Goodwill Geek Mail-Bag: John Gaither is Awesome. No really.

So... I've made a few friends around the internet lately. I send them things. They send me things. And sometimes... when other people send those people things... they send those things on to me. 

I've blogged before about the Trash Man doing giveaways over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture! These giveaways are epic. There are toys in them, and old collectibles... and comic books... and movies... and tchotchkes  galore. They are just crammed with stuff. Amazing stuff. 

I won the first of such giveaways, and a kind gentleman named John Gaither, of the Clawful Punch blog won the second one. And I lost the second one... and then I received a consolation pack for losing the second one... and then I secretly won the second one anyway, because a bunch of the stuff Jon won in his prize lack didn't fit his collection. AND HE GAVE IT TO ME:

Originally, John offered me a handful of Monster in My Pocket figures. I gladly accepted. But when the package actually arrived... well there was quite a bit more stuff in that box than just MiMPs. Everything you see above was hiding in that beautiful box. I will now talk about all of it in depth, and in graphic detail that lets you know EXACTLY how much I love these toys. 

First up, let's look at the LEGO-style mini-figures. We have some Mega-Bloks mini-figs from back when they still had the Marvel license. The Sandman, Mr. Fantastic, Captain America, and Spider-Man are all in attendance. The red guy on the end is a HALO guy... but since I don't play video games for the most part, I have no idea if it's Master Chef or a Master Shepard or whatever (ha! I don't know video game character names! I'm like an old person!) Then the soldier on the far left is a soldier that appears to be from the Character Builder line. He's pretty bad-ass and adorable at the same time. My absolute favorites of the bunch are the LEGO Yoda key-chain and the Kre-O Sunstorm. 

Mini-figures!!! Left to right we have 5 Monster in My Pocket figures. The yellow guy in the very back and the two leg-wrestling fellows are from (I BELIEVE) the "Kinnikuman Ultimate Muscle Kinkeshi" line. There's a hot-pink King Castor from the O.M.F.G. line, and a soft-rubber kinkeshi figure in light pink next to him. NO IDEA who the translucent blue guy is, but I absolutely adore him. 

To finish up the toy-portion of the package, we have a Super Mario Brothers red mushroom tin. On the right of him is some sort of squishy rubber battling virus figure (he came with the card you see him satnding on... but it's in another language...) The kung-fu guy up from is another Fisftul of Power figure, and the guy in the weird hazmat suit to the left of him? I don't recognize him. You can see an old Dick Tracy PVC figurine towering above all of them (I had this one when I was younger) and the most amazing piece of them all? The Dino Riders Termite figure on the far, far left there. This is one of the exact figures I owned and ADORED as a kid. I liked this particular figure so much that I didn't want him to be a villain. So he defected over to the good-guys team. He and my purple Construx Alien and my Adventure People X-Ray Man would go on space adventures together ALL the TIME. John featured him in a HILARIOUS post over on his blog before he sent him on to me. Please do yourself a favor and click on that link. I think my favorite shot is of Termite looking longingly out the window at the end.

And finally, a bunch of cool odds and ends. That Frankenstein Magazine is a treasure trove of old monster-movie GOLD that I will be poring over for quite a while. I don't want to open the Voltron Tattoos or the Pee-Wee's Playhouse Funpak... so those will remain sealed (for now). You can see a whole slew of wax-packs along the bottom there including Alf (!) Alien, Gremlins 2, Ghostbusters 2, Harry and the Hendersons, and 21 Jumpstreet! All cool. There's a trio of awesome pins featuring Thanos, Gumbi, and what I believe is a Reverse Flash symbol? Then a Dick Tracy novelization, and a Godzilla vs. Biollante DVD round out the awesomeness. 

So John went over-board... which just made it that much easier for me to send off a pack of junk his way as well (which I had already been planning to do before he beat me to the punch!). It was incredibly kind and generous of him to share his Pop Pop! Trash Culture "One Man's Trash" prize pack with me. I also want to indirectly thank the Trash Man for putting on his monthly give-aways. He is giving out NOSTALGIA GOLD over there people!!! 

BUT I also feel it bears repeating: John Gaither is Awesome!

