Cyborg, Beatniks, and Blood

Again with the books and grab-bag magic! This one comes with yet another Imperial monster toy as well! I could keep talking and talking and talking and... well, you get the idea, but instead let's take a look at what I brought home this time, shall we? 

Trotting right out to the front we have this Imperial beauty which, after a little bit of research turns out to be their idea of a Pegasus... but I call bulls--t and say this thing is a Jersey Devil!!! It's meant to stand on its back-legs with the tail propping it up, but when I found it, it was broken off, and so had to be super-glued back into place. I was lucky to even find the tail if we're being honest. Usually that stuff is nowhere to be found, and alas, that would have precluded me buying this guy at that point. But here we are dear reader! Tail glued firmly back in place, this guy looks downright MAJESTIC posed with the rest of my Imperial toys in the cave.

Now let's pick through that grab-bag. HEre are the total contents. We will NOT be going over the entire contents, as there were only a handful of things I even wanted. There was a ridiculous overabundance of Night at the Museum knight/top toys from Wendy's (oh how the mighty have fallen...) and though I don't feature it here, I did end up keeping the Easter Bunny toy because there is a disturbing lack or representation for the Easter Bunny here in the cave. But let's look at the other stuff now:

First, flying out of the DCU animated television universe, we have a "Beware the Batman" Happy Meal toy and a "Teen Titans Go!" Cyborg toy. Both of these dudes were judged "worthy" of positions on the Batman/DCU shelves, even if Cyborg is missing his projectile fist.

Let's be honest. The reason I bought the grab-bag was for Maxwell the pig here. He's one of the apparently hundreds of spokes-things for Geico insurance. He's somewhat lost his charm as they've begun to overuse him... but back when he first appeared in the "Wheee! Wheee! All the way home." ad... he was HILARIOUS:

"MAXWELL!"

And what I originally took to be some sort of bootleg Sesame Street merchandise (Can you tell me how to get to "Sesame Place?") actually turned out to be merchandise from a Sesame Street THEME PARK that I had previously not been aware of. Sesame Place is my Graceland folks. 

I also found these, which I found fascinating, in the cassette section. "The Beat Generation" vols. 1 & 3 (I did end up finding vol. 2 on another day). Thee include everything from readings from books, songs, and interviews that have to do with the Beat movement. Artists include Kerouac, Burroughs, Gilespie, and more. This is one of those situations that I genuinely regret not actually owning a tape-player to play this stuff on.

More cassettes include "Captain & Tennille's Greatest Hits", and "Creedence Clearwater Revival". I'm a sucker for music from the late 60's-70's.

To kick off my book finds from this particular trip, we have the horror anthology, Psychos which I promptly added to the Halloween read pile for this fall... and Tales of the Cthulu Mythos which is really interesting to me because it is an anthology containing not only H.P. Lovecraft's tales, but stories from other writers who have borrowed Lovecraft's concepts for their own, building on them.

I found an extra copy of Spaceballs: The Book and the strangely appropriate companion volume of Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters which is a Star Wars anthology of EU fiction that I just couldn't pass up. I've mentioned my disinterest in most Star Wars EU stuff here in the past, but The Mos Eisley Cantina, Han Solo, and Lando Calrissian have all made me contradict that in the past, and no so have the Bounty Hunters.

I found these novelisations of Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge and almost peed a little. My friend Miss M over at the Diary of a Dorkette blog (and podcasting companion on both Geek Fallout and Eclectic Mayhem) is a big fan of all things Jaws, and that interest has infected me as well. Her favorite was Jaws 3 and I was disappointed not to find that particular volume... but still. 2 Jaws books are pretty great. But I have to be honest... I was even MORE excited to find the NEXT two novelizations:

Gremlins and The Return of Swamp Thing!!! Again, potential urination threatened. And Peter David wrote the Swamp Thing one!!! Can I just say how much I adore the Swamp Thing live-action costume? Man that thing is gnarly, both literally and figuratively.

So that's it kiddos! Between that Jersey Devil toy, the Geico-pig toy, and those kick-ass novelizations, I was pretty pumped to bring home this particular haul!

I will be back (hopefully sooner rather than later...) to share more Geeky Goodwill Goodies with all y'all! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Quick Stop Books: From Troma Films to Teen Titans

I popped into Goodwill for a Quick Stop last week and am just now getting around to blogging about it. It was a better haul than I'm used to picking up in a Quick Stop, which is usually just a sort of drive-by for me where I skim the toy section, the book section, and then run for it with anything I find. 

So I found a nice pile of books, and even a handful of toys, but I'm just going to focus on the books first. I'll drop a post on here about the toys tomorrow or the next day.

First up is this awesome book All I Need to Know About Filmmaking I Learned From the Toxic Avenger which looks like an EXCELLENT READ. From Class of Nuke'em High to Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD I love a good, trashy Troma flick. I was incredibly excited to find this book. This was 1.99.

Bed Bed Bed is actually the second They Might Be Giants book I've found for cheap recently. The other one is a book called KIDS GO! which I found at Mardens (a salvage and surplus store chain here in Maine). I am a huge TMBG fan from way back when so having books based on their works just makes me happy. I paid .99 cents for this, but the CD was missing from the back (which is okay because I already have the music that would have been included).

Next up a newer Dragonlark: Dragon Day Choose Your Own Adventure book that looked cute. I have a couple of the more recent, more fully illustrated books from this series that I've picked up at Goodwill. .99 cents.

This was a treat to find for me, because even though I am really not even a little bit of a manga fan (or manga-style fan) I am a fan of Adam Warren. He did a great mini-series for Marvel a few years back called "Livewires" and the art style didn't set my teeth on edge. The writing was clever and I loved the hyper-technology he introduced in that story. So when I discovered this Elseworlds version of the Teen Titans by Warren: "Scissors, Paper, Stone" I was interested to see his take. It was a nice surprise, and a great, short read, and since I paid .99 cents for the book I was not disappointed! 

As I've mentioned before, I like the Muppets, I like Golden Books, and I pretty much don't mind if they're not vintage as long as its a Holiday book I don't already own. So this Ho-Ho-Ho Baby Fozzie book made it home for .99 cents without having to think too hard about it. 

Another excellent find was this sometimes considered controversial Player's Option: Combat and Tactics book for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd edition (or 2.5 edition, depending on which geek you ask). I LOVE finding role-playing books at Goodwill! I paid 2.99 for this book, but definitely felt it was worth it. 

The New Walt Disney Treasury: 10 Favorite Stories from Golden Books from 1971. I really like the look and feel of the book and its illustrations. Here are a handful of shots from the interior: 

Another excellent find for just 1.99. I'm really not a collector of anything classic Disney, but I really wanted this book. 

Well, that's it for the books from my most recent Quick-Stop. I'll be back with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon, as I still have some toys from the same trip to share!