Another Trip to Scottie's Books

So last year sometime I went back to "Scottie's Books" a little used bookstore (that I have a feeling may be getting ready to let out a death-rattle within the next few months... man that place just never seems to be doing business) in the area where I occasionally find some fun stuff in. Here's a link to last October's countdown post featuring some face-meltingly cool finds I made there. Anyway, this was just your run-of-the-mill trip to Scottie's, but I STILL managed to make some fun finds. So let's check them out! 

I brought home second copies of both Ray Bradbury's "The October Country" and Roger Zelazny's "Doorways in the and" for a friend. I love both of these books. Actually both of these authors. I have an extensive Zelazny collection, and my Bradbury collection is also picking up speed. I have certain authors that I consider to be "collectible," meaning I pick up books by them any time I spot one I don't already have, regardless of what I have or haven't heard about the books themselves. Both Zelazny and Bradbury are on that list for sure.

Another type of book I collect is movie novelizations. I rarely ever read them, but if the movie is good enough... or weird enough.. iconic enough... or just mind-numbingly bad enough... then I want a copy of the book they based off of that screenplay. Here we have a copy of X-Men 2, novelized by the one and only Chris Claremont. That actually has a pretty good shot of being read at some point. "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," even though it IS written by Steve Spielberg himself... is probably not going to get read any time soon.

This book is straight up WEIRD. Which is why I love it. It's not a comic-STRIP book per se, but a series of gags and one-liners, mostly illustrated. Maybe I'll explore this one more in-depth sometime in the future, and let you see the pages. It was an interesting find, and apparently, its just one in a series of this kind of ALF book.

Finally here are some 80's cartoon/toy inspired picture books I found. "Meet My Pet Monster" and "Wuzzles: Eleroo's Big Surprise," both of which I read to my kids that same night. I miss My Pet Monster so much! Yet another great creation from "Those Characters in Cleveland" who brought us Care Bears and Madballs!

So there you have it! 7 neato-cool books I found at Scottie's Books! I will of course be stopping in there for my annual "spooky books" hunt for my October Halloween countdown again this year... but just in case they permanently close their doors before fall gets here, I may want to make the trip sooner rather than later.

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

More Vintage Kid's Books!

So it seems some days like I find more vintage kid's books than ANYTHING at Goodwill. Here's another pile I brought home from the Bangor, ME Goodwill. I'm going to do some posts in the future where I revisist some of the cooler finds I've made, and check out the interiors. But for now, let's just look and see what I brought home, shall we? This entire stack of books came home from one trip, and every book here cost me .99 cents apiece. 

Leotards!

I'll start with this Space Hawks: Faster Than Light Choose Your Own Adventure Book from 1991. Apparently this was the first in 6 books that shared a continuity about space-pilots fighting alien threats. As with most CYOA I find, it looks fun and I plan on giving it a spin. 

Educational!

It wouldn't be a Goodwill Geek post without a handful of Little Golden Books, right? So here's the first one, an old Geography themed LGB that I bet parents FOUGHT over at the book stores back then because their child's Christmas would just not be complete without it. I bet thousands of Mall Santas got requests for this one. 

I f**king WANT his car.

It also wouldn't be a G.G. post without something from Sesame Street. Combined with LGB, this one is like a hurricane of childhood glee for me. This one loosely follows the events of "Follow That Bird".

The Midget Elephant Caper

One of the most exciting finds of this trip was this Insepctor Gadget Little Golden Book! I was disappointed to see there is crayon damage on almost every page of the book in varying degrees. I picked it up anyway because, hey... Inspector Gadget. 

No idea what this is about. Sorry.

I also picked up this bizarro LGB-knock-off. It's from the line of Treasure Books. searching for these online, I believe the spine would have originally been in solid red. I don't know if mine is faded or peeled off. 

I always like finding weird knock-off brands of LGBs to go in my collection, like the Rand McNally Elf Book I found back in April at the same Goodwill. 

Back alley Decepticons? Sounds dirty.

Here we have a Transformers Big Looker Storybook from 1986. "Car Show Blow Up". It's a post Transformers the Movie tale, as it stars Ultra Magnus and Hot-Rod, and features Galvatron as the leader of the Decepticons. Basically the premise is that the Decepticons need to steal human technology from a car show to teach them how to build robots (???) to build a city for them. Not their most shining moment.

Mmmm. Yes. Work that stroller.

I don't know if anyone remembers my thoughts on Ms. Pac-Man from my League post: Ultimate Arcade... but let's just say I felt like I needed to tuck this book between the others I found so I wouldn't get dirty looks for carrying straight-up PORN around the Goodwill. 

More porn.

