Goodwill Finds: The Joker, Giant Spider-Man, Electronic Dungeons and Dragons, Zombie Bert!

Spider-Man has something he wants to show you... 

There are some cassette tapes in this picture that I forgot to photograph. So you can't see those in this post.
You can KIND of see the titles in this shot. I'm too lazy to track them all down but the two coolest ones were probably the soundtracks for Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Coneheads Movie. Try to imagine them.

It's a pile of stuff I brought home from the Brewer, ME Goodwill store!!! YAY!!! As per usual, let's take a closer look at everything piled up here, shall we?

I'm probably jumping the gun here and showing off one of the best finds from this trip... but WHO CARES??? This thing was a SUPER exciting find. This is a Mattel Electronics Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth game.

Here is the gameboard. Testing it with a battery I discovered it no longer works. This does not phase me in the least. I love the look of this thing either way. This came out in 1980, and at the time I'm sure it was a technological marvel.

Forgive the fuzzy picture here, but I wanted to show off the interior compartment, complete with labyrinth walls, instruction booklet, dragon piece, treasure piece (next to the dragon) and two warrior pieces. From what I can gather, you explore the board, receiving signals from the game on which directions you can move, and then you plug in wall pieces as you go, to map the whole thing out.

I also found a copy of the Back to the Future novelization (this is a must-pick-up, no matter how many copies I may or may not own at this point) and Superman: Miracle Monday (which is a bizarre story of time travellers and demonic possession that has absolutely nothing to do with Superman II even though it is obviously merchandised for that purpose.

Terry Pratchett's "Thud!" is honestly a no-brainer. All Discworld novels are, honestly. Anthony's Xanth series, Aspirin's M.Y.T.H. books, and DeChancie's Castle Perilous series all desperately want to have the same sense of whimsy, magic, and heart as the Discworld books and while I genuinely enjoy all of those series, they will just never stack up. The Forgotten Realms book I picked up because it is an anthology of mystery tales set in Faerun. Couldn't pass it up.

I lumped these together... because... Holidays I guess? I'm adding Brian Jacques's "Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales" to my Halloween Read Pile. Not sure if I'll be reading "Secret Santa: Agent of X.M.A.S." to my kids this year or what. Time will tell. But they both look like fun.

I look forward to reading "Thank You for Smoking" because I like the movie so much. I hope they have a similar tone/feel to them. And "Which Way Books" are almost more exciting for m to find these days than genuine Choose Your Own Adventure Books. So "The Castle of No Return" was a nice score.

MUPPETS! These two books are some of the best Muppets books I've found in a long while! The color and the action in "Gonzo the Great" is awesome, and the illustrations in "Short Green and Handsome" (a sort of illustrated comic novella... thing) are some of my favorite renditions of the Muppets on paper.

A recent issue of MAD Magazine featuring Adventure Time on the cover came home with me, and yet another new book for the Halloween book shelf: "Tilly Witch". I don't have much more to say about them than MAD + Adventure Time = must have. Don Freeman was the author of the original Corduroy books, which were fun, so hopefully Tilly won't disappoint.

You may remember this 12 inch Spider-Man from his provocative pose above... here he is with my Toy Biz Wolverine for scale. I like this big guy! At first I almost didn't buy him. But he was a buck, and he's HUGE, and he's nicely articulated, so I decided I was stupid to leave him behind.

This bag of cake toppers contained these guys:

Aren't they magnificent? I love that Oscar is giving away a dirty sock as a gift and Cookie Monster is just eating his cookies like WGAF?

But my favorite one by far is this horrifying Bert figurine that makes me think that the zombie apocalypse has hit the Street quite hard.

I picked up this set of swappable build-your-own-dino parts for my kids. They were not as fun to play with as I would have liked them to be, honestly. If you look carefully, you can see a broken brown peg sticking out of the large blue piece (some sort of aquatic dinosaur's body) and the entire time I used these with my boys it felt like other pegs were going to let go. Too bad really.

This was a weird grab-bag. The Goodwill I frequent usually seems to at least clump some sort of like items together in a very general way in their grab bags... but this one wasn't even trying. BUT it was a buck and there was really just one item in there I was after, and I was willing to pay that buck for it.

The main item I bought the bag for was this guy right here. The Joker, not the bunny he won at the carnival.

This is of course the "Dark Knight" version of the Joker... sort of the Heath-Ledger-Lite version they produced for the kiddies. Honestly, I really like this figure's design. I like how it pays homage to the movie character in a simplified, cartoony kind of way. Here he is next to the Joker they released for the 1989 Batman film before they tired making him look more Nicholson-esque in later models. I still favor the one on the right because this was "my" Joker as a kid... but the new one makes a nice addition.

Another nice surprise in the bag was this fella here. This is the Ram Slammer from the 2007 Hot Wheels "Stunt Strikers" McDonald's Happy Meal line. Looking at it at first I assumed it would be some sort of vehicle belonging to the Spider-Man villain, the Rhino. But nope! I still like it quite a bit either way. It's some sort of pseudo-diecast vehicle, so it's got some heft to it for a Mickey-D's Hot Wheel toy.

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough! Until then, Happy Hunting!