A Package from the Trash Man!

You may have noticed by now that I have a habit of waiting waaay too long to thank people for stuff they've sent me. If you haven't noticed this, then you are about to notice. Maybe you're new here. 

So this post is going to be all about a package sent to me by my good friend Brian Farrell, otherwise known as the "Trash Man" curator of the Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture blog. He sends me stuff from time to time, and I return the favor from time to time. Let's dig in and see what he sent to me this time, shall we? 

First up, Brian and I try to help each other out as much as we can. Since he knows I don't frequent comic shops (there are none easily accessible in my area), and this Nebula MiniMate was a comic shop exclusive, I asked Brian if he would snag one for me if he could and save me the cost of going eBay-diving for it. As usual, Brian came through and really did me a solid. I am super appreciative, as this completed my GotG MiniMates collection.

My one complaint with this MiniMates line is that they made a duplicate Sakaar Trooper when they could have made the Collector, Korath, Corpsman Dey or even Nova Prime. There were several criminally overlooked characters that could have been packed in exclusively with Nebula. Oh well, at least the Sakaar Trooper is an army builder, so it works.

Also included was this View-MAster circa 1980-something, and some slides to view, starring none other than Toy Story, Knight Rider and the Muppets!!!

It would be weird if there were no collectors' cards included in a package from Brian, and he did NOT disappoint. I suspect very strongly that this Fright Flicks wax pack was hand-picked for me due to my absolute adoration of Pumpkinhead. I have not opened it. This is one of the wax packs that I will be keeping unopened and intact as an objet d'art.

I DID open the Marvel Universe Series II pack so I could see what characters I got. This series has always stood out in my mind due to some of the cards being illustrated beautifully by Arthur Adams. Thanos, Dr Doom, Speedball, and a battle between the Thing and the Hulk all have Mr. Adams's distinctive art on display.

Brian also knows of my weakness for Choose Your Own Adventure books. So he knew that Museum of the Living Dead, which is a "Plot-It-Yourself Horror Story" and Demons of the Deep which is a "Fighting Fantasy Gamebook" (Steve Jackson of Gurps and Munchkins fame???) would be right up my alley!

Also included were these issues of the (in my opinion) BEST Cloak and Dagger comic book series of all time: Strange Tales Featuring: Cloak & Dagger and Doctor Strange!!! This one even features Power Pack! Three more issues to put towards completing my run!

This Goodebumps-style book may not seem remarkable to you... but if you look closer you see there's just nothing right about this cover at all.

Gah, I bet it smells awful in there. 

Some of the absolute BEST and surprising items in the box were this Battle Beast, "Tarsier Tyrant" and this Monster in My Pocket, "Bigfoot". Both of these toy lines were ones I collected as a lad. Here you can see Tarsier Tyrant about to pimp-slap Bigfoot. 

He owes him money. 

But my absolute FAVORITE items above all else in the box were these three items right here. A 1988 issue of MAD magazine, featuring the California Raisins on the cover, the first California Raisins cassette "The California Raisins Sing the Hit Songs," and a "it-just-occured-to-me-how-weird-this-is-as-an-adult" pin-on button of the California Raisins all climbing into a hot tub together, that I actually owned as a kid. I am a HUGE California Raisins fan. There are few properties that I have such strong and clearly remembered nostalgia for the way I do for the C.R.'s. As a kid, I was obsessed.

So that was the entire package sent to me by the Trash Man, and as usual, he knows what makes me geek out. I wanted to send a proper thank you out to him, for being such a good friend on top of the cool swag.

Be sure to listen to us, along with our buddies Miss M of the Diary of a Dorkette blog, and Jason Roberts of the Nerdy Life of Mine blog on our fledgling podcast Eclectic Mayhem. At this point we're only a few episodes in, but we make up for it with pure insanity.

Well, that's all I've got for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies, so until then, Happy Hunting!

Another Package from Miss M!!!

I have a good friend, Miss M, whom I often podcast with (on both the Geek Fallout podcast and the Eclectic Mayhem podcast) whose blog, Diary of a Dorkette, is a MUST read, and with whom I also often exchange packages of pure FUN with on a semi-regular basis.

So another one of THOSE showed up a while ago, and in typical Goodwill Geek fashion, I have put off blogging about it for MUCH too long. So let's take a look at what Miss M sent my way, shall we?

First up there were some Star Wars toys included. The loose figure there is Zam Wessel, a shapeshifting bounty hunter whose right arm is removable as she gets it light-sabered off apparently? (Thanks Wookie-Pedia!) still on the card there is Jabba the Hutt lackey, Bib Fortuna! I freed him from his carbonite prison and quickly added him to my Star Wars shelf.

