Home » More Storybook Art Of Midcentury Work Trucks (And Some Flava Flav): Cold Start

More Storybook Art Of Midcentury Work Trucks (And Some Flava Flav): Cold Start

Cs Henschel Top
ADVERTISEMENT

I’ve mentioned a few times before about the strange but charming and, the more I think about it, sort of happily baffling trend of certain mostly European makers of work trucks, often huge ones, having brochures and advertising materials that contain illustrations that are uniquely characterful, and often feel like something out of a beloved children’s book. The example I want to show you today, from a 1955 Henschel HS 100HK, is particularly storybook-feeling.

Henschel (& Son) started out making steam locomotives in the mid-1800s, and by WWII the company was building all sorts of war machines, sometimes using forced labor, in probably the least charming or storybook way possible.

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

Maybe that’s why they felt so compelled to show their postwar trucks in such a simple, lovely way. Hoping we’d forget about all that wartime nastiness? Maybe that’s why we get brochures with paintings like this (from an artist named Hollnagel) that feel like they could have been swiped from a Little Golden Book:

Cs Henschel Wide

I’m really taken by the raw, uncut, weapons-grade, burn-your-fingers-if-touched charminonium that saturates every bit of this thing. Look!

ADVERTISEMENT

Cs Henschel 1

How does this artist make mud and an unfinished building look so appealing? Also, those clouds either represent rain or are extruded.

Cs Henschel 2

Is the truck fording this stream or getting a drink? I’d believe either.

Cs Henschel 3

ADVERTISEMENT

Climb that hill, big little truck!

Cs Henschel 5And, okay, now descend it! Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?

Cs Henschel 6

The Henschel logo feels oddly religious to me? Like a Moravian star, sort of?

Cs Henschel 7

ADVERTISEMENT

Look at that truck, driving over those stumps!

The illustrations are genuinely beautiful, I think, with just the right level of detail, the right saturation of colors, the right irregular shapes of the border of the scenes, it all just works. I love it. It’s also confusing, because is this targeted at kids? Kids who are in the market for heavy-duty logging or construction trucks? Maybe I’m underestimating the ability of people with heavy equipment jobs at mining concerns to appreciate really sweet illustrations that evoke childhood books?

You know what else I underestimated? Or who? Flava Flav.

Yes, the guy in Public Enemy who wore clocks and pulled funny faces; of course I knew he was great in a hip hop context; I didn’t realize the man could play the piano like this, too:

ADVERTISEMENT

The man plays like 19 instruments. I somehow didn’t know this before, and that’s on me. There’s a lot I feel like I should have known about Flava Flav, including that he’s something of a hero to Olympians, helping US track and field athlete Veronica Fraley pay her rent:

Incredible! And, did you know he’s sponsoring the USA Women’s Water Polo Team?

He’s also the official US Water Polo Team Hype Man:

ADVERTISEMENT

In a world so full of dipshits and reprobates and callow fucknuts, we need more Flava Flavs. The man is an inspiration.

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on reddit
Reddit
Subscribe
Notify of
22 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Knowonelse
Knowonelse
2 months ago

Once again, Instagram links are stupid and useless. Attempts to find the actual IG post with FF playing the piano were fruitless. How many pages of IG links does it take to find that specific one? This applies to every IG page link, if it isn’t on the initial page, I have yet to find it.

Chri$
Chri$
3 months ago

Just a note, he very much dislikes when he is referred to as “Flava Flav” and strongly prefers “Flavor Flav”. Carry on.

Freelivin2713
Freelivin2713
3 months ago
Slower Louder
Slower Louder
3 months ago

Mr Flav has a nice touch on that piano. Fight the power!

TOSSABL
TOSSABL
3 months ago

I couldn’t pick out a FF track to save my life, but it’s always heart-warming to hear of someone practicing good humaning.