No, really! 

That's it for me you guys! I'll be back soon to show off some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Goodwill Geek Mailbag: October Toys O.M.F.G.!!!

WARNING: This is a long one! It focuses an inordinate amount of time on two small sets of monochrome plastic mini-figures. Like MUSCLE things. If these kinds of toys (or the long and boring dissection of toys similar to them...) are not you "thing". Then you'd best sit this one out. You have been warned.

So a WHILE back (in July) I mentioned that I had ordered some stuff from both the Strange Kids Club and October Toys... and I never really got around to talking about what I had ordered from October Toys... which if you are familiar with ME and my obsession with mini-figures, and you are familiar at all with October Toys... it shouldn't have been a huge mystery to figure out. 

Here's the bulk of what arrived in my package: OMFG!!! (Or Outlandish Mini Figure Guys for the uninitiated...) along with a bunch of fun extras. The fun extras MOSTLY included IMPOSSIBLE to photograph collectors cards and art cards of various different sizes ans styles. If I can get some more shots of them before I post this you might even get to see them. 

I ordered a pack of both Series 1 and Series 2. At the time of this writing, Series 3 has not been released yet but it LOOKS AWESOME and will be ordered ASAP. Series 1 was no longer available in the flesh/pink color, so I got it in purple. Series 2 I got in flesh/pink. It doesn't bother me that they don't match though, as when I was a kid I always had a healthy mix of the multi-colored MUSCLE figures from the big 28-packs in with my flesh colored guys. So this just serves to remind me even more of those classic toys! 

Let's jump right it with series 1 shall we? I picked these up because they looked like an incredible homage to M.U.S.C.L.E. figures of the 80's... and that is EXACTLY what these turned out to be once I got them in hand. These look great! The plastic is very reminiscent of the old MUSCLE guys in that it's hard but very faintly rubbery. This may also be weird to comment on, but here goes: They have this awesome plastic-y smell that I always associate with new toys. Yes. I sniffed these toys. 

I think the only real dud for me out of this first series is "Stroll" who doesn't look terrible, but who also doesn't really do a whole lot for me. His concept art was interesting, but he's just sort of plain in figure form. Being my least favorite OMFG is still sort of like being my least favorite ice cream. I still won't turn my nose up at it. Stroll is still pretty cool. I like his clawed hands and his little naked/furless tushie (in the back).

I think "Multiskull" is actually the contender for my favorite one of the bunch. He ties with only one other figure. Multiskull is just incredible though. The fine detail that went into the sculpt is just mind-blowing. He's like some sort of skull-golem, made up entirely of... well, skulls. His chest is one giant central skull, with a smaller central skull on top for his head. The arms and legs sprouting out of this are just piled-together chains of smaller skulls. Even his hands are skulls! I love the little detail of that right-handed skull with its mouth gaping open. So cool. 

Next up is "The Phantom Out-House" which is pretty just what she is: An outhouse. Why do I keep calling her a "she"? Because that classic moon symbol was the ladies room symbol way back in the day. Boy's outhouses had Suns cut into them. Fun fact! I know for a fact that "Phantom Outhouse" was not this character's original name. It was originally going to be the "Phantom Sh*thouse" I personally like the change of name. The arms and legs are almost certainly formed from excrement... human or otherwise. I really like the sense of humor behind this character, and love the way she looks in purple plastic. 

Next up is my second contender for favorite character of the bunch. "King Castor"! He's another beautifully detailed sculpt. From the awesome tower-like grasping left arm to the cannon-equipped right fist, King Castor is ready for combat! And his face (sculpted squarely between his shoulders there, in the circular window) looks like he's ready to kick butt and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum! I seriously LOVE this guy. He's just so craggy and gnarly, and full of detail.

Finally we have "The Crawdad Kid" which I think reminds me the most of a classic MUSCLE figure. He just sort of has the stance and the build for it more than the rest. I really like all the weird little details on this one. He appears to be some sort of crab/man hybrid (or Crawdad I guess) in a fisherman's slicker and boots. But he also sort of appears to have a face UNDER the crab-shell head thing, leading me to believe the crab might only be a hat or helmet or something. He's definitely cool though. 

