My stuff from Hake's Arrived!!!

So I may have mentioned in passing that I won a recent contest over at Cool & Collected. If not, let me explain: I won a contest for members of the League of Extraordinary Bloggers who participated in an imaginary shopping spree on Hake's Americana and Collectibles (Specifically Auction 209). The prize? Only a $100 shopping spree on Hake's web-site!!! Yeah boy!

Soon after finding out I won I giddily hopped over to the Hake's Americana and Collectibles web-site and started browsing. It did take me a little while to find things I was interested in among their for-sale stock. I didn't want to go the auction route, simply because I always like sure things more than maybe-things. I called Hake's with a list of item numbers, 4 in total, and spoke to the incredibly patient and helpful Heather.

This is not a picture of Heather. How would I even have that?
I think Heather would be upset if I did, honestly.

Brian had suggested I call in my order, so that was the route I went. I am a complete basket-case on the phone, and as I stuttered through my order convinced that I would be reported as some sort of "When a Stranger Calls" style serial killer at any moment. 

"No I haven't 'checked on the children' sir...
Could I please just have your next item number?"

After placing my order, this instantly appeared:

STUFF!

Just kidding! It took like 15 minutes. 

Delivered by this man.

Just kidding again! It was probably a couple of days. I don't remember. I was still in the fetal position after having to talk on the phone to another human being. 

Let's cut the attempts at self-deprecating humor (and horrifying truth) and look at what I ordered shall we? 

(I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality of the pictures. I have been assured that this makes my blog charming, rustic and original. Not crappy like I thought.)

First up is the Master's of the Universe glow-in-the-dark secret compartment ring. I have these bizarre, vague and hazy memories of owning one of these at some point during my childhood. I remember things like it being too big for my fingers... and probably ripping the lid off the base at some point. 

Image from Hake's site.

What I absolutely cannot remember is WHAT THIS CAME WITH. Can anyone help me? I desperately want to know what figure or figures had this ring included as an accessory. Had I not been spending my Hake's Free Money, this ring would have set me back 25 dollars. 

Next up is this Mr. Peanut key-chain/figurine. It's EXTREMELY hard (for me) to photograph. In this picture he looks like a semi-amorphous off-white silhouette of Mr. Peanut... but I assure you he has facial features and... stuff. 

This image is directly from the Hake's web-site.
You can kind of see his face better in this one.

If you didn't already know, I LOVE Mr. Peanut. So this purchase was a no-brainer. Had I been "shelling" out my own simoleons instead of buying it on Hake's dime, I would have "shelled" out 24 dollars. (Get it? Like peanut shells? Puns!)

Here he is next to Tiny Goodbite for scale (whom I am now HORRIFIED to realize is incredibly dusty. Don't look at him! DON"T LOOOOK! I never CLEEEEEEAN!!!). I I'm such a ridiculous push-over for old food mascot characters. I think I just love the idea of anthropomorphically animated food items (actually ANY items) to the point where I want to own them ALL.  

I also picked out this Alfred E. Neuman "What Me Worry?" pin from MAD magazine. I thought Dale would do a good job presenting this pin for the masses to appreciate. 

Image from Hake's site

As soon as I saw that iconic, gap-toothed grin I knew this pin MUST be mine. I would have had to lay down 10 cool dollars had Hake's not been picking up the tab. 

Last but certainly not least, I bought this set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles "Power Rings" distributed in Canada as a Nabisco Shreddies premium back in 1990. I am so freaking excited to own these! Canadians get all the cool toys! Had Hake's not been FOOTing the bill, I would have SHELLED out a 35 dollar sum for these rings (I know I already used shell above for Mr. Peanut, but it was too good to resist... plus a foot clan reference! Puns!)

Image from Hake's site.

These are a great, iconic set of characters from the original cartoon. My only complaint is that they should have done Bebop and Krang rings and rounded the set out to 10. Where Rocksteady goes, Bebop MUST follow. It's pretty much the same (to an admittedly lesser degree) with Shredder and Krang.  

Turtles! Turtles! Turtles!
Doesn't quite have the same ring as
Girls! Girls! Girls!

I don't know why I felt the need to pose the rings next to the characters that they represent... but I did, and therefore you get these lovely pictures to look at. 

I do love the classic April O'Neil design from the old cartoon, but I have to be honest about her ring: Without all the other mutant animal characters (and Shredder) she would just be a weird nebulous floating head ring of a brunette. It's not exactly my favorite ring. I think maybe they could have traded her for Bebop. (Sorry if I'm perseverating on this whole Bebop thing... but it really irks me, even more than Krang)

I'll let you decipher this one on your own.
I don't own a Riddler toy so the Joker stepped in to be Vanna.

