My Trip to the Belfast ME Goodwill, Memorial Day Weekend

So over the Memorial Day Weekend, my family and I took a trip out to Belfast, ME. This is where one of my favorite Goodwills in all of Maine resides. 

I'll be honest, this wasn't my most productive visit to the Belfast Goodwill, and considering the length of the trip out there, that was a bit of a disappointment. I didn't find any toys that really got me all that excited, but I did find a couple of game items that were pretty fun... and the rest of my finds were mostly book related. (It occurs to me now that this was not the most compelling way to sell this post and keep you reading on the edge of your seat. But... let's take a look anyway. 

I found this adaptation of RAMBO First Blood Part II for .99 cents... which to be honest, I'm questioning why I even brought it home. I think I just get excited any time I find movie adaptations nowadays... and this felt like it shouldn't be left behind. I've never seen a Rambo film in my life... nor am I really interested in seeing one. But here we are. 

I was completely surprised when I pulled this "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" off the shelf... and ecstatic! I've always wanted to break into the old-school Disney comics stories that the Duck Tales series were drawn from, and I hear that this volume is not only an excellent entry point... but an excellent book in and of itself. I paid 1.99 for this collected edition from Gemstone! 

A couple of great Choose Your Own adventure books! I seriously doubt I'll read through Playoff Champion... but I'm a collector so you know... gotta have! Heh... heh. But Beyond the Great Wall? I'll give that one a test-drive for sure!

More CYOA! This time the Mystery of Chimney Rock, which looks excellent, and old-school... and a "Find Your Fate Adventure" starring none other than Indiana Jones in the Lost Treasure of Sheba. Indy in a CYOA (style) book!!! I'm on a roll with the licensed gaming books baby! Especially since I found that Star Trek Which Way book last Payday Friday!

And closing out the CYOA craziness are these two "Dragonlark" Choose Your Own Adventure Books, Your Very Own Robot, and Indian Trail which are much more recent books and contain full-color illustrations. At first I was going to turn my nose up at these Dragonlark books, but I've actually found them to be pretty fun. All of my CYOA finds were .99 cents apiece.

Also .99 cents apiece were these three Little Golden Books. A couple of Richard Scarry classics in Duck and His Friends and Chipmunk's ABC. I was kind of a sucker for Raggedy Ann and Andy as a kid so I also snapped up this copy of Five Birthdays in a Row. Blame it on the nostalgia, blame it on obsession, or even blame it on the shiny spines I guess... but my LGB collection just keeps growing and growing.

Random assortment of other things here, the most exciting for me being The Count's Number Parade which is yet another old Sesame Street book I didn't already own. The Nestle Nesquik "It's Legendary" comic was put out by DC and was apparently a free giveaway at Wal-Mart in 2012. It's a truly bizarre little story involving an airship driven by anthropomorphic milk cartons and the Quik Bunny. They get attacked by sour milk air pirates. Garfield's Scary Tales is a book I may already own in paperback, but I couldn't pass up a hardcover copy of it either way. 

I can't figure out exactly how old this Snoopy and Friends Sticker Album is... because all of the trademark info inside it is from the 60's. But my guess is that its actually from the 80's? Not sure. Either way, I've done some soul-searching recently and I've discovered something: I'm really not a Snoopy fan. Not a Peanuts fan in general. Nope. They just don't do it for me. I know that's the nearest to sacrilege a geek can get... But they just don't do it for me. "Why did you buy this thing then?" You may ask... and I will tell you I may not be a fan of Charlie Brown and co... But I AM a sticker album fan. I miss these things! I can't find anything like these out in stores anymore! I used to have about a half-dozen of them as a kid. I'd love to have a couple for my boys to keep stickers in. They must be out there somewhere, right? Specialty shops, or craft stores, or educational toy stores or some other nonsense... I'll keep my eyes peeled. 

One of my absolute FAVORITE finds of this trip: Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future which is a sort of storybook/novelization of the TV movie of the same name that kicked off the old TV series starring the Titular Max Headroom. I was a big fan of Max when I was a kid. LOVED him. I was much more aware of him as an advertising mascot than as a sci-fi A.I. character... but that was enough for me. This was one of the few finds I made at the Belfast Goodwill where I gasped a little when I picked it up.