Onto series 2! Overall I was less impressed with this series as a whole. They've grown on me though, and I'm still pretty happy with the whole OMFG line considering. So let's take a look. 

First up, Grim Gourd. He is squarely my second-favorite figure of the lot. He's a Jack 'o Lantern with arms and legs for crying out loud! I really like the detail put into the fine grain of his shell. That face! He's so sinister! Just so great that this line has a Halloween character represent! Since he's so squat and stocky he feels like a goblin or something. Just excellent. 

Well, it just wouldn't be OMFG if there wasn't a figure referencing some sort of bodily fluid, or gross-out factor. This character makes me think of what the Knight character from MUSCLE (known as Robin Knight in the original Kinnikuman manga) would look like if he was given an Garbage Pail Kid make-over. So this is actually TWO pretty great homages to 80's properties in a strange way. 

What keeps this from being my absolute favorite character of the bunch is this. The "puke" element separates from the "knight" element. I know a lot of people were delighted by this, but I'm just not into it. I realize there were probably manufacturing problems with designing this as one big piece... but it just screams "you're going to lose part of this toy!" to me. I've actually considered the idea of gluing the two parts together since I bought them. I don't seriously think anyone is going to display these two pieces separately, so what's the point? If you're the kind of collector who gets these in multiple colors, you could then mix-and-match colors from different sets... but I personally don't collect that way. 

"Shirtle" was initially my least favorite character of this series. But his cuteness has worn me down and now I like him quite a bit. He is some sort of bizarre shark/turtle hybrid and of course he's actually wearing a shirt. I guess my initial judgements sprang from the fact that he had so little detail to him compared to some of the other OMFGs. He also feels the least like a MUSCLE character out of all of the characters. But as I previously mentioned, I've grown to love Shirtle. He feels like a bit of a sad-sack, like the Eeyore of the group. But being an ARMORED SHARK he has untold power even he doesn't know about.

"Cry-Borg" is absolutely my least favorite figure of the bunch. Again, as with Stroll above, OMFGs are like pizza (or sex) even when it's not great it's still pretty good. I just don't really like the pose, the sculpt or even the concept here really. I'm not feeling the giant baby character as a part of this line at all. What do I like? Well, the idea of a destructive robot baby is not all bad. And the WMD as his rattle is a clever idea. But ultimately, I would have liked to have seen a more MUSCLE like character than this included. He does balance on that one foot as well, but not exceptionally well. I just... meh.

But luckily there's still so much more to love about OMFG!!! Like "Cuddlehard"!!! He is by far the very BEST that series 2 has to offer! And he's obviously the OMFG logo right off the packaging, turned into a road-warrior!!! He looks just AWESOME. He manages to remind me of both the old Tang mascot-mouths and the Rolling Stones logo too:

plus

Besides the fact that I always find it pleasingly meta when they can somehow work out the branding of a toy-line INTO the toy-line itself:

Case in point.

So basically Cuddlehard is my ULTIMATE OMFG figure. 

But WAIT!!! Then, as an added bonus to my order they tossed in this little guy! It's an announcer guy with a T.V. for a head with the Toy Break logo! He's fantastic!!! Nothing got me smiling bigger than when I saw this included in the box!!! Looking at him, I knew EXACTLY what he was inspired by (and even possibly partially casted-directly from) and that made me even happier! It was this little guy:

Photo courtesy of Toyriffic.blogspot.com
Property of Eric Stettmeier.

The little MUSCLE Announcer Guy! I loved him as a kid! When I would play he would always get himself into trouble and need rescuing. He was the nebbish little brother of Petey Graffiti of the GPK mini-figs. I had two of him actually, because I was given two identical 28-packs that included him. Both of them were green. So getting a surprise "Toy Break" figure who is an homage to this little guy was the cherry on top! (Just FYI: Toy Break is a youtube show done by the folks over at October Toys, who produced the OMFG figures. It's a great show and you should totally check it out!)  

"Why are there always toys piled up everywhere in here!!!???
Clean up this room!"
- My Mom when I was 10, in my head when I took this picture.

