Liberace, The Frighteners, and Ice Age, Ice Age, ICE AGE

Not a huge one tonight kids, but some fun finds nonetheless. Only one major toy find, and the rest is all cassettes and books. But let's take a look and see what we shall see, shall we? 

Here's the pile of loot that I brought home. A few details may jump out to begin with, but let us take a closer look.

First up, the cassettes. We'll probably take a closer look at the Halloween Songs and Sounds from Walt Disney Records when October hits. Likewise, I'l probably wait until December to dissect Liberace: A Christmas Medley. So that leaves the one in the middle: the "Working Girl" soundtrack. It's really most significant for Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" which is a pretty great song if I'm being honest. Chris de Burgh's "The Lady In Red" is on here too, which I absolutely adore. I really need to go watch Working Girl again sometime.

Speaking of movies I want to revisit soon, I found this novelization of Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners" I think I may add this movie to my Halloween watch-pile for this year, since it's been years since I've seen it.

Or maybe I should just add this novelization to the ever-growing Halloween read-pile? I dunno. I always felt like this movie was a bit of an underrated gem. Seeing some great horror/genre vets like John Astin and Jeffrey Combs hamming it up always does my hear good. "I like it when they lay still like that..." and "My body is a road-map of pain!" are lines I quote to my wife on a regular basis to this day. Classic.

I feel like I overpaid slightly for this Ray Bradbury collection of short stories, by Goodwill standards anyway. I would have paid waaay more in a used book store I guess, so thanks for small favors. I buy Bradbury books as "collectible" now without hesitation.

The grab-bag you saw above is really what had me most interested honestly. It was packed with a huge variety of Ice Age Burger King Kids Meal toys from 2002, based off the first movie in the franchise. I'm a complete nut for the first film, and don't really care for the others in the series AT ALL as  I may have mentioned in a post on another blog, a long.. long... time ago.

What's funny is that if you read that post from my other (now defunct) blog, at the very end you'll see me struggle with trying to remember what is is that the tiny Sid the Sloth toy was originally encased in at one point. This find answered that question! It was one of the ice-block toys you can see on the bottom left of the picture above.

This picture, by the way, shows that the grab-bag contained almost 15 whole sets of toys from that series of Burger King Toys. Funny thing is these are all duplicates of 5 toys out of a set of 10 different ones. So even though I have 15 sets here, I still only have half the set!!! It's kind of interesting looking back at the toys they were putting out 13 years ago compared the toys they do nowadays.These things are elaborate in and of themselves:

I won't go into great detail about every single toy, but I will take a moment to say how excited I was to finally track down a "Pinky" toy (the human baby, who is technically named "Roshan") to go with my other Ice Age Toys.

Each set has several pieces to put together and features a character from the movie, doing something from the movie. It's pretty awesome. If I had room to set these up somewhere all the time, I totally would.

But here's the REALLY excellent part: They connect together! I know this is nothing new but back in 2002 it was still a kind-of/sort-of relatively new concept in Happy Meal toys. The Inspector Gadget set from 1999 really kind of revolutionized the idea of collectible/connectable sets, and they were still refining the concept with this one. 

So not only do each of the toys have a cause-and-effect pay-off, you can connect them all in one glorious chain of chaos. It works with mixed results, but for the most part I got this thing to trigger off flawlessly 3 out of 5 times. I dabbled with the idea of taking a video of the whole Rube Goldberg affair... but it was too unpredictable and quick moving to even attempt it. Again, keep in mind, this is only half of the Ice Age set BK was offering that year. So if I had all 10 can you imagine!?

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

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!

Father's Day Flea Market Finds: GEEKING OUT!!!

Welcome to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks! This is the blog where I talk about geeky stuff I've picked up secondhand and then wax poetic about nostalgia or the pure love I have for purely ridiculous things. This post will be no different than most, as I have some pretty exciting stuff to talk about. 

And timely as ever, I would like to talk about Fathers' Day... FROM LAST YEAR. Yes that's right folks... I am just finally getting around to blogging some stuff I picked up very nearly a whole year ago. 

For Fathers' Day last year, my wife took me out on a shopping spree. We hit some Goodwills, and a few other places on our way out to a town called Rockland here in Maine. We even stopped off at a Flea Market, which are kind of few and far between here in Maine, and I am sooo glad we did! 

Let's take a look at what I brought home! 

I was really excited to find these Return of the Jedi Burger King glasses in such great shape! The only one I'm missing now is the battle scene between Luke and Darth while the Emperor watches. Love these things! I spent many a summer drinking out of glasses just like these as a kid. I think my most vivid memories are of the Ewok glass. Man I LOVED Ewoks as a kid.

There was also this complete set of The Empire Strikes Back glasses too! I like these ones even more. They. Are. GORGEOUS. I am a Boba Fett fan in theory. I know he doesn't really do much blah-blah-blah whatever. I love the design of his suit and his helmet. I love the design of this glass. And seeing him side by side with Darth Vader makes this one of my absolute prized possessions.

