Oh No. It's a Book One (But there are Ewoks! And Gobots! and Muppet Babies!)

Alright: Full disclosure. This is a book post. Bear with me though, there are some pretty good finds in here. 

Here's a quick look at the first half of the pile.

Here's a quick look at the second half of the pile. LET'S RIDE!!!

First up, the nearly obligatory Little Golden Books. I have SERIOUSLY been thinking about purging my collection for awhile now and really prioritizing what I keep... but I will NEVER not want adaptations of Pixar films. It seems like Toy Story 3 is very divisive amongst the Pixar fans... I personally loved it and thought it made for a perfect wrap up of the series. 

That was of course... before they announced Toy Story 4 was a thing. 

A couple of chapter books in Lloyd Alexander's "The Beggar Queen" and Peter Abrahams's "Behind the Curtain," an Echo Falls Mystery. I still haven't read the first Echo Falls Mystery, "Down the Rabbit Hole," but these look interesting. Lloyd Alexander books that I don't already own are always a must-buy.

Next up a couple of kids' adaptations of 90's films near and dear to all our hearts. Home Alone and Jurassic Park! I don't really have a ton to say about these two... just really liked finding them!

A Casper and Wendy book that I plan on passing along... maybe... if my kids don't like it... and "The Littles and the Missing Cat." I always forget how much I actually liked the Littles cartoon as a kid. It went some weird places for sure.

A couple of Don Bluth books here, was have "All Dogs Go the Heaven: Charlie's Friends" and "An American Tail: Tony and Fievel" I must say again... I really have nothing majorly important to state about these guys. I did LOVE most Don Bluth films with all my childhood heart though... the storytelling, the bizarre characters, the interesting twists. All Dogs Go to Heaven especially was a weird one, but one I loved nonetheless. It is a movie that just couldn't get made nowadays. It's too distressing, too blunt in places. Too raw and real while also being bizarrely fantastical.

And "The Land Before Time," man this one was amazing. The heyday of Bluth animation was distilled in this set of three films plus The Secret of NIMH. Do I own all of these movies? If not I gotta track them down. 

Next up was this nice set of "Monster Chronicle" books, one about werewolves, one about Vampires. I'll probably be digging a bit deeper into these two as a part of my countdown to Halloween next month, so keep your eyes peeled for that!

I have already read "Would You Like To Play Hide & Seek In This Book With Lovable, Furry Old Grover?" about 40 times since this trip to Goodwill. My boys (especially my 4 year old) LOVE it! They interact with the book as expected, and laugh almost all the way through. This one's a classic. Interactive Sesame Street books with incredibly charming artwork, like "There's a Monster At the End of This Book" were pretty prevalent back when this came out. Aaaaand... I kind of hated myself IMMEDIATELY after buying this adaptation of "Herbie Rides Again!"

"Sesame Street: A Celebration of 40 Years of Life on the Street" was an incredibly awesome find for me! Just looking at the cover makes me smile. You have the likes of Frazzle and Farley and Don Music rubbing elbows with modern characters like Zoe and Murray. That's pretty awesome. This book resides in a place of honor on my shelf. 

It blew my 6 year-old, Star Wars-obsessed son's brains out his ears when he found out that there were two movies based solely around the Ewoks. He's an Ewoks fan, so this was kind of big news. He was even more excited to see that I had brought home a BOOK based on the first film! 

A BUNCH of Muppet Babies books! I really loved the Muppet Babies as a kid. This was one of my favorite shows. I probably got more of my initial exposure to the Muppets from the Babies cartoon (and the movies) than I did the actual Muppet show. 

GOBOTS BOOKS!!! I was a Gobots kid, meaning I owned more Gobots than Transformers as a kid (And I'm not even getting into the Rock Lords, which I've discussed here before... and which will probably be discussed again veeeery shortly...). I was not a Transformers kid at all really, except in that I occasionally watched the cartoon. So finding not ONE but TWO books based on the Gobots made me mist up just a little bit. And finding out that the interior art was done by Steve Ditko? Even if it wasn't exactly his greatest work ever... was a fun treat! 

Finally, I have sad TIME and TIME AGAIN that I DO NOT COLLECT VHS tapes. But when you encounter "Gobots: Battle of the Rock Lords" and "MTV: Liquid Television" VHS tapes just sort of kicking around the ol' Goodwill... and you have friends that collect VHS... you buy those things. You buy them HARD. Honestly, I kind of wish I'd kept these now... at least the Rock Lords one, even though I DON'T COLLECT VHS!!! But I know they are in a good home with someone who values them. So I try not to obsess. 