So in this shot I just had this perverse need to look at these OMFGs as if I were a 10 year old kid again. I always had HEAPS of MUSCLE guys all over my room, all mixes of colors piled together. There was something truly nostalgic in seeing this little heap of OMFG that took me back there. 

Here I wanted to compare two of my favorite OMFGs with a few of my favorites from other new and old lines of mini-figures. So left to right we have: Flyboy in teal, who is a sidekick figure from the the classic TMNT line. Cuddlehard in flesh from the OMFG series 2. Wendigo in red, from the Monster in My Pocket line. King Castor in purple, from OMFG series 1. Cobra Satan in Orange from the M.U.S.C.L.E. line. Zero Hero in green from the S.L.U.G. Zombies line. And Hiccup from the Spinmaster How to Train Your Dragon Bucket of Dragons set. I think these look great together! 

Heeeeey! Look who got off his lazy butt and took a picture!

So here are the extras that were included in my order beyond the little purple Toy-Break Head guy... A Crawdad Kid postcard done in GPK style... a postcard promotinf D-Con (a convention for toy designers/makers) and some October Toys/Toy-Break collector's cards! These are just an awesome cherry on top of the sundae. 

So I'm waiting now with baited breath for the third series of OMFG to finally be released so I can order some. I want to get them in a nice light blue color so they really stand out from the others I already have. Count on a review of those when I get them as well! Overall I can't recommend these enough to kids of the 80's who played with MUSCLE, or who collected Monster in My Pocket in the early 90's. OMFG will set off all the nostalgic synapses in your brain and release the collector's endorphin you so desperately need! 

Anyway, that's it for me tonight, but I'll be back soon with some actual Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

Who can take a Saturday and change it into fun? The Trash Man Can...

So I'm sitting in my Cave one Saturday morning, just minding my own business when my wife hands me a package that came for me in the mail! Turns out it was from my good friend the Trash Man over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture, and I was about to have the best Saturday morning since I was a kid in pajamas munching Cap'n Crunch and watching Muppet Babies!

Upon opening the pack I discovered this pile of loot! Now, I have just recently WON a GIGANTIC pile of loot from the Trash Man in his monthly Trash giveaway. So I was scratching my head at WHY I would be receiving another one so soon... and then it dawned on me... this was a consolation prize! See, Trash Man sends out BIG prize packs, and then he sends out smaller ones to the losers each month. I may have won the very first one, but I LOST the second one (Yeah, I had the audacity to enter into the next month's drawing... Don't judge me. These prize packs are SOFA KING amazing). So I went about my business, and forgot about the whole thing. UNTIL this showed up! 

See, the cool thing about the Trash Man is he PAYS ATTENTION. He knows all my weaknesses. He remembered how much I WIGGED OUT about the Lantern rings he sent me last time, so he tossed a few more my way this time. And believe me, I verbally, audibly, and EMPHATICALLY shrieked like a teenage Beatles fan of the female persuasion (you know, the kind-of-homely-but-kind-of-hot-too ones with the horn-rimmed glasses that probably ended up being your Aunt or something?) when I saw these. GODS I LOVE THESE!!! I have all of them but 3 now, and I will be tracking those down post-haste! 

MUSCLE guys!!! When I was a kid I thought the guy on the left was supposed to be a mummy, so he attacked people with bandages. The guy in the middle was pretty much just Ice Man. And the guy on the right looked like a pepper grinder to me, so he would puff clouds of irritating pepper at people, blinding and burning them while he fought. I was such a MUSCLE nut!!! This brings my current collection up to 26! I miss having these so much. 

Here are a pair of Garbage Pail Kids wax packs that I refuse to open. I love them just the way they are! They bring back such great childhood memories. Some of the happiest times of my young life were the walks I used to take down to the store to pick up these wax-packs. I am so incredibly thankful for these. 

Finally, there was another of my collecting staples: A Choose Your Own Adventure book! "The Forbidden Castle" which is another perfect addition to my shelf. Long-time readers will remember that next to only maybe Little Golden Books, CYOAs are my favorite kind of books to collect. And Trash Man remembers that. Trash Man is the king of KNOWING what you like. This package I received was incredibly generous and tailor-suited for me. 