Finally, I did not order this last button... Hake's threw it in for free with my order! They were already completely giving me a bunch of free stuff... and they just kept the free stuff coming!!! They really know how to treat a guy. I must not have creeped Heather out too much. 

"OH MY GOD STOP BREATHING HEAVY
AND JUST GIVE ME YOUR ZIP CODE!!!"

My entire order totalled out at 94 dollars. Heather then looked up the estimated shipping and told me that it would be exactly 6 dollars. This meant that everything, EVEN MY SHIPPING (down to the last cent!) was included in the credit I had won! Heather was all: "How on Earth did you do that?"
And I was all:

"I'm just really good at maths and whatnot."

So this is the m entire haul from Hake's!!!

I want to say once more how incredibly thankful I am to both Hake's Americana and Collectibles for the prize money, and to Brian from Cool and Collected for running the League of Extraordinary Bloggers, and for making great connections with sites like Hake's. I genuinely enjoyed browsing through Hake's stock and dreaming of the things I would buy with unlimited moneys. Hake's has some truly amazing things for sale!

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

League of Extraordinary Bloggers: First Time

Welcome to another League of Extraordinary Bloggers post! What's the topic this week? Let's have a look shall we? 

It feels like the first time… 

Write about your first experience with something. 

I believe it would have been late 1985. That would have made me 7 years old at the time. I was at a birthday party being held for a kid I didn't like very much... but our Mom's were friends, so it was a sort of obligation to attend. At 7 I didn't really care one way or another I guess, as long as I got some cake and some party favors... But I just REALLY didn't like the kid who's party we were at. 

I hope your f**king Birthday cake sets your
f**king face on fire you a**hole.

I was ready to write the entire party off as a loss until we got to go sit at the table to watch him open his presents (I remember he got a Prince Dargon with Dragonflyer which I was insanely jealous about. A**HOLE!!!) and on the table there were these wax-wrapped packages of trading cards: 

This and ALL other GPK images in this post are from Baron Aaron's GPKWorld site.
He has an incredible archive of GPK and you should check it out.
Click on any of his pictures to go there.

Garbage Pail Kids!!! 

This was the very first time I had ever even HEARD of GPK, much less actually laid hands upon them. The kids around the table all seemed to know all about these things already, so I was the only one who was struck dumb by the cards inside:

     

I remember them well. These five images were my very first introduction to Garbage Pail kids. CYClops, DOUG Plug, Brainy BRIAN, JANET Planet, and Bad Breath SETH. 

      

Out of all the GPK's I would eventually own, these 5 stand out as my very FIRST. I was immediately struck by how detailed the artwork was. At 7 years old I thought these were almost eerily beautiful (although I wouldn't have had those owrds in my vocabulary to describe them). And looking at them subjectively as an adult, I honestly do find the artwork kind of beautiful. The artistry is there. You can tell artist John Pound put a lot of love into each piece. 

From those hideous wrinkle's around Seth's mouth there, or the multi-colored shading on Janet's skin... can you blame me for falling in love at first sight? After that birthday party, I would walk a couple of blocks down to the local convenience store any time I found enough loose change to buy another pack. I remember tearing those packages open on the way home and poring over every detail carefully, almost trying to memorize every character's features. I never had binders and card sheets to keep them protected in (and probably wouldn't have done so even if I had them...) but I did keep them in one of these:

An old zipper bank bag that my grandmother gave me to keep them in. I lugged that thing around everywhere!

And so started a life-long romance with GPK, from:

I've talked a bit in the past about how much I love this little guy. 

"Garbage Pail Kids Cheap toys with Crummy Candy" to:

         

The Garbage Pail Kids movie!!! And there was a magazine they put out that I ALSO dragged around EVERYWHERE when it came out. I LOVED this movie and the magazine when I was a kid!!!

And of course Garbage Pail Kids were simply a gateway item... leading to obsessions with things like:

MadBalls! (those Characters from Cleveland were another HUGE love of mine as a kid) And... 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (The weirder and grosser the villains were, the better in my opinion, and Play-Mates was feeding that need!). And it indirectly got me started on the path to comic books by getting me interested in magazines like: 

          

Cracked and MAD!!!

So it's pretty obvious that the Garbage Pail Kids had a pretty heavy influence on my development after that first exposure. 

Let's see what the rest of the League is Blogging about!

- Chrisloc1701 from Random Nerdness takes us on a tour of his first memories of the Happiest Place on Earth!