All right kids! That's it for tonight! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies (and October Eve is on its way!!!) so until that time, Happy Hunting! 

Rock Lords! An Off-the-Wall Post About Some Off-the-Wall Toys

Hey there everybody! For a change, I'm going to actually talk about something I didn't buy while out thrifting, but instead something I picked up on eBay. Normally I stay away from eBay talk on here, but I just love this topic sooo much I couldn't resist. 

ROCK LORDS!!! 

When I was a kid I collected a ridiculous number of toylines, from Star Wars, to Masters of the Universe, to Thundercats to Real Ghostbusters, to G.I. Joe, to TMNT. I was never huge fan of Transformers toys although I did love the cartoon. I ended up with a few GoBots in my toy box because they were the cheaper alternative and (in my memory at least) easier to figure out.

An offshoot of the GoBots were the Rock Lords, which were not transforming robots (with a couple of exceptions) but instead transforming creatures made of living rock. And yes, when they transformed, they turned into the rocks pictured above. They did indeed transform into (ridiculously unconvincing) rocks. This makes them one of the saddest punchlines of all 80's toy jokes because in all actuality, the Rock Lords were incredibly cool action figures that would have made more sense if they simply didn't transform at all... but in fact the transforming action just adds to their charm.

The factions of Rock Lords don't have fancy "Autobot and Decepticon" style names, so they're just good or bad. The leader of the "good guy" Rock Lords is Boulder. Boulder here is one of my all-time favorite toys period. He is one of those toys that I managed to hang onto through various cleaning purges, and as a result he managed to team up with everyone from all of my various other toy-lines over the years. He is also one of the few Rock Lords that actually resembles a rock when in rock form. One of the things I love about this line however weird it may seem is how the transformation mechanics really forced the designers to find a balance between the seeming natural elements of the rocky outer shells and the living elements inside, while still being a functional action figure. In some cases, like Boulder, this was a perfect, successful balance. In others however...

... like Magmar here, the conversion is less successful. Magmar is the leader of the evil faction of Rock Lords. He is supposed to be a bad-ass, but unfortunately his articulation is ridiculously limited due to his design. His arms move up and down but his pointless elbows don't really do much to enhance his arms posing, and his legs actually bend backwards, like a crane's. What I do genuinely love about Magmar's design are the color highlights and the mohawk. The yellow on his chest and shoulders here actually reads a much darker orange color in person (think my flash bleached it out a bit) and the green accents are pretty badass. I didn't own Magmar as a kid, and so my evil Rock Lords were led by Stoneheart (who I do not currently own, and who is therefore not in this blog post).

This weird looking fellow is Crack-Pot. As a kid I thought he was kind of creepy, and I think I ended up treating him as a villain. He is, in fact, actually a heroic Rock Lord. He was the only other Rock Lord from my collection to survive the great toy purges alongside Boulder.

This fantastic fellow is Brimstone. He was one of my absolute favorite villains from the line as a kid. He has the peculiar distinction of still having his eyes visible when he transforms into a rock (you can't see them in the picture at the top of the post because I have him flipped over on his face) and due to his hunched appearance and color he reminds me of a crab. This was always the "crazy guy" of the bunch, all hissing and screeching while he fights.

This rugged guy is Granite, and was given to me by Brian of Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture fame. Granite was always Boulder's second in command in my mind, and a loyal friend. Nuggit (the little gold robot I also haven't tracked down yet) always played the part of the sidekick, so I wouldn't call Granite that. He's more Boulder's Samwise than his Woozy Winks. He does however remind me these days of the Sontarans from Doctor Who.

Actually most of the Rock Lords look like a combination of Doctor Who creatures cross pollinated with Gwar band members, so that's not surprising.

This last figure I currently own is Styx 'n Stones. Following the "my army of evil henchmen must include a two-headed monster" trope, here we have the double-trouble threat of Styx n' Stones. I LOVED Styx n' Stones as a kid. Two-headed villains were freaky and fun! You can see there's some color coding going on to help you differentiate between the two. Styx, on the left has pink coloring, while stones on the right gets red. This extends from their eyes and mouths right on down to their... toenail polish.

And here they all are as a group, good vs. evil, all in a group. I remember obsessively transforming these guys back and forth between their warrior and rock modes. It's too bad the line wasn't more popular because I found these to be genuinely cool to collect and play with as a kid. In addition to the ones pictured in this post, I also owned the aforementioned Nuggit and Stoneheart, as well as Marbles, Slime-Stone, and Pulver-Eyes I will probably not bother to track down ALL of the Rock Lords, but I might try checking some or all of these guys off my list one or two at a time. For now though, I'm pretty happy with the six-pack I currently possess.

