This Stolen (or possibly just Missing) Tiki Alert comes from Squid in San Clemente, California — Tiki Farm’s resident sculpt master:

Howdy folks-
Just posting to let you all know that a certain sculpt of mine has gone missing from its rightful place in my display cabinet. If any sharp eyes come upon it, I would be grateful for a heads-up.

If someone should wish to return it, regardless of how they acquired it, no questions asked.

Thanks.
squid

Shag designed this mug as part of Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Mug merchandise in 2004, and Squid created this original sculpt of the design, from which the mugs were cast. I’m sure it’s something that Squid is very proud of, and I would imagine it’s a terrible loss. Please keep your eyes peeled for this sculpt, and if you find yourself in a position to get this back to Squid, please do! Squid can be contacted through Tiki Farm.

UPDATE: A few more details about it — it is about 10% larger than a final Shag Enchanted Tiki Room mug, it’s light gray (as seen above), and it’s made of a special hard tooling wax, which is not sticky.

• Missing/Stolen Original Sculpture , Shag Tiki Room Mug [Tiki Central]
• Shag Enchanted Tiki Room 40th Anniversary Pole Mug [Ooga-Mooga]
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This painting was recently stolen from the Lucky Tiki in Mission Hills, just north of Los Angeles. The painting was done by Kirby, and it depicts the Lucky Tiki logo tiki (designed by Kevin Kidney) surrounded by smaller tikis, drinks, and the words “Lucky Tiki”. If you see this painting, contact Kirby at seekirbypaint@yahoo.com.

• the lucky tiki painting Stolen keep an eye out [Tiki Central]
• Kirby’s Island
• The Lucky Tiki, Mission Hills [Critiki]

There are plenty of horror stories out there about all of the shipping companies, so a lot of folks tend to think of FedEx, UPS, DHL and all the others as being generally equal in reliability. And truly, it’s possible that any one of the shipping companies could have been the player in this crappy tale, but it happens to be FedEx this time. This doesn’t excuse the extraordinary awfulness of what happened to Benzart.

Ben “Benzart” Davis is not only a fantastic tiki carver, he’s a bit of a legend — he’s been carving for decades now and was responsible for the fantastic tikis that used to populate the Tropicana in Vegas. Benzart now lives in Florida and after working on heavily detailed small pieces, has returned to creating large masterpieces. Benzart pieces are highly coveted, and widely revered.

The tiki to the left is Big Benzart #5, and was shipped via FedEx to its new owner in Maryland. It disappeared from the FedEx system on February 16, when it “Departed the FedEx location” and never appeared anywhere else. Calls to FedEx were uncooperative, initially telling Ben “don’t call us, we’ll call you,” and ultimately telling him that the tiki had been completely “destroyed,” had been discarded and it was now a claims issue.

Okay, now look at this thing. It’s a big ol’ solid piece of wood. Really big, like man-size. What, short of a raging inferno of a fire, could damage it so badly that it would justify completely tossing it? FedEx refused to give Ben any confirmation of what had occured, no details, no pictures of the damaged goods, only telling him it had been discarded. The whole thing smelled rather fishy.

Benzart puts a lot of time, care and love into his tikis, and he simply would not take this as an answer. He wanted to have the remains of his tiki. He wanted to know what had become of it. You don’t just toss a tiki. Everybody knows that. It’s bad juju.

Ben insisted on speaking to a human being at the local office that last saw the tiki. He again was given the runaround, told that he couldn’t talk to the local office, told again that the package was damaged and destroyed, and upon insisting to see the remains, was transferred through three more people. Finally he was sent to a person at the local office, a woman named Peggy, who upon hearing the description of the item, said “It’s RIGHT HERE”… the tiki had not been destroyed at all. On the contrary, the FedEx label had been partially damaged.

So not only was FedEx unable to connect a package having lost its delivery information with a person trying to find out what happened to a package at that exact same day & location, they flagged Benzart’s package as having been destroyed and discarded, without actually having any idea at all what happened to it. Especially given that the FedEx system knows the dimensions, size and Lose Weight Exercise of each package, it should have been able to connect the two, given the unusual the size of this package. With Ben being told his package had been trashed, how on earth did they plan on connecting the package with its proper owner?

So Benzart and the tiki’s new owner have a happy ending, but it is absolutely ludicrous that it was incumbent on him to be so ridiculously tenacious and persistent in the face of FedEx asshattery.

• UPDATE….UntimelyDeath… BigBenZart UPDATE!!!! [Tiki Central]

Tiki carver and artist Polynesiac has learned that two of his tikis have been stolen from a store in Long Beach. The tikis had been put on consignment there, and were reportedly stolen along with many other items in the store. Each of the two tikis are about two feet tall and about 3/4 of a foot wide, and carved from Mexican fan palm. They are stained a dark color and sealed with a shiny clear coat. The two tikis are pictured above — on the left is “Tangaroa” and on the right is three different views of “Marquesan Tattoo.” If you see these tikis call Polynesiac (Jim) on his cell phone at (310) 971-5068.

• Tikis Stolen in LongBeach CA [Tiki Central]

A tropical-themed coffee shop in Shrewsbury, Connecticut Massachusetts had a large tiki stolen recently. The 5′ tiki is a large Ku with red eyes (pictured left), and is a fairly common design used for large displays. It’s not one-of-a-kind, but there can’t be very many of these in New England… if you spot this tiki, contact Lalajava.

Thanks for the correction!

• Tiki-theft crime wave continues [Tiki Central]
• Lalajava

The tiki pictured here was stolen within the past three weeks from Hawaiian Gardens, a retirement community in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, near Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. Tiki Kiliki, who lives near the complex, is helping the management search for this tiki. If you spot this tiki, or have any information about what happened to it, contact Tiki Kiliki at tiki_kiliki@tikikiliki.com.

• Tiki Stolen in Florida – please help! [Tiki Central]
• Hawaiian Gardens, Lauderdale Lakes [Critiki]