Here we have a Toothless and a Dragon trap from the series of toys put out to promote the second film (or the second film put out to promote the toys, depending on how cynical you feel like being...)

A few previous packages from Miss M had included X-Men characters that were missing some of the accessories. Miss M thoughtfully held onto these for me and included them here!

And finally, what I think are my absolute favorite items of the pack, this Miss Yvonne figure from the Pee-Wee's Playhouse line, and the Christmas card (this was meant to be a Christmas gift LAST YEAR... did I not mention that... since it is now MAY???) which definitely evokes Pee-Wee's Bicycle from the Pee-Wee's Big Adventure film. Miss Yvonne immediately started hanging off the shoulders of all the Masters of the Universe figures, which immediately made them all very uncomfortable, except for Prince Adam, who seemed to really get along well with her. 

Here's one last look at the box of pure FUN sent to me by Miss M! I want to make sure I send out a heartfelt THANK YOU to her, and make sure everybody knows what a great person and friend she is!

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

Giant Bots and Legs from Butts.

So here's a pile of loot from last fall or early last winter, sometime shortly after Thanksgiving, from a trip to the Brewer, ME store. It's a nice haul, and it's waited a while to finally be seen. So let's dig in! 

Right off the bat, I am ALWAYS on the lookout for these Napa Valley CD cases, because they so perfectly work as little knick-knack shelves to display toys in. So bringing home my THIRD case was pretty exciting. All of these are on my desk, facing me, so I make sure to put all my very favorite toys on them so I can look at them all the time.

I brought home a pretty big grab-bag too, so let's see what's inside.

Here are the contents, all piled together, and as you can see, there was a pretty diverse collection of good trapped in this bag, waiting to be set free.

First up a couple of Animaniacs toys. I like Animaniacs toys, don't get me wrong... but I'm not a huge fan of those weird, plastic accordion tubes that are holding these together. They're weird, and as a kid, any toys that had them attached would ALWAYS get stretched out too far and destroyed. So as much as I like the characters, I passed these along to a new home.

These are from 1993's "Makin' Movies" Happy Meal toy line. They weren't a licensed property, so this was just one of those McDonald brand sets of toys that I absolutely ADORE. I missed these as a kid, mainly (probably) due to the fact that I was 15 when these came out and was past caring about Happy Meal toys (for a while). But I can love them now. I do love them NOW.

There were four... FOUR of these Dr. Robotnik (or Dr. Eggman or whatever) Burger King toys in the bag. That is all I have to say about that, really.

These are quite possibly my two favorite items from the bag. The first one is "Rhino" (no not "Rhinox" apparently...) and despite not being even a LITTLE BIT of a a fan of Beast Wars Transformers, I have a ridiculous affection for all of the Happy Meal Beast Wars Transformers toys. It's true! I currently own three of them, and I have no idea who the heck they are, but they are all so impossibly awkward in their design that I can't help but love the ever-loving HECK out of them. THIS ROBOT SPROUTS ITS LEGS OUT THE BUTT OF A RHINOCEROS. Your argument is belong to us.

Ace Ventura: Beast Wars Edition

Beside that beautiful and artfully designed Transformer, I also found a Z-Bot in the bag! This fellow's name is Buzzsaw, and he is yet another one of the Z-Bots from Burger King, in other words: one of the 5 Z-Bots ever produced that I am actually interested in owning. (I have Turbine, Jawbreaker, Skyviper, and Buzzsaw here. I only need Bugeye to complete the quintet).

I so completely remember the first half of this commercial (before the Z-Bots are introduced)... it's downright creepy. 

Creepy Pocahontas head in a basket, like some weird Disney Native American version of SE7EN, and Phoebus from the Hunchback. The random Disney characters Happy Meal toys portion of our program is now complete.

Another HUGE highlight of the bag is this little guy right here. This is Doodle Bug. He's from the Glo Friends line that accompanied the Glo Worm line of toys, who all additionally starred in a cartoon. I used to have a Glo Worm. The original. The long green Mr. Hanky shaped toy from the 80's.

The guy on the... ri-- no the left. The guy on the left.

I LOVED MY GLO WORM. So much in fact that I was constantly running through batteries and in need of another glo-fix. It got bad man. But I got help. And now I'm the man I am today and I am not defined by my Glo-diction. Except now here's Doodle Bug. 

And I'm back to square one. 

