Goodwill Finds: The Joker, Giant Spider-Man, Electronic Dungeons and Dragons, Zombie Bert!

Spider-Man has something he wants to show you... 

There are some cassette tapes in this picture that I forgot to photograph. So you can't see those in this post.
You can KIND of see the titles in this shot. I'm too lazy to track them all down but the two coolest ones were probably the soundtracks for Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Coneheads Movie. Try to imagine them.

It's a pile of stuff I brought home from the Brewer, ME Goodwill store!!! YAY!!! As per usual, let's take a closer look at everything piled up here, shall we?

I'm probably jumping the gun here and showing off one of the best finds from this trip... but WHO CARES??? This thing was a SUPER exciting find. This is a Mattel Electronics Dungeons & Dragons Computer Labyrinth game.

Here is the gameboard. Testing it with a battery I discovered it no longer works. This does not phase me in the least. I love the look of this thing either way. This came out in 1980, and at the time I'm sure it was a technological marvel.

Forgive the fuzzy picture here, but I wanted to show off the interior compartment, complete with labyrinth walls, instruction booklet, dragon piece, treasure piece (next to the dragon) and two warrior pieces. From what I can gather, you explore the board, receiving signals from the game on which directions you can move, and then you plug in wall pieces as you go, to map the whole thing out.

I also found a copy of the Back to the Future novelization (this is a must-pick-up, no matter how many copies I may or may not own at this point) and Superman: Miracle Monday (which is a bizarre story of time travellers and demonic possession that has absolutely nothing to do with Superman II even though it is obviously merchandised for that purpose.

Terry Pratchett's "Thud!" is honestly a no-brainer. All Discworld novels are, honestly. Anthony's Xanth series, Aspirin's M.Y.T.H. books, and DeChancie's Castle Perilous series all desperately want to have the same sense of whimsy, magic, and heart as the Discworld books and while I genuinely enjoy all of those series, they will just never stack up. The Forgotten Realms book I picked up because it is an anthology of mystery tales set in Faerun. Couldn't pass it up.

I lumped these together... because... Holidays I guess? I'm adding Brian Jacques's "Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales" to my Halloween Read Pile. Not sure if I'll be reading "Secret Santa: Agent of X.M.A.S." to my kids this year or what. Time will tell. But they both look like fun.

I look forward to reading "Thank You for Smoking" because I like the movie so much. I hope they have a similar tone/feel to them. And "Which Way Books" are almost more exciting for m to find these days than genuine Choose Your Own Adventure Books. So "The Castle of No Return" was a nice score.

MUPPETS! These two books are some of the best Muppets books I've found in a long while! The color and the action in "Gonzo the Great" is awesome, and the illustrations in "Short Green and Handsome" (a sort of illustrated comic novella... thing) are some of my favorite renditions of the Muppets on paper.

A recent issue of MAD Magazine featuring Adventure Time on the cover came home with me, and yet another new book for the Halloween book shelf: "Tilly Witch". I don't have much more to say about them than MAD + Adventure Time = must have. Don Freeman was the author of the original Corduroy books, which were fun, so hopefully Tilly won't disappoint.

You may remember this 12 inch Spider-Man from his provocative pose above... here he is with my Toy Biz Wolverine for scale. I like this big guy! At first I almost didn't buy him. But he was a buck, and he's HUGE, and he's nicely articulated, so I decided I was stupid to leave him behind.

This bag of cake toppers contained these guys:

Aren't they magnificent? I love that Oscar is giving away a dirty sock as a gift and Cookie Monster is just eating his cookies like WGAF?

But my favorite one by far is this horrifying Bert figurine that makes me think that the zombie apocalypse has hit the Street quite hard.

I picked up this set of swappable build-your-own-dino parts for my kids. They were not as fun to play with as I would have liked them to be, honestly. If you look carefully, you can see a broken brown peg sticking out of the large blue piece (some sort of aquatic dinosaur's body) and the entire time I used these with my boys it felt like other pegs were going to let go. Too bad really.

This was a weird grab-bag. The Goodwill I frequent usually seems to at least clump some sort of like items together in a very general way in their grab bags... but this one wasn't even trying. BUT it was a buck and there was really just one item in there I was after, and I was willing to pay that buck for it.

The main item I bought the bag for was this guy right here. The Joker, not the bunny he won at the carnival.

