Randomly Received: The Trash Man Giveth

All right... the time has come. I am officially getting ready to delete the content from Really Rather Random Guy (dot blogspot dot com) and in preparing for that, I wanted to import a bunch of the content that I know will then be lost forever, by bringing the posts over here to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks (dot blogspot dot com). So, with that in mind, I thought I would preface these entries with the fact that they are indeed OLD blog posts from an OLD, now DEFUNCT blog, and cross my fingers and hope that folks will still want to read them.

This post was originally published back on January 23rd, 2014.

I know this budding blog appears to be turning into the repeated tales of a blogger being showered with gifts from folks all over the internet... but these posts are LONG overdue. The folks who sent me all this great stuff really deserve a big thank you, so I'm dedicated to making sure they get it. 

I want to take a moment to thank the Trash Man over at "Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture" for the awesome package he sent me shortly before Christmas this past December. I felt like such a heel because not only did I not get him anything... I snuck into his house and stole his last can of Who-Hash on Christmas night. FYI Trash Man looks like this when he wakes up in the middle of the night:

"...there's a light on this tree that won't light on one side.
So I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear.
I'll fix it up there, then I'll bring it back--
You know what? Just shut up and get back in bed." 

But that is neither here nor there. What IS here? This pile of goody-goody-goodies:

As you can see, he was yet again very generous to me, and intuitive to boot as to what would make me squeal like a little girl with bladder control issues. Let's take a closer look shall we:

First up, Trash Man always knows that one of my greatest weaknesses is Choose Your Own Adventure Books. And so, here we have CYOA #66: Secret of the Ninja. In the same vein, we also have Wizards, Warriors, and You Book 2: The Siege of the Dragonriders. I am a HUGE fan of gaming books in general (gaming books = books that require you to make choices and turn to corresponding pages ala CYOA) and I've never read a WW&Y book before so I am intrigued to be sure. Nothing takes me back to my childhood and/or teen years better than a good gaming book. Nothing says "I have maturity issues" like an overweight 35-year-old reading a CYOA on the bus during his morning commute. Like a BOSS. 

Next up... another particular obsession of mine (of course) Golden Books! And not just any Golden Books, but Darkwing Duck and Sesame Street Golden books! I received two copies of "The Silly Canine Caper" starring Darkwing, and "The Day Snuffy Had the Sniffles". I'm not going to go into great detail over why I've become so obsessed with Golden Books right now, as I have a planned upcoming post about them... but suffice it to say that Trash Man has me dead to rights. Because that's what makes this the hottest blog on the NET. Golden books. 

Probably one of my absolute favorite themes in the package was the small collection of Garbage Pail Kids stuff! Trash Man sent me a pair of vintage GPK buttons featuring Crater Chris and Janet Planet. These are destined for the ceiling of my car where all of my other buttons live. There was also a 4-pack of GPK MiniKins which are sooo reminiscent of the old GPK Cheap Toys (With Crummy Candy) that I've made it my life's mission to own them all. I... don't have a lot of legitimate goals like most people. 

Speaking of... Trash Man also included THIS!!! I'm almost 100% sure it's some sort of bootleg... but that just makes it COOLER. This is Petey Graffiti (or New Wave Dave if you're into that sort of thing) from the old Cheap Toys line in a rubbery yellow that I'm certain the toys were never officially produced in. I'm showing him side-by-side with my flesh-colored Petey (He's not actually smaller... I just suck at scaling photos). The yellow is vaguely reminiscent of something produced by the human body... like phlegm or ear-wax or pus or something vaguely upsetting of that nature. I LOVE IT. 

Next up, Trash Man included a cannister of Trash Pack figurines. My two sons collect these like CRAZY so I actually let them have the figurines while I kept the packaging for myself. While I do have a handful of these of my own... I can't afford to go whole-hog into collecting them or I will literally drive my wife insane. But I appreciate their pedigree, to be sure, with ancestors (or at least inspiration) including Madballs and MUSCLE Things certainly. They're like the bastard descendents of Monster in My Pocket and Garbage Pail Kids. They are a welcome addition to my family, THAT'S for sure. 

Here you see a set of ghosts with the most! The two viloently purple and orange fellows in the front are a pair of Real Ghostbusters toys from when I was a kid. These are actually spring loaded traps that bite down on Ray, Egon and the others. Open their mouths to set them and then touch their tongues to snap the trap. I used to torture myself as a kid by snapping them on my fingers repeatedly. I was some sort of pain freak at an early age. Man those suckers left a mark on my knuckles. ANYWAY. Then we have Beetlejuice there in the middle. I remember Trash Man posting about this guy on his own blog at one point, and being fiercely jealous of him. Now he's MINE. This is Beetlejuice from the animated series, and he appears to be "snake-charming" a Sandworm. I love this rubber figurine with a fearsome passion that rivals the love of a mama bear and her cubs. Is that weird? It doesn't feel weird. It feels RIGHT.

