Collaboration blends legendary Chicago-based innovation with authentic Los Angeles art and car culture

ADDISON, Ill., June 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Renowned car care brand Turtle Wax has joined forces with internationally acclaimed artist and avid car enthusiast, Mister Cartoon, to combine their mutual love for cars, culture and design in a new collection of premium products: The Art of Car Care™ line. Specially formulated for automotive enthusiasts of all kinds, The Art of Car Care™ line is the culmination of a meticulous collaborative process between Turtle Wax engineers and Mister Cartoon. Together they created a range of interior and exterior solutions tailored to Mister Cartoon’s specifications for any and all drivers.

The Art of Car Care™ line is a fresh take on what car care traditionally looks like, balancing premium products that can enhance any vehicle with upscale artistic inspiration from the automotive and lowrider communities of Los Angeles, the epicenter of car culture and a place where Mister Cartoon is a long-time participant and key figure.

“Growing up in Los Angeles, I saw firsthand how cars truly become an extension of who you are, and presentation is everything when you pull up to a spot,” shares Mister Cartoon. “Keeping your car fresh and clean gives you confidence, and I saw an opportunity to team with Turtle Wax to emphasize how car care is an art that connects people on all levels.”

Each The Art of Car Care™ product features exclusive, eye-catching labels that were completely hand-drawn by Mister Cartoon in his trademark style. The collection as a whole underscores the idea that car care is a form of art, both inside and out, no matter the car or surface and allows any car enthusiast to view their car in the lens of a canvas.

“My passion for cars is what drives my art. When I was young, I started airbrushing street fantasy murals featuring cars as a way to get involved in the scene. Now I‘m able to build and paint my own custom cars, and my mural collection has been featured in art shows internationally. Each The Art of Car Care™ bottle should be thought of as a work of art in itself, and it‘s cool that these products will be in the hands of car heads across the country,” shares Mister Cartoon.

“Our new product line, made in partnership with Mister Cartoon, seamlessly blends cars, lifestyle and art in a way that’s unique, yet authentic, speaking to both Turtle Wax and Mister Cartoon’s roots in the automotive community,” said Daren Herbert, Chief Marketing Officer at Turtle Wax. “This is a true collaboration, and we couldn’t have thought of a better partner to share the rich history of the Los Angeles car scene, and Chicano culture, than Mister Cartoon.”

The Art of Car Care™ collection includes wash, wax and air care products. Seven wash and wax products will be available online starting June 14 at TurtleWax.com, MisterCartoon.com and OReillyAuto.com. The products will hit shelves at O’Reilly Auto Parts stores first, starting June 28.

• All Tire Clean & Prep: Deep-cleaning foam and optical brighteners leave tires looking like new and prepped for dressings. Dissolves brake dust, grease, grime, road film and soils.
• All Wheel Cleaner: Acid-free, color-changing formula quickly and safely dissolves brake dust, contaminants and iron particles. Safe for all painted, clear coat finishes, polished metal, chrome wheels and more.
• Tire Shine: Provides a deep black, wet-look shine that lasts for weeks with water-resistant polymers and protection against drying, fading and cracking.
• Slick Wash & Wax: Slick, swirl-resistant wash with thick foam that adds protection and high-shine to car exteriors.
• Quick Detailer: Swirl-resistant, streak-free carnauba and ceramic blend delivers incredible depth-of-shine and durable protection. Can use without water in between car washes to safely remove light dust, dirt and road grime.
• LVP (Leather Vinyl Plastic): Non-greasy ceramic formula safely cleans, conditions and protects interior surfaces against drying, fading and UV damage.
• Interior & Exterior Protectant: Non-greasy, long-lasting deep, rich shine, infused with ceramic polymers to repel, protect and add clarity to plastic, rubber and vinyl surfaces – inside and outside the car.

Turtle Wax and Mister Cartoon are also taking automotive odor elimination to new grounds with a line of auto foggers that will be available at TurtleWax.com, MisterCartoon.com and OReillyAuto.com starting June 14, with in-store availability at O’Reilly Auto Parts starting June 28. The collection also includes a hanging air freshener, which is available now exclusively at AutoZone stores.

