Countdown to Halloween Day 12: The Brewer Witches and Alien Resurrection

Hello ladies and gentlemen! It's day 12 of my Countdown to Halloween here on the blog, and today I want to show you some Halloween-y finds I brought home from the Brewer, ME store just a few weeks back. 

Here's a quick look at the whole pile of stuff. Without any further ado, let's start digging in with a look at some of the book finds.

"Stories of Ghosts, Witches, and Demons" was intended for the Halloween pile, but I don't know if I'll have time to fit it in at this point, to be honest. "The Time of the Vampires" looks a little sketchy to be honest, and I'm definitely not trying to get to it this year. It kind of looks like it might just be a collection of vamire stories for fans of the Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake books... and while I'm not against those in any way (I was a Southern Vampire fan for a few books before I got a bit bored or burned out or both) I'm just not sure t's worth me panicking over this year. Maybe next year.

But then, speaking of next year... I am seriously toying around with the idea of populating a Halloween Read Pile with nothing but horror movie novelizations. I Just might try it. With "Lifeforce" and "Jaws" here, and the healthy pile of books I've managed to accumulate, I'm certainly off to a good start.

I was delighted to find this megaphone of the Brewer Witches in a nice Halloween-y orange and black. This is indeed the mascot of Brewer High School, the same town where this Goodwill is located. I did a quick search to see if there is any background on why the school chose a witch as its mascot, and came up fairly empty handed. But it matters not! This thing has some nice local flair, and lends itself to this time of year nicely.

Finally... This. I bought this. As you can see, I paid FIVE DOLLARS for it. Friends of mine told me I sorely overpaid for this item, and I kid of agreed, even as I was debating this purchase in the store. This is a "Call" action figure of Wynona Rider's character from "Alien: Resurrection". But here's the thing: I don't actually hate Alien Resurrection as much as everybody else seems to. I kind of liked it in fact... or at least as far as I can remember. I liked the new Ripley. I liked Call. Storywise and tone-wise it veers wildly from the track of the first three films... exactly the way all three of those films differ wildly from one another storywise and tone-wise. The first movie is a slasher flick. The second one is a sci-fi war movie. The third is a prison film. And Resurrection is... well it is what it is.

Plus dig these accessories! We have a face hugger splayed out and aggressive looking, and a chest burster baby alien! Plus some nifty guns too.

The likeness isn't 100% selling me that this is a Wynona Rider action figure, to be honest, which is a little disappointing. But at least maybe I won't have to worry about it shoplifting all my stuff.

In this scene she says the classic line "Aren't you a little short for a xenomorph?" I was a little disappointed to discover Call is much taller than the xenomorph figure I have in my collection. Ah well, c'est la vie. I don't remember those wrist spikes being a thing in the movie. Am I crazy? Did she have some sort of wrist spike thing she used to interface with computers maybe?

Anyway... that's it for tonight kids! I'll be back sooner than you can say "Wait, did he just say he LIKES Alien Resurrection!?" with more Gibbering Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

Remember, I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 2: Body Wars, Spider Wars, Mars Attacks, and More!

So this post is going to sort of serve as a dumping place for a BUNCH of Halloween stuff I've found in previous weeks but wanted to share in October. This was, for the most part, not all bought at the same time, although much of this is probably all from no more than about three different trips to Goodwill total. There's a good mix of toys, spooky books, games, and other junk, so it'll probably be a nice assortment with a little bit of something for everyone. Let's check it out!

I found this "Mars Attacks!" claw-machine refugee for a dollar about a month or so back. He looks great with my stuffed Walking Dead "Well Zombie" sitting around gnashing their teeth at one another.

These guys were a couple of awesome finds in a grab-bag with some other toys (there's Batman, a Gorilla, and a horse I think? Just out of frame here... but these two guys were the Halloween-iest) the fella on the left is a Kaiju by the name of Gigan. I have had a lot of really great luck either finding or being given a bunch of these Trendmaster figures featuring Godzilla monsters. These are exactly the scale I want these in, and since watching even a single Godzilla/Kaiju film is still an item on my bucket list, this level of commitment it perfect for me. I am in LOVE with the character designs, and have a bit of a crush on Mothra if I'm being honest.