This is of course the "Dark Knight" version of the Joker... sort of the Heath-Ledger-Lite version they produced for the kiddies. Honestly, I really like this figure's design. I like how it pays homage to the movie character in a simplified, cartoony kind of way. Here he is next to the Joker they released for the 1989 Batman film before they tired making him look more Nicholson-esque in later models. I still favor the one on the right because this was "my" Joker as a kid... but the new one makes a nice addition.

Another nice surprise in the bag was this fella here. This is the Ram Slammer from the 2007 Hot Wheels "Stunt Strikers" McDonald's Happy Meal line. Looking at it at first I assumed it would be some sort of vehicle belonging to the Spider-Man villain, the Rhino. But nope! I still like it quite a bit either way. It's some sort of pseudo-diecast vehicle, so it's got some heft to it for a Mickey-D's Hot Wheel toy.

That's it for tonight kids! I'll be back with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Goodwill Finds: King Kong, Star Wars, and More!

Welcome friends! I have such sights to share... So without further hyperbole or ado, let us begin. 

Here we have the entire haul in one shot. So let's dig in, shall we? Let's get a closer look at all this stuff.

First up, a Sly and the Family Stone Greatest hits compilation. I love, Love, LOVE 70's funk music, and Sly and the Family Stone is one of the greatest bands to come out of that era (for me anyway, I'm not going to pretend to be a music historian by any means). But there are SO many great songs on this cassette you guys.

Terry Pratchett has passed away in the time between me buying these books and writing this post. I still have a hard time processing this. Mr. Pratchett's stories are just so good, and full of wry humor, and life, and heart, and genuine warmth, and a sharp eye and tongue directed at everyone and everything equally. It is hard to believe he's gone now. Hard to believe the door to Discworld will be permanently closed and that what we've got is all we've got. But that's life I guess.

I don't even ponder whether or not I should pick up Terry Pratchett books when I see them. They never disappoint.

This is my second of Stephen King's crime thriller stories under the Hardcase Crime banner. I still haven't read Joyland either. and now I have The Colorado Kid to add to the pile. That's sort of my M.O. though, right? Always adding to the pile?

Speaking of... here's a copy of Blackbeard's Ghost with the Disney movie cover, which is technically not a novelization... but is close enough. It's about a ghost pirate. C'mon now.

This is where I picked up my copy of Garfield's Thanksgiving! This is the comic adaptation of the TV special, and as usual, there are a slight, strange variations in there. I've never been as much of a fan of the Thanksgiving special as I am the Christmas and especially the Halloween special... but it's still right up there. We watch it religiously every year.

THIS GUY. I mean whoah. This is am Imperial Toys King Kong toy! I love finding classic imperial toys at Goodwill. Nothing brightens my day in quite the same way. This toy is so cool. This was definitely the highlight of the trip. Everything else is downhill from here I'm afraid.

Which is really too bad, because all I have left is this big grab-bag full of toys...

And here are the contents. Let's get with the closer look already!

Included in the bag were a BUNCH of Mega Bloks pirates mini figures. The majority of these are just okay in my opinion, but there were three truly stand-out figures in the bunch:

And those three are right here. First of all, we have a skeletal pirate. I'm no stranger to this line, as my daughter picked out one of the mini skull playsets for me for father's day back when these were a brand new thing (maybe 7-8 or more years ago?) so I'm no stranger to how neat-o cool these can be. Starting on the left we have the skeleton, and then the pirate captain, with a peg-leg, ring in his beard, and an eyepatch. Finally, we have arguably the very best character of all: Some sort of witch doctor islander with scary eyes, a rooster comb, and a skull painted on his face. I love these things SO MUCH.

There were also a couple of random LEGO mini-figs in the mix. Not 100% sure who these guys are or what they're from. I ended up giving them to my son.

Also given to my sons to play with were these half-dozen Star Wars Attactix toys. I'm not into the prequels so I didn't want any of the clone troopers, and I honestly didn't care about the Tie Fighter pilot either. Nothing says fatherly love like handing over a pile of toys that fire tiny hard projectiles with alarming force to a couple of young boys who can barely go 5 minutes without getting into a fight.

Also in the bag was this broken Electro figure. He's sad, so we won't talk about him anymore.

