Saying that, as far as I’m concerned Biscardi’s ‘Bigfoot’ is phoney. It’s admittedly better than most, if not all the other attempts known to me, and a fair bit of time, thought and effort seems to’ve been put into it, but considering the execrable standard of the other hoaxes that’s not admitting much.

But to me, Biscard’s ‘Bigfoot’ is highly useful for just how precisely it underlines the authenticity of Patterson’s ‘Patty’.

Patty’s fur is distributed over her body - and responds very characteristically to her movements - exactly like real fur, whereas Biscardi’s ‘critter’ is covered in something strongly resembling velvet or perhaps suede.

Also, everything about Patty’s body implies towering power and monumental mass, particularly her prominent and highly responsively rippling muscle distribution, whereas Biscardi’s effort, to me, not only disports itself exactly like any ordinary human bloke in a monkey suit, but in precisely those places where we’d expect at least a hint of muscular action, we see instead clear and obvious cloth folds, particularly the gloved hands and the all too apparent ‘flares’ in the shower pic.

Just speculating, there may be something going on with the sasquatch that wasn’t possble before the days of mass media, and which may have really caught fire with the advent of the Internet: a large and growing number of the general public, gathering information on their own time and without consulting anyone else, getting way ahead of the scientific community in acknowledging the possibility of the animal. At least to appearances that seems to be what’s going on.

Scientists have much to plead. Ignorance of the evidence may be the case with many. Lack of time and funding is probably increasingly the excuse for many more. As things-in-the-woods noted on another thread, the desire to latch onto a field that is likely to bear fruit without ridicule is undoubtedly a powerful motivation for scientists who would like someone ELSE to run the gantlet of finding the sasquatch. (It’s an encouraging sign of the times that Jeff Meldrum hasn’t lost his tenure yet; and maybe before that that Grover Krantz didn’t.)

Maybe scientists won’t unite voices to push for a true search for the critter before mainstream media stop using the sasquatch as an easy way to get laughs and Dabble In The Paranormal, and start talking about an intriguing search in which the momentum hasn’t reached critical mass yet.

Or maybe there’s a better way to say it: maybe people don’t report sightings because of what may be a totally erroneous perception of what the public thinks about the sasquatch. Instead of a community, everyone who’s seen one, or who thinks they exist, is an island.

And maybe the media could change that.

Argosy and True were friendly but not overly sensationalized publications (as many people assume) for Sanderson’s articles. During those extremely conservative times he was able to write and get scientific papers on unknown hominoids only published in Genus, for example, an Italian science journal.

Anthropologist Carleton Coon, who was able to marginally include Yeti and Bigfoot in his anthropology books, found himself only carefully saying what he felt was the reality of hominology in, for instance, popular natural history magazine’s review of Sanderson’s book. Osman-Hill was published an item on Ceylon’s unknown hominids, remember, in a science journal. There are other examples, but you get my point.

Sanderson’s Saturday Evening Post articles on cryptids in 1947 and 1948 were rather typical of what some low-key mainstream locations were being employed.

Indeed, DWA’s citing of his first experience reading an article, in National Wildlife Magazine, demonstrates what I have found, the tabloid approach is more recent.

Also, during the 1970s, you had some journals in America, such as one edited by Roderick Sprague (which he would republish as anthropological monographs of the University of Idaho) and even Current Anthropology, serving as platforms for discussions on Sasquatch.

More people are interested today, so you see more widespread treatments in a variety of locations - from the tabloids to the scientific journals.

There were articles in scientific, academic, and folklore journals on Yetis and other cryptid hominoids in the 1950s and 1960s, then on Bigfoot in similar journals, starting in the 1960s.

These things come in cycles.

On the technicality about tabloids, but not on my main point. Which - and maybe I need to restate it - is that the sasquatch wasn’t getting serious scientific review (by the mainstream of science) even during that nine-year window. The topic has always been fodder for “popular mainstream magazines and books” (as, of course, separated - carefully - from the scientific mainstream). But I don’t think folks would argue with me that almost all of that popular discussion has tended to sensationalize the animal, and to create a “public image of Bigfoot” that actually seems to me at odds with the animal that lots of people seem to be seeing.

What I think would be great would be if the mainstream media started adopting the tone: something is behind the durability of this phenomenon. And only serious scientific sleuthing will bring it to light.

For those of us who haven’t seen one, of course.

Sorry, that’s incorrect. There is no historical evidence for that statement at all.

During the nine year period of the modern era of Bigfoot, from the Crew footcast photo publication and the “naming” in 1958, to the time of the film in 1967, Bigfoot was not a “tabloid superstar.” Bigfoot was featured in popular mainstream magazine and books, such as Sanderson’s 1961 classic and those of others.

Actually, Bigfoot only became a major subject for tabloids after the Patterson-Gimlin footage of October 20, 1967.

Historically, the National Enquirer did not take on its current flavor until it moved from New York to Florida, in 1971. World Weekly News was not even created until 1979.

The tabloidization of Bigfoot (through the pages of the Globe, Sun, National Enquirer, World Weekly News, and others) happened mostly in the 1970s, not the 1950s and early 1960s.

A return to the more scientific-based and new-discovery-oriented view of the late fifties, as opposed to being a negative, would actually be great.

I think it’s pretty obvious how the sas stays where it is scientifically. Think about it. Has any other North American animal ever gotten this kind of treatment? The grizzly might have been considered impossible if Europeans had had no previous bear exposure before coming to this continent. Even so, the first news most Americans got of the griz - other than the trappers, explorers, hunters and others who encountered it firsthand - was from Lewis and Clark, who had among the chief of their responsibilities detached, SCIENTIFIC observation of the fauna along their route.

For the sas it’s different. Long before the Patterson film, Bigfoot was a tabloid superstar. I count it as nothing short of incredible that my very first exposure to the sas was a remarkably even-handed article, published scant months after the Patterson film, in, of all places, National Wildlife Magazine, a zoologically conservative outlet if ever was. (No, I never saw “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” and I never plan to. I’ve always seen the sas as just another animal, and I think my first exposure was why.) But that article was a drop in a tabloid bucket. Unlike most primates, whose discovery gets written up in Nature and Science, the keystones of the sas search get the big play in Argosy and True-Life Real Adventure. Which aren’t strictly tabloids. But one gets the drift, doesn’t one?

I think that as long as the National Enquirer and Tom Biscardi are on the case, the sasquatch is safe from science. Which, as we all know, won’t keep it safe for long. But may at least allow it to die out with some dignity. After all, Bigfoot doesn’t care what anyone says about him.

The first picture reminds me of that dog chracter in the Banana Splits cartoon show. (Blinkie I believe)

I don’t know what to say about the 2nd picture.