Next to Gigan we have Shan Yu, the villain from Disney's Mulan. I'm not really a Mulan fan per se, but I am a fan of this huge, gray, imposing, zombie-looking warlord with a giant buzzard on his shoulder. Shan Yu's eyes in the movie are actually a thousand times more disturbing than they are right here on this toy... but I think if they had accurately reflected the depths of soulessness in Chan Yu's creepy peepers, kids would have been crying into their Happy Meals and defecating uncontrollably (and not just from the McDonald's food). He is currently menacing my Scooby Doo action figures, because honestly he looks like someone from a Scooby Doo episode, right?

"Creatures" is a collection of poetry compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Stella Ormai. I have vague memories of this book from when I was a kid, which was why I picked it up, honestly. But it was disappointing. I was expecting more monsters and less gnomes, fairies, and sprites. This book desperately wanted to appear to be a Halloween book (I mean look at that cover!) but unfortunately there are only about 4 or 5 poems in the whole book that fit the bill.

Some Scooby Doo Chapter books! The first one is the novelization of the second movie, which I felt was wholly superior to the first live action movie, although neither of them was truly what I considered to be "good" Scooby Doo. The monsters in Scooby Doo 2 were the really fun part. I've been compiling a collection of chapter books to share with my boys and, as is the case with "The Case of the Glowing Alien," Scooby Doo pretty much always comes home from Goodwill as my kiddos genuinely adore ol' Scoobs.

I brought these two books home together. I plan on giving Bruce Coville's "Book of Monsters" a bit more attention in this very countdown, so let's ignore it today. Instead, I want to talk about "The Haunting of Derek Stone: The Red House" by Tony Abbott. I found a book that collected the first two Derek Stone books together in one volume sometime last year and FELL IN LOVE WITH THEM. This is a great example of me picking up some random book by some random author at Goodwill and discovering a new series of books that I just fall in love with. Derek is facing the threat of an undead ghost army overtaking the land of the living, and even though this is a YA series, it makes your flesh CRAWL. I'm shocked at some of the stuff Abbott gets away with in these books! Great read, highly recommended.

This isn't a horror collection. It's a collection of sci-fi stories about... sci-fi story writers I guess? But the cover is absolutely horrifying. So I'm including it here. Behold and be afraid.

Here's a fun one! Spider Wars by Milton Bradley circa 1988. This is a nice looking game with fun pieces and a really fun looking web-style playing surface/thing. Check out those spiders on the cover, and the awesome spider-figures in the game! This thing screams Halloween in black and neon orange and green. This one came complete with the whole shebang, except for one vital thing:

I really desperately need to get my hands on a copy of the directions! There are some very basic mechanics of the game that don't make sense when we're trying to play. I have in fact play tested this with my 6 year old son and we did have fun, but I feel like there are some rules we are not observing that we probably should have to make this game a little less one-sided?

Twisted Sister, and Dee Snyder specifically, gnawing on his raw meat, scared the CRAP out of me as a kid. This cassette has "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" included, which are great songs.

This is a collection of vampire lore compiled by Daniel Cohen called "Real Vampires," which I have to contest the title of a bit... but check out that cover art!!! Anyone know who this is? I can't find reference to the cover art in the book anywhere. Anyone recognize this work? I want to see more!

No Halloween season would be complete without a couple of cheap Ghost Story collections! We can see Mr. Daniel Cohen hard at work again with "The World's Most Famous Ghosts" and a Watermill Classic collection: "Midnight Fright: A Collection of Ghost Stories" I probably won't be reading either of these before next Halloween, but I've added them to the potential Halloween Read Pile materials.

This was a fun find! From "Those Characters From Cleveland" (The creators of Madballs, My Pet Monster, Popples, Strawberry Shortcake, and many more) an on-again-off-again subsidiary of American Greetings, comes Body Wars!

These were Mighty-Max/Polly Pocket style fold-out mini-playsets, featuring germs and anti-bodies fighting each other for control of various internal organs that folded out into battle stations! Unfortunately this stomach I found didn't come with any of its characters or accessories, but I still found it be be gross and endearing. Had Body Wars come along when I was a bit younger (These came out in '94 when I was about 16 and in highschool so no dice...) I would have been OBSESSED with them. This is exactly the kind of thing I loved as a kid.

I never say no to horror movie novelizations. It kind of irks me looking at this picture that I have the books out of order. Ugh. Who does that? Me I guess. But anyway. I love the original Jaws film, and because my friend Miss M loves the whole franchise with a level of passion bordering on public indecency, I have learned to appreciate the other films as well. This will not be the last time you see a Jaws novelization during this countdown. We're going to need a bigger blog.

