Goodwill Quick Stop 08-09-2013 Toys! Comics! Cool Stuff Galore!

On my way home from work on Friday I decided to stop in to Goodwill for one of my patented "quick-stops" this means I breeze through the departments I'm most likely to find something good without really digging much. I hit the toy department, scan the books, and look at the case at the front of the store. 

GOODWILL GEEK TIP #765: Always check the glass case or cases near the register. You NEVER know what they're going to stick in that case... sometimes its all just old costume jewelry but it could be old game cartridges, or steak knives, or vintage action figures, or sex how-to books, or anything they think may be valuable and/or dangerous for kids to get their hands on for whatever reason. Some of it may be obvious, but some of it will probably have you scratching your head. 

In the many glass cases of the Goodwills I frequent I have found: a bag of Masters of the Universe action figures, a bag of McDonalds vintage Happy Meal Cars, a can of Duff Beer from the Simpsons that turned out to house one-sixth of a dice game... the list goes on, but I will not. In fact, two of my quick-stop finds in this post were out of the glass cases by the registers! ALWAYS CHECK THE CASE

For instance, I found is set of 1991 Archie toy cars from Burger King in the case. I'm not a huge Archie fan, but this was a cool set, and I do enjoy have icons of different sorts in my collection. Plus the cars are all very cool. 

I love that the "big 4" of the Archies are all represented here, and that each has a distinct looking automobile that seems to match their personalities. Archie in his old-fashioned fun-loving jalopy, Betty in her classic Cadillac, Veronica in her suped up sports car, and Jug-Head in something that says Volkswagen to me, but I really don't know for cars... so feel free to enlighten me.

 

They have General Motors markings on the bottoms in addition to the Burger King and Archie stuff so I am led to believe these are genuine car models. I never liked them much as a kid but as an adult I'm becoming a sucker for any kind of old-school Fast Food premium with a famous character driving a toy car.

I paid 1.99 for each of these, making the set just under 8 bucks, and less than that with my discount card... but I still had this twinge of feeling like I was over-paying. I really fell in love with them though so I went ahead and brought them home. 

The next item I found was sitting in with the board games and puzzles in the toy department. It's a 2001 Dexter's Laboratory Coloforms playset! I've read enough blog posts from fellow bloggers to know how much fun Colorforms can be, so I snapped these up for .99 cents without hesitation. I was worried that when I got them home some of the pieces might be missing or damaged...

But I was relieved to discover that was not the case! All 32 Colorform Pieces were present, whole, and accounted for! They still stick to the background included like magic too! I was kind of disappointed by the selection of Colorform pieces to play with, as I know there were more crazy events and experiments that could have been represented rather than say... a loose lightbulb or a grandafather clock. I find it hard to believe kids would have had much to "play" with this set. But I still love that it reminds me of my childhood, and the Colorforms I had back then. They feel just the same. And I'm a big Dexter's fan so I can't complain. 

Kicking around loose on the shelf is yet another Dexter item, and I can only assume he was shucked from a grab-bag (This happens a lot. People pop open grab-bags and leave the contents strewn everywhere. It drives me insane) because he had no price tag so they just charged me .99 cents for him. The weirdest thing about him? He's a Subway Kid's Meal toy! I never thought Subway had anything worth bothering with in their kid's meals! This was of course from 2001 so it's been like, 12 years... they've probably had quite a few hits and misses in that time. 

Here's Dexter in his new home with some other fellows. I sort of see Dexter either teaming up with or facing off against Inspector Gadget. It just feels right. 

I cannot explain why I bought this book. It is a Perry Mason mystery/crime novel. It is "The Case of the Mythical Monkeys" I think... I think that the image of the monkeys and the title... juxtaposed with the hot "ready-and-waiting" red-headed bombshell... just got me. I will never read this book, just to be clear. I could easily just tear off the cover, frame it, and hang it on the wall. I won't do that because it causes me physical pain to deface books in such a manner... but I need to display this awesome piece of ridiculousness SOMEHOW. I only paid .99 cents for it, so I don't feel TOO guilty.