• So Fresh Auto Foggers: An odor eliminator and fabric refresher with exclusive technology that removes the toughest odors caused by smoke, mildew, pets, food, spills and more. Available in four unique scents that were developed hand-in-hand with Turtle Wax and Mister Cartoon: New Ride, Clean Blast, Sunset Peach and Midnight. Plus, you can get an exclusive Stay Lucky fogger only at O’Reilly Auto Parts.
• Hanging Air Freshener: A long-lasting odor eliminator with an original Mister Cartoon lifestyle design featuring Our Lady of Guadalupe. This AutoZone-exclusive is designed to last longer than other paper air fresheners and is available in a 3-pack, with more scents and designs to come.

For more information about Turtle Wax, visit www.TurtleWax.com and follow on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date with the latest and greatest from the brand. And, visit www.MisterCartoon.com and follow him on Instagram at @MisterCToons. 

*Source: NPD RTS 12 months ending Dec. 2022.  

About Turtle Wax  
The Turtle Wax story started with the launch of the first-ever bottled car wax in 1944. More than 75 years later, the ‘Most Innovative Brand in Car Care’ is still capturing the attention of the auto appearance industry with a cross-category assortment of No. 1 selling products. With product distribution in more than 120 countries, the Turtle Wax brand resonates around the globe, but the brand’s heart remains in its hometown of Chicago, where award-winning innovation is developed to this day. Turtle Wax also believes in supporting the future generation of car detailers and provides training and educational opportunities through the established Healy Family Scholarship Program. For an inside look at the brand’s breakthrough product development process or how Turtle Wax supports car culture worldwide, visit TurtleWax.com.  

About Mister Cartoon 
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mister CARTOON was immersed in art from an early age. He began his career as a graffiti artist before branching into murals, album covers, logos, and now most famously known for his tattoos. His richly detailed, hand-rendered designs pull much of their inspiration from the Los Angeles of CARTOON’s youth. CARTOON’s work has helped bridge the gap between those hardscrabble beginnings and the style’s current popularity. CARTOON has gained a worldwide following from his tattooing, with a clientele that includes the likes of Eminem, Travis Barker, Christina Aguilera, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent, Lewis Hamilton and Snoop Dogg. He’s attracted a diverse and devoted fan base for his work in other media as well. The result has been highly acclaimed gallery appearances and art shows in London, Paris, Tokyo, and beyond, as well as activations alongside global brands like Nike, Netflix, Apple, Louis Vuitton and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Service to the community has been an essential part of CARTOON’s career, where he is active in outreach programs, sharing his knowledge with young people and devoting time to many community-based initiatives.

Media Contact: Tim Klein, Zeno Group, [email protected]

SOURCE Turtle Wax

“I think it’s important to understand our roots, where the technology we use came from, and I believe these machines and the people who made them should be celebrated,” says Nicolas Temese, a.k.a. Miniatua. By day, the Montréal-based artist works as a technical director at an animation studio, and in his spare time, he tends to the exacting details of minuscule, vintage hard drives, floppy disks, and keyboards.

Temese has been fascinated by computers and science since childhood. “The first computer I ever played with was an 8-bit Atari 800XL,” he says, sharing that during the last ten years, his interest in engineering of early technology grew. He spends hours poring over manuals and documentation of retro models, fascinated by the inner workings and intent on being able to recreate every detail as faithfully as possible. “IBM had incredible, clean industrial design back then, with great aesthetic that still look amazing to this day,” he says.

Ranging from 1:10 to 1:16 scale, Temese’s editions are fashioned from polystyrene sheets that he delicately cuts and shapes before gluing and sanding the components and adding a coat of paint. For softer accessories like cushions, he uses polymer clay. “I recently started using resin printing to add details on some of my miniatures, but I have a few projects that I make entirely by hand,” he says. “Depending on the project or deadline it can take me a few months. The longest project I worked on was eight months.”

IBM 704

Many of Temese’s iterations are based on actual models that hit the market in the second half of the 20th century, from room-sized data processors like the IMB 704 to game-changing desktop versions like the IBM 5150. Introduced on August 12, 1981, the 5150 was the first widely available personal model, marking a paradigm shift in computing, business, and society as a whole. He also pays a lot of attention to lighting and documentation, mimicking the style of photography used in advertising during each machine’s respective era.

Temese recently embarked on his first fictional examples, creating a model of the WOPR, or War Operations Plan Response, from WarGames. The 1983 film follows the exploits of a high school-aged character named David Lightman, played by a young Matthew Broderick, who inadvertently hacks into a military central computer, thinking he has accessed a game, only to find himself enmeshed in escalating tensions between nations headed to a seemingly inevitable World War III.

