Another Trip to the Dreamcatcher Antique Mall

So, I made yet another trip to the Dreamcatcher Antiques Mall recently, and I came out with a handful of fun items:

Here's a look at the entire haul, but let's break it down piece by piece, shall we? 

First up I have this 1989 Bumblebee Transformer. He was either a part of the Pretenders line of the Legends line of that ear, according to the Transformers Wiki. Bumblebee was actually one of my favorite characters on the show as a kid. The odd characters were always my favorites on any show... it was the soldier and warriors and tough guys that didn't really appeal to me at that age. 

Here he is in car mode. Apparently all I'm missing now is the gigantic gun turret that you usually find innocuously installed on the roof of most Volkswagen Beetles. (Man, does he NEED a good cleaning)

Meet Becky. Becky is a Fisher Price Adventure Person... and a total hottie. She is a scuba diver. I get really distracted when Becky's around. Becky is also the name of my Aunt. So... that got weird fast. I absolutely LOVE the Fisher Price Adventure People line. I only owned one as a kid because they were a little bit before my time (I had the X-Ray Man figure) but I really appreciate the design and simplicity of these little folk as an adult collector. 

Next up is what I thought at first was a Hotwheels Batmobile from the Tim Burton movie... but I was mistaken. This baby is solid rubber! It was released in 1992 to support the Batman Returns movie, and was produced by Applause... you know... the guys who made all those PVC figures with the thick, rubbery paint? They did everything from the California Raisins to Sesame Street to Disney's Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers (can you tell I'm looking around my cave trying to think of figurines Applause produced?) To me, this just makes this thing that much cooler! The wheels are on pins and do actually roll, so this isn't just a solid hunk of rubber. Bumblebee, Becky, and the Batmobile up there all cost me just one American Dollar as a GROUP!!! They were all in a .50 cent bin but the guy at the register just grunted and charged me buy 2 get 1 free. Boy what a momentous occasion in my life! 

The star of this shot is the TSR PVC Bugbear figure standing front and center. I just wanted to include Warduke and Strongheart because they are the only other TSR toys from the 80's I own. Strongheart I bought in a grab-bag at Goodwill a long while back... and Warduke was a very recent gift from my wife's cousin's husband, who actually won him from the Garage Sale of awesome. Anyway... the Bugbear's supposed to be the star of the show here, so let's focus on him. I'm still not totally clear if the action figures and the PVC monsters were all meant to be part of the same toy line... but now that I know of their existence... I may be tracking more of these down. He was three dollars on his own. 

And finally, I brought home this Vampire the Masquerade players guide... which I already own. But it was only five dollars, and I have an idea of where this might be headed, so I snapped it up. All of the items you see here cost me just a hair under 9 dollars. There were two other items that I'm not revealing because I bought them as a surprise gift for a friend, and those brought my total up to 15 dollars. 

That's all I have for today kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting. 

Another Trip to Dreamcatcher (From Last November Actually)

Do you ever lose pictures on your hard-drive and just completely forget about them? I do. I do a lot actually. And that is how I forgot to post about a trip I made to the Dream Catcher Antique Mall last November, and it's a real shame too. I found some AWESOME stuff on this trip. But instead of just letting it be a shame, I decided to go ahead and talk about it anyway! So let's hop into the wayback machine and check it out shall we? 

I don't remember the prices I paid for anything at this point... but I know I got a pretty good deal on these two Fisher Price Adventure People from the early 80's. These fellas are, from left to right, Clawtron and Brainoid. I can honestly tell you that I LOVE the Adventure People line, even the standard "civilian" type characters... but ESPECIALLY these trippy Star Wars knock-off characters.

I wanted to get a bit more of a close-up of Brainoid's... well... brain here. I discovered that he is incredibly hard to photograph clearly, and this was the best I could do. The brain sort of rattles around in the helmet if you shake it, but not completely, as it is attached to a loose peg that allows it to move without letting it go completely crazy. I am hard pressed to tell you about another action figure as old and as awesome as this one. I am completely in love with this guy! 

Similarly goofy and gorgeous is this green bendy alien character! His name is Hondu and he is from "The Other World" line of toys from Arco back in the early 80's. This picture of him is just terrible and believe it or not, this is after I tweaked the colors a bit to make him not-quite so luminescent. (You can see him a little better in the group shot at the end). I love Hondu and I really like The Other World Toyline. It never fails. Just when I think I know all about all the different, weird, out-there action figure lines of days past... something like this pops up and reminds me of my ignorance. 

This familiar looking fellow is a 1994 Alien Vs. Predator 2-pack figure. He originally came with a PRedator to face off against. Up to this point I had not had a nice iconic-looking basic Xenomorph to put on my shelves. I really like the look of this toy, from the sculpt and detail down to the pose. He's actually not super poseable, as him limbs are all angled to pretty much just let him stand in one position. You can see from the photo that he desperately needed a good cleaning as well. Overall he makes an awesome addition to my monster shelf.