And of course, I can never leave a Choose Your Own Adventure book behind if I spot it. This one is particularly old, and is only #4 in the series. "Space and Beyond"" looks a little silly to be honest, based off the illustrations alone. The hero of the story has a chin that is larger than the rest of his head. I got this for .99 cents. 

And last but not least I found a parcel of comic books in the glass case up front! At first I sighed because the pack was 9.99 and I'm SO tired of Goodwill over-pricing old comic books... and then when I asked to see the pack and realized it contained sixteen issues of Power-pack... and THREE of them were Inferno tie-ins... I decided I would buy! That's like .63 cents per issue, and I'm okay with that. Not only that, but if you look above, there's a guest appearance by Nightcrawler and I suspect the Morlocks. 

I've never really followed Power Pack. I think I have a couple of loose issues somewhere in my collection (none of the ones I picked up here). I know a little bit about the characters and their powers, and some of their history That's only because I used to make it my business to know anyone and everyone in the Marvel Universe. But I've never really read any stories. These will be my first official foray into Power Pack territory. Hey look! The New Mutants guest star in one of these too!

Here's a three-issue story-arc featuring Galactus! The far right comic in the far right picture there is a Holiday special that came out in '93. "An All New Story from the Original Creators!"

I mentioned a while back that I've been having a bit of a dry spell at Goodwill. AND THEN... I run in for a quick-stop and I come home with some pretty cool stuff like all this! This was a fun little handful of great stuff and I walked out whistling!

Well, that's it for me today! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Goodwill Cave Feature: The Curio Shelf

Lately, I've been meeting interesting people all OVER the internet, and I've been discovering a lot of awesome new blogs because of it. So when I was contacted here on Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks by one Laura Huey, I set about exploring her blog, boobobby.blogspot.com a little bit at a time. She only started blogging a little over a year ago (like me!) and went through a move shortly after (also like me!) so we get to see this transition on her blog. She has three kids (me too!) and loves showing off her thrift discoveries (ahem, me again!) on her blog. 

Laura Huey's "girl-ified" house shelf

She recently showed off a curio shelf she picked up second-hand, repainted, and filled with kitschy goodness. I just loved it. So I told her I had a curio shelf in my cave that I had filled with stuff in a similar way. I THOUGHT I had done a whole post about that shelf on here already. Turns out I only gave you a glimpse of it back when I first showed off the Goodwill Geek Cave back when I finally got it decorated the way I like a while back:

This is what it looked like then. Looking at it recently, I didn't like the looks of it anymore. It was just too cluttered. With Laura's awesome post fresh in my mind, I wanted to feature this shelf on the blog, so I tried to de-clutter it a bit. I half succeeded. Here's what it looks like right now: 

Before, there was so much stuff crammed into every square that you couldn't really see anything. I removed ANYTHING I wasn't immediately charmed by. I made a pile of stuff to remove, and a pile of stuff that would go back on the shelf. Then I picked a few new things that would look good up there now as well. This is still my homage to the kinds of toys that get lost at the bottom of the toy box. The stuff that get's scooped up in handfuls and donated to Goodwill (or worse THROWN AWAY) that people vaguely remember as those cheap but cool little doo-dads they had when they were kids. This is my paean to those toys. 

 Let's start with the very tippy-top shall we? We've got all kinds of plastic figure goodies up here! There's some spacemen I'm pretty sure are vintage, and some neon plastic dogs that I have NO information about whatsoever. A pirate and a skeleton warrior I found at Goodwill... and the best items up here: The Z.O.M.B.I.E. figures from October Toys (I picked these up at a local music/movie/game store called Bull Moose Music, where they just have a big dish of them by the register) and the Scooby-Doo plastic figures which are actually game pieces from some Scooby Doo board game I also found at Goodwill. 

This is my favorite corner of the whole shelf. There's a bunch of little rubber finger-puppet guys, and almost everything is monster themed in some way. The top right four squares, with the blue aliens, devils, clowns, and dapper monsters are some of my absolute favorite little toys of all time. 