“The WOPR was a challenge because of the electronics mostly,” Temese says. “I changed my approach a few time while building it, and the design of the electronics had to change a few times.” Recently, he created a scale model of David’s bedroom, where a phone, coding books, and other electronics complete with illuminated details flank a boxy setup.

Learn more about each piece and find many more images on Miniatua’s website and Instagram.

Detail of IBM 704

IBM 5150

IBM 704 Vanguard

IBM 1401

David’s Room from ‘WarGames’

Detail of David’s Room from ‘WarGames’

‘WarGames’ WOPR

Detail of ‘WarGames’ WOPR

HP 264X

HP 264X

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Miniatua Puts the Micro in Microchip in a Series of Remarkably Precise Miniature Computers appeared first on Colossal.

The greatest economic engine for progress in human history is increasingly becoming a toxic word among younger Americans, despite simultaneously loving most of what the system produces. It’s a classic “Madison Avenue” challenge– and so we brought in some of world’s top agencies to tackle it.

_{By Seth Matlins and Randall Lane, Forbes Staff}

One of the pioneers of modern marketing, Leo Burnett, popularized a new way of looking at advertising, the “Chicago School,” which held that the key to an effective campaign revolved not around the slick slogans coming out of New York or California agencies at the time, but the product itself. “Before you can have a share of market,” he said, “you must have a share of mind.” There’s an obvious corollary: dominant market share requires positive perception maintenance. That translates into vigilance at juggernauts like Apple and Disney. An unexpected challenge for fast-growing innovators like Tesla and Zoom. Business school case studies about once-beloved icons like Sears and Kodak.

But if you look at the brand within the American economic system most brand- challenged right now – one that both dominates practically and yet struggles attitudinally— it might well be capitalism itself. Despite its historic role as the greatest prosperity engine ever created, and despite the resilience of U.S. productivity and employment figures even during this rocky time, capitalism, has become increasingly unpopular within the country synonymous with it. Just 57 percent of Americans have a positive view, according to a massive Pew Research survey last summer, versus 65 percent in 2019, numbers that comport with numerous other polls, including ours, conducted with The Harris Poll.

Drill down by age cohort, and those results become positively alarming: among adults under 30, only 40 percent have positive feelings (compared with 44 percent who said the same about socialism). America’s next generation of leaders seems more keen to create the next AOC than the next AOL. And oblivious to what socialism means when applied dogmatically across a country, whether Venezuela today or East Germany a generation ago.

As with many image problems, there’s a root cause at the product level. Over the past decades, millions have seen less opportunity, glacial equity progress, and a less-level playing field. For young Americans loaded with student debt but lacking a clear path to upward mobility, capitalism, the product, seems particularly flawed right now. early 80 percent of Americans want capitalism to evolve, according to the Harris Poll survey commissioned by Forbes in January. And so it will: capitalism is a living, dynamic product by design. Like Detroit in the 1970s or Apple in the 1990s, it self-corrects, as it has for centuries. But that self-correction requires a customer base whose minds are open to the product, rather than rejecting it out of hand and entirely.

That’s what makes a “rebranding” so critical, because if people reject the brand, the word, they won’t participate in evolving the product. So, Forbes put out an 18-page request-for-proposal) to some of America’s top advertising agencies, experts in the art and science of persuasion, asking them to pitch ideas on behalf of a unusual pro-bono client – capitalism – with the objective of catalyzing a cultural conversation, destigmatizing the word among young adults. In short, we wanted ideas that would deliver an “oh, I never thought of capitalism that way” reaction. Our target? Americans 18-35 who reject capitalism as the cause of inequity, rather than a possible solution for it).

The Forbes name would appear nowhere on the work; rather we’d contribute $1 million in media value toward the start of a public service campaign (one we hope others will join) for the “winning” idea.

We know there’s urgency and think there’s opportunity. Many who dislike “capitalism” may not fully understand it, what is and isn’t, does and doesn’t. Some tend to conflate it with greed or politics, without actively considering the societal wealth and creativity it engenders. By focusing on the brand, we hope to create a productive conversation about capitalism’s future. Given that it’s much harder to change perceptions once formed than to create them, the urgency feels real.

Ultimately, four highly-respected agencies —AKQA, Anomaly, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and Whalar, a creators’ agency—took us up on the challenge, each dedicating literally hundreds of hours towards this cause, pro-bono, while retaining all right, interest, and ownership in their ideas.