And that folks, is where I leave you on this, m second post of the countdown to Halloween! I'm doing this as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year. As always, I will be back with some more Garroting Goodwill Goodies sooner than you'd like... so until then Happy Haunting!!! 

Cyborg, Beatniks, and Blood

Again with the books and grab-bag magic! This one comes with yet another Imperial monster toy as well! I could keep talking and talking and talking and... well, you get the idea, but instead let's take a look at what I brought home this time, shall we? 

Trotting right out to the front we have this Imperial beauty which, after a little bit of research turns out to be their idea of a Pegasus... but I call bulls--t and say this thing is a Jersey Devil!!! It's meant to stand on its back-legs with the tail propping it up, but when I found it, it was broken off, and so had to be super-glued back into place. I was lucky to even find the tail if we're being honest. Usually that stuff is nowhere to be found, and alas, that would have precluded me buying this guy at that point. But here we are dear reader! Tail glued firmly back in place, this guy looks downright MAJESTIC posed with the rest of my Imperial toys in the cave.

Now let's pick through that grab-bag. HEre are the total contents. We will NOT be going over the entire contents, as there were only a handful of things I even wanted. There was a ridiculous overabundance of Night at the Museum knight/top toys from Wendy's (oh how the mighty have fallen...) and though I don't feature it here, I did end up keeping the Easter Bunny toy because there is a disturbing lack or representation for the Easter Bunny here in the cave. But let's look at the other stuff now:

First, flying out of the DCU animated television universe, we have a "Beware the Batman" Happy Meal toy and a "Teen Titans Go!" Cyborg toy. Both of these dudes were judged "worthy" of positions on the Batman/DCU shelves, even if Cyborg is missing his projectile fist.

Let's be honest. The reason I bought the grab-bag was for Maxwell the pig here. He's one of the apparently hundreds of spokes-things for Geico insurance. He's somewhat lost his charm as they've begun to overuse him... but back when he first appeared in the "Wheee! Wheee! All the way home." ad... he was HILARIOUS:

"MAXWELL!"

And what I originally took to be some sort of bootleg Sesame Street merchandise (Can you tell me how to get to "Sesame Place?") actually turned out to be merchandise from a Sesame Street THEME PARK that I had previously not been aware of. Sesame Place is my Graceland folks. 

I also found these, which I found fascinating, in the cassette section. "The Beat Generation" vols. 1 & 3 (I did end up finding vol. 2 on another day). Thee include everything from readings from books, songs, and interviews that have to do with the Beat movement. Artists include Kerouac, Burroughs, Gilespie, and more. This is one of those situations that I genuinely regret not actually owning a tape-player to play this stuff on.

More cassettes include "Captain & Tennille's Greatest Hits", and "Creedence Clearwater Revival". I'm a sucker for music from the late 60's-70's.

To kick off my book finds from this particular trip, we have the horror anthology, Psychos which I promptly added to the Halloween read pile for this fall... and Tales of the Cthulu Mythos which is really interesting to me because it is an anthology containing not only H.P. Lovecraft's tales, but stories from other writers who have borrowed Lovecraft's concepts for their own, building on them.

I found an extra copy of Spaceballs: The Book and the strangely appropriate companion volume of Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters which is a Star Wars anthology of EU fiction that I just couldn't pass up. I've mentioned my disinterest in most Star Wars EU stuff here in the past, but The Mos Eisley Cantina, Han Solo, and Lando Calrissian have all made me contradict that in the past, and no so have the Bounty Hunters.

I found these novelisations of Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge and almost peed a little. My friend Miss M over at the Diary of a Dorkette blog (and podcasting companion on both Geek Fallout and Eclectic Mayhem) is a big fan of all things Jaws, and that interest has infected me as well. Her favorite was Jaws 3 and I was disappointed not to find that particular volume... but still. 2 Jaws books are pretty great. But I have to be honest... I was even MORE excited to find the NEXT two novelizations:

Gremlins and The Return of Swamp Thing!!! Again, potential urination threatened. And Peter David wrote the Swamp Thing one!!! Can I just say how much I adore the Swamp Thing live-action costume? Man that thing is gnarly, both literally and figuratively.

So that's it kiddos! Between that Jersey Devil toy, the Geico-pig toy, and those kick-ass novelizations, I was pretty pumped to bring home this particular haul!

I will be back (hopefully sooner rather than later...) to share more Geeky Goodwill Goodies with all y'all! Until then, Happy Hunting!