I am a sucker for these wooden push-puppet toy things, especially when they are holiday themed. I didn't notice when I took the picture, but the black thing on its underarm is not a weird mole that needs attention. It's actually a crow that should have been flipped up the other way so it would be facing us.

Now for the books!

A couple of nice Thanksgiving themed books to read to my kids when the holiday rolls around.

I picked up this copy of Lloyd Alexander's The Black Cauldron specifically for the cover art. It is amazing. That's part of what convinced me to pick up Adventures in Time and Space as well, because I liked the cover art so much... but I also hope that one's a good read as well. I already know the Black Cauldron is a good read, as this is like... the 3rd copy I now own, and I've read it almost as many times.

These were both nice surprises. I have a long-time love of Garfield because of my childhood association with it. So finding a copy of the very first collection of Garfield strips was a must-have. The Batman digest is nice because if you flip it over, there's a Superman comic book on the other side! These are both done in the style of their respective animated TV serieses as well.

How can you lose when it's a Bugs Bunny Little Golden Book? You can't. That's how.

I never knew that the Iron Giant was a book by Ted Hughes and Dirk Zimmer before becoming one of my favorite animated films of all time.

However, the book has a MUCH different skew to it than the movie did. I much prefer the movie, I must say, but this is an interesting story too, In the book there is a monster that is giant even when compared to the Iron Giant. So there's that to deal with.

Finally, I found a couple of cassettes. These are some excellent, EXCELLENT cassettes to have found. Joe Cocker is f**king amazing. He just is. If you don't think so then you listen to music wrong. And the Eric Clapton edition of Unplugged is easily on of the best sessions to ever come out of the "Unplugged" concept. So... I was pretty happy to have found these.

Well! That was quite the journey, but we got through it together, and now it is time to rest our weary heads. So... that's all there is for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies. So, until that time Happy Hunting!

Another Trip to the Old Schoolhouse Antique Mall

There's an antique mall out in Brewer, ME that I've only dropped in on a couple of times now, and this post to follow reflects the second visit I've made out there. It's a fun place to check out once in awhile, as the stock doesn't really change frequently enough for me to make the trip out there more than maybe once or twice a year. But when I do, man the finds are fun! 

Here's a quick glimpse at everything I brought home from The Old Schoolhouse. But let's take a closer look, shall we?

First up, I already had a capeless version of this same Shadow action figure. But since this one HAS the cape, I couldn't pass it up, This is pretty much the one action figure from the line put out to support the 1994 Alec Baldwin film that actually just looks like the character without any weird bells or whistles. Would I love it if I had the pistols that go along with this shadowy hero? Yes I would. But at least now I have an action figure that represents the character as he should look.

This Miss Piggy in repose is a Benjamina Gunn Muppets Treasure Island Happy Meal toy from 1996. I love the look of this toy, and the colors are amazing. So far I have Piggy and Fozzie from this set, and I honestly wouldn't mind tracking down the rest. I made the mistake of finding and passing over a Gonzo toy from this same line about a year before this, and have been kicking myself ever since!

This little Green fellow is an "Outer Terrestrial Creature" toy produced by Marty Toys back in 1983. This guys name is "Mooky" and on top of being a bendy toy, he's preternaturally top-heavy due to a special "Somersault Action" that these toys had, which basically meant that if you toppled them over, they flipped. I absolutely ADORE weird old toy lines like the one Mooky here comes from. It's precisely these kinds of discoveries that keep me picking through old junk as a hobby.

This might not strike you as ridiculously exciting... but for me, finding this 1996 Burger King wind-up "Scud" toy from the original Toy Story movie was a dream come true. I've been eye-balling these things on eBay for years now, and all because I wanted a Scud toy of an approximately appropriate scale to display with my Toy Story Buddies collection:

And this Scud fits the bill perfectly. (P.S. If anyone has an extra Etch-a-Sketch with Chickenman, Snake-and-Robot 2-pack, or any mini toys of the mutant toys from the first film... contact me. There's only like 5 toys left that I want or need to finish this collection off).

I used to religiously track down the M&M tubes every Christmas JUST for the ornaments on top. I don't do it anymore because they don't really make them either a.) new every year... they just recucle old designs repeatedly... or b.) they don't make them at all. Couldn't spot any M&M ornament tubes at ALL this past year... -sob-. So finding this little brown M&M skier really made my day!!! I feel like the brown M&M's are seriously underrepresented in toy/ornament form, since the reds and yellows and greens are so much more festive... so this guy really stands out!

