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Beware of Fake Monkey Automatons

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the as-opposed-to-real-monkey-automatons dept.

rkinch writes "The Mechanical Music Digest gives this warning about bogus monkey automatons that seem to be flooding the antiques market. These supposedly 19th-century hookah-smoking shrunken monkey heads are actually clever modern reproductions tricked up to look old. That "Marvo the Magic Monkey" specimen hanging on your wall may not really date back to 1879."

12 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Mechanical Monkey Heads? by baptiste · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You have GOT to be joking. Just when I think I've seen it all on /. Must be a REALLY slow news day!

    I have this image of Taco in a room with all these mechanical talking monkey heads. :)

    --
    Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
    1. Re:Mechanical Monkey Heads? by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 4, Funny

      Little Mechanical Monkey: "Kill them Taco. They are all against you. You must kill them all."

      Taco: "Shut up Chim Chim just shut up why won't you just SHUT UP AIIII!"

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
  2. Damn . . . I've been swindled by StefanJ · · Score: 4, Funny

    On the other hand, it's probably my fault.

    I shouldn't have believed it when the guy told me that it wasn't uncommon for antique monkey automatons to take AAA batteries.

    1. Re:Damn . . . I've been swindled by Salsaman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Thats nothing, mine came with an MCSE.

  3. Shameful by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's a sad day in America when a man can't trust that his mumified monkey corpse impaled on a mechanical rig in the reproduction of an Arab smoking a controlled substance isn't the genuine article.

  4. Huh? by jsimon12 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am confused firtly, about how this is /. material, but I guess the real question is does anyone have video of the monkey smoking, cause that would really be a cool conversation piece, I mean what chick doesn't get turned on when she sees a monkey smoking?

  5. Beware of Fake Monkey Automatons... by pergamon · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...I've said that many times

  6. This is important to know by rakerman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Because only genuine shrunken monkey heads come with an Evil Curse (tm).

  7. News for Nerds? Oh yes. by wadetemp · · Score: 4, Funny

    1) Mechanical Music Digest: Ah, a publication about music. Does the monkey make music? Can we legally make copies of the monkey's songs? Is the monkey using DRM-enforcing mechanics? Additionally, this publication is about mechanics, and mechanics are cool (especially quantum mechanics, which the monkey probably uses.)
    2) warning: bug in the Monkey can share your files with everyone on the net
    3) automaton: Monkey Automaton vs. Grendel, dude. Bulldozer-like ramps beat pneumatic spikes 9 times out of 10.
    4) Magic: Gandalf has magic. YOU SHALL NOT PASS!
    5) hanging on your wall: like my 80-inch plasma TV, baby
    6) 1879: 0x757 in hex, which is a palindrome. Both hex and palindromes rock.
    7) ... fill in your own reason why Fake Monkey Automatons 0wn j00 here.

  8. Re:Become a slashdot editor? by JabberWokky · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Slashdot was a personal site, and to a certain extent, still is. A couple of friends got together and started it. They were funded by (Andover, VA REsearch, VA Linux, VA Software) for growth and bandwidth in exchange for bannerspace. The content and all editorial decisions are still those of a couple of guys who are friends. That's what gives Slashdot its feel, and all of its good and bad points.

    Think of this site like Community TV - it has corporate sponsors, but everything else is a couple of guys who like Star Wars, Legos and xchat. CmdrTaco and Hemos and a few others get paid, but other than one person (roblimo?) who was suggested as legal advisor, it's all just friends running their own site.

    No, Slashdot is not a media site any more than a random LiveJournal blog is a media site. It's a group of guys whose personal blog just happens to be incredibly popular, needed bandwidth, and got a company to sponsor them (with provisions that they retain all editorial control).

    There have, incidently, been a few user wipes - I've been using Slashdot longer than my rather high uin might suggest (since after the most recent user wipe, I didn't bother making an account for awhile). This is one of the odder stories that has hit the site, but I kinda like it. And I want a couple of those monkeys (I'd open up the box and make new costumes for them, though).

    --
    Evan (no reference)

    --
    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  9. Isn't this a duplicate? by caferace · · Score: 5, Funny
    I mean c'mon. This has been common knowledge since late March. Jeez.

    The level of professionalism around here has seriously dropped.

  10. Save the Musee Mechanique by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    San Francisco has a museum, the Musee Mechanique, with some automata like this, real ones, along with a nice collection of mechanical coin-op musical devices. They're being pushed out by a renovation of the Cliff House, and there's a petition to save them. Please sign. Thank you.