What about you? Do you remember Rock Lords? Or do you have some other weird toy line rom the misty memories of your childhood that you feel like didn't get the love it should have?

Well that's it for today kiddos! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies (or something else) soon enough, so until then, Happy Hunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 17: A Package From Brian "The Trash Man"

So my friend Brian, "The Trash Man" over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture and I often exchange mail. And it's almost a cheat to include his packages in this countdown because he almost always sends me something that could be construed as Halloween-y. But hey, it's my blog, so I cheat. And besides, there are some pretty overt, directly Halloween-y things in this package to share. 

Like for instance, these two. First up we have an INCREDIBLE McDonald's plate featuring the McDonaldland Gang having a Halloween hoedown! I actually have no idea if its a hoedown or a sock-hop but based on Birdy's and Grimace's costumes, it could go either way. Next, the jack-o-lantern tin on the right which is cool enough in its own right, but once opened was revealed to contain a veritable ARMY of mini-figure toys and other goodies. So lets look at those next. 

Still staying firmly in the theme of Halloween, we have these Monster in My Pocket figures. I had almost ALL of these (well, series 1 anyway) when they came out back in 1990. Nowadays my MiMP collection is getting respectable again, but is a shadowy echo of its former glory.

Next a squad of LEGO-style guys, ranging from LEGO and Mega-Bloks to KRE-O and whatever that little yellow space-guy in the front is from. First we have the INCREDIBLE Man-Bat figure which I LOVE!!! and Havok from mega-bloks. Havok is one of my favorite X-Men. I now own a LEGO Krang-bot from the new TMNT Nicktoon, and Dr. Mindbender from G.I. Joe KRE-O.

Next up are an assortment of toys from various different MUSCLE-related lines. The teal and orange guys are from the original Kinkeshi line that spawned MUSCLE Things here in the states. The Blue and red guys are hard plastic MUSCLE Thing toys, and the guy in the center is from the Ultimate MUSCLE line.

Mini-figures were really like my own personal crack as a kid. I collected the hell out of both of the pictured lines above. Battle Beasts and Army Ants!!! Between all the MUSCLE Things, MiMPs, Garbage Pail Kids Cheap Toys, and the ghosts and sidekicks from the Real Ghostbusters and TMNT lines, plus just other random mini-figures from other lines... I had an army of mini-figures! The Battle Beasts pictured above are "Danger Dog" and "Fleet-Footed Ante-Lope" The Army Ant is is called "Heave-Ho".

Tiny plastic robots, dinosaurs, and firefighters were also included! I placed the two I loved the most in the foreground. The Orange robot and the weird gray "dinosaur" with two ridges running down its back and a snout like the Luck Dragon from the Neverending Story.

More plastic goodies included these "cowboys and indians" figures (I know that's not P.C. but it feels weird calling them Cowboys and Native Americans) and a set of plastic pirates that I believe are probably cake toppers. The pirates have taken up residence on my Pirate/skeletons shelf, even though they are clearly not skeletons.

These two figures are from the Trash Bag Bunch line, which I missed out on, but would definitely like to track more down of nowadays. These guys remind me of Bebop from TMNT and Mutant Zero from the Initiative in a ridiculously vague way. 

Another pair of my near-favorite toys from the whole pack were these two. A Panthro eraser!!! I was (and still am) a huge lover of Thundercats. And Panthro was one of my favorite characters from that show as well as my favorite action figure from that line. The crocodile is from old Super Golden Crisp cereal commercials featuring Sugar Bear. I am also a huge fan of advertising mascots (and their nemeses) so this hungry guy is a perfect addition to my collection.

On the military side of things, The Trash Man included this mega-sized army man and a Cobra Commander action figure! C.C. ended up on my Joes shelf. He's the classic 80's villain and I love both the hooded and helmeted versions of the character.

So Brian and I share an enthusiasm for the Rock Lords. I had most of the toyline when I was a kid, a receiving Granite here made me rush to eBay to see how much it would cost me to fill out the rest of my collection. Turns out... kind of a lot. It's weird to think that a series of toys that had warriors transforming into lumps of rock can go for so much money these days... but if I love 'em, obviously a lot of other people out there probably do too. The fella on the right side there is Taco Terror, one of the Refrigerator Rejects from the Food Fighters line of toys from back in 1988. I've been seeing these things make a huge comeback lately due to nostalgia and the bizarrely awesome concepts and designs of the toys themselves. This was another line that I had a BUNCH of as a kid.