I'm not sure why ALF is wearing his shirt from the animated series on the cover of this book, because it is based squarely on the sitcom version of the character. It takes place on Earth where ALF spends the entirety of the book naked. And yes, there is a bit of romance between ALF and the anteater.

Add funny caption later. No one will see this.

A Ducktales book! "Webby Saves the Day" is a weird, out of continuity tale where Scrooge's 3 nephews come live live with him and the Beagle Boys invade the mansion. And... well... Webby saves the day. 

Here are a couple of books that originally included read-along albums to play. The Muppets Take Manhattan and the Rankin and Bass adaptation of the Hobbit. That's all I really have to say except that the Hobbit was a favorite of mine as a kid. I don't know if I saw it aired on TV or if we rented it... but Gollum made me terrified and I LOVED it. That is still the Gollum I will always know and love over the Peter Jackson version. And Piggy's sweater there is pretty terrifying too. 

I feel a little cheated because only two
of the family members pictured here are actually
WEARING Cosby sweaters.
What the hell is Claire wearing? A robe?

This was probably my ABSOLUTE favorite find of the lot. The Cosby show scrapbbook from 1986! It's full of interviews and behind-the-scenes stories about each actor and character. I remember The Cosby Show was THE show to watch when I was a kid. I remember the days when they played The Cosby Show and Family Ties back to back and that was the night I was allowed to stay up and watch both shows with my family. This was a wild find for me. Don't judge. 

No this is not an issue of Disney's Gargoyles.

And finally, I know it's not a kid's book, it's a comic book based on a Horror property... so pretty much as far from kid's book as possible... but I got it in the same trip. The NOW comics Fright Night series! And for a change it wasn't priced 1.99! Just the same .99 cents as the other books I picked up. Still a little high for quarter-bin style comics... but oh well.  The writing and plot of this series were terrible, but that didn't stop me from loving them. We get to see Evil Ed in action as a vampire force to be reckoned with, and the resurrection of Jerry Dandridge! (Um... spoilers?)

What I really loved finding were these ads for other NOW comics that I want to go back and find!!! Good ol' Ralph Snart!!! The Terminator? Married With Children? Green Hornet? Speed Racer? TWO different Real Ghostbusters titles? Bats, Cats, and Cadillacs? I'm there!

A pretty great set of books to bring home between Inspector Gadget, another CYOA, ALF, a cheesy Transformers books, The Cosbies, and.... -shiver- Ms. Pac-Man... I was pretty happy. 

Welp. That's it for me kids. I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then Happy Hunting!

Boxsome Part 2!!!

It's been a while since I've talked about Boxsome on here... in fact it was back in May. Back then I GUSHED about the contents of the package that I had ordered from Tommy and I revealed at the end of the post that I had already ordered MORE. 

Well, it's been a LOOONG while since that package arrived, and I have been planning for a while to post what was included. So... here you are! 

Last time I was a bit more curious about some of the more weird and obscure wax-packs up for offer... but this time I knew exactly what I wanted. I ordered two Boxsome packs that each had an ALF wax-pack and a Dinosaurs Attack! wax-pack included. 

That's right. I ordered two of the exact same Boxsome packs. Essentially, I could have just ordered one with two ALF wax-packs, and one with two Dinosaurs ones... but what's the fun in that? 

Here's my first pack opened. And boy are there some great extras included! As always, there's a pizza point! Also included are some great properties like Howard the Duck, Gremlins, ALF, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Return of the Jedi. There are some Darkwing Stickers, and the obligatory Pongs. There's also a pack of those AWESOME California Raisins World Tour stickers that I GUSHED about last time! 

First up is the ALF pack. I owned a copy of ever single card pictured here as a kid. I didn't really appreciate them all back then, but man do I love them now! The four photo cards from the show take me back! The sticker is great too, and out of these wax packs as a kid, I was almost as excited for those as the Bouillabaseball cards!!! But not quite. In my youthful mind, those fictitious sports cards were on par with Garbage Pail Kids. They were the whole reason I bought ALF cards at all. 

More awesome Dinosaurs Attack! cards. Nothing super special to report here, I needed almost ever single one of these for my own personal collection, so that was pretty cool. I do want to repeat again how much I love these completely disgusting and horribly inappropriate pictures of terrible things being done to people by dinosaurs in ridiculous ways. 

And then I cracked open those sweet California Raisins World Tour stickers and got Poland, Scotland, Spain, Argentina, and Russia! Each one has a ridiculously cheesy pun, riddle, or joke on it. Love these!

All right! On to pack number two! Another great mix of extra cards here, with more appearances by Gremlins, Return of the Jedi, and TMNT. There's a Batman card and a Mario/Donkey Kong card in the mix this time! Plus: PONGS! There's a nice custom Boxsome sticker included in this pack as well. 