Next up we have this USA for Africa "We Are The World" 45. 

This single came out in 1985 and I remember hearing it A LOT. It brings me crashing back into my childhood in a big way. For those of you who may not know what the deal with this is... it was this incredible collaboration between a WHOLE LOT of artists including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, and most of the Jackson family, just to name a handful. Even actor Dan Aykroyd pitched in and sang. It was all in an effort to raise money for African famine relief. It was most notable though for being a crossover of talent so huge that it has since only been rivalled by the Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue anti-drugs special. Yeah. It's that big.

I almost left this package of Hildebrandt Brothers art collectors cards behind. But I honestly really like these cards, and I had a bunch of them back in the 90's when they were originally released. Plus anything with a pink tag on it was half off! So I got these for .99 cents. 

I wasn't disappointed! There's a lot of really fun art featured in these sets. There are a couple of different serieses mixed together in this pile but they're all from the Hildebrants. Really love the giant cat-whale thing in the front-most card there. Also pictured are some Star Wars, Ravenloft, and Greek Mythology artwork. 

My son actually discovered these Shirttails ball-in-the-hole puzzle/game things in the package. I have no idea if these are actually vintage or not, (the packaging seems to sort of indicate not...) but since they feature an assortment of characters from a show I really enjoyed as a kid... it didn't matter to me one bit either way. Which leads to to the final and most exciting find of the day... this "board" game: 

Hangman from Milton Bradley, circa 1976! And look who graces the cover of the box with his spooky presence! Vincent Price!!! I have literally not even untaped the cover of the box to check the contents. That is how much I love this box art. I would have bought the box empty. There's a commercial on youtube starring Mr. Price himself, that is embedding disabled... but you should check it out here.

Look at this sinisterly smarmy man. Look deep into those confidently creepy eyes. He wants to see you dancing on air... swaying in the breeze. 

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

Goodwill Geek Mailbag: A Package from Steph at Nerdjoy!

So... I recently set up a trade with Steph over at Nerdjoy! She had seen some toys on the blog that she liked and I told her I was willing to part with them if we could send each other a small package of items apiece. This is how I like trading. It lets people surprise me, and it lets me surprise them. I LOVE surprising packages in the mail. 

Arthur! That's a Disney Princess you're back-handing! Honestly!

So this showed up and knocked my socks off! Let us explore this box (which just so happens to be a Loot-crate box! Ha!) in greater detail. 

I expected a spring-loaded snake to pop out of the tin. I don't know if I was relieved or disappointed. 

First up we have a couple of Star Wars-themed items. A Boba Fett PEZ dispenser, which hits me with the one-two of Boba Fett and PEZ... both of which pull at my heart strings. Second there was this AWEOSOME tin that contains a New Hope digital wristwatch. This thing makes me think of the watches I used to wear when I was a kid, that made my wrist sweat like crazy but made me feel like I was SO GROWN UP. I never fastened them very tight because I sucked at buckles and so I would slip my hand out of the wrist-strap without undoing it. At that age it wasn't about wearing a watch to tell time... it was about wearing a watch you could constantly take off and put back on because of course that's what they were for. Until you lost it. 

I have nothing funny to say. I'm so terribly sorry. So ashamed.

Here was have some awesome figures. A LEGO Joker Happy Meal toy, a bendy Pokey the horse, and an Arthur figure from the Tick action figure line. Can these two sidekicks take on the clown prince of brick-crime??? Stay tuned Geek fans! (I will probably not pursue this, so you don't really need to stay tuned.) 

I've lost my gift for gab. Don't even pay attention to these captions anymore. SOB.

Steph warned me that she might lay some girly toys on me... but this is as bad as it got. And I have to say, I'm not that put off by this Snow White figurine from McDonald's because now my Evil Queen has someone to hunt down and tear the heart out of... or poison... or whatever. I'm definitely not a huge Beanie Baby collector so this froggie friend will probably be headed on to another home... but let's all take a moment to swim in the cute, sad, and slightly derpy pools that are this frog's eyes. 