This was a really interesting find. I had never heard of the "Spirits of the Earth" storyline by Charles Vess. I still haven't actually sat down and read this book.. but it is so naggingly familiar to me that I can't help but assume I've read it before, so long ago that I'd all but forgotten about it. Apparently Spider-Man is in Scotland for this tale, and he is battling the Scottish branch of the Hellfire club. I am a fan of Vess's work on books like Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and the bits of the Sandman he did were just stunning... and I know he did "The Cry of the Wendigo," a back-up story in Amazing Spider-Man #277 which I loved, so I expect no less from this book.

This was another exciting find for me as it was a book that I DEFINITELY owned as a kid. This was published as a part of the media blitz surrounding the release of Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. Love this book! It is a semi-detailed history of Batman's first fifty years. Lots of history, lots of pictures, lots of cool details inside. Again, I haven't sat down to re-read this bad boy yet, but I can't wait to!

Of all the things I found at the flea-market, it was this guy that made me the most excited! I know he's filthy, and I know he's not complete... but I LOVE HIM. The AT-AT walker, to me is one of the most iconic Star Wars vehicles of all time. I picked up the AT-AT, the seven Burger King glasses, and the two bucks for 15 bucks total.

It was later that same day that I found these "Star Wars Kids" magazines at Goodwill.

I lucked out because they had the half-price color (the green price tags) so I got them all for .50 cents! I would have usually posted these in a Goodwill post, but felt it appropriate to share them along with all the other Star Wars stuff I found on the same day. (There's my boy Greedo!)

I think I'm going to have to do a more in-depth look at these magazines sometime in the future. They're from a happier time before the the words "Prequel Trilogy" were even a thing.

I also visited a used bookstore while I was out for Father's Dayand thought I'd quickly toss those finds in here as well. It was an eventful day. I mostly found books dealing with some of my favorite newspaper comic characters, collected in book form. There was this, "The Indispensible Calvin and Hobbes" which pretty much finishes off my Calvin and Hobbes collection.

I found the third and final Outland collection, "One Last Little Peak," which also finishes off my Outland collection. (I'm a huge Berkeley Breathed fan)

And I found my first copy of "A Garfield Christmas" which is adapted from the Christmas special of the same name. I later found another copy at Goodwill, but I was SUPER psyched to find this one on this particular day. Next to the Garfield Halloween special, this is one of my very favorite holiday specials of all time.

And finally I found a copy of Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man". I've been looking for this one for quite some time now and I was pretty pleased to find it in paperback for such a cheap price. I've recently become something of a Ray Bradbury nut and this was one of the few books of his that I don't already own. So yay me!

Well that's it kiddos! I'll be back with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough... so until then, Happy Hunting!

Payday Friday 02-15-2013

Today I'm going to tell you about my last payday Friday, which happened back on the day right after Valentine's day. It wasn't as amazing as the LAST last Payday Friday, which was so epic I dedicated Not just one post... not just two posts... or THREE posts... but a whole week of four posts to it... but I still made a handful of finds that I was really pleased with just the same. I'm saving the very best for last... so if you're just here for the pretty pitchers, scroll on down to the bottom. 

First off, I'll start with one of the 2 grab-bags I picked up. There was quite the mix in there for 2.99. You can see the whole pile here on the left, and a couple of Pokemon on the right (there were actually 2 identical Pikachus in the mix, but I forgot to include the other one.)

Then there were these 3 sets of Hercules Happy Meal toys. I've never seen the movie, and I'm not sure who everyone here is... but I think the blue guy is the centaur villain, and the other two shells are Titans... Zeus, Hera, and a satyr (wasn't he voiced by Danny DeVito or something?) I think I like the rocky two-headed Titan guy the best out of all of these. 

The reason this grab-bag actually made it home with me are these Batman Returns Happy Meal toys. There's only the front half of the Batmobile (which fires out of the back end) and the Catwoman toy looks like a hungry dog chewed the crap out of it (I already have one, luckily...) but the Batman and Penguin vehicles look amazing. I'm especially in love with the colors on the Penguin's car. The blue and yellow penguin and the hypno-umbrella on the front... It just does it for me. So when I really face facts, I spent the 2.99 on those 2 items alone. Not the best deal I've ever made... but considering I would have happily paid .99 cents for each of them had I found them separately, I only overpaid by about a dollar. 

Here's a couple of YA books I picked up to check out. I've never read any of the Deltora books, but this is a compendium of monsters, which I just can't resist. The lush full color illustrations and pages packed with bizarre monsters just begging to be adapted for D&D... right up my alley. The Key to Rondo is a magical-world-accessed-by-some-weird-old-antique story starring some kids. I paid .99 cents for each of these. 

Here is another item I was particularly excited about. Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury in Hardcover was a nice  pick-up for 1.99. 

I can't even tell you how long I've been meaning to pick up this movie. So finding a copy of "Gladiator" at Goodwill for 2.99 was pretty spiffy. 