Probably the most AMAZING item to come out of that box was this INTACT piece of glassware. Another of my fatal flaws is a deep love for all things McDonaldLand, and the collector's glasses are a HUGE piece of that. GRIMACE YOU GUYS. I don't even care that he seems creepily somnambulant in this image, in a sort of "I'm approaching you like a Romero Zombie but with NOSTALGIA" kind of way... I love this glass with every fiber of my being. I actually know right this moment where I can go and find a Hamburglar glass for 3 dollars... and now that I own Grimace and Ronald... I may need to make the 1.5 hour pilgrimage out to buy it sometime this weekend. Or actually next weekend. 

After I get paid. 

And I get permission from my wife. 

This motley trio from left to right: Plutor from the Trash Bag Bunch, a Two-Face vehicle Happy Meal premium, and a Battle Beast that has been painted in some sort of bizarre black and gray camouflage pattern. I was convinced at first that the guy on the far left was a Z-Bot to begin with... and it turns out I was close. Galoob was responsible for both the Trash Bag Bunch and the Z-Bots lines. In fact Plutor here was produced in 1991 and the Z-Bots debuted in 1992. I'm genuinely shocked that Galoob didn't reuse the mold for the Z-Bots line. In fact, a number of the Trash Bag Bunch figures (yet ANOTHER mini-fig line that I failed to collect for some reason, and that would have been PERFECT for me... I mean I collected the HECK out of Monster in My Pocket, and they came out in 1990!) would have made perfect Z-bots. The Two-Face vehicle actually transforms a little so you can flip over the front and rear of the car to show good and evil qualities. Aaaaand... I'm seriously thinking about trying to strip the paint OFF of this Battle Beast... but I'm not sure I can do it without ruining the original paint job. I hope that Brian didn't paint this thing specially for me because I would hate to think that I am stifling his artistic voice. But hey. Omelet. Eggs.  

Who is the most adorable Anti-Life equation hunting lord of Apokolips? This Darkseid from the Funko Pop! line, that's who! What is hilarious about this you ask randomly without really knowing why except for narrative reasons? Let me tell you! I stood in Hot Topic the first week of December and AGONIZED over whether or not I should buy this guy for myself. I ultimately decided not to at that time because I don't have a ton of DC Funko stuff (or didn't at the time anyway) and even though he's a Jack Kirby boy and ultimately one of if not THE baddest BAD-@$$ of the DCU... I just wasn't sure where he'd fit in with my collection... and I wanted some Funko Horror Classics figures more. So I bought those instead. But I have never been so excited as I was the day I heard the BOOM and saw my package from the Trash Man drop from a tube in the sky because I knew that Darkseid was here to STAY. I have to say, he is beautiful. I plan on buying a Funko Hordak to go up with him and the two shall have an EPIC friendship to last the AGES!!! Plus, Darkseid rocks that go-go girl outfit pretty nicely. He looks like an Austin Powers fembot a little bit.

And HOLY COW IT'S... that OTHER... transforming... Masters of the Universe... rock guy... (Googles for a moment)... Stonedar! Now I have the pair!!! I have a pair of stones!!! They really have a great heft in my hands. This is actually, seriously one of my favorite things in the box (not counting all my other favorite things in the box) because I LOVE tracking down old MotU toys! And Trash Man gets that! I love that he gets that! And I love that I have the TWO transforming MotU rock guys now! (I recently found Rokkon in my HUGE MotU/Goodwill score back in mid-December) I love how stoic and disinterested he appears to be... as if he had a hard made of... something... hard and cold... I got nothing.  

And last but definitely NOT least... a Funko Horror Classics Mini-fig! This came sealed and they are blind-boxed, so Trash Man didn't know he'd sent me Jason Voorhees... but I couldn't be happier!!! There were only a very small handful of these that I really felt were MUST-haves... and Jason was one. I can now add him to my collection including Pennywise the Clown and Sam from Trick R' Treat! I wasn't initially a huge fan of what they'd done stylistically with these characters, but I have to admit having them in hand, in person, they look VERY cool. Jason here looks ready to go menace some of my other mini-figures, like the Indiana Jones crew or whomever... Ch-ch-ch... Ah-ah-ah...

So Oh MY GOSH that about wraps up this post! What a haul! The Trash Man is an incredibly generous gift-giver, and I will have to find the time and the resources to put together a fitting thank you package sometime in the future. Be sure to check out his blog over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture, and keep your eyes peeled for our future plans for a big Gremlins blogging event coming up this Summer! ALSO at the time of this posting, he is currently starting up another one of his EPIC Trash giveaways... which are filled with ANYTHING BUT TRASH!!! Go enter the contest right away!!! I really can't begin to thank him enough for all he's given me, stuff-wise and blogging-buddy-wise as well. I truly appreciate his humor, his heart, and his... h... he... haiiir...style...? Some other h word. Thank you man. I truly mean it.