- GI Jigsaw shares TWO incredibly cool memories. First trips to two of the most formative locations in ANY self-respecting geek's life. I love his choices!

- But I think Erik Johnson, Illustrator shares some of the most personal and beautiful "firsts" so far.

- The Trash Man over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture features an old comic that I WANT. 

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

Goodwill Graphic Content: Old 80's (and Early 90's) Comics!!!

Hey there Goodwill Geek fans! Today I want to feature some comic books I picked up a while back. First up is the three issue run of the first appearance of the "New Fantastic Four"!

This was published back in 1990, and featured the original Fantastic Four being taken out by a particularly wiley, telepathic Skrull chick who sneaks into the Baxter building and picks them all off one by one. I remember looking at the issues in stores when it came out, and desperately loving the idea and WANTING this story, but I never actually buying any of the issues. Then lo and behold, I find all three of the issues tucked in with the kids books at Goodwill just a few weeks ago for .99 cents apiece. I'll tkae it for .99 cents! I've paid more for sooo much less, comic book-wise. 

They even got their own "rookie" card!

Of course upon reading this mini-event at home, I was struck by some observations: The story is... not... good. The humor is... not... humorous. The characters do... not... come off as cool together. And the Art Adams art? Kind of... garbled and... confusing in places. I was genuinely disappointed. But I feel like I own a coveted piece of comic book history, even if it's just because I REALLY wanted these issues as a youngin'. 

The next two sets of comics I picked up at a thrift store in Ellsworth, ME called Nice Twice. They have a small corner dvoted to piles of children's ephemera, including toys, books, and sometimes comics. I felt like a handful of issues based on some 80's toys properties were worth the .50 cents apiece they were asking. I was never a Centurions fan, and these comics haven't really changed my mind. What I remember from when I was a kid was that the figures all seemed really awkward and clunky, and had all these little pieces to lose. I remember the villain looking kind of weird and... wide? I guess? Like he'd be really easy to push over. 

Can we fight later?
I just really need to... lean... right now.

Again, these comics did nothing to disabuse this notion. Still, a fun set of old 80's comics based on toys... who can complain? 

I was 100% sure I had never heard of AniMax before the day I found these comic books. The comics were completely INSANE and the character designs were just amazing. I just didn't remember this toy line one bit. Then I did some research online and found this:

Images courtesy of: melbirnkrant.com 

And suddenly some bells started ringing. I never owned a single one of these toys but I think I remember the commercials for them or something. I KNOW I would have LOVED a set of the villain action figures. I was never a serious vehicle collector as a kid, and that's probably why this collection eluded me. 

The real fun began as I started flipping through the books to look at the old ads included. Here's a couple of back-cover ads for Popples. I never wanted a Popple myself but absolutely every little girl my age that I knew had one. 

Remember Bonkers? I do! I would BEG for these things every time we went to the grocery store. Know how many times I got them? Exactly zero times. Zero. I never got any. Yeah. And then on the right side there we have an ad for the Kideo TV series of cartoons, all based on American Greetings properties. I remember seeing exaclty ONE of these cartoons: The Get Along Gang, which I LOVED. 

Here are some ads for Lazer Tag and the Madballs comic book. Two of the most ubiquitous properties of the 80's here immortalized in comic book form. I was such a Mad-Ball zombie that I owned ALL the comics, a LOT of the Madballs, and then the complete set of Madballs action figures and the Madball Roller-Cycle. I didn't own lazer-tag but DESPERATELY wanted to. 

 

Here are some great comic-strip style advertisements starring Spider-Man v.s the Soggies for Cap'N Crunch, and Gumbi and Pokey for Brach's lollipops. In the same vein as the famous Hostess ads starring ridiculous villains just crazy for pie, these tell some semi-exciting stories involving famous characters and food. 

I loved Madballs but was TERRIFIED of the Ugly Balls in this print ad. You could get one mail-order from Bonkers candy. And The Flintstones kids!!! Check out all of the semi-mediocre crap you could get back then that had the Flintstones on it!!!

I do not remember a movie called Thrashin' featuring Josh Brolin. But I wish I had LIVED it. It looks amazing. And oh my heavens STRIPED Chips Ahoy! I DO remember those. 

And finally a couple of fun ads depicting the 80's social scene. This geeky kid is getting all KINDS of tail thanks to his... model car kits? I'm... I'm not sure about that. That can't be right can it? And there on the right is an OXY ad featuring teenagers so disfigured by acne that they cannot show their faces in public. Plus a couple of new Webster's terms for the types of acne they are suffering from. 

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