The last (and best) things I found on this trip to Goodwill were in this grab-bag full of Happy Meal toys for 2.99. And not just ANY Happy Meal Toys, but the transforming food toys from the late 80's and early 90's... "Changeables"!!! Some of these are robots, some of these are dinosaurs, and some of these...  

...are just weird only semi-transforming anthropomorphisized food items named Milly Milk and Otis Sandwich, from the Food Fundamentals line... who appear to be promoting a healthy life-style you clearly won't have if you are eating at McDonalds... not really Changeables at all. 

So here's this set of Changeables Dinosaurs that transform into McDonald's foodstuffs. Top row, left to right we see Big Mac-O-Saurus Rex, Quarter Pounder With Cheese-O-Saur, McNuggets-O-Saurus, and Hot Cakes-O-Dactyl. Across the bottom is Tri-Shake-Atops, Fry-ceratops, and Happy Meal-O-Don. 

Here we have some of the McRobots... Turbo Cone, Gallacta Pounder, and Krypto Cup. I had already gotten a few of the toys included this grab-bag from a semi-recent transaction I made with Brian over at Cool and Collected. A couple of them I had on hand already, so all total I already owned about 5 of the toys I found at Goodwill on Friday... but 7 toys I actually needed out of 12 ain't bad really.  

I plan on doing a post on my Happy Meal toys collection on here at some point very soon. These guys will make another appearance, and I'll feature the stuff I bought from Brian, along with some other stuff I had already, and/or found at Goodwill. 

For now though, that's all there is to report for last Payday. Between the Batman toys, a new-to-me Ray Bradbury novel, and those McDonalds Changeables I was pretty happy. 

I'll be back soon with more Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Payday Friday Week Continues: There's Always Books

I almost always come home with a pile of books from Goodwill, even when I come home with absolutely nothing else. This past Payday Friday was no different. There's always books. This trip was a little different though, in that there was an ABUNDANCE of geek-tacular books that set me a-drooling. It was like they had completely cleaned off the shelves and replaced everything with new stock. It wasn't all stuff I was interested, but it all looked different from times past visiting. 

First, I picked up a couple of books for my daughter. Dead is the New Black by Marlene Perez and Red unicorn by Tanith Lee both looked like they were right up her alley. They cost me 1.99 apiece. My daughter's in that young adult reading phase where magic, romance, and adventure tell some sort of coming of age tale. 

The next two books aren't geeky, I just thought they looked interesting. Leaving Las Vegas is the book by John O'Brien that inspired the movie. Dog On Itis a mystery novel told from the point of view of a dog. I am a sucker for mystery novels with interesting hooks like that. I paid 1.99 cents for Leaving Las Vegas, and Dog On It was.99 cents. 

I'll admit I just picked this book up because it looked old and kitschy. It's not worth much, but it is an adaptation of an old Disney film about a horse living in the 1870's. I paid .99 cents for it.

This just looked fun. I have no idea if the software will work on my computer (fingers crossed) but the interior art gives enough templates to build a bunch of cool looking robot paper-craft toys. I paid 1.99 for it. 

Now I'm getting into the stuff that I was genuinely excited about. The Houdini Box by Brian Selznick looks very promising. A beautifully illustrated novella about a boy who meets Harry Houdini and receives a mysterious gift from the famous escape artist. I paid .99 cents for this one, and honestly cannot wait to read it. 

As an Edward Gorey Enthusiast I was really pleased to find this collection of postcards with Gorey's handiwork on them. This has got a nice selection of pictures from Gashly Crumb Tinies among many other works. I paid 1.99 for it. 

Some of my first posts on this blog were dedicated to Ray Bradbury. I finally found a copy of the Martian Chronicles this past Payday Friday for .99 cents. Putting this on the Geek Classics reading list for sure. I'm always happy to find a nice Bradbury at Goodwill. 

Moving into the eye-meltingly awesome category we have a copy of Marjane Sartrapi's graphic novel, Persepolis. I've been meaning to buy a copy of this for a long while now, and finding a really nice copy of it at Goodwill, for 1.99... (NO wait that's half off because it has a blue sticker!!!) made me leap for joy. It's ALWAYS awesome finding some cheap graphic content at Goodwill. 

And finally, another awesome find that had me squeeeee-ing for joy was this copy of Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf illustrated by Berni Wrightson. I PAID .99 CENTS FOR THIS AWESOME BOOK!!! I love Cycle of the Werewolf the movie "Silver Bullet", which was based on it. 

Between all these books, and the grab-bags I featured yesterday, and the Fisher-Price Little People toys I featured the day before that... AND the stuff I still have in reserve for tomorrow... You can understand why I was drunk with Goodwill greatness, can't you? 

So... if I have power tomorrow, I'll be back with more Payday Friday Goodwill Goodies. If I don't have power, I'll be back sometime this weekend. Until then, Happy Hunting!