And finally, I picked up a couple of great Little Golden Books! Big Bird's Red Book and Mrs. Brisby and the Magic Stone! I owned the Big Bird book as a kid, and I was thrilled to find a copy of it out and about! The illustrations took me back to my childhood so completely. And the Rats of NIMH book was a very weird and nice surprise. I would not have guessed that this film would have gotten the LGB treatment! I love surprises like this. I try not to trawl through the LGB collecting communities too much because I'm always delighted when I find something like this, (like an Inspector Gadget LGB, or a Darkwing Duck LGB, or a Donny and Marie Osmond LGB...) in the wild!

So here's the whole pile! If I were to hazard a guess back, I would say I probably spent between 10 to 13 dollars on the pile you see above. I remember being pretty pleased to bring them home for whatever I paid. 

That's all I have for tonight kids! Next time around I'll most likely be blogging about one of a couple of awesome packages I've received in the mail recently, so keep your peepers peeled for that! Then I'll be back soon after with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

Another Trip to Dream Catchers

I recently made another trip into the Dream Catcher Antique Mall in Ellsworth, ME. And this time I found a handful of great old books, and a fun action figure find! I brought my handful of stuff up to the desk and the guy looks at what I have and just says:

"...Eh... Ten bucks for everything there."

I was prettyy happy because at least two of the items I had were marked at 4 dollars apiece. The other three things had no price, but I had assumed they would be priced similarly... so pretty much everything you see in this post cost me 2 bucks. I literally smiled, handed over a ten dollar bill, thanked the man, and took all this stuff home with me.

Ah. I finally found the second part of this novelization trilogy. It's been driving me nuts for a while now that I only have the first and third parts... and once I got this home I was able to slide this book in between those two on the shelf and let out a satisfied sigh. THIS is the reason why I collect stuff people. Just the rote lining up of things that need to be ordered and in complete sets. Aaaaand... because I like the stuff sometimes? I definitely love the first trilogy, and as I've mentioned recently, I'm getting a strange kick out of collecting movie novelizations now that I've found so many of them at Goodwill. 

Whoah... What? Little Golden Books? Whaaaaaaat? Yep. I'm sure regular visitors will already be annoyingly familiar with the fact that I collect these. What makes these ones particularly special though? This is a first edition Walt Disney's Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier! printed back in 1955 this book has that nice, brownish-gold ink on the gilded spine. I mean, it's not like it's worth much. I think the most it's going for on eBay is about 20 dollars. But still! This is a classic! And the older I find these books, the better. 

Here is a first edition Walt Disney's Donald Duck's Christmas Tree LGB from 1954! What I find really interesting is that Donald is chosen to replace Mickey Mouse, who co-starred in the original animated version of the tale "Pluto's Christmas Tree" two years prior. Nowhere can I seem to find any reference as to WHY that is. Donald is usually portrayed as the Chipmunks' nemesis... and Pluto is always depicted as Mickey's dog... so this is just all very confusing to me. 

I don't know if you are familiar at all with this fairy tale (which is admittedly a Christian parable more than anything... but it reads like a fairy tale) by John Ruskin, but it was one of my favorite stories to have read to me by my grandmother as a little boy. I found this copy that was published in 1932 by McLoughlin Brothers Inc. marked for 4 dollars (but remember I paid 10 for EVERYTHING you see here... so I really got it for 2!) It's pretty much a kind of boy-Cinderella story where a boy named Gluck is being used as a house-keeping slave by his two evil older brothers. Gluck meets a mysterious magical benefactor in the King of the Golden river, who gives Gluck magical instructions on how to gain access to Treasure Valley. Of course, the evil older brothers find out, try to follow the instructions in their own crooked evil ways, fail tests of their moral fiber, and each in their turn are transformed into black stones for their troubles. Gluck wins out in the end, and all thanks to the magic of the King of the Golden River, and his own pure heart. Also, the illustrations by G. A. Davis are super cool, and just seeing them took me back to my childhood. I'd only ever seen this story printed in anthologies of other fairy tales, so finding it published in a single-story format was extremely exciting for me! 

My belt buckle has a big K on it!

I think the absolute BEST find of this particular trip was this Michael Knight action figure from 1982! (Sorry for the terrible pictures... he seemed to be really difficult for me to photograph...)

So sad.

Michael is articulated to pretty much just do ONE thing, and that is sit in a big plastic KITT car and drive around. Sigh. Unfortunately... there was no KITT to be found at the Dream Catcher Antique Mall. So... Michael will just have to go without. 

You're... mocking me, aren't you.

Until I remembered this! I found this KITT at Wal-Mart on clearance down from 4.97 to 3.50! It's... well, it's not quite what Michael needs to make him feel complete... but It makes ME happy!

This was a pretty great handful of items for me to bring home for only 10 dollars! Overall, this was a great trip to the Dream Catcher Antique Mall as well, and I've already spotted some other, more expensive items that I may be picking up in the future if they're still there.

Well, that's it for me folks! I'll be back with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies in the near future, so in the meantime, Happy Hunting!

Random Handful: Action figures from the Dream Catcher!