So here's another pack of Dinosaurs Attack! to check out... and what's this? I was shorted a card!!! Not the fault of Boxsome, fortunately. This was a Topps error all the way. Luckily I didn't have any of these yet either. 

In my ALF cards, I received a bunch of less familiar-looking cards. The sticker I remember vividly, and the Bouillabaseball card is, as always, the desert!!! Gods how I love them!

And what is this? In addition to the two Boxsome packages, there was a loose pack of U.S. of ALF "super stickers" included as well. These were obviously cut from the exact same cloth as the California Raisin sticker cards above and the sense of humor is exactly the same... SO I LOVE THEM. It was also really cool to receive them as a free gift with my order!

I want to end this post by saying EXACTLY what I had to say last time:

"All in all, I can't recommend Boxsome ENOUGH. If you were a card-collector in the mid-to-late 80's you will find a GOLD MINE on Boxsome. PLEASE for your own good, go check it out. The prices are incredibly reasonable, and the packs are such a random load of fun that you will have absolutely ZERO buyer's remorse."

Because I feel it still holds completely true. Thanks again to Tommy Day for running such an awesome service over there at Boxsome!

I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies, but in the mean-time, Happy Hunting!

Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies: 80's Kid's Books

Today's Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies is all about kids' books. BUT WAIT! There's some really cool ones in here, so even if you'd normally click away when you see I'm just doing a big weird post about kid's books... hang around for a while, okay? Almost every single one of these books is based on an 80's property, or was published back in the 80's. 

Let me get the obligatory Sesame Street book out of the way. This one's pretty rad though. It's a book of Sign Language ABC with Linda Bove!!! When I was a kid I was completely in love with Linda on Sesame Street and the fact that she was deaf and spoke in sign language only made her seem cooler to little me. I remember this book from somewhere, probably school. I found it not at Goodwill, but for .50 cents at Bull Moose in Bangor, ME. 

Next up, a trio of exciting Hollywood adventures! These books and all the books to follow were indeed found at Goodwill, for .99 cents. Benji and the Tornado, Gremlins: A New Friend, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: The Mummy's Curse. I was most excited to find the Gremlins picture book, but Young Indy ain't no slouch either. Benji I used to watch a lot as a kid, so  it gives me warm and fuzzies.  

Here we have a Who Framed Roger Rabbit book, detailing a very abridged version of the movie's plot. Then, I found this Muppet Babies McDonald's premium book featuring baby Fozzie and Kermit. There were at least two other books in the series given out with Happy Meals. This one is all about how Fozzie wants to make Kermit into a frog-skin suit he can have Kermit all to himself. I guess. I haven't read it yet. The ALF book is from the animated series, detailing his adventures on his home planet of Melmac. Pretty awesome!

All right! Now we're into the Good Stuff! You can tell because the pictures are solo shots. Here we have a G.I. Joe book titled Operation Star Fight. The art in this book, done by Earl Norem, is phenomenal. It's pretty violent by Joes standards too. It looks like folks are actually taking bullets. The story's not much to talk about (Cobra tries to hijack a space shuttle. It goes about as well as anything Cobra tries to do.) This is a sweet looking book though.

The Real Ghostbusters: The Haunted Castle is nothing amazing to write home about. I'm mostly just excited that I now own a Real Ghostbusters storybook. This tiny little book is about as long as a novel, so it doesn't make for great bedtime reading... It's weird that most 80's books have this same problem. It's like they didn't even take into account that most kids have an attention span of about 40 seconds, give or take depending if there's candy in the room. Fun little piece of nostalgia. 

One of the MOST exciting kid's book finds in recent memory is this Thundercats book, Lion-O Walks the Plank! I haven't read this one yet either, but I have to beg the question: How does one walk the plank into the vacuum of space? Aren't they in like... outer space up there in that picture right now? How is that happening? All kidding aside though, I'm stoked (yep, stoked) to own this book.

Aaargh! I published this post without writing anything about this tiny little TMNT book! It's pretty great, but much like the Real ghostbusters book above, it's TOO LONG to read to my little guys. Maybe when they're older... until then I'll just hang on to it for them in the cave...

I guess Isaac Asimov must have been into like, science or something. This is not the first kid's science book I've found written by him. There was that "Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs?" book I found back in August LAST year... (Spooky!) There are no Robots gaining self-awareness in either of these books. It's kind of a bummer. 

Hey! Here's a Q*Bert book! It has nothing whatsoever to do with the animated series either, which I found pretty refreshing. So no villains dressed up as a greaser/biker gang, and no malt shops or letter-jackets for Q*Bert. 

