About Us
Curio & Co. understands collecting and collectors. Each of us can recall that first childhood treasure – a smashed penny, a toy from the bottom of the cereal box, a rubber band with “You’re the bestest” written on it by Jenny McKenzie – and we remember feeling “this is so special that I have to keep it forever.” So we did.
We know that memories have powers so strong they can take
you back to a specific time and place in your life that you can live over and
over again. And sharing those memories
with others can be just as powerful. Mr.
Druthers remembers his Great Grandfather – who worked at Curio & Co. side
by side with his father – bringing out
a collection of matchbooks collected from travels around the world. “Listening to his stories of those
matchbooks; well I was right there with him…in places I’d never even seen.”
All of us at Curio & Co. are honored to help you build your collection of memories – to rediscover your own childhood treasures and share in some of our favorite memories of places you might not have seen yet.
Team Members
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Elmer Druthers CEO
Mr. Druthers continues to uphold the family traditions of excellence and dedication to high-quality merchandise and that have made Curio & Co. great for the past four generations.
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Margie Trundleberry Office Manager
Margie really runs the show around here, and we just couldn’t manage anything without her. And we’re not just saying that because she’s looking over our shoulder right now as we write this. Honestly.
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Jay Laramie Head of Acquisitions
Jay’s work tracking down all of our one-of-a-kind collectibles brings him to some unusual places (with unusual expense reports), but buying Rex Ensemble tour posters for a living? Lucky devil.
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Louis Smeedley Head of Archives
Louis and his team in Archives and Restoration ensure that the next generation gets the same chance to drool over Darnell Duffy’s work or hold a Star Cowboy Blaster in their hands. (Louis would prefer gloved hands, but we just can’t help it.)
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Shirley Dinn Head of Sales
Shirley’s job is both the most exciting, and the hardest. Bringing you the coolest products from entertainment memorabilia makes us so happy. But letting go of it is really difficult.
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Ned Wazowski Head of Research
We sometimes forget that Ned doesn’t know everything. Math, freeways and chili recipes confound him. But for anything else you might need to know, Ned’s got the information.
They All Want... Bunchy
Bunchy
When my Mom was little, they kept all of their Bunchy bottle caps in an...
Friday, Jun 14, 2013
by Ned Wazowski
One terrific idea, beaming right up
Sometimes, small budgets and short deadlines can be the best thing to happen to a project. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention.
One of my favorite stories is about the development of Star Trek’s most innovative technology: the Transporter. According to legend, the original plan for the show was to have the Enterprise land on each planet to allow the crew to explore.
However, this presented a number of problems. First, they’d have to do some pretty hefty special effects each time the ship landed, and secondly, the Enterprise is supposed to be a huge ship and landing the model they used on the planets would require a lot of suspension of disbelief. (Just where the heck would they park it?) The crew could use the shuttlecraft of course, but even that was too expensive to build for the first few episodes. (Aluminum Model Toys later offered to build a full size version of the shuttlecraft for use on the episodes – at no cost – in exchange for the rights to market the model kids. Smart move!)
In addition, landing either the ship or a shuttlecraft would require a lot of time in each episode, which creator Gene Roddenberry thought would slow down the storytelling. So without any feasible means to get the ship to the planet, creators came up with the Transporter to “beam” people and equipment – or tribbles – from one place to another.
The special effects required for this were pretty simple: turning a Slo-Mo camera upside down and filming shiny grains of aluminum powder. But the results were huge. The transporter revolutionized science fiction and changed the way we think about space travel. In a 2008 Discovery Channel magazine article, physicist Michio Kaku predicted that we might have this technology in 100 years.
Best of all? Transporter technology gave us one of the coolest catch phrases ever (even if Kirk never actually said it).
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