I recently made another trip to "The Dream Catcher" Antique Mall in Ellsworth, ME. I mentioned The Dream Catcher back in February when I wanted to post some pics of items I've been drooling over there. But this time, I didn't just go to drool. I went back with a specific purchase in mind: a couple of old CRACKED magazines that I had seen there the last time I'd visited. But I ended walking out of there with so much more!

After running upstairs to quickly grab the magazines, I headed back downstairs to find a box of mixed action figures that had caught my eye on the way by. This is the complete pile of stuff I brought home with me after my visit.  

I've been hitting a bit of a dry spell at Goodwill lately. I have to admit. I'm just not finding the vintage goodies in there like I used to. So I thought I'd visit the Dream Catcher, pick up the issues of CRACKED and then see what else they had for cheap. As I pawed through the box of old action figures, I asked the guy behind the counter how much they were, and he said "A buck apiece" which got me pretty excited. 

Now, this first item I actually did not find in that box of action figures. This is a He-Man Soaky bubble-bath container from 1985. It cost me 5 dollars. And honestly, I can't think of ANYTHING I would have rather spent 5 dollars on. Look at this craftsmanship. It looks like an Academy Award from the Hyborian Era. 

ALL RIGHT!!! Let the 1 dollar goodness begin!!! First up straight out of 1986, we have this John Rambo action figure in his all his Rambo and the Forces of Freedom glory! I like your sleeveless sweat-shirt John, because your shirtless figure makes me very uncomfortable feeling. 

This is the action figure that actually drew my eye to the box. This is a Windhammer from the Silver Hawks line, from 1986. He is next to useless, even if I had his tuning fork accessory. But I like his colors, and he looks pretty bitchin' next to the vintage Thundercats figures I've managed to accumulate so far. He sort of looks like a medieval surfer-dude werewolf, right? 

Oh my ever loving F**K. I had NO IDEA what this figure even was when I picked it up. I just knew it was a bizarre pig-ball character with a Roman helmet and sexy legs. And, I might add, nothingh covering his crotch-ital area. Turns out this is a Pudgy Pig Power Rangers figure from 1994. I am not even a little bit of a Power Rangers fan. Sorry. But I F**KING love this toy. I reminds me of something straight out of MadBalls. 

Pawing around in that box, my face LIT UP when I saw this Anton Arcane and Weed Killer from the 1990 Swamp-Thing toy line. I found a color-changing Swamp-Thing at Goodwill last year, and even though these guys are missing their monstrous accessories that "transform" them into monsters, it's nice to have some of Swampies villains to menace him with. I love how Anton's head sort of just looks like a raisin. Weed Killer is the typical Toxic Crusaders/Captain Planet type villain... as eco-aware superheroes were the trend at the time. 

I almost didn't pick up this Strong Guy action figure from 1993. It's a little plain, and while I'm a HUGE fan of Strong Guy, I'm not a huge fan of this action figure... then I was like: "Hey, it's a buck, and what are the odds I'll ever find another Strong Guy toy of any kind? I NEED this." So I bought it. 

This Rocketeer PVC figure from 1991 was not actually in the box, but he was still just a buck. I found him while I was meandering through the upstairs area of the mall, where I picked up the CRACKED magazines. There was a suction-cup version of the character too, meant to cling to a window... but I ain't got time for that. 

Finding this 1993 Batgirl Happy Meal figure from Batman: The Animated Series put a huge grin on my face. For a simple, barely articulated Happy Meal figure, she's pretty great looking. She looks so... peppy, right? 

Finally, there's this guy. I have no idea where he came from. I've Googled and Googled and Googled. I picked him up at first because I though he was a Mummy figurine, possibly from the old Marx Universal line. I was disappointed to discover that was not the case, but he's still pretty cool. He's a larger-scale solid plastic playset style figurine. It looks like he was supposed to maybe have a helmet? And something plugs into his gut there, where you can see a hole. I've posted before and after cleaning shots because he was sort of caked in... clay I'm hoping? He looks like he's supposed to be an astronaut, but I have to admit, his dead-eyed face has a kind of creepy quality. If anyone can help me identify this guy, I would much appreciate it!

UPDATE: My inter-friend Anne Packrat did some research and came up with some other plastic astronaut toys. They aren't the same guys, but they are exactly what kept coming up every time I tried searching. I own a few of them, so I'm posting this next picture for reference/scale/whatever so folks can see how BIG this guy is. Keep in mind the guy on the left is about the size of a green plastic army man where my big blue guy is somewhere around 5 inches tall or so. 

UPDATE to the UPDATE: Well, Anne was right! Or at least very VERY close. MPC makes both figures. They put out the little guys but they also put out the 5 inch line as well, which had accessories. I found a picture of some more of them over at AngelFire.com. Here it is:

Image Courtesy of Angelfire.com

That's my guy in green there. The gray guy on the end is an example of a re-release and you can see how the accessories were pegged to the figure and then twisted off for play later. 

That's it for right now. I'll be talking a bit more in the future about the CRACKED magazines I picked up, but I wanted to dedicate a whole post to those. I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!