Thank you Trash Man, this package was really special to me, and it made my day. 

So that's it folks! I'll be back very soon with some more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Goodwill Geek Mailbag: I Won This Box of Trash... YOU GOTTA SEE.

Soooooo... yeah. There was this contest thing over at the second-best blog on the internet: Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture (It's only second best because the blog you are currently reading exists. But on the day I die The Trash Man becomes king of the internet. It's in the bi-laws. Read 'em). 

Anyway... this box showed up at my post-office. And it was HEAVY. And not in like the tense emotional sense. I mean physically heavy. I almost slipped a disc lifting that thing. We're talking turn-your-head-and-cough-please style hernia. 

Here's what it looked like when I opened that b**ch:

And I'll form the HEAD! Wearing this HAT!

It was at this point that I started hyperventilating a little bit. I had been chosen at random on the Trash Man's blog to receive what I had assumed would be a bunch of random junk. As I pulled more and more stuff out of this seemingly bottomless box that was decidedly NOT junk... I started to realize that I had become the victim of a bait-and-switch. I was not the recipient of junk at all. I was horrified to realize that I was the recipient of ALL THIS AWESOME STUFF:

Everything you see on this desk (not counting the laptop computer or the dough boy)... WAS INSIDE THAT BOX. Guys, it was like a clown car in there. Except instead of clowns trying to kill me with cotton candy ray-guns, it was AWESOME stuff trying to AWE me with... AWESOME. Let's whittle this MOB of amazing down to its components shall we? 

First up is a set of mini-figs that made me squeal out loud when I saw them. S.L.U.G. zombies!!! I only ever picked up the Christmas variants, the Series 3 Coffin pack, and I think one or two of the 2-packs from that same series. I'm hard up for series 1 and 2 zombies (and display space for them). What I was most excited by was the "Curly" zombie, which gives me two-thirds of the zombie Stooges! I just need the Larry zombie now! This also brings my "food-service" zombies up to something like... six  I think? Bizarre. And Cleopatra is just awesome. The guy on the far left is getting ready to serve up a brain like a tennis ball! Zombie love!

Next up we have a couple of the Family Dollar Joes. When I saw these popping up on fellow collectors' blogs I was sorely tempted to go track them down. Of course, when I finally got around to it, they had all disappeared. I love Snake-Eyes's color scheme here but didn't care for the bulky gray vest, so I took it off. Storm Shadow looks great too, in mostly black, but juuuuust enough white to make him... him. They're getting ready to fight here. (Spoiler Alert: Snake-Eyes is going to WIN.)

PEZ!!! I'm not even sure which of these I already have, and which ones I needed. Taz is new to me for sure. I LOVE PEZ. Some of these guys will be tossed into whatever give-away I may do in the future. I kind of feel like a putz, letting Trash Man beat me to a give-away when I've been blogging for a year. Sigh.

M.U.S.C.L.E. Guys!!! Well... at least the 5 on the left are. The 2 on the right? Those guys are from the original Kinkeshi line put out in Japan, that they later based MUSCLE on. They have slightly darker colors, and are made of the more plaint eraser-like material. I have never owned any of them before, and I was QUITE happy to receive these!!! The MUSCLE men brought me right back to my childhood. I now have around 25 of these guys total. I think I'm going to have to start actively tracking down more of them. I'm not kidding when I say these kind of hit me in the soft-spot nostalgia-wise. 

Trash-Packs!!! These are the modern-day equivalent of everything I loved as a kid back in the 80's. The gross factor, similar to GPK... the size factor similar to MUSCLE and other mini-figures... Just awesome. My oldest son is 4 and he collects these like a boss. Occasionally he gets duplicates and they disappear into my Geek cave forever. Now I have some legit Trash Packs of my very own! I think my absolute favorites are the two guys furthest to the left. The blue slug with the giant red mouth, and the gray grub with the dazed expression. Priceless. 

