recently restored. I going to add a spice rack on the right side to hold these little guys. That way, I can season the food as I cook.

Besides spice racks, these companies made all kinds of kitschy items for cooking including things for barbecuing! Below are a few items we purchased off of Etsy.

As you can see, these were made by MG of Japan and I love this set. There are 3 different characters to help you mark your steak; a bull for rare, a chef for medium and a cowboy for well done. I also dig the holder, it’s a tiny corral!

Looks like I need to replace one of the toothpicks on one of the bulls. It just makes you think that they made eating such an experience with little things like this to spice up a dinner.

This is what I would have on my steak, hate to eat a steak that is still bleeding. These little guys are so cool.

Here we have a set of extended salt and pepper shakers for using on the BBQ. This saves your knuckle hair from getting burned off when you try to season your meat. I knew we needed a set of these to add some style to the BBQ.

Since I plan to also restore the other BBQ made by Huntington, I needed BBQ utensils and extended salt and pepper shakers for that unit as well. Now that I have this, I need to purchase a set of spices to place in the tray on this BBQ.

There are soo many different kinds of souvenir shakers like these out there. Here are a few other ones that I thought were cool:

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This is a cool set made by Napco.

The colors on this set are great. These little guys even have earrings!

These shakers come in all sizes. Some shakers are large or small or squatty like this set.

Here are a couple of black cat shakers. The cool thing about this set is that they click together with magnets!

This set is known as the “I love Lucy” set. A set just like this one sold on ETSY for over $100!

These two look a little formal. He appears to have on a tuxedo and she has her mothers pearls on.

These little pieces really help show your personality when in the kitchen. Do yourself a favor and pick up a set that catches your eye and enjoy them.

9 Comments

Posted in The Makin's Of Our Pad and tagged mid century bbq, mid century cookware, mid century kitchen, mid century kitchen utensils, mid century shakers, mid century spice rack, mid century utensils, retro bbq, retro cookware, retro kitchen, retro kitchen utensils, retro shakers, retro spice rack, retro utensils, vintage bbq, vintage cookware, vintage kitchen, vintage kitchen utensils, vintage shakers, vintage spice rack, vintage utensils. Bookmark the permalink.

9 responses »

Shannon | March 6, 2014 at 5:43 am

Love the cute spice sets! Thanks for sharing them. Do you put a protective clear coat on the steak markers to protect the paint? I know the spice sets wouldn’t require much washing, but I’d be afraid the paint on the steak markers would be damaged when I washed them. Would love to know what kind of clear coat you use.

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- Hepcat Restorations | March 11, 2014 at 1:05 pm
  
  Hi Shannon,
  Thanks for your comment. I actually don’t plan on doing anything to these little guys. We’re just going to carefully hand wash and dry them.
  
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Leslie.Kahlenberg@wellsfargoadvisors.com | March 6, 2014 at 10:49 am

Hi there,

I actually meant to reply back on your previous post about the fabulous Chalkware Fairy Lamp. We have the SAME issue as you with some broken pieces around the base near the switch as well as one of the wings. How do you plan on fixing as you are so incredible with your restorations?

So glad to see you back to posting as all your items are so fab!

Thanks,

Leslie

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- Hepcat Restorations | March 11, 2014 at 1:03 pm
  
  Hi Leslie,
  Here is a link with a walk through of the process.
  http://hepcatrestorations.com/2012/02/28/continental-lamp-resurrection/
  Thanks so much for continuing to follow our blog, it looks like you’ve been with us about 2 years!!
  
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Robin @ AtomicLivinHome.com | March 6, 2014 at 7:47 pm

Those are all so darn cute!!

I’d LOVE to have the Finnish ones as that’s my heritage. My mom would have loved them, too!!

Nice finds~ 🙂

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- Hepcat Restorations | March 11, 2014 at 12:57 pm
  
  Thanks Robin. We picked up a few more things for the BBQ this past weekend. I’ll blog about them soon.
  
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Mod Betty / RetroRoadmap.com | March 7, 2014 at 5:21 am

OMG what a swell collection!

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- Hepcat Restorations | March 11, 2014 at 12:57 pm
  
  Thanks!!!
  
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