Something about dinosaurs... or monsters... made of rubber... I've got nothing. I'm so depressed.

Finally, we have the three items I definitely place on a pedestal above all the other items that came in this package. The little frilled lizard/dino figure is AWESOME, and though I can't find any Jurassic park markings on it, it makes me think of the spitting dino that takes out Wayne Knight. Then of course there's the rubber finger-puppet guy who reeks of cheap rubber and childhood. I LOVE THOSE THINGS!!! And finally Steph sent me a figurine of RODAN MOTHERF**KER!!! RODAN!!! I am really digging all things giant-monster lately, and this beautiful little guy from the 1994 Trendmasters line is right up my alley! 

I had such a great time setting up this trade and then seeing what showed up when the package arrived! Steph has an incredible blog over at Nerdjoy  where she explores not only fashion trends inspired by her favorite geeky-properties... but enough cool stuff to have any fan from any fandom drooling over her collections and general outlook on geek-culture. Be sure to check out Nerdjoy! 

That's all I've got for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

League Post: Shelf Expression!!!

It's once more League of Extraordinary Bloggers time again!!! And what pray tell is our topic this week you may ask? Well ask and I shall answer!!!

It's pretty cut and dry this time around kids, Brian occasionally sets photography challenges for those of us that blog for the League, and this week I wanted to encapsulate my ENTIRE collector's sensibilities in one arranged shelf photograph. So of course I went with a 4-tiered knick-knack shelf. Take a look:

I'm hard pressed to find a property that I enjoy not somehow represented here. Sift through this chaotic mess and you will find shreds of my childhood mixed with things beloved by my inner child of today. Cartoons, advertising mascots, comic book characters, horror icons, and toys just for the sake of toys are all included in this menagerie. I took this one all-in-one-shot shot but I also took break down shots of each individual shelf in the 4 levels of my brain right here in display. Thought about talking all of this to DEATH... but I think I'll just let all of the images speak for themselves from here on out. 

Let's take a peak-see at some of the other League members' Shelf-Expression, shall we?

- Nerdy Life of Mine

- Revenge of the Toy Box

- Cool & Collected

- Stunt Zombie

- Erik Johnson Illustrator

- Midnight Monster Spookshow

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

Goodwill Geek Mailbag: A Package from Miss M!!!

Long overdue is my reporting on this wonderful piece of mail that I received... a package from my good friend Miss M over at Diary of a Dorkette!!! Miss M and I have both recently begun podcasting with Geek Fallout, which is a part of the Atomic Geeks Network. SO I get to talk to her a lot more now and she never fails to impress! We've also been package-pals (not as dirty as it sounds) for a while now, sending boxes back and forth filled with lots of awesome goodies we think the other may enjoy. So I was pretty ecstatic when this showed up: 

Be careful. This box may melt your face off Arc-of-the-Covenant-Style. But let's throw on our sunglasses and check out what she sent me anyway... 'kay?

Let's start with this koosh yo-yo thing that straps to your wrist. I threw this on, grabbed my hackey-sack, got a bandana on my australian shepard and went to the park to toss him a frisbee... because that is my lifestyle. No. Actually, I pretty much spent a good half-hour wanging this koosh ball around my cave and knocking random sh*t over. Most. Exciting. Half-hour. That room. Has seen. And a TMNT skateboard and ramp set from McDonalds!

A hot piece of brother and sister action! Wait... No. First we have Johnny Storm from the 2008 Marvel Legends Ares BAF line. And a Jessica Alba as Sue Storm action figure that, funny enough, is the same one I bought for my daughter when the movie came out back in 2005. They look pretty rad together right?

Next up is this set of Men In Black Burger King toys from 1998. The set on the left is pretty disgusting actually. You fit the little guy with the green goo INSIDE the big blue guy. Yeah. And then there's the hangar looking thing with the peek-a-boo creature poppin out the top. Creeper. 