Here's a random assortment of other mini-figs that were included. Skip past the Smurf for a moment and look at that other little bue guy next to him. That's Jagged Tooth, an Army Ant from General McAnther's Blue Army. Army Ants are a FAVORITE line of mine, right up there with MUSCLE, Battle Beasts, and California Raisins. SO EXCITED to get my hands on this guy! Up and to the right of the ant is a figure from a line of discontinued mini-figs called Fistful of Power from the mid-aughts. His name is "Cursor". And he has a chainsaw hand. He's pretty bad-ass. The rock and roll guy on the missile skateboard is a Savage Mondo Blitzer from 1991. His name is Direct Hit. The gray monochrome guy is a Nazi officer from the BMC Toy D-Day Playset. He's pretty Nazi-ish. The last of these Unusual Suspects is a Devil finger-puppet guy. I think he's one of my favorite items to come out of this box, to be honest. Just look at him. He's amazing. Now back to that Smurf! I couldn't tell what accessory he was originally supposed to be holding, but a Google investigation turned up this: 

Image from eBay.

So now I know! 

But of course, that was not the end of the mini-figs, by any means. Top left here you have War Machine and Whiplash from the Iron Man 2 Mega Bloks sets. Next to them you have a Clone Trooper/Y-Wing Transformer (you'll see the other form below). Far right we have another favorite of mine! Storm! This is a Marvel Mini by ZAG.  Next a couple of AWESOME LEGO mini-figures! A MEXICAN WRESTLER and a GUY IN A GODZILLA SUIT!!! Two of the very best LEGO mini-figures EVER CREATED. MINE NOW. Next we have some Marvel's Avengers Chibi minis, which to be honest, I already have a complete set of. But that's okay! I now have an Agent Coulson, Iron Man, and Nick Fury Chibi miniature set to give away! Aaaand there, in the middle is a Yoshi K'Nex mini-fig!!! I am so effing impressed by the sheer volume of mini-figs in this package you guys!!!

Next up we have some packaged stuff, and some vehicles. First, a packaged Ren figure from the Nicktoons line. I've been eyeing these for some time now. I think now I am going to be forced to track down a Stimpy. ALSO!!! A Burton-era Hotwheels Batmobile for my collection!!! This one got me to shout out loud with excitement! That sucker went right up on my wall with my other pop-culture Hotwheels! In the front row, there's another shot of my Star Wars Transformer (in Y-Wing mode) a loose BttF Hotwheel, and a Johnny Lightning version of Dick Dastardly's Mean Machine. 

I don't know if readers of my blog also follow Trash Man's blog (if not, you totally should)... but one of the first posts he did over there was one featuring some weird old party favors he picked up from one of his favorite stores. I would have been CRUSHED if some of those hadn't found their way into this box... And I was NOT disappointed! The least exciting item for me was probably the pack of VR Troopers Napkins. But I'm just not a Saban live-action-stuff fan. The REST of these are AMAZING!!! Top left we have a set of TMNT party hats from 1989!!! Next to that we have Millennium Masters of the Universe Drinking cups! I loved the Millennium reboot of MotU especially the action figures. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these cups... but it will be EPIC. Finally there's an incredible package of Voltron party hats!!! Look at that image! It's BEAUTIFUL!!!

But wait!!! There's STILL MORE!!! Here is the assortment of Wax-Packs and loose trading cards I received as well! The cards up top, above everything else are Power Ranger cards. The Wax packs in the middle include Dinosaurs Attack!, Harry and the Hendersons, Weird Ball, and a 6th Series Garbage Pail Kids pack! That one GPK pack is the only one I didn't crack open almost immediately after taking these photos. It's the one item I want to keep untouched. The Harry and the Hendersons pack had almost the EXACT same set of cards that I got in the pack I remember buying as a kid. It was really strange actually. The Weird Ball cards were interesting... but not really my thing... and Dinosaurs Attack! is probably my second favorite set of Topps trading cards from my childhood, directly following GPK. I'm going to make another embarrassing confession now... finding the MUSCLE figures and the unopened GPK wax-pack had me a little choked up. Not quite full on blubbering but there was just SO MUCH of my childhood right there in my hands. It was a full on rush of memories that I wasn't expecting.

