CHILDHOOD MEMORIES SHOULD COME WITH A WARNING LABEL

Whoever put together this shit show basket of dolls should be questioned by the authorities! I took this pic at a tattoo show, I know, broken record, lol. I’m always photographing weird shit.

These little fuckers look like they’ve got unfinished business, right?! Like one of Ed Bassmaster’s characters would say: “Would you look at that!!!” Eight little weird ass faces staring in different directions, and the one in the middle looks like she knows where the bodies are buried. I’d like to meet the people who thought putting them all together in a wicker basket was a good idea. Actually, scratch that, I know the two that put them together, lol.

And before anybody gets offended, I know these dolls probably meant the world to the children who owned them. They might have been birthday presents, holiday gifts, or companions that survived countless moves and years of being dragged around by their hair. To their owners, they were precious. To me, they look like the cast of a horror movie that got canceled for frightening the camera crew.

Let’s go straight to childhood nostalgia tattoos, shall we? A subject that gets pretty entertaining when you consider how differently people remember growing up. Cartoon characters and toy tattoos. Portraits of these characters also bring back memories of Saturday morning television, my favorite in childhood memories sitting in front of a TV with a big ass bowl of Captain Crunch topped off with real milk, and a half pound of sugar poured on top, cause childhood diabetes did not exist back then. Then there’s playing outdoors, or the toys we refused to part with. Other people probably remember the same toys staring at them from a dark bedroom shelf and wondering whether those little plastic eyes were following them around.

You can take an old doll, a cartoon character, or a toy that hasn’t been manufactured in decades and turn it into a tattoo that has absolutely no meaning to anybody except the person wearing it. It doesn’t have to be fashionable, expensive, or recognizable to the rest of the world. The owner might have an entire childhood attached to an image that looks like a twenty-dollar garage sale purchase to everybody else.

If you’ve been thinking about a childhood-inspired tattoo, Inker gives you a place to discover tattoo artists and explore their work. Some memories deserve an artist who can reproduce the smallest details, particularly when you’re working from an old photograph or a toy that’s seen better days.

As for these dolls, I sincerely hope they found good homes. Preferably in different ZIP codes.

J Gekko
Staff Writer, Inker