The next post I plop on here will be about the package I received from a certain Texan Lady who I also adore... so keep your eyes peeled dear readers! It's gonna get random up in here.

Creepmas Day 12: A Few Leftovers

So this year I'm celebrating Creepmas! 

From the 13 Days of Creepmas website: 

"A reaction to the continuing incursion of Christmas into Autumn and Halloween, CREEPMAS is a good-natured chance for Halloween lovers to exact revenge by bringing some spooky good cheer into the holidays or, more appropriately, the Hallowdays..." Read more about the inspirations behind this 13 day celebration HERE. 

So for today's post I'm pretty much just going to throw in everything I either forgot to include in earlier posts or I didn't really have room for in earlier posts. 

First up is this Hotwheels "Street Creeper" which they put out as as a part of their 2013 Holiday Hotwheels selection. I don't usually pick these up (though I've bought myself 2 of the 2014 selection so far...) but last year I just HAD to pick this one up because it so perfectly embodies the spirit of Creepmas! It's a horror themed Hotwheels dragster done up in Christmas colors! What's not to love?

Next up, Darth Vader might not be considered a "horror" villain... but a super-powered murderer he most certainly IS. So dressing him up as Santa Claus most definitely fits the bill as something Creepmas-y. I would NOT want to see this guy sliding down the chimney in the middle of the night. This is a Funko bobblehead from 2009 that my wife picked up for me.

Of all the winter and Christmas-themed GPK out there (about 10 as evidenced by these Topps Licensed GPK Holiday Greeting Cards) this is the only one I own. I do have one of the "Where are they now?" cards for Sandy Clod... but I'm not a big fan of those cards, and so I chose not to include it here. Instead you have Snotty Dotty/Frozen Flo #386 originally from the old 1987 run... here presented as a 3D card that was included in the 2011 Flashback series 2 set. For some reason m camera REFUSED to get a clear picture of this card, which may be due to its lenticular/3D nature. Who knows. 

My Darryl Dixon (of AMC's Walking Dead fame) ornament had not been added to the tree when I did my Christmas Zombies post a few days back. So I include him now. He's really just one of those Funko Pop! mini keychains that just came out this year, with a Santa's hat added for some festivity. But it works (don't mind the Dunkin Donuts Munchkins ornament, I don't believe it in any way takes away from the full manliness of Darryl, having it there).

This is my recently purchased (this past summer) shambling mound figure from the old Dungeons and Dragons line produced in 1982. He is wearing a Santa's hat and dragging a bloody sack behind him. I only have a vague idea of why I put this together. What I WANTED to do was find a Krampus toy. But apparently you can buy action figures of Will Shakespeare, a Cat Lady, or even Joss Whedon... but not Krampus. So instead of Krampus I decided to make my own Christmas Monster. If I'd really thought about it, I would have decked him out like a Christmas tree... but hindsight is unfortunately 20/20 in this case and nothing more. Suffice it to say however that this guy is definitely out looking for naughty nerds this season... so you better be good for goodness sake!

There was one more book I had planned to write about, Dean Marney's The Christmas Tree That Ate My Mother. But I couldn't really drum up a whole post about killer Christmas trees. Apparently this is the first book in a series of books detailing various holiday items that try to eat people. Skimming through the text this looks like a fun, quick read. I may try it out. 

Also new this year is this sugar-skull blown-glass ornament that we picked up at Target for my daughter. This thing is glittered-out to the max. It simply brings the right feeling of the macabre to the tree that we just love.

Today I'll leave you with a link to iHorror.com's 8 Holiday Horror Films You Need to Watch This Month (from 2013) aaaand just for the heck of it... a link to the search for "Creepmas" on Pinterest.

Happy 13 days of Creepmas! I'll be back tomorrow with the final entry in the countdown, which may or may not involve a Goodwill Goody! Until then, Happy Hunting!

So several blogs later... And some fun stuff that came in the mail!

So should we just carry on as if the whole "Really Rather Random Guy" thing never happened? I think I will... for now. Instead, in other news, I've received some cool stuff in the mail! 

First up, my buddy Mason over at D.I. Treasures sent me an envelope out of the blue! It contained a pack of these incredibly random Troll trading cards...

And this not-so-random Random trading card! (Of course this is a reference to my Really Rather Random Guy blog... of which I am not speaking at the moment...) and I have placed this bad-boy in a place of reverence within the cave!!! Thank you Mason! I have a package with not a small amount of LEGOs inside it, ready to blast off your way someday (hopefully) soon! 