Collegiate Autodidact
Collegiate Autodidact
3 months ago

All those curving lines in the illustrations, especially in the one of the Henschel truck crossing the stream, are quite evocative of the works of Virginia Lee Burton perhaps most famous for writing and illustrating Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939) as well as The Little House (1942) and Katy and the Big Snow (1943.) Her illustrations for The Fast Sooner Hound (1942) by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy have a lot of grand sweeping curves as befitting the story of a dog who could outrun even the fastest locomotive in the country:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR_ko2TqezkFqiKmVuh99VUeVTE2_KAhhxGG94asKf7nw-D-__oM5HoqFGi-lFwCv-IGSgj41FFIUM-UfbIa5HihIQq37uyLBujkF02iXD-GoZvoH0QI1KQhW7p5wMOahvmthXXqSN5c8/s280/Bontemps+Conroy+-+The+Fast+Sooner+Hound+-+028.jpg
Here’s a pretty good write-up about that book with more images of the illustrations:
http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/11/arna-bontemps-and-jack-conroy-fast.html?m=1
Since Virginia Lee Burton was such a well-known artist in the 1940s and had a lot of influence on children’s book illustration it’s quite possible that whoever illustrated the Henschel brochure drew inspiration from Burton’s oeuvre.

Last edited 3 months ago by Collegiate Autodidact
Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
3 months ago

“Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?”

Nitroglycerine!

The Wages of Fear (French: Le Salaire de la peur[a]) is a 1953 thriller film directed and co-written by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck and Véra Clouzot. The film centres on a group of four down-on-their-luck European men who are hired by an American oil company to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads, loaded with nitroglycerin needed to extinguish an oil well fire. It is adapted from a 1950 French novel by Georges Arnaud.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGFkY2Q3ZDYtNDhlOS00YTE3LTk4MDEtNzQ4OTljNDM4MTVjL2ltYWdlL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI4Nzk0NjY@._V1_.jpg

Last edited 3 months ago by Cheap Bastard
Gubbin
Gubbin
3 months ago

Per Wikipedia, the truck business was folded into Hanomag and thence into Daimler, but their old factory in Kassel is one of the world’s largest producers of locomotives, as Henschel Antriebstechnik.

Maybe a certain train-enjoying writer needs a trip to central Germany? I mean, fly into Frankfurt and you got that, the Nixdorf museum, the John Cage organ, Technik museum Speyer…

Hoonicus
Hoonicus
3 months ago

All is serene in Storybook land, then you try out a mid-century, high CG, unladen chassis on a four lane roadway, and it slaps you into reality with a snap 180 when braking. Good thing they chose brown upholstery.

Flyingstitch
Flyingstitch
3 months ago

The big red truck went over the mountain and into the woods.

No, no, children! Don’t ask what was in the woods!

Last edited 3 months ago by Flyingstitch
Library of Context
Library of Context
3 months ago
Reply to  Flyingstitch

And, okay, now descend it! Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?

Gravestones. It’s loaded with gravestones.

Lew Schiller
Lew Schiller
3 months ago

I know nothing about Hip Hop (should there be a hyphen there?) but would appreciate clarification…is it Flava or Flavor? Seems to be Flavor on his X account.

IRegertNothing, Esq.
IRegertNothing, Esq.
3 months ago
Reply to  Lew Schiller

His birth certificate says Flavor, but his friends call him Flava.

OrigamiSensei
OrigamiSensei
3 months ago
Reply to  Lew Schiller

It is most definitely Flavor Flav, and as I recall it’s something he’s quite insistent on (recalling an incident on his reality show where a contestant screwed it up and got booted for it).

Vetatur Fumare
Vetatur Fumare
3 months ago
Reply to  Lew Schiller
Lew Schiller
Lew Schiller
3 months ago
Reply to  Vetatur Fumare

I fully expected this to be waiting for me at the other end of that link
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=AaFC3VEcSxtun5LX&t=43

Vetatur Fumare
Vetatur Fumare
3 months ago
Reply to  Lew Schiller

I am at work, but I am still going to click that. Hopefully it’s just Rick Astley.

Geoff Buchholz
Geoff Buchholz
3 months ago

That six-pointed star is identical to the ones on the official flag of the City of Chicago. I am now about to disappear down a Henschel rabbit hole.

Parsko
Parsko
3 months ago

Public Enemy is probably the best hip hop group in history. They did not represent what the world painted them as.
Flava Flav is an amazing individual and deserves all the credit.
90’s hip hop is peak human.

Gubbin
Gubbin
3 months ago
Reply to  Parsko

Don’t believe the hype!

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
3 months ago
Reply to  Parsko

I like Bug Butts.

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
3 months ago

I’d like to think if I had the money I’d do the same, but at this rate I’ll never find out if that’s true.

22
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x