All right, the last of the loose baubles includes a handful of Double Dragon Pogs and some metallic "slammer whammers". The items in this picture that make me go completely APES**T are the SDCC exclusive GL rings promoting Blackest night. I may have another new obsessive collection to track down now. Love these. AAAaaand... the "I Saw E.T." button, which I also FREAKING LOVE. I have no idea if it's from the original release of the film, or the big rerelease... but it doesn't matter to me. Finally, there's an awesome K-9 Dr. Who keychain! It's like this box knows the contents of my soul!  

Turns out part of the reason the package was so heavy was because it was loaded with books, movies, and comics too! First up is one of these mini-books featuring a random topic... but THIS ONE IS ALL ABOUT PEZ!!! Yet another amazing item in the GIANT BOX OF MIRACLES. I feel like you guys might think I'm trying to oversell this box... but I can't even tell you how much of this stuff is just perfectly "me". 

I had to smile when I pulled out this VHS copy of "Superman The Movie". Trash Man is a big VHS enthusiast, and this is just so HIM. Probably the item that elicited the goofiest chuckle when I saw it. I don't own a VCR so this is being displayed for box art alone. It is THE item that best represents my pleasure over having won this prize package. It is truly the Oscar statuette of the whole box.

Next up are these two excellent books of two great old childhood properties. First we have "Six Guns and Shurikens" starring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is a young readers chapter book where the turtles FIND A F**KING GENIE and are transported to the F**KING OLD WEST!!! I haven't read it yet... but I certainly plan to. Then there's "Operation: Poison Dart" which is not only a G.I. Joe Book... But A F**KING CHOOSE OUR OWN ADVENTURE BOOK!!! This is amazing. I didn't know these even existed. I love that they do. I love that I now own one. I love life.

Next up, a couple of DVDs. First, another item which made me LOSE MY S**T. Neil Gaiman's Julius Schwartz Lecture at MIT? YES PLEASE. I am a complete Neil Gaiman fanatic. And I've never seen or heard this speech. I remember reading on his blog about it back when it happened... but never thought I'd get to check it out for myself. Next to that is a Troma Pictures double feature of "Psycho a GoGo" and "Rawhide Terror" which I cannot wait to watch. They look deliciously crazy. 

Next... animation!!! Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a movie I have been meaning to watch for years because I've heard it's a classic Batman tale, and a classic in geek animation in general. Aaaand speaking of classics in geek animation... we have He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Vol. 1. 20 episodes of MotU goodness. I have a "greatest hits" DVD somewhere, but that's it. LOVE this.

I'll confess this next one is a bit of a cheat. The novelization of the movie Alien was something I noticed Trash Man had an extra copy of and asked if I could have. So he tossed it in when he sent me the package. It's still effing cool. I've really started getting into collecting old novelizations of awesome films, and this makes a perfect addition to the pile.

Here are a couple of excellent kid's books based on a couple more AWESOME properties! Darkwing Duck "The Darkest Night" and Voltron "The Deadly Flowers". So completely blown away by these! Love Darkwing AND Voltron! And since I also collect vintage 80's (and early 90's) cartoon kids books these are PERFECT for me!

And FINALLY I got to the bottom of that box full of miracles only to find these: COMIC BOOKS! Among the titles included I found 5 Spider-Man books, 5 Avengers books (including 1 Transformers crossover issue!), 4 Captain America Books, 3 G.I Joe Books, 2 Hulk books, 1 X-Factor book, and a partridge in a pear tree! I was overwhelmed by the sheer awesomeness of these cool old issues! Some of my favorite covers (I haven't had a chance to read through them all yet) have to be The White Rabbit, Speedball, and Tower vs. X-Factor covers. These ones are just amazing to behold. These are all awesome looking comics though, and I can't wait to dig into them further!

So in summation... I was floored by the sheer amount of AWESOME packed into this one small-ish (yet back-breakingly heavy) box! I cannot thank the Trash Man enough for the free loot, and I can't wait to see what else he has in store over at his blog! Trash Man, from the bottom of my heart, please know how thankful I am that I received this prize pack it is amazing. I only hope I can come up with some sort of prize pack in the future that will make some lucky guy or gal as happy as this one made me. Thank you thank you, thank you. 

WELL. That's it for me tonight kids! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodness! Until then, Happy Hunting!