Former Twin Cities business owner brings handmade work to new S.D. home

Three blocks from the worst of the 2020 riots in Minneapolis, Dallas Poague was left to wonder if his longtime business would be burned down.

“I stayed up every night, protected it with my life because it was the store on top, my workshop in the basement and my apartment above it,” said Poague, who owned the resale shop Time Bomb Vintage for years. “If that went, it would be my entire life.”

Rioters “came up to our block, skipped our block and carried on,” he continued. “I stayed another year and a half, and the neighborhood was still burnt carcasses everywhere of buildings. It was just so depressing being here I couldn’t take it anymore.”

He sold the store, which carries a wide range of vintage items and retro collectibles and looked for a city near enough to Minneapolis that he still could be close to his adult children.

“I’d come up to Sioux Falls just to check it out and really liked it,” he said. “I’d go antique shopping because that’s what I do when I go to a town is find antique shops, and there were some in Hartford.”

When he settled on the Sioux Falls area for his move and began scouting warehouse space, he saw one come up in Hartford and connected with his past visit there.

He moved this past spring and began turning his passion for vintage selling and collecting with a talent for creating to form Sugar Frosted.

To say it’s an eclectic business is a bit of an understatement.

Remember the classic McDonald’s characters? The likes of Grimace, Hamburglar and Mayor McCheese used to greet kids at the restaurants’ play areas, which led both to plenty of wear and tear and to a generation of collectors Poague now serves through restoring the pieces.

He’s currently restoring a Mayor McCheese that his ex-wife ended up with following their divorce – that’s another story – “and from that, she started collecting more and more McDonald’s stuff, so their whole backyard is filled with the giant Big Mac climb-through head and huge Grimace,” Poague said. “We’re still good friends. And I have another friend with a whole yard of McDonald’s stuff. They just shot up in value like crazy these last couple years.”

He’s one of few people who restore the pieces, using high-end products usually used in the automotive industry.

He also restores fiberglass playground equipment, gumball machines, props and old toys.

The other side of Sugar Frosted features Poague’s creative work. He produces vintage-inspired pieces such as giant spray cans designed in the style of classic hairsprays or Christmas snow spray.

“I do an old Breck can from the 1970s and a lot of salons buy those. The spray paint guys love the spray paint ones. I do a WD-40 can, and all the garage guys buy those,”  he said.

Some banks he made inspired by vintage Fisher-Price characters sold out online.

He’s working on a line of lamps featuring vintage restaurant signs – including, in a nod to his new home, a version with the iconic Bob’s Cafe sign.

Poague has sold his work at the Minnesota State Fair but is just beginning to sell pieces in the Sioux Falls area. He’ll be one of more than 50 makers featured at Saturday’s 605 Made Holiday Market, co-organized by Knotty Gnome Variety & Salvage and Align Content Studio, the publisher of Pigeon605.com.

Knotty Gnome also is based in Hartford, and co-owner Stacy Wengler plans to carry Sugar Frosted’s work in her store.

“I’ve never seen anything like his work in our area, so I just thought it was really interesting and definitely unique,” she said. “I feel like it’s something that would be a great fit for that person you don’t know what to get something for. I was really surprised by it and definitely think there’s a spot for him in our community.”

The 605 Made Holiday Market runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the underground parking garage of Cherapa Place. It is sponsored by The First National Bank in Sioux Falls and Dow Rummel Village.

To see the complete lineup of artists featured at 605 Made, click below.

605 Made Holiday Market vendor guide