GUEST: I brought with me a gift that I got from my uncle back in 1998. He owned his own company, and so kind of what he did was party planning and promotional events. He worked and had a contract for Fox, and this was a promotion for their Saturday morning cartoons. At the completion of that project, he gave me this lovely art collection.
APPRAISER: Very cool-- so were you yourself a Fox Kid when it came to the cartoons?
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: Fox Kids was the kids' programming, uh, block for the Fox network, which, it was, like, a religion to follow. Every Saturday morning, you'd get the new cartoons. If you were a '90s kid, you grew up watching Fox Kids.
GUEST: Absolutely.
APPRAISER: And when it came to this promotional print set, or set of spoof-on-lithographs, we'll call it, it is a pastiche-- a complete spoof of some of the greatest canonized artists throughout art history. Which is why, when I saw this, my mind was just exploding with excitement. Because you have the perfect cross-pollination of pop culture with fine art. This was released by Fox in 1995. This would have actually came in this whole crate.
GUEST: Ah, cool.
APPRAISER: And when you look at the branding, how we look at the portfolio holder here, you say, "Musée du Renard des Enfants," which is simply, "The Museum of Fox Kids."
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Now, I pulled out some personal favorites here, but you have the complete set. What I really love, closest to you there, we have, uh...
Right. ...Pablo Picasso's "The Ladies of Avignon." But instead of having five ladies, we have the five Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Grant Woods' "American Gothic," but instead of the iconic husband and wife... (laughing): ...we have the crazy mask from "Goosebumps."
GUEST (laughing): Yeah.
APPRAISER: And then this one, my personal favorite from growing up watching Fox is, we have the Masked Rider acting as a subject to what would be one of Frederic Remington's iconic, uh, Western paintings.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Frederic Remington, master of 19th-century...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...American Western art. And when we look at the image of Amazing Spider-Man, it's drawing on the aesthetic of Roy Lichtenstein. And then one of my other favorites, you have Botticelli's "Birth of Venus." 1995, this was the peak of when Fox Kids was hot. For fine art collectors that are also coincidentally, a lot of times, pop culture collectors, this hits them right in the sweet spot. The fact that these have never been framed, they're in their original holder, just makes it perfect for a works-on-paper collector.
GUEST: Oh, good, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: There's no sun fading, there's no damage.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: While they are editioned of 500, very few have actually surfaced in the market. And a complete set has never been seen to sell at auction within the past ten years.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: I would say, conservatively at auction for the set, with the fact that you have it in the original Fox Kids-branded portfolio, I'd say it
would easily be a $4,000 to $6,000 set of prints today.
GUEST: Are you kidding? Holy cow! Okay. It was just literally sittin' in a drawer. (laughs)
APPRAISER: So... Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. Fox Kids...
GUEST: Oh, my God!
APPRAISER: Fox Kids is now big business today.
GUEST: Yeah. Okay.
APPRAISER: So they're not child's play.
GUEST: Holy cow-- okay. Holy cow! Yay, I'm so excited! (both laughing) Oh, my gosh, no way. That makes 'em so worth me keepin' 'em in a drawer for so long. I literally didn't get 'em out for anybody. (sniffles) That's awesome.
