Comments & Curiosities:

This is terrible. I don’t know what to say. Trigger is gone. Forget health care; we’ll get back to global warming; this is important.

You might not know Trigger’s name, but if you are a Newport-Mesanite, you will definitely recognize his face, and his, well, other end. Trigger is the life-sized fiberglass horse in front of the Feed Barn on Newport Boulevard in Costa Mesa.

He’s been a local landmark since the beginning of time, which wasn’t yesterday. No one knows Trigger’s real name by the way. That’s a nickname the Feed Barn’s customers gave him.

And now he’s gone. I don’t understand. Sometime in the wee small hours of Friday morning, Trigger vanished, which is not easy, considering he is 6 feet tall, 8 feet long and was anchored in concrete. And this isn’t the first time Trigger has been jumped, blindfolded, thrown in the back of a truck and disappeared into the night.

According to Feed Barn manager Jenni Engelstad, he has vanished at least four other times, only to turn up, and this is shocking, at a local school. But the last Trigger-take was more than 10 years ago.

Since then, he hasn’t moved a muscle. He stands there; he watches the traffic on Newport Boulevard; he listens to the wind. Trigger leads a quiet life. The Feed Barn folks are taking it all in stride though. “If it was a group of 16-and 17-year olds, I wouldn’t care as long as I get it back,” Engelstad told the Daily Pilot. The wanting to get it back part is understandable, since fiberglass ponies as big as Trigger cost two to three grand.

But I’m not pulling for Trigger for the money. It’s because he is a horse in a time machine, a throwback to a simpler time, when goofy signs and life-sized logos were everywhere. Maybe they were all descendants of cigar store Indians, but in the ’50s and ’60s, they were everywhere.

My favorite? I’d have to go with Mr. Peanut. He was always stylin’, in his top hat and cane, white gloves and spats. They had a life-sized Mr. Peanut in a candy store in my neighborhood that I would trade my car for today.

The loopiest life-sized logo? That’s easy — Bob’s Big Boy. If you can look at a Big Boy statue and not smile, there is something wrong with your smiler. Of all the chubby kids in the universe, he had to be the goofiest, in those sissy la-la polka-dot overalls, holding a Bob’s double burger over his head.

The Gumby haircut was the bell ringer though. You’d have to dip your entire head in a vat of pomade every morning to get it to do that. No matter how he was turned, his hair was always pointing at something over his left shoulder.

Be that as it may, the Big Boy was based on a real, live boy, according to Bob Wian, founder of Bob’s Big Boy.

“He was about six,” recalls Wian on the Bob’s Big Boy website, “and rolls of fat protruded where his shirt and pants were designed to meet. I was so amused by the youngster, jolly and healthy looking…I called him ’Big Boy.’”

All of which is fine but if the real-life kid actually had either the polka dot pants or the Gumby hair, I would have asked him to leave. You can still find a few Bob’s Big Boy statues, but not many. Unless they anchor them to the core of the Earth those things are gonzo about an hour after they’re put up.

Theater lobbies used to be teeming with life-sized figures promoting films, especially sci-fi and horror films — and not the cheesy foam board cutouts you see today, but 7-foot-tall, seriously scary fiberglass figures.

There were times you’d have to hold onto your popcorn and turn sideways to squeeze between The Mummy, Invader from Mars and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Of course, if you ever drove Route 66, there’s not enough time and space to describe how many kitschy signs and statues lit up travelers faces from Chicago to Santa Monica, between teepee motels and “giant everything” signs, from Paul Bunyans to burgers to bunnies.

While we’re on the road, the “World’s Tallest Thermometer” in Baker is a classic on the way to Vegas. I’ll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell. It’s not really a thermometer. It’s just an electric sign that is 134 feet high with a maximum temp reading of 134 — all to commemorate the highest U.S. temperature on record, 134 degrees Fahrenheit in nearby Death Valley on July 10, 1913.

Jump over to US 395 and you’ll see one of my all-time favorites, the vintage Mobil Oil “Pegasus” sign (as in flying horse) on the well-worn gas station where the 395 and SR 14 hook up south of Ridgecrest. The bright red Mobil sign got its own star turn in National Geographic a few years ago as one of the last, fully operational, red neon Mobil Pegasus signs, complete with front legs that go clip-clop in a stately trot when the sun goes down.

All in all, Trigger is in pretty good company. He is a classic, and whoever took him, please bring him back safe and sound, or at least call the Feed Barn so they can pick him up. And Big Boy, you might want to lose the polka-dot pants, ease up on the hair product and lay off the carbs. You’re not getting any younger, dude. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at ptrb4@aol.com.