Miss M knows I like a good, goofy food mascot toy... and these guys for Sonic, called "Brown Bag Juniors" are right up my alley! I don't have a Sonic around where I live, so these are a great get! I do want to mention that Sonic could have stepped up their game a little and come up with a better mascot than a brown paper bag. Honestly Sonic. 

Some miscellaneous fast food vehicles. One pull-back, one dump truck that becomes a horrific open-mawed monster, and a race car that, less threateningly, becomes a pen. 

Random handful of action figures. The original puffy-faced Batman action figure from the 1989 film, and a couple of Happy Meal toys, including a Beast Wars Transformer and a Small Soldier. 

Some toys from Bobby's World! Howie Mandel's 90's kid's show got a set of Happy Meal toys that showcased different fantasies of Bobby's being lived out, as his wagon transforms into a racecar and his pool toy becomes a sub.

Miss M also knows I like me some creepy creepy... turkey jokes? There's a LOT of eclectic reading material in this pile... from ghost stories to... talking turkey..?  Miss M knows that I like me some creepy short story anthologies, and holiday books!

Two of my FAVORITE items in this whole package are these Jack in the Box mascot "Jack" toys. My brain melted a little bit when I pulled these out and beheld them. There isn't a Jack in the Box restaurant anywhere near here... and I absolutely ADORE their ad campaigns. The character of Jack is irreverent, only very mildly creepy, and always unexpected. Being able to add these to my shelf of fast food ephemera is a real treat!

Next up is this trio of Toy Biz X-Men from the mid 90's. Captive Sabretooth, Weapon X Wolverine, and Mutant Armor Beast. Once you get out of the first two waves of the X-Men action figures from Toy Biz I started to lose a bit of interest... I do appreciate the insanity of lines like the Mutant Armor subset though, and the details on both Sabretooth and Wolvie are pretty great though! What really got me squealing though was these:

Toy Biz Storm and Magneto from the very first wave of X-Men figures! I FLIPPED OUT when I realized Miss M had bestowed these action figures upon me!!! Storm was one of a very small handful of female action figures I owned as a kid, and I treasured her for it! Magneto was never really an A-list villain when I became familiar with the X-Men as a kid. He was just sort of easing out of his position as Headmaster at the New Mutants school and taking his place as a member of the Hellfire club... but he wasn't really doing much villainy at the time. Even Emma Frost was starting to lighten up a bit by this point. And by the time he became the leader of the Acolytes I wasn't as faithful to the main X-books as I once had been. But as an adult I have developed a true love for all things Magneto, and I was astounded to have this old fave back in hand. But then I pulled this out of the box: 

Pure. Sex. In black leather. Longshot!!! This is a Marvel Legends figure from 2006, and it features one of my all-time favorite X-Men characters, Longshot! Longshot is from "my" X-Men. When Inferno was starting out, and I was discovering the X-Men for the first time, the entire world believed them dead, they were invisible to all electronic means of detection, and they had a home-base in Australia that they had taken over from the cyborg Reavers. Longshot was a member of the team alongside Dazzler, Rogue, Storm, Colossus, Havok, Wolverine, and Psylocke (who was still a purple haired british woman at the time, not an Asian ninja sex-doll).  Longshot left the team shortly after, and was not heard from again for a very long time, but he brought plenty of mythos to the table, introducing the X-Men to a couple of their weirdest and yet enduring villains: Mojo and Spiral. 

I can't thank Miss M enough for this spectacular package!!! I always appreciate getting neat toys in the mail from good friends, and Miss M is definitely that. Don't forget to check us out over at Geek Fallout, with our other good friend Brian, the Trash Man from Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture, and the regular hosts, Chris, Evan, and Rich! 

That's all I've got for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Payday Friday: Goodwill Finds!

So payday Friday happened on May 23rd. For those of you not "in the know" I almost always stop off at Goodwill on my way home on Payday Fridays. (I also stop off on non-payday Fridays, some Wednesdays, sometimes Saturdays, and any other day of the week... given the opportunity.) Here's a look at what I picked up on my way home from work when I stopped off at Goodwill:

Some books (there's ALWAYS books...) but also a couple of semi-fun grab-bags this time around. All of the books in this post cost me .99 cent apiece. Let's take a closer look shall we?

