Expo 86 memorabilia: Beer, visors and blow-up dolls

Vancouver – Expo 86 was crazy on big things.

The world’s biggest hockey stick. The giant Canadian flag. The mammoth Swatch.

Alas, you can’t take a 20-storey high hockey stick home in your carry-on luggage. So Expo came out with a dizzying amount of small souvenirs for the masses.

Jimmy Pattison and Bob Rennie both own genuine versions of Expo Ernie, the lovable robot that was the fair mascot. But many more people were able to go home with an Expo Ernie toy, coin bank or picture frame.

You could even pick up an Expo Ernie blow-up doll. And a mint copy has been unearthed at the Museum of Vancouver for its charming new show, Recollecting Expo 86.

An Expo Ernie blow-up doll, along with some other Expo ’86 collectibles.

“He has the second largest collection of Expo 86 (memorabilia),” explains the museum’s Viviane Gosselin. “He was extremely generous with his time, and spent a lot of time showing us what he has.”

There are the usual world’s fair trinkets you’d expect to find (Expo coffee cups, Expo playing cards, Expo plates). But there are also some slightly odd collectibles, such as Expo 86 beer.

Expo ’86 Labatt’s Blue.

Gosselin’s favourite is an Expo ’86 egg carton put out by Woodward’s. “Expo 86 and Woodward’s together!” she said. “This is priceless.”

Gosselin never got to see Expo in person, but she digs Expo’s goofy 1980s style.

“(There was) a different flair and flavour and esthetic in the ‘80s,” she said. “You see that coming through (in items like) the visor. You think why visors? It was scorching hot – you’re going to burn the top of your head! But so what, you’re stylish!”

Three types of the headgear sold at Expo ’86.

“You can’t take yourself too seriously wearing a hat like that,” she laughs. “It’s a trucker hat with a pompom.”

The biggest display is Expo pins. Visscher has about 500 of all shapes and subjects, including a Royal Visit 86 BC Ferries Pin, an RCMP musical ride pin, and a pin of then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that looks like a photo you’d find in an antique locket.

Some of Pete Visscher’s collection of 500 Expo ’86 pins.

“It’s a great networking opportunity,” said Gosselin.

There are three types of the Expo 86 collectible vase, but that wasn’t the plan at the beginning of the fair – they ran out of the original vases and had to improvise.

“The biggest estimate was that there would be like 14 million people, and 22 million came,” she said. “Two months prior to the closing of the event, retailers started to run out of merchandise. They had to create new material, but had run out of the basic forms and shapes.”

Of course, rarity is what makes something a collector’s item, rather than a run-of-the-mill collectible. Still, 30 years on, everything with Expo Ernie on it has become a collectible – he’s probably as popular today as during the fair.

“It’s kind of the friendly face of technology,” said Gosselin.

“I just love the 1980s look, the kind of rounded edge, friendly (look). It’s friendly, approachable. Expo Ernie really captured and embodied that.”

The Expo show is actually part of a bigger exhibition, All Together Now: Vancouver Collectors and Their Worlds, which opens June 22.

“That’s 20 collectors,” said Gosselin. “One is Major Matthews (Vancouver’s first archivist), all the rest are living collectors. It’s everything from corsets to artificial prosthetics to pinball machines. We have Chinese restaurant menus from an anthropologist, Imogene Lim, who is really interested in hybrid history.”

jmackie@postmedia.com

Recollecting Expo 86

Vancouver Museum

1100 Chestnut, Vancouver

To Jan. 8, 2017

Tickets: $15, $11 for student, youth and senior, $5 for children five to 11

Info: www.museumofvancouver.ca/content/recollecting-expo-86-happy-hour-event

An Expo ’86 plate.

An Expo ’86 bottle cap.

Some Expo ’86 pins.

One of the many types of Expo Ernie toys for sale at Expo ’86 in Vancouver.

The coveted Expo ’86 desert hat with neck cover.

The Recollecting Expo 86 exhibition.

Expo Ernie found himself onto all sorts of collectibles, such as this change purse.

Expo ’86 playing cards and a lighter.