Random Buys of a Random Guy: Battle Cat and More at the Schoolhouse Antiques Mall

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 on February 4th, 2014. 

Shortly before Christmas I went hunting for an elusive place out in Brewer, ME called the School House Antique Mall. I had heard there were some old Battle-Cats to be found there, so I decided to go check it out. I've tried to find the place before, but since I am terrible at directions, I had failed on two previous attempts to locate it. But third time was the charm (finally had to stop at a Gas Station and ask for supplementary directions)!

And they said Ziggy couldn't still be relevant...

I WISH I had picture-taking capabilities on my iPod at the time, because it was SO much more than I was expecting! I didn't find much on the ground floor, but moving up to the second I entered a room that was floor-to-ceiling with old 80's toys! Mostly dolls to be honest, but PLENTY of cool stuff to catch my eye, including some fantastic old Fisher-Price Little People pieces and buckets upon buckets of dirty old 90's action figures. I didn't buy too much because as fun as it was to look, a lot of the stuff there was a bit over-priced. I did come away with a few items I just couldn't leave behind. 

First up is this Muppet Babies Fozzy Happy Meal figurine. He originally came with a wheeled ride-on horsey but I didn't really care that his was missing. I saw a Miss Piggy figurine there as well, but she was three dollars (what?) where Fozzy here was only one. So Fozzy came home, and that little Piggy stayed at market. Gonzo and Kermit were very happy to have their fuzzy buddy on the shelf with them. 

Next up are a couple of Fisher-Price Little People. A cowboy/jungle safari sort of character (need to look him up) and a second circus clown to go along with the one I already had. I pretty much picked up the clown because I loved him, and the cowboy because he was so cheap. The clown set me back 2 dollars on his own, but was worth it. The cowboy-or-whatever-he-is was another 1 dollar purchase!

And of course, the whole point of the journey was Battle Cat! I found a set of Battle Cat armor in my big Castle Grayskull find just the weekend prior to my trip out to the School House, so leaving without a Battle Cat to put in it seemed foolish. There were actually 3 Battle cats for sale. This one was 3 dollars, and had just the tip of his tail snapped off. There was another identical Battle cat there for 3.50 (and yes, identical implies that his tail was also snapped off). The one Battle cat there with his tail intact was 8 dollars, so I decided to save myself 5 bucks and buy this one. 

I will literally look for any excuse to show this stuff off.
I'm... pretty shameless.

So here's a shot of He-Man on his properly attired (and finally present) Battle Cat!

This is the whole pile of loot, including the very old Tom and Jerry Christmas Golden Book that I for some reason neglected to get an individual picture of (and only paid 2 dollars for). I was way more impressed just looking around the School House than I was with m actual purchases there, but the next time I go I will have picture-taking capabilities back and I will be sure to share what I see there! 

That's it for tonight gang, but I'll be back with more randomness soon enough. Keep your peepers peeled here 'til then! 

This One's Honestly Kind of Lame, but I've Been Sitting On This Draft FOREVER and I don't Blame You if You Hate It.

Oh my gosh, this entry has been waiting for AGES to be written up and posted. Here's a quick stop into Goodwill from last year some time... My quick stops didn't used to involve combing through the books section, but now I usually at least scan them to see what's there. Hence, the small pile of books.

First I found this vintage package of "Mr. Doodler" non-toxic, washable markers from the 80's. Unfortunately, they are not the smelly kind... but I remember these from school when I was a kid, and surprisingly, they still (kind of...) work. So I bought 'em for .99 cents. 

I don't feel like writing up stuff about each and every one of these books, but most of these should be pretty obvious as to why I picked them up. All sci-fi, fantasy, and geek-speak stuff. The I, Steve book is all inspirational Steve Jobs quotes, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a novelization of the Stanley Kubrick film (although its pedigree is smudgy. It was developed by Clarke and Kubrick together, to be released after the film... and is technically based on the film... but it (and apparently the film) was also based on a bunch of Clarke's short stories). 1984. Never read it. Probably never going to get around to reading it... but now I can at least say I have no good excuse for not having read it... because I own it. 

I have been holding on to the first book in the Wyrd Museum trilogy for a while now, and I was almost on the verge of just getting rid of it... and then I found book #2... and now I have to try and make myself read these books about a magical museum... which sounds pretty great actually. But... so... many... books. Like this beautiful old paperback copy of the Tolkien Reader that I will probably never read either. But look at that thing.

I picked up this fun looking Gold Key Golden Comics Digest starring Tom and Jerry. Just look at that line-up! Droopy Dog! Still haven't read this one, but I am looking forward to it!!! And as always, there was a Golden Book starring Mickey Mouse that just HAD to come home with me as well.

The star of the show is this Hungry Hippos board from the 80's! Look at this thing! The ones you buy nowadays have the hippos that you can separate from the game for easy storage... actually no. That's the version our family bough back in the early 2000's. NOWADAYS, the game has been tainted by the "Elefun and Friends" branding because Hasbro realized that all of their animal-themed games needed their own shared universe.  

