1969 RCA console in a not-quite-"parquet" cabinet...
 

I just realized that I had never posted this picture here, and it's a little too late for April 1.

The cabinet isn't Parkay (or parquet) though-- it's real butter..!

This living room diorama was part of a set of butter sculptures from the 2009 Iowa State Fair commemerating the 40th anniversary of man landing on the moon. The video shown on the "butter TV" is of course footage from the Apollo 11 landing (shown continuously in a loop).

I don't think RCA actually made any TV sets with this, um, cabinet material. What do you think the life expectancy of a CT-100 in a butter cabinet would be before it melted into a puddle?

I remember seeing white cabinets out on the curb when I was a kid. Not blond but a solid white.
I have always wanted one but never seen one again.

A butter tv is just nasty.

Probably not more than a few minutes, if that long. Can you imagine watching the late movie on one of these sets, only to see the chassis slowly sink to the floor of your living room as the butter melted? Not to mention the mess this would leave behind. I can't imagine how the butter TV in the diorama you mention lasted any length of time, if it was showing a continuous video loop. The only thing I can come up with is that the chassis was solid-state; that or else the butter cabinet only held the CRT, with the rest of the set located some distance away. The latter makes sense since the two channel selector "knobs" on the front of the set are, like the rest of the set, made of butter.

BTW, the CRT used in this "butter TV" must have been custom-made if indeed it is a standard color tube, which I doubt. I have never, in over four decades of electronic experimenting, seen a color CRT as small as this one, although nowadays small-screen flat panels are available (witness the 7" Haier digital TVs now available at Best Buy, et al). It could well be that the screen of the butter TV was actually a tiny, custom-made FP.

I presume this was a normal size CRT, and the objet d'art was in a chilled case?

by the way, salted or sweet?

The butter sculptures are behind a thick glass window. They're actually in a refrigerated room-- in fact, it's evidently below freezing in there, becuase they often have ice sculptures displayed too. The Iowa State Fair has for quite a long time always featured an approximately life-sized cow sculpted out of butter (it's a new sculpture each year). However, over time, they have expanded the butter sculpture range to include various themes (however, they always have a butter cow too).

I guess it may be hard to judge scale in that photo, but that TV console is life-size, or close to it. I couldn't tell for sure what type of display it was (it looked like a CRT), but I'd bet there's some sort of framework under the butter supporting it regardless if it was a CRT or flat panel. My guess is that it was a generic "BPC" CRT TV tucked in there, perhaps with some sort of hidden venting for the heat.

Yuck !! What a nasty, greasy mess...And after a few days when the butter turns rancid...I don't even wanna think about it...

This would be an easy cataract fix though. "Like butta".

I'm sure I have some spare Compactrons for this particular set. I doubt it's a "hot chassis" though.