Well, it's been a while, but the MST3K Live Tour is wending its way through the country, so I wanted to share a piece of memorabilia that I purchased at the Chicago shows: one of the spring snakes specially made for the tour!
Actually, that's a fake can of nuts that houses the spring snake. The tour features a live riffing of the MST3K classic Eegah, which of course includes the immortal line "Watch out for snakes!" and so they're selling spring snakes, along with a metal mug that's supposed to house the snake.
But the problem is that the cup was only available at certain stops along the tour, so I ended up with a snake without a home!
So I made up my own fake "mixed nuts" can to house the snake. The body is jsut sawed off from a 3-inch diameter mailing tube, with a cardboard circle hot-glued to one end (any MST3K related prop needs to have at least some hot glue in it), and the top is just one of the plastic caps off of the mailing tube. And yes, I did include a small compartment at the bottom of the container with a few dried beans in it, so you can shake it to hear that "mixed nuts" effect.
The label was designed in CorelDRAW during one evening to look like those fake can labels that you may remember from the S. S. Adams novelty company. I was hoping to print it out on sticker stock, but couldn't find a place that would do that, so I just printed it out on a regular color printer and then carefully glued it to the tube, along with a protective layer of laminating plastic.