In the category of "items that made me gasp out loud when I removed them from the box" we have this Kermit mug. And not just ANY Kermit the Frog... but his Muppet News Reporter role from Sesame Street. Brian has had some amazing success sending me breakable items via the sometimes-questionable postal service. This is one of my absolute favorite versions of Kermit EVER. As this news reporter Kermit would go out and interview the characters from famous nursery rhymes and fairy tales. It was brilliant. The PEZ dispenser is from 1991 and makes a great addition to my current muppet PEZ collection.

It wouldn't be a package from Brian without some sweet wax-packs (Technically the Beetlejuice cards are not in a wax-pack, I know. Don't worry about it.) and this package did NOT disappoint! I opened the ALF pack to see who the Bouillabaisseball Card featured. The other two remain sealed.

There is probably a very quantifiable laundry-list of items that people have discovered that I love just from reading this blog. Very close to the top of this list is any kind of Choose Your Own Adventure books (or "gaming books" if you're hardcore). And Brian is always hooking me up with these things. The Third Planet From Altair is the 7th book in the CYOA series and Famous and Rich (I'm assuming Robin Leach has the copyright of "Rich and Famous"?) is the 4th book in the "Which Way Books" series. Both look like they will be fun to read.

One of the other most surprising items to come out of this package is this VHS tape featuring the Madballs. I don't talk about Madballs enough on this blog, because frankly I find them next to impossible to find around my area nowadays. Madballs were not the most durable toys when I was a kid, and none of mine survived my childhood whatsoever. I have exactly two Madballs in my vast collection at this point, Slobulus and Crackhead. I would rent the video tape you see above from a local rental place obsessively as a child, as well as its sister-tape Madballs: Gross Jokes. I think they were collectively to be the beginnings of some sort of Saturday morning cartoon that simply never took off.

It was interesting in that it took place in a dystopian world inhabited by ball-shaped organisms (and by interesting I mean "bizarre"). The world was ruled by the evil "Badballs" (all of the second-wave-released characters, led by Wolfbreath who was heart-breakingly one of my favorite Madballs, and VERY hard to watch acting evil) and there was a resistance building to escape the oppressive world led by the good Madballs (all of the first-wave-released characters led by Screamin' Meemie) who just wanted to have fun, which was illegal on their home planet of ORB. Ah the 80's.

If anything sums up a package received in the mail from The Trash Man better than the phrase: "From Trash to Treasure" better... I can't think of one. So the title of the first of three Little Golden Books that Brian included in the package is more than fitting. I am of course a rabid collector of Little Golden Books which is either endearing or creepy depending on who's reading this. In the pile is a book starring one of my favorite Disney Afternoon properties: Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers! The Big Cheese Caper. And a Woody the Woodpecker Takes a Trip which stars the main character and his obligatory child-versions of himself that are named Knothead and Splinter.

Also included in the package were some comic book treats! Marvel's STAR imprint was always good for some toy-licensing fun, and here we see Air-Raiders and Silver Hawks representing! Brian of course knows from this blog how much I love my Air-Raiders figure that I salvaged from childhood:

As demonstrated in this picture of Baxter Stockman KILLING him...

I never played with him properly, calling him "Vocal Chord" instead of the much more accurate and unwieldy: Tyrants of the Wind Soldier.

And the comic book includes this KICK-@$$ picture of "Vocal Chord" in all his glory! This sight gave me LITERAL goosebumps.

There's nothing not-awesome about these three issues as well. We have an Inferno tie-in that I actually don't own yet, a Marvel Holiday Special (LOVE the Holiday specials from back in the day!) and a Marvel Super-Heroes Super Heroes Summer Special with the tagline: When Balls Collide!!! That right there is worth the price of admission.

Brian also included this TPB of Rocketo which is a comic I have always been curious about, but too lazy to track down on my own. So now I can finally check it out! It looks amazing.

And when I had heard that he was getting rid of his Shadowpact trades due to the evil, Evil, EVIL minimalist game... I stuck my hand up in the air and said "mememememe!!!" because I liked the team back when they were introduced. These stories are of... mixed quality, and I can see why Brian had decided he no longer needed them in his collection. But I ASKED for them, remember. It was incredibly gracious of him to acquiesce. 

So there you have it kids! The contents of a package from Brian "The Trash Man" Farrell, of Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture fame! That's all I've got for tonight. I'll be back soon with more Gross Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!