Goodwill Finds: Strangers in Paradise and Well Zombie

UPDATED TO ADD: I just noticed that this post is officially my 400th! I noticed this very shortly after posting my 403rd post which I put on the site 2 days after my 3 year blogoversary! Lots of milestones I've completely missed! 

-Now back to the blog!- 

So... I think I'm actually starting to get caught up with the stuff I purchased in the year 2015! Finally! The year is half over and I think I'm finally here! Yay! Here's a little pile of junk I brought home. Nothing RIDICULOUSLY exciting, but a couple nice grabs. Let's check it out, shall we?

So here's a pic of the whole pile. Time to dig in.

I tore open the grab-bag first. Disappointingly, this was one of those rare occasions where I really should have looked closer, because once I got it home, I found there wasn't really a ton of stuff in this one to interest me.

A handful of interesting items, my favorite probably being the Imaginext crab in the bottom right corner here. We also have what looks to be some sort of Iron Man themed motorcycle, a Sportsmaster Happy Meal toy from the Batman: The Brave and the Bold line, and another Imaginext figure, this one some sort of medieval or caveman shaman or something.

There's this Robin from the Batman LEGO Happy Meal line, and a Toy Story alien (honestly Robin, this alien and that purple crab are probably the only real 'keeps' for me out of this bag... not really a win).

Some fun cassette finds... U2's "Rattle and Hum"is full of some great live performances, and KISS's "Creatures of the Night" I picked up for the cover art alone. I'm always on the lookout for Christmas cassettes with some personal meaning to them, and Chris Van Allsburg's "The Polar Express" read by William Hurt fits the bill NICELY.

A couple of nice Graphic Novel scores in a Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man digest "Spider-Man vs. Sandman and Venom" (maybe released around the time the 3rd Raimi film was out?) AAAND the first collected 'pocket book' of "Strangers in Paradise" by Terry Moore. I've never read SiP before, but I've heard people RAVE about how great it is, so I'm excited to give it a try.

You're going to start seeing a few more young-readers chapter books cropping up on the blog. I won't subject you to absolutely every purchase, but my reasons are twofold: I'm buying chapter books to read to my 6 and 4 year old sons. They REALLY like the Magic Treehouse books, and since I now know they'll sit and listen to a couple of chapters at a time (as long as there are a few illustrations peppered in from time to time) I've gone whole hog. The other reason is I like to track down books I loved as a kid myself. I was an avid reader and as soon as I learned I could read to myself for pleasure I never wanted to stop. Encyclopedia Brown books were a popular series with the kids I went to school with and I want to share these stories with my kids.

There was one final item this time around that I was pretty excited to bring home... and it's this guy right here. This is a Funko POP plush "Well Zombie" from The Walking Dead. Before their "Fabrikations" line Funko was putting out stuffed characters based on their POP designs. This fat fella is cleverly velcroed in the middle so he can be puled apart the same way he was on the TV show (probably one of 3 memorable moments for me from the "Herschel's farm period"). This guy was in a grab-bag with I-don't-even-know-what-else because this is from a while back and he was the only thing I was after.

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

Golden Books and Plastic Dinosaurs!

Alright so it's another fine edition of "Look What I Picked Up Sometime Last Year Everybody!" This post is going to be about a trip where I brought home a pile of Little Golden Books, some cassettes, and most importantly, some bizarre old plastic dinosaurs! Be sure to check those out at the end of the post! So let's get to it shall we? 

Before I delve into the LGBs, I'll point out I brought a couple of kids' chapter books home as well. The book on the left, The Christmas Tree That Ate My Mother, you might recognize from my 2014 Creepmas countdown extravaganza... if you read that. If not... well, there' this book about a mother-eating Christmas tree. And since I've been trying to track down Ramona books, I was delighted to find this old copy of Ramona the Brave with a Joanne Scribner cover! 

All right! I happen to be koo-koo for Little Golden books! The older the better honestly, and I found some oldies-but-goodies this time around for sure. First we have Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland. This is an awesome little book that focuses on just this one part of the story. Next we have The Lone Ranger Little Golden Book. I think I was most excited to find this particular book as it is really the only piece of vintage (antique?) Lone Ranger merchandise I now own. 

I was a little less excited (but still please) by these older Golden Books that I also brought home... an adaptation of Cinderella (A "Little Golden Activity Book" that once included paperdolls), Count to Ten, and Hi Ho! Three in a Row which sounds more inappropriate than it actually is. Trust me.

Finally, I was excited to find this very old copy of Hanna Barbera's Cindy Bear featuring Yogi Bear, and a not-a-Little-Golden-Book-but-just-as-exciting Mickey Mouse Club book, Goofy: Movie Star. Which was put out around the same time as the rest. 

As usual, I also picked a couple of old cassettes to bring home as well. This time around I brought home Billy Idol's self-titled album and U2's album, "War". Billy Idol's song "Hot in the City" always makes me laugh, especially when paired up with its video... the feel of the song is so NOT bad-ass. It just feels really old-fashioned to me... like a shoo-wop song or something... but then the video has Billy in usual fashion, snarling, punching holes in walls, stripping off his clothes, etc. It's all just so incongruous with the feel of the song itself. It feels like a song by Huey Lewis or Billy Joel or someone.

The only songs off of "War" that I'm really familiar with are "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years Day" and they're both pretty punchy, high-energy stomp-and-kick ind of songs... but they're probably waaay more political than I really want to dwell on.

Finally, there were these weird plastic dinosaurs! There were doubles of everyone, and two of the designs even look like really dinosaurs! I'm less interested in the brachiosaur or the dimetrodon however, and want to tell you how much I love "Opera singing but can't stand on my own" dinosaur, and "patient bulldog puppy with a spike-nose sitting" dinosaur. They are by far my favorite dinos in this pack.

So that's it! That's all I had on that particular trip. Some fun stuff by and large however! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!