The top left corner of the curio shelf is not without it's cool details. Plastic knights, plastic cowboys, a fez monkey, a cyclops surfer dude... these are all awesome in their own way. I think one of the best little toys in this corner is the little red camel with the canopy on its back. I don't know where he came from originally, but I do love him so. 

These are the middle two rows of the shelf, separating the corners I've just shown you from the top, and the bottom corners I'll show you next. There's some really great stuff in here. I have a square dedicated to giant reptiles, some vintage dinosaur erasers, wrestlers! and much more. The pink flamingo and the guy playing guitar are two of my favorite mini guys here. The gray astronaut being confronted by a yellow squid-like alien also floats my boat. Plus giant rubber ant!

Got a handful of deceptively girly items sprinkled through this corner. You can see a kitten in a Santa's hat, and a pink bunny. These are there to honor the holidays I feel they represent. I'm actually referring to the mouse in the pink dress and the flower fairy in the bottom left corner there. These used to belong to my daughter when she was little, and I always think of her when I see them. Among the crowd here you'll also see a pair of goofy old kangaroos getting ready to duel, a teddy bear ice-skating past a hungry tiger, a whole troop of fire fighters, rubber fish, and a set of red prehistoric creatures all together (I'm counting the crab because I know there were crabs back then... and it's my shelf, so I do what I want.)

Finally the last corner of the shelf holds my little purple afroed car washers, my suckling pigs (oh no! one piglet has wandered off!), my monkey themed square, my plastic divers-themed square, and my Halloween square. That little pumpkin you see next to the finger puppet is a cool little tin ring lacquered orange and black and it is AWESOME. Other stuff as you can tell is just sort of randomly wherever. Why Mr. Peanut is standing next to that little orange Asian kid I don't know. Why a mermaid is basking in the glow of a orange scorpion I'll never figure out.

A LOT of this stuff was picked up in grab-bags and sealed LEGO bins at Goodwill. Goodwill Geek Tip #394: ALWAYS buy the taped up tubs full of LEGOs. There is always a crap-ton of other stuff in them as well. Little plastic soldiers, Hotwheels cars, anything. They're almost never just LEGOs. It's like opening the Arc of the Covenant without getting your face melted off.

I want to thank Laura Huey for inspiring this post! She really has a great blog, over at boobobby.blogspot.com and great taste in general. She blogs about more than just what she collects, which is great. It's not all just about the vintage Raggedy Ann accouterments and 70's style owls.

There is... a like crazy-a** number of owls though.
But who am I to judge?

She blogs about her family, her beliefs, her friends, her conflicts... she's a well-rounded renaissance blogger.

Laura Huey plus kids, from the Boo Bobby blog.

With that said however, I want to take some time to point out some of the cooler posts she's written, dedicated specifically to her collecting: 

- In this one she shows off some of the incredible pieces she's collected and has on display in her bedroom.

- This post features a ton of vintage goodies that she displays out on the built-in shelves in her home. You need to see some of this stuff!

- This one showcases Laura's awesome ability to take old kitschy items and decorate a kids room with them in a way that makes them look new and fresh. Some of this stuff I wouldn't look twice at if I saw it at Goodwill. Seeing it up in Laura's daughter's room makes it look fashionable and cool.

- In this haul post, Laura shows off some thrifty finds. For every kitchen rooster or canning supply she picked up there was a Never-Endng story on VHS or an old Jack-in-the-box. I have no idea what's going on with the baby-limbs in the seashell... just go see for yourself.

That's it for me tonight folks! I'll be back in a while to show off some Geeky Goodwill Goodness. Until then, Happy Hunting (and check out Laura's blog!)

Goodwill: Graphic Content

So today I want to take another opportunity to showcase some excellent graphic novels I've found at Goodwill. It's another edition of Goodwill: Graphic Content! All the books featured today were picked up on different trips into Goodwill. Only a few times have I found more than one or two TPBs at a time in one trip... but when I do find them, I jump for joy and startle the cashiers.  

See more about the books after the jump!