Countdown to Halloween Day 8: Garfield, Lego Monster 4, and More!

Welcome back! Today we're looking at some more cool Goodwill finds I brought home to celebrate this Halloween season! 

Just a small pile of items today, so here's your first glimpse... Let's dig in!

A couple of book pick-ups include a collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories in "The Tomb and Other Tales" and "The Eye of the Warlock" by P.W. Catanese. I read "The Thief and the Beanstalk" by Catanese, and really enjoyed it. This Eye of the Warlock book is somehow related to the tale of Hansel and Gretel in the same way the other book was related to Jack and the Beanstalk.

Next up we have this Monster Maker card game from Buffalo Games. This one looks like fun, and one I can maybe even play with my kids!

Each of the 5 monsters you try to assemble as a part of the card game gets their own biography that lets you know a little bit about each of their likes and dislikes.

Can't wait to try this one out as it looks silly and fun and not too hard to learn.

I also brought home a stuffed Garfield toy because I almost never say no to Garfield. He is such an integral part of my childhood and of my Halloween that I consider this guy to be a bit of a Halloween decoration in and of himself. Here he is sizing up my little Halloween Garfield PVC figure (I got that on eBay and he is a German import apparently... that figure is one of my most prized possessions.)

Finally, I picked up a copy of LEGO's Monster 4, which was miraculously COMPLETE! No missing pieces or materials whatsoever!

The game was already mostly assembled for me, so it didn't take too much effort to get together.

 I figured that even if I didn't end up liking the game, I could use all of the monster heads included in the box as game pieces to build monster mini-figures, and there would be no loss either way.

Turns out, the game is pretty great, and simple enough that my 4 year old picked up the rules very quickly and BEAT ME two out of three times! Turns out it's a slightly more complicated version of Connect Four.

There's a die you piece together, and a spider that hops around the grave yard, scaring your monsters away. It's a lot of fun, very fast paced, and can be as simple or complicated as you make it, depending on what you roll and where you place your pieces. Very happy I picked this one up for several different reasons!

That's it for today kids! But I'll be back soon with more Grody Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.

Countdown to Halloween Day 2: Body Wars, Spider Wars, Mars Attacks, and More!

So this post is going to sort of serve as a dumping place for a BUNCH of Halloween stuff I've found in previous weeks but wanted to share in October. This was, for the most part, not all bought at the same time, although much of this is probably all from no more than about three different trips to Goodwill total. There's a good mix of toys, spooky books, games, and other junk, so it'll probably be a nice assortment with a little bit of something for everyone. Let's check it out!

I found this "Mars Attacks!" claw-machine refugee for a dollar about a month or so back. He looks great with my stuffed Walking Dead "Well Zombie" sitting around gnashing their teeth at one another.

These guys were a couple of awesome finds in a grab-bag with some other toys (there's Batman, a Gorilla, and a horse I think? Just out of frame here... but these two guys were the Halloween-iest) the fella on the left is a Kaiju by the name of Gigan. I have had a lot of really great luck either finding or being given a bunch of these Trendmaster figures featuring Godzilla monsters. These are exactly the scale I want these in, and since watching even a single Godzilla/Kaiju film is still an item on my bucket list, this level of commitment it perfect for me. I am in LOVE with the character designs, and have a bit of a crush on Mothra if I'm being honest.

Next to Gigan we have Shan Yu, the villain from Disney's Mulan. I'm not really a Mulan fan per se, but I am a fan of this huge, gray, imposing, zombie-looking warlord with a giant buzzard on his shoulder. Shan Yu's eyes in the movie are actually a thousand times more disturbing than they are right here on this toy... but I think if they had accurately reflected the depths of soulessness in Chan Yu's creepy peepers, kids would have been crying into their Happy Meals and defecating uncontrollably (and not just from the McDonald's food). He is currently menacing my Scooby Doo action figures, because honestly he looks like someone from a Scooby Doo episode, right?

"Creatures" is a collection of poetry compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins and illustrated by Stella Ormai. I have vague memories of this book from when I was a kid, which was why I picked it up, honestly. But it was disappointing. I was expecting more monsters and less gnomes, fairies, and sprites. This book desperately wanted to appear to be a Halloween book (I mean look at that cover!) but unfortunately there are only about 4 or 5 poems in the whole book that fit the bill.