What was NOT given over to my sons? These guys. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader figures that both ended up on my Star Wars collection shelf. There's a lesson in here somewhere about father/son relationships... but for the life of me I couldn't tell you what it would be.

Moving on.

This thing.

It was in the bag.

Don't know what it is, what it comes from, what it's for.

There is a grey pressure plate inside it, that when pushed, snaps the whole thing shut. Sort of like a trap... but it doesn't really scream "IT'S A TRAP" like you-know-who. Mainly because there's also what appears to be some sort of handle-bars inside it as well. So part of a vehicle maybe? I've been trying to investigate this for a while... and still nothing. It's baffling. If you know anything about it, let me know in the comments below.

UPDATE: This toy belongs to a Robots (as in the animated film called Robots) playset. Mystery solved.

Well kids... that's it for tonight! I'll be back with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough! But until that happens, Happy Hunting!

A Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies: Science Fiction Books

So today I'm tossing a bunch of different books under the Random Handful banner. This time around it's Science Fiction as the theme.

I actually found book three of the Star Wars trilogy for .99 cents at Goodwill BEFORE I posted about the Empire Strikes back novelization here! At the time I was still on the hunt for book #2... but if you haven't read that earlier post, spoiler alert: I got it. 

Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of Hellboy. I like the movies, and I've found all of the trade paperbacks of the Hellboy comics series second-hand, or on the cheap at Mardens... so I HAVE almost all of them... but I just haven't gotten into them yet. Hell, I even have an action figure from the animated series that I also have never seen. That doesn't stop me from continuing to pick up Hellboy books whenever I see them in hopes of someday loving them. So I got this Hellboy Novel, "The Lost Army" at Goodwill for .99 cents. 

Ehhh... I don't know if you can EXACTLY classify this one as "sci-fi" but it comes pretty close... Right? It tells the tale of a middle-school megalomaniac super-genius who puts his goals of world domination on hold for a bit while he tries to win an election at his school, just to prove a point to his father. It turns out to be harder than he thought. Hilarity ensues. I really like the concept behind this book, and I hope it turns out to be a good read. 

You can see Mardens price tags on the front of this book, but I did indeed pick it up at Goodwill. I probably overpaid however, because at Goodwill I suspect these were on clearance for .50 cents and I paid .99. C'est la vie. I am actually interested in reading a novelization of Nu-Trek. 

Garth Nix is hands down one of the authors I am most excited to track down and read more of. I love his Abhorsen series, and the Keys to the Kingdom series, and recommend them highly. I've tracked down almost all the books in the Seventh Tower series, as well as his book Ragwitch, though I haven't read any of those yet. Add another to the pile! .99 cents. 

I've just been meaning to read this ever since I read Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I picked it up for no other reason than that. .99 cents. 

I actually thought that I had bought this book, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, at one point, but when I went looking for it, discovered I didn't actually own it at all... Jaime Hood over at Shezcrafti threatened to revoke my Geek Membership once if I didn't read this book at some point. I tend to take her threats more seriously than some... So the very next time I saw it at Goodwill I picked it up. Haven't read it yet... but it's only a matter of time now. .99 cents.

I had already seen a ton of super-positive reviews for Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl" online before I discovered it at Goodwill. I picked it up for 1.99 and added it to my read pile. I guess it's a novel about the seedy side of bio-engineered slaves. Like that could have a seedy side. Described as "bio-punk" this book is extremely high-concept with a complete reinvention of how the world works bio-technologically in the 23rd century. It's another one my fingers are itching to turn the pages in. Steady fingers. Your time will come. 

Picked this one up the same day as The Windup Girl (and a couple of other books I'll talk about during my upcoming Halloween Countdown... it was a good day for good Sci-Fi). Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter team up to bring us "The Long Earth" I was pretty much sold as soon as I saw Pratchett's name on the cover, and considering this is a collaboration, and a non-Disc-World book, I was intrigued. The book deals with alternate Earths, and travel between them. It deals with a pair of exploratory protagonists and the other Earths they explore. It deals with the way the world would react to the fact that there are suddenly millions of other Earths to expand out onto... and the sorts of dangers that might dwell out among those millions of potential worlds that would in turn discover us. I got this one for 1.99 as well. 

Well that's it boys and girls! A Random Handful of Sci-Fi books I've picked up at Goodwill. I hope you enjoyed reading about my hopes to read them as much as I enjoyed writing about hoping to read them! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!