In fact, all of Q*Bert's dialogue is written in code that you decipher using the phrase key at the beginning of the book. The whole thing pretty much just tells a story to explain what the hell is going on when you play Q*Bert. I like how the picture on the cover is in the shape of a Q. This is deep stuff here people.

You didn't think I'd do a whole post about kid's books and not have at least ONE Little Golden book did you? This here's a Tom and Jerry LGB. They... have a party apparently. Looks fun, albeit most likely highly unsanitary. I love finding older properties like this. Even though the copyright on the story is 1955, this book was still published in the 80's as the coupon for 15 cents off another Golden book in the back of the book has a copyright of 1982. 

This is one of those pretty standard, generic books about monsters that talks about all the different categories, from old mythology, to current legends and cryptozoology, to monsters of the movies, and the "possible" monsters that aliens could potentially be. The artwork and text are all incredibly cheesy and enjoyable. This is the exact kind of flashlight-under-the-covers kind of book I would have checked out from the school library for six weeks in a row as a wee lad. 

Nyah-ha! I slipped ANOTHER Sesame Street book in here!!! This one's about The Wanted criminal known as the Great Cookie Thief. It plays out like a classic Sesame Street comedy sketch from the show, and it's all western themed. I'm cheating a little bit here as this book is actually from 1977. But it's classic Sesame Street! And by classic I mean the awesome stuff they used to do back in the day before it all started being about Elmo's goldfish. 

Well that's it for me tonight kids! I'll be back real soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

Goodwill Geek Mailbag: Strange Kids Club!!!

So I took it upon myself recently to order myself some geek-tastic wares from some of the internet's geekiest vendors. These include The Strange Kid's Club and October Toys.

Today I'm just going to focus on what I got from the Strange Kids Club. What did I order? Well let's take a look-see shall we?

The first thing I ordered from the Strange Kids Club was their "Strange Kids Official Sticker Pack: Series Two." Series one was completely sold out, or else I would totally have picked that up too. I tore this poly-bag open post-haste and spread my booty-loot out to examine it better. 

First up are the featured stickers in the set. These are three MadBalls-like caricatures of Strange Kid and a couple of 80's pop-culture icons. 

Representing Gizmo from the movie Gremlins is the Kevin Luong designed "Mogwad". He is literally BURSTING with fetal mogwais as if his head has just been exposed to water, and it is splitting open his skull in a frantic bid to let his offspring out. Plus, he's picking his nose with his tongue. Classic. 

The Strange Kid sticker, designed by James Groman, exhibits all of the classic MadBalls features, including exposed brains, skin blemishes, blood-shot eyes, random stitches, dangling tongue, and copious amounts of splattering bodily fluids. 

Representing the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters is "Stay Puss" also designed by Kevin Luong. With a face only Gozer the Gozerian could love, Stay Puss looks like a marshmallow that's gotten a little bit toasty/melty... and a little bit contaminated with biohazardous ecto-plasm. Would you have him any other way?

Also included in my sticker pack were these collector's cards and a sticker from the Series 1 sticker pack! The Punch Out and TMNT cards were appreciated... but the Catwoman card from the Batman Returns series is by far my favorite. She's going to be displayed somewhere prominently. Let's take a closer look at the series 1 sticker:

This sticker is called "Melmac Attack" designed by James Callahan. It's from the Strange Kids Club Official Sticker Pack: Series One. They threw it in as my "random" sticker. I just wish I could get my hands on the other three stickers from series one somehow!

Finally, I ordered two issues of the Strange Kids Comix Magazine. They are sold out of issue #1, but issues #2 and #3 were in stock, so I snapped them up! #2, pictured above, is Halloween themed! The comics are short but fun, and in several different styles. There was also an interview with cover-artist David Hartman, who is also a powerhouse in animation apparently. This completely reminded me of old magazines like MAD and Cracked, and it was well worth the purchase price. 

Issue #3 is dedicated to classic 80's television (mostly kid's shows) as you can probably tell from the cover. There's a mild TV Guide-parody feel to the cover and first page or so, but again, this brings back memories of MAD and Cracked. The interview with Jason Edmiston is great, but I think my favorite piece is a Ghostbusters vs. Beetlejuice crossover comic that ends up spilling into Pee-Wee's Playhouse. If that's not enough to get you to buy right there, this is not the magazine for you. 

Tucked into one of the magazines was this postcard drawn by Nigel Ward, depicting Beast Man, and Mer-Man standing in front of Catle Greyskull with Strange Kid as he brandishes... the Sword of Omens? This was an awesome little surprise to find, and it topped off the whole package perfectly! 

Well, I think that about wraps it up. I'll be going over the stuff I got from October Toys very soon, so keep your eyes peeled. I'll also be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! So until then, Happy Hunting!