Some Scooby Doo Chapter books! The first one is the novelization of the second movie, which I felt was wholly superior to the first live action movie, although neither of them was truly what I considered to be "good" Scooby Doo. The monsters in Scooby Doo 2 were the really fun part. I've been compiling a collection of chapter books to share with my boys and, as is the case with "The Case of the Glowing Alien," Scooby Doo pretty much always comes home from Goodwill as my kiddos genuinely adore ol' Scoobs.

I brought these two books home together. I plan on giving Bruce Coville's "Book of Monsters" a bit more attention in this very countdown, so let's ignore it today. Instead, I want to talk about "The Haunting of Derek Stone: The Red House" by Tony Abbott. I found a book that collected the first two Derek Stone books together in one volume sometime last year and FELL IN LOVE WITH THEM. This is a great example of me picking up some random book by some random author at Goodwill and discovering a new series of books that I just fall in love with. Derek is facing the threat of an undead ghost army overtaking the land of the living, and even though this is a YA series, it makes your flesh CRAWL. I'm shocked at some of the stuff Abbott gets away with in these books! Great read, highly recommended.

This isn't a horror collection. It's a collection of sci-fi stories about... sci-fi story writers I guess? But the cover is absolutely horrifying. So I'm including it here. Behold and be afraid.

Here's a fun one! Spider Wars by Milton Bradley circa 1988. This is a nice looking game with fun pieces and a really fun looking web-style playing surface/thing. Check out those spiders on the cover, and the awesome spider-figures in the game! This thing screams Halloween in black and neon orange and green. This one came complete with the whole shebang, except for one vital thing:

I really desperately need to get my hands on a copy of the directions! There are some very basic mechanics of the game that don't make sense when we're trying to play. I have in fact play tested this with my 6 year old son and we did have fun, but I feel like there are some rules we are not observing that we probably should have to make this game a little less one-sided?

Twisted Sister, and Dee Snyder specifically, gnawing on his raw meat, scared the CRAP out of me as a kid. This cassette has "We're Not Gonna Take It" and "I Wanna Rock" included, which are great songs.

This is a collection of vampire lore compiled by Daniel Cohen called "Real Vampires," which I have to contest the title of a bit... but check out that cover art!!! Anyone know who this is? I can't find reference to the cover art in the book anywhere. Anyone recognize this work? I want to see more!

No Halloween season would be complete without a couple of cheap Ghost Story collections! We can see Mr. Daniel Cohen hard at work again with "The World's Most Famous Ghosts" and a Watermill Classic collection: "Midnight Fright: A Collection of Ghost Stories" I probably won't be reading either of these before next Halloween, but I've added them to the potential Halloween Read Pile materials.

This was a fun find! From "Those Characters From Cleveland" (The creators of Madballs, My Pet Monster, Popples, Strawberry Shortcake, and many more) an on-again-off-again subsidiary of American Greetings, comes Body Wars!

These were Mighty-Max/Polly Pocket style fold-out mini-playsets, featuring germs and anti-bodies fighting each other for control of various internal organs that folded out into battle stations! Unfortunately this stomach I found didn't come with any of its characters or accessories, but I still found it be be gross and endearing. Had Body Wars come along when I was a bit younger (These came out in '94 when I was about 16 and in highschool so no dice...) I would have been OBSESSED with them. This is exactly the kind of thing I loved as a kid.

I never say no to horror movie novelizations. It kind of irks me looking at this picture that I have the books out of order. Ugh. Who does that? Me I guess. But anyway. I love the original Jaws film, and because my friend Miss M loves the whole franchise with a level of passion bordering on public indecency, I have learned to appreciate the other films as well. This will not be the last time you see a Jaws novelization during this countdown. We're going to need a bigger blog.

And that folks, is where I leave you on this, m second post of the countdown to Halloween! I'm doing this as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year. As always, I will be back with some more Garroting Goodwill Goodies sooner than you'd like... so until then Happy Haunting!!! 

Halloween Countdown Day 14: My Birthday!

10 days later and I wasn't even going to bother with posting anything about my birthday because I didn't really get anything Halloween-y for my birthday anyway... Until today. Wanna see what I got? Let's take a look!

Out of the gate we're starting with the non-Halloween-y stuff, of which the MAJOR gift this year was this set of Disney Infinity Marvel: Guardians of the Galaxy figurines! Before anyone asks: No, I do not own the game... or even a system to play it on. But I LOVE Guardians of the Galaxy, and I LOVE the animated-style of these figures. They are simply stunning, and make a great addition to the shrine I am currently building to the GotG.