As if to reinforce capitalism’s taint, each of these agencies, engines of the capitalist system themselves, told us that the decision to participate was fraught with and required reconciling their own discomforts with capitalism, especially among their young, creative workforce, before committing. “We resisted this project,” said Jamie Gutfreund at Whalar. “Many times, and in many ways, struggling to overcome our own deep-seated challenges with capitalism.” Another agency leader described the “full-blown existential crisis” one of their strategists had during the process, while a third told us of the near rebellion the mere thought almost created.

Getting and understanding the personal, of course, has spawned some of the greatest advertising work ever. It’s where the human and motivating insights live. As we sat in on these pitches, there was always passion, and sometimes pain. All did their own research, looking for ways into to solving for a massive cultural and marketing challenge. The anecdotes, and video testimonials like this, this and this, made those survey numbers very real.

As the agencies presented, we asked for questions: the core of the idea, what it says about capitalism, it’s offer, or ask, to the audience, and its ability to prompt conversations. Certain that the mere word was so toxic, we’d lose our audience the moment we said it, AKQA and another agency went for the strong stuff: rather than a “rebrand”, they advocated for full renaming. Just as Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC to distance itself from the stigma of “fried”, they felt a fresh start trumped fighting against entrenched biases. Their arguments and ideas were strong.

Ultimately, though, we decided we couldn’t change perceptions of the word without using the word, which took us to Goodby Silverstein & Partners, and Whalar. Great marketing ideas often spring from a simple human insight, observation, or fact. For Goodby, the insight driving their idea was that the audience’s rejection of the system wasn’t about disdain but disappointment; a disappointment with capitalism because of their desire to succeed within it, while remaining hopeful about its promise,

So, how would we get them to listen? How would we overcome confirmation bias and, in an instant, find a way to get to the “oh, I never thought of it that way” reaction at the heart of the brief?

Goodby answered these questions and the brief by asking one. Simply: Does capitalism suck?

Of course, it doesn’t. But of course, we’d hear a resounding “yes” from those whose perceptions we are trying to shift. For Goodby, starting the cultural conversation requires “getting people to question their beliefs about capitalism (and) presenting both sides of the coin,the hope and the hopelessness” as Jeff Goodby, one of the firm’s founders told us.

It looks like this:

In the executions, both sides are presented, hopelessness and hopefulness together. Leading with the former the work blunts confirmation bias, creating room for the other side of the coin—in which the “oh, I never thought about it that way” reaction lives. Jeff Goodby describes it this way: “We’re trying to start a conversation about a rather esoteric topic, but in a decidedly not esoteric way.”

Whalar, the creator agency, took a different strategic approach, rooted in a different core insight. What their research showed was that while there are lots of monologues about capitalism among the audience (in particular on TikTok) there isn’t a lot of conversation about it, as the TikTok videos linked to previously illustrate.

Whalar advocated for a “show not tell” strategy, reframing capitalism and capitalists both, by putting it and them in action. From their presentation:

“People need to talk about capitalism. But talking isn’t enough. For capitalism is imperfect. Instead, people need to see capitalism in action.”

To show “capitalism in action,” and not surprisingly given the agency’s focus, they recommended turning to creators—capitalists, entrepreneurs, and small businesses unto themselves—leveraging their influence and audience relationships to not only create a conversation and campaign, but commerce too.

Reminiscent of Bono’s (RED), Whalar advocated for partnerships with a portfolio of creators creating a for-profit brand,“Imperfect Capitalist,” that fuels cultural conversation, and a merchandise collection reminding the audience that though perfection may be a noble aspiration it’s rarely a reasonable expectation. It might look like this:

To Whalar, the creators serve as both message and medium, acknowledging their role within the system, not shying from the word, and actively driving commerce and cultural change. Following in tradition of brands and companies from Patagonia to Unilever, this effort seeks to become self-sustainable.

While Whalar’s work lives outside the brief, Goodby’s work nailed it, and Forbes will put its promised $1 million in media towards this effort, starting immediately, the first effort in the launch of The Capitalism Campaign. Whalar’s work is expected to launch in October, a second effort to bring more young adults into driving capitalism’s continued evolution.

Because when practiced correctly, capitalism isn’t a zero-sum game: it benefits people—consumers, employees, investors, the world. The work of these two agencies represent what their “client” stands for – a collaborative system that, however flawed, ultimately leans toward progress.

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