Perusing eBay today, I came across a listing for a new-in-the-box rectangular slow cooker. Never one to pass up a chance to check out a box or packaging for details and clues, I clicked through the pictures.

Back in November, my attempt to unravel the large/flour canister and cookie jar conundrum turned out to be just the first step of what will likely be a long journey. As part of that investigation, I discovered that the lids of the embossed ceramic canisters were constructed in two different ways.

ile Merry Mushrooms is arguably Sears' largest and most successful line of kitchen coordinates from the 1970s and 1980s, there are certainly many other designs. The familiar Frog Family line, AKA Neil the Frog, rivaled Merry Mushrooms in size, popularity, and longevity.

But what is a kitchen coordinate product line? The 1971 Wish Book puts it pretty succinctly, touting that "Kitchen Coordinates... [are] one pattern for stove top and table." While tableware, storage, and cookware sets existed, it was the kitchen coordinates that put the same design onto everything and more.

By the mid-1970s, kitchen coordinate lines included almost everything to outfit your swinging kitchen: cookware, clocks, spice racks, paper towel holders, tablecloths, message center, kitchen organization, and letter holder. The same item was often made with different designs, like the 5-in-1 cabinet, utensil holder, and whistling teakettle.

Last week, I took the information from the catalogs about the large embossed ceramic canister and the embossed ceramic cookie jar and tried to apply it to my collection. The outcome was iffy at best, but a lot was discovered in the process. You can read up on that adventure here. There are also helpful truths to keep in mind while looking at Merry Mushrooms.

Today, I found a cookie jar with the box listed on eBay.

The question of how to differentiate the Merry Mushrooms cookie jar from the flour canister comes up often. Is the embossed ceramic cookie jar really the same as the flour embossed ceramic canister? The short answer is yes. However, like all investigations into a seemingly simple Merry Mushrooms question, this one led into so much more.

We watch a lot of movies in our house. My husband and fellow author, Nate, has a collection of over 5,000 DVDs. While he enjoys a healthy variety of films, it's classic and contemporary horror, and obscure and low budget productions that are among his favorites.

Over the course of my mushroom hunting and studying journey, there are some pieces I've only seen in photos from old auction or sale sites, ancient websites from the early aughts, or in pictures shared by other collectors online. Among them are appliance covers, magnets, can opener, sprinkling can, and cork board. These pictures provide visual evidence that they really do exist in our realm.

However, there are some pieces that are so rare I have yet to see even a photo on an decades-old blog or foreign "auction" site. Dare I say that these are among my unicorn pieces? To even just see a photograph of one (or more!) of the Top 10 Things I've Never Seen would be magical.