I am now 1/6th closer to having a complete set of Fisher Price Little People to represent each of the Village people. I could literally NOT be more excited than I am about this fact. Look at this guy! I apologize if this toy is seen as horrifically racist. I really do. But it came from a time when toys like this were beloved.

And I belove him.

Please don't hate me.

I am not afraid to admit that I adore Marge Simpson. Probably to an inappropriate degree. And disturbingly, there is a whole LOT of inappropriate material out there on the internet (please, for the love of all that is good... do NOT Google it, as some of it will just make you lose faith in humanity) to support a man with my kind of carnal cartoon lust. Fortunately, I don't need to go looking because my collection of Marge Simpsons toys is growing healthily, (can the jokes you pervs) thank you very much. I now proudly own two of the toys from this, the very first line of Burger King Kids Club premiums to feature the Simpsons.

There was also a handful of fun books to be had while I was picking around the Old Schoolhouse too! This Bugs Bunny's Adventures copyrighted from 1948 is practically an illustrated chapter book. I picked this up with a friend in mind.

I will never not buy illustrated adaptations of Garfield TV specials. This one is from Garfield On the Town, which was the second special to star Garfield. In this one, he meets his mother and the rest of his extended family, and learns to be (somewhat) thankful for the life he leads with Jon and Odie. If this was being produced today, you wouldn't see the cigarette butts on the ground near Garfield's feet. Just a random observation.

Have I mentioned my undying love for Punky Brewster on this blog before? I think I have. So finding a kids' book dedicated to one of her animated adventures (with Glomer in the mix!) would obviously be a Holy Grail for me. So I brought it home. 

So that's it for tonight kids, but I'll be back soon with Geeky Goodwill Goodies before you know it! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

A Package from Tintod!

So awhile back I set up a trade with the writer of one of my favorite blogs out there right now. Tintod of the Junk Fed blog fame! He and I are buddies on Instagram while also kind of knowing each other through the blogosphere. His blog is an amazing patchwork quilt of essays that reminisce and ruminate on different aspects of childhood and nostalgia. The posts on Junk Fed never fail to either touch my sense of sentimentality or make me think long and hard about how I see my own past. 

Great. Read. All around. 

Check Junk Fed out. 

So! Long story short, (too late) we set up a trade, Tintod and I. I'd like to share the sweet haul I received from him as a result. This is another case of a post long overdue, but better late than never. So let's take a look at what I got from him, shall we? 

First up, some shameless self-promotion on Tintod's part... but he's earned it. As you can see he's tossed in a couple of his business cards, promoting both his blog and his services as an illustrator. The guy is truly talented folks, so be sure to check out his work! 

On the backs of both the larger postcards is this ad for Tintod's "Space Madness" (click the link to check out Tintod's Store) custom action figure lineline:

A series that's had me drooling for some time now. But enough about how awesome Tintod is! Let's talk about how awesome Tintod's package is! (Wait...)

The whole trade was inspired by this Burger King Kid's Club Universal Monsters Frankenstein figure. This one completed my set of four! And funny thing is, all four of these guys came from online friends! 

(Dracula courtesy of Laura of Boobobby Blog, The Creature courtesy of Erik Johnson, Illustrator, and The Wolfman courtesy of Stacey Rader, the Geeky Vixen!) So now I have the complete creep quartet and I couldn't be happier! The trade extended waaay past ol' Frankie here though...

Tintod told me he wasn't sure if all the 150 pieces are here for this 10x14 jigsaw puzzle starring Evel Knievel and his Ring of Fire. But it doesn't matter either way, because he could have sent me the empty can and I would have been just as excited!

Next up we have this "The Fantastic World of D.C. Collins" VHS tape. I vaguely remember this film from my childhood, when the world was hitting the peak of its Gary Coleman FEVER. I'm not a VHS collector as many of my online friends are, but this one has a place of honor on my 80's shelf in the cave, alongside ones given to me by other blogging buddies. Any film starring "A Little Bitty Walter Mitty" has to be amazing.

Last but definitely not least, we have a Hotwheels Carvel Ice Cream Truck featuring Fudgie the Whale! Next to Frankenstein's Monster, this is probably the item that most tickled my fancy out of the whole lot. This baby was added to the wall of pop-culture Hotwheels IMMEDIATELY.

So here's a final peek at all of the contents of the box I received from sir Tintod, and I think you'll agree it was a fun bit of mail to receive indeed! Be sure to check out Tintod's blog, and be sure to listen to his recent appearance on the Nerd Lunch Podcast, where he waxes poetic about Doctor Who!

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