Next up, a package arrived! I recently set up a trade with Brian over at Cool and Collected, and it went from being a small trade to being something far more magical and amazing. Above is a picture of the box he sent me. There is STUFF IN THERE. 

First couple of items are these Toonsylvania toys. I have never seen this show, and therefore I had no idea what these toys even were until I Googled them. Monster themed cartoon characters in the vein of Addams family meets Animaniacs? I'm there, dude. 

These guys appear to be giant-sized Marvel Squinkies. Cyclops, Magneto, Hawkeye, and Thor. These look pretty great up on my Marvel shelf! 

Next up is this Tech Deck film director guy with his camera... and a Mindswallower the Mystic Gormiti figure, who is one of the moth-themed characters... WHICH I LOVE. This is literally one of the only two Gormiti figures I now own, and they are BOTH MOTH THEMED.

Here we have a couple of Character Building mini-figs and the guy in the middle is... I don't know what. A LEGO compatible brand of some sort. 

Up next we have some famous canines! Joe Cool Snoopy and a Burger King Kid's Club Scooby-Doo toy that I've been eye-balling on eBay for years now. I love it! 

A couple of my favorite items in the box were these diecast "Action Masters" Terminator 2 toys! These went right from being photographed to a place of pride up on the cave wall. Love T2 and these little guys look great! 

There was also a cool assortment of Garbage Pail Kids, Wacky Packages, and a Cartoon Lagoon DVD to check out! All in all, the package was full of absolute joy and wonder! I can't thank Brian over at Cool & Collected enough for his generosity, and I can only hope that the box full of goodies I have set aside for him does it justice! And to think that this was all started by these two little guys: 

I originally contacted Brian to trade some funky rubber monster figures I had for these Horror Icon Mez-Itz he had picked up recently. And the ball just got rolling... Love the look and feel of these guys, even Leatherface, who I'm not usually a fan of. 

And here we now have a Barbershop Quartet of ADORABLE Jason Voorhees. Shave and a Haircut anyone?

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back soon to feature some Geeky Goodwill Goodies or other Really Rather Random stuff... but until then, Happy Hunting!

Who can take a Saturday and change it into fun? The Trash Man Can...

So I'm sitting in my Cave one Saturday morning, just minding my own business when my wife hands me a package that came for me in the mail! Turns out it was from my good friend the Trash Man over at Pop Pop! It's Trash Culture, and I was about to have the best Saturday morning since I was a kid in pajamas munching Cap'n Crunch and watching Muppet Babies!

Upon opening the pack I discovered this pile of loot! Now, I have just recently WON a GIGANTIC pile of loot from the Trash Man in his monthly Trash giveaway. So I was scratching my head at WHY I would be receiving another one so soon... and then it dawned on me... this was a consolation prize! See, Trash Man sends out BIG prize packs, and then he sends out smaller ones to the losers each month. I may have won the very first one, but I LOST the second one (Yeah, I had the audacity to enter into the next month's drawing... Don't judge me. These prize packs are SOFA KING amazing). So I went about my business, and forgot about the whole thing. UNTIL this showed up! 

See, the cool thing about the Trash Man is he PAYS ATTENTION. He knows all my weaknesses. He remembered how much I WIGGED OUT about the Lantern rings he sent me last time, so he tossed a few more my way this time. And believe me, I verbally, audibly, and EMPHATICALLY shrieked like a teenage Beatles fan of the female persuasion (you know, the kind-of-homely-but-kind-of-hot-too ones with the horn-rimmed glasses that probably ended up being your Aunt or something?) when I saw these. GODS I LOVE THESE!!! I have all of them but 3 now, and I will be tracking those down post-haste! 

MUSCLE guys!!! When I was a kid I thought the guy on the left was supposed to be a mummy, so he attacked people with bandages. The guy in the middle was pretty much just Ice Man. And the guy on the right looked like a pepper grinder to me, so he would puff clouds of irritating pepper at people, blinding and burning them while he fought. I was such a MUSCLE nut!!! This brings my current collection up to 26! I miss having these so much. 

Here are a pair of Garbage Pail Kids wax packs that I refuse to open. I love them just the way they are! They bring back such great childhood memories. Some of the happiest times of my young life were the walks I used to take down to the store to pick up these wax-packs. I am so incredibly thankful for these. 

Finally, there was another of my collecting staples: A Choose Your Own Adventure book! "The Forbidden Castle" which is another perfect addition to my shelf. Long-time readers will remember that next to only maybe Little Golden Books, CYOAs are my favorite kind of books to collect. And Trash Man remembers that. Trash Man is the king of KNOWING what you like. This package I received was incredibly generous and tailor-suited for me. 

Thank you Trash Man, this package was really special to me, and it made my day. 

So that's it folks! I'll be back very soon with some more 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!