Look at this goofy b*stard. This was back in the days of "Henry," "Homer," "Harry," and "Happy" Hippo. But darned if they didn't ALL look so deliriously "Happy" back then. Man. Although... if you stare at his nostrils for too long it makes your eyes hurt a little. Don't do it.

All right kids, that's all I have for tonight. I'll be mack with some more Geeky Goodwill Goodies soon enough though! So until then, Happy Hunting!

Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies: 80's Kid's Books

Today's Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies is all about kids' books. BUT WAIT! There's some really cool ones in here, so even if you'd normally click away when you see I'm just doing a big weird post about kid's books... hang around for a while, okay? Almost every single one of these books is based on an 80's property, or was published back in the 80's. 

Let me get the obligatory Sesame Street book out of the way. This one's pretty rad though. It's a book of Sign Language ABC with Linda Bove!!! When I was a kid I was completely in love with Linda on Sesame Street and the fact that she was deaf and spoke in sign language only made her seem cooler to little me. I remember this book from somewhere, probably school. I found it not at Goodwill, but for .50 cents at Bull Moose in Bangor, ME. 

Next up, a trio of exciting Hollywood adventures! These books and all the books to follow were indeed found at Goodwill, for .99 cents. Benji and the Tornado, Gremlins: A New Friend, and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: The Mummy's Curse. I was most excited to find the Gremlins picture book, but Young Indy ain't no slouch either. Benji I used to watch a lot as a kid, so  it gives me warm and fuzzies.  

Here we have a Who Framed Roger Rabbit book, detailing a very abridged version of the movie's plot. Then, I found this Muppet Babies McDonald's premium book featuring baby Fozzie and Kermit. There were at least two other books in the series given out with Happy Meals. This one is all about how Fozzie wants to make Kermit into a frog-skin suit he can have Kermit all to himself. I guess. I haven't read it yet. The ALF book is from the animated series, detailing his adventures on his home planet of Melmac. Pretty awesome!

All right! Now we're into the Good Stuff! You can tell because the pictures are solo shots. Here we have a G.I. Joe book titled Operation Star Fight. The art in this book, done by Earl Norem, is phenomenal. It's pretty violent by Joes standards too. It looks like folks are actually taking bullets. The story's not much to talk about (Cobra tries to hijack a space shuttle. It goes about as well as anything Cobra tries to do.) This is a sweet looking book though.

The Real Ghostbusters: The Haunted Castle is nothing amazing to write home about. I'm mostly just excited that I now own a Real Ghostbusters storybook. This tiny little book is about as long as a novel, so it doesn't make for great bedtime reading... It's weird that most 80's books have this same problem. It's like they didn't even take into account that most kids have an attention span of about 40 seconds, give or take depending if there's candy in the room. Fun little piece of nostalgia. 

One of the MOST exciting kid's book finds in recent memory is this Thundercats book, Lion-O Walks the Plank! I haven't read this one yet either, but I have to beg the question: How does one walk the plank into the vacuum of space? Aren't they in like... outer space up there in that picture right now? How is that happening? All kidding aside though, I'm stoked (yep, stoked) to own this book.

Aaargh! I published this post without writing anything about this tiny little TMNT book! It's pretty great, but much like the Real ghostbusters book above, it's TOO LONG to read to my little guys. Maybe when they're older... until then I'll just hang on to it for them in the cave...

I guess Isaac Asimov must have been into like, science or something. This is not the first kid's science book I've found written by him. There was that "Did Comets Kill the Dinosaurs?" book I found back in August LAST year... (Spooky!) There are no Robots gaining self-awareness in either of these books. It's kind of a bummer. 

Hey! Here's a Q*Bert book! It has nothing whatsoever to do with the animated series either, which I found pretty refreshing. So no villains dressed up as a greaser/biker gang, and no malt shops or letter-jackets for Q*Bert. 

In fact, all of Q*Bert's dialogue is written in code that you decipher using the phrase key at the beginning of the book. The whole thing pretty much just tells a story to explain what the hell is going on when you play Q*Bert. I like how the picture on the cover is in the shape of a Q. This is deep stuff here people.

You didn't think I'd do a whole post about kid's books and not have at least ONE Little Golden book did you? This here's a Tom and Jerry LGB. They... have a party apparently. Looks fun, albeit most likely highly unsanitary. I love finding older properties like this. Even though the copyright on the story is 1955, this book was still published in the 80's as the coupon for 15 cents off another Golden book in the back of the book has a copyright of 1982. 

This is one of those pretty standard, generic books about monsters that talks about all the different categories, from old mythology, to current legends and cryptozoology, to monsters of the movies, and the "possible" monsters that aliens could potentially be. The artwork and text are all incredibly cheesy and enjoyable. This is the exact kind of flashlight-under-the-covers kind of book I would have checked out from the school library for six weeks in a row as a wee lad. 

Nyah-ha! I slipped ANOTHER Sesame Street book in here!!! This one's about The Wanted criminal known as the Great Cookie Thief. It plays out like a classic Sesame Street comedy sketch from the show, and it's all western themed. I'm cheating a little bit here as this book is actually from 1977. But it's classic Sesame Street! And by classic I mean the awesome stuff they used to do back in the day before it all started being about Elmo's goldfish. 

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