Friday, September 13, 2024

A Rainy Day at Wonder Eggs amusement park, 1992

 
 
note: most of these images are pretty high res, so open them in a new tab if you want a closer look!

I'm a bit of a Namco enthusiast, and for years I've been interested in their first go at the amusement park industry with Wonder Eggs, a charming and strange high concept space revolving around the fictional L'apero Village, presided over by the goddess Elds. A decent amount has been written about the subject in English by more thorough writers than me so I won't go too far into it; if you're reading this you probably know all about it already.

What I'm here to talk about is this binder I found full of materials from the park, circa 1992-- likely not long after it was open!

This binder originated from a seemingly defunct company called Nelson Laboratories, based in LA; from the letters included, it looks like they'd solicit theme parks to ask if they wanted their consultation on how to run better? 🤔 in addition to their correspondence with Wonder Eggs, I also saw that they reached out to Universal Studios in Hollywood and were shot down haha.

In any case, Wonder Eggs apparently went for it and sent a roll of film to Nelson!

Unfortunately, while I'm pretty confident that no one has seen these photos since 1992, they still represent a frustratingly small slice of the park as a whole. you can see glimpses of a lot of things but they're rarely the focus, so there's a lot of "HEY LOOK iconic thing in the background!" lmao.

None of the paperwork in this binder had anything filled out/any notes written, which makes me wonder if this consultation ever got off the ground; if it did, I'd love to see the photos that go more in-depth into the rides and infrastructure. anyway, lets get into it!

Considering these photos were taken specifically for Nelson Laboratories over thirty years ago, I strongly believe these don't yet exist online; it's my absolute pleasure to provide them for the Namco fans out there.

Check em all out below! 👇