Slightly more Halloween-y is this Scooby-Doo PEZ set, which I mentioned during my tour of the Halloween aspects of my Geek cave... so I won't go into great detail here again. BUT PEZ + Scooby-Doo = AWESOME!!!

My daughter got me this book The Infinite Sea which is the second book in the 5th Wave series by Rick Yancey. This author is currently one of my favorites and this series is just GUT-wrenching. 

This set of TMNT PEZ dispensers was a last minute purchase by my wife the night of my birthday. Again... PEZ + Almost anything = AWESOME.

NOW. The inspiration for this post was the fact that when I arrived home today my wife's cousin gave me this awesome pillow from www.Horrordecor.com the creators of the Horror-Buddies line. This Handbook for the Recently Deceased from Beetlejuice is perfect for the chair in my Geek-Cave!!! Gorgeous AND functional!

The pillow came with a bag of (biohazardous) random goodies as well, including a Betelgeuse business card, a postcard of the Farmer from Motel Hell, a banana Laffy Taffy (which I promptly ate) and my favorite part: a random toy evil-clown head.

My wife greeted me with a late birthday present as well. A "Freddy vs. Jason: Forest of Fear Game" from Neca! She found this for four dollars at Mardens, a local chain of salvage and overstock stores here in Maine. Marden's doesn't always have awesome stuff... but when it does... It's INSANELY awesome stuff. Like this.

Here's a look at the Freddy Krueger pieces from the set. I'm loving all three, but if forced to choose I think the Freddy on the right is my favorite. I like worm-Freddy too, but I'm almost always more of a sucker for the iconic versions of characters vs. some sort of gimmick.

Again, if forced to choose my favorite Jason Voorhees, I would probably go with the Jason on the left this time. Although, the Jason in the middle is carrying Freddy Krueger's head, which is pretty badass in its own right. (I apologize for the crummy photographs throughout the post. Not even gonna make excuses.)

On a side note, another MAJOR birthday gift from my wife was a road-trip to three different Goodwills on the day of my birth, as they give you 25% off your purchase if its your birthday and you have a discount card with Goodwill. So I went on a Goodwill SPREE too.

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back with some Ghostly Goodwill Goodies soon enough. Until then... Happy Haunting!

Goodwill Gaming Week Day 5: Games... made of wood? I Guess?

Welcome to the fifth day of Goodwill Gaming features here on Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks! 

Today I'm focusing on a couple of games that have a nice old-timey feel to them, even though one of them came out in 2001. Both are constructed from wood, so they get to share a post together. 

Gobble what?

First up we have the game "Gobblet" which is a sort of cross between checkers and connect four. I paid 2.99 for my copy at Goodwill after hearing rave reviews about it online.

Let's look under the lid.

Here's a shot of the inside of the box, and the under-side of the lid, which serves as the playing surface. I'm not entirely sure why they built a smaller box inside of the bigger box to contain the playing pawns, but it looks classy as hell. 

I want you inside me.

Here's a shot of what the pawns look like up close, and separated from each other. When not in use they rest inside each other like nesting dolls. The larger three pieces of each color are hollow for this purpose. 

Reading is for wusses. Just play the damn game already.

Here are the instructions. What it basically boils down to is that you move the pieces around on the board, jumping onto and "gobbling" your opponent's pieces until you have four of your own colored pieces in a row. I have yet to con anyone in my family into playing this game with me... though I'm DYING to try it out. I love checkers, and I love connect four. I love eating stuff too. I guess that is really neither here nor there.  

Just a box... not assuming anything.

Here is a rather unassuming box with a handle that I picked up for 1.99 at Goodwill. It looks like a little case for something really sophisticated like cigars or hummus. But when you open it and look inside you find:

Now I am assuming so many things!

It is a game called "Shut The Box"! My game didn't actually come with dice. I added those.  Those are some nice dice.

More reading. Wuss.

The object of the game is to roll dice and put down the numbers that match the rolls until all the number tiles are down. It's a pretty quick play, and a great time killer. You can count each individual die (if you roll a 1 and a 3 you can put down both of those numbers) or the total of the dice together (1 + 3 = 4, so you could put down the 4 instead). But as soon as you roll something that you can't flip over (let's say the 1, the 3, and the 4 are all already flipped) then you lose. The object is to get all 9 tiles flipped and then shut the box without having that happen.

And since I mentioned checkers above, and to just sort of fluff up the end of this post... I'm going to plop a link here to the post where I talked about this game: 

That's right, bitches. I'm back.

Blanket checkers. There was a whole story associated with these that I feel like NEEDS to be recounted now (you'll need to scroll down past the books to find it... but it's totally worth it).