First up from the kid's book department we have The DUNE Storybook from 1984. I have a terrible confession to make: I have never seen this movie! I have STILL not read the book/s and I ONLY picked this book up because I knew it was from the 80's and I couldn't just leave it there. But I WILL see this movie... I just don't know how soon. Then we have a Little Golden Book that I very distinctly remember owning when I was a kid, Tweety Plays Catch the Puddy Tat, which obviously starred Sylvester and Tweety. It was memorable for this moment: 

Which TERRIFIED me. I also distinctly recall wondering why the witch's skin was green but the nose was ruddy pink. Also, I know Tweety is a bird, and is only pretending to be a witch here, but how exactly is he flying? 

Next up a couple of fun CYOA finds... first up, the very first Choose Your Own Adventure story: The Cave of Time albeit the 19th printing. I don't mind though this copy is from 1986 and will still play through just as well in its 19th printing as its first. I would like to find one with the original cover artwork at some point, but again, that's not really all that important to me. And even though I'm not much of a Star Trek fan, I can't hide the fact that I TOTALLY GEEKED OUT when I found this "Which Way Book" starring the crew of the Enterprise in Voyage to Adventure. 

The first of my two grab-bags cost me 1.99 and only had these two items in them. But they're enough! These are toys from Safari Ltd, one of those toy companies that specializes in solid plastic figures in lines such as dinosaurs, jungle animals, and fantasy creatures. Here we have their example of a griffin and a "lucky dragon" which looks endlessly familiar... Anyway, these types of toys usually run for around 10 to 15 dollars... so getting these for about a buck apiece is pretty awesome. 

Ironically, the next grab-bag had way more in it, and only cost me .99 cents. I'm going to completely ignore the Little People furniture, because it's not of the type I collect, the Kung-Fu panda toy because I already own it, and the orange maraca. Let's focus on the other stuff. 

I have already owned two of these Oscar the Grouch Garbage 'Delivery' trucks in the past, and sent one of those off to a buddy. Still, I'm glad to bring another one home. I'll be finding him a good owner in the near future, I'm sure. The blue and pink fellow next to him is a Moosel figure from the Wuzzles line back in 1985. I really liked the wuzzles as a kid, but I never owned any of the toys, so this is a sort of retroactive geek-out. 

The other two items of note from this particular grab-bag are Finn from the recent Adventure Time McDonald's Happy Meals premiums, and Gary from Spongebob, also a Happy Meal toy, from back in 2012. I wanted to get more of the Adventure Time toys when they came out, but I only ended up with a couple of them. I'm still on the look-out for a bendy Jake figure too. Getting to add this sword-wielding Fin to my collection is the next best thing. I am a pretty big fan of Spongebob, regardless of how much people seem to have grown tired of it. I still find the show funny, classic-yet-innovative, and mind-bending. Spongebob is one of the forebears of the entire trend of cool animated shows (like Adventure Time!) that we see nowadays, and I appreciate him for it. This is a roller-blading Gary with a sweat-band... so I'm pretty pleased. 

My final find of the day was this old Monopoly game from 1946 or so (had to do some research online for this one). I am NOT a huge Monopoly fan, but the siren call of this ancient boardgame would just not be ignored. I actually paid 6.99 for this, which is the most I've paid for any one thing at Goodwill in a very long time. 

I examined it in the store and yet didn't notice that the game-board itself was not included. Don't know how I overlooked that. I think this was one of those rare occasions that I tricked myself into thinking I was buying something that was "worth something" other than to just myself. This is the sort of thing that ALWAYS happens when I let this type of thinking influence my buying at Goodwill. I still really like the fact that I have such an old edition of the game, but I don't think I'm going to hang onto it for long. You can see this old version of the game came with wooden character pawns instead of the metal ones we use today (this is legit, these are not just random pieces someone included in the game before donating it... Research.) I think the jade-green dice included are from some other game, but other than the dice and THE BOARD ITSELF, this game is pretty neat and complete. 

Well, that's it for now kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! So until then, Happy Hunting!