If you'd like to check out what's been going on during the other 4 days of Goodwill Gaming Week here are some links to the other articles:

- Day 1 I checked out the MAD Magazine Board Game from Parker Brothers. 

- Day 2 I explore the bizarre world of Mexican BINGO!

- Day 3 I featured the Clarissa Explains It All Board Game! 

- Day 4 I sort of just phoned it in and re-blogged about some other games I've featured here before. "Hero Quest" and "Emperor's Challenge". 

I'll be back tomorrow with some more Geeky Goodwill Gaming Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting! 

Goodwill Gaming Week Day 4: Just Some Lazy Reblogging. About Games!

So today I'm totally blowing off doing a new entry and pointing you back to my very first board game feature here on Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks: 

Hero Quest! Here's the link to my original write up of that game. 

Not enough? 

Then here's a link to a post that shows the contents of a cool seeming game called Emperor's Challenge. (Scroll down to the bottom of the post to find it).

Sorry for the reblog... but I wanted to find some way of tying in old game posts in anyway... so this is it. 

If you want to check out the earlier Goodwill Gaming posts (before I phoned this one in):

- Day 1 I checked out the MAD Magazine Board Game from Parker Brothers. 

- Day 2 I explore the bizarre world of Mexican BINGO!

- Day 3 I featured the Clarissa Explains It All Board Game! 

I'll be back with some original content and more Geeky Goodwill Gaming Goodness tomorrow! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Goodwill Gaming Week Day 3: Clarissa Explains It All!

Welcome back to Goodwill Gaming Week here ate Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks!

Back in November of 2012 I posted about a Payday Friday from the prior October. This haul included a copy of the Clarissa Explains It All Board Game. I didn't write much about it at the time... but the time has come to correct this oversight.

Take a look:

For those of you who have no idea who Clarissa Darling is, or why she should be explaining anything to you at all... we need to go back a few years to 1991 and the heyday of Nickelodeon. Spongebob hadn't been invented yet, and wouldn't rear his yellow, porous head for another 5 years or so. It was the year of Nicktoons like Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy. But along with those were some live action shows aimed at teens like "Are You Afraid of the Dark" and "Clarissa Explains it All". 

Clarissa was portrayed by a pre-"Sabrina the Teenage Witch" Melissa Joan Hart. It wasn't the first sitcom of its ilk aimed at Teens, nor would it be the last... but it always had a special place in my heart. 

So they took this concept and turned it into a board game. It actually seems like it would be pretty fun to play (still haven't play-tested on my family... we'll see if it happens) what with it's fun multiple choice mechanism and opportunity to steal from other players- but you can just read the rules later. I think the major thing this game board is lacking is more photos from the show. There's a total of three on the whole board, four if you count the driver's license (which I DO NOT). It just would have dressed it up some more. 

Obligatory back of the box shot here. Full of cute-itude. 

Here's a shot of Clarissa on her bed. Nothing funny I can think of about that. 

Teenage girls like talking on the phone. There's got to be some comedy they can wring out of that...

And there's Sam! Sam was so cool. He climbed trees and whatnot. 

Being a game about Clarissa's quest to acquire a car and license, you may notice a certain... theme to some of the game tokens. 

Here are more game pieces, all transportation themed. I like that flip-flops are considered a form of transportation. 

Here are some crisis cards. They represent chances to lose your hard-earned... earnings. 

Here are a few examples of "rescue" cards. These counteract the various crisises... crisees... cristopi? The various bad cards. IF the character on the card matches (a Ferguson rescue cancels out a Ferguson crisis). 

Here are some "Clarissa Explains... List Cards". The players all choose which number on the list they agree with and this determines a secret number of spaces they may move on the board. I picked my 8 favorite lists to highlight here. I really dig the explanations of a teenage girl from the 90's. 

And finally we have the booklet with instructions on how to play the game. I honestly can't believe my luck at finding this game complete. There was even an old pencil included. I can't wait to give it a shot with my wife and 12 year old daughter (can't decide if she'll be mortified or completely uninterested... but excited is too much to hope for). 

Any way, this little 90's Nickelodeon relic takes me way back, and for that, I love it. 

If you want to check out the rest of Goodwill Gaming Week:

- Day 1 I checked out the MAD Magazine Board Game from Parker Brothers. 

- Day 2 I explore the bizarre world of Mexican BINGO!

I'll be back tomorrow with more Geeky Goodwill Gaming! Until then, Happy Hunting!