Topps Juice Gum Cartons from 1982-1985

This just goes to show you that you can pretty much find anything for sale on Ebay.

This post from Dinosaur Dracula sparked my memory of these.

I only really wanted the Pink Lemonade carton(Pink Lemonade was my favorite, based on taste, and the look of the carton.  Look at it!), but the auction, as it turns out, was for all four.  They are pictured in the order of the years printed on their sides, starting with Grape from 1982, and ending with Orange from 1985.  All four have gum inside, but I am not tempted to eat any of it.  Well maybe I am just a bit curious to see if, at least the Pink Lemonade tastes the way I remember it.

Yard Sale Finds #13

Well, this weekend was supposed to be a pretty decent weekend for yard/garage sales.  But the friggin’ rain ruined it!  There were two different towns that were having village-wide garage sales, and the rain seemed to make many people change their minds.  The people were out looking for the sales, but there were far fewer sales than I have seen in past years.

There were some deals to be had, and I even passed on a few items.  But we’re here to talk about what I was able to come home with.

There were tons of PS1 games for sale, but many of them were missing the instruction manuals, so they were of no real interest to me.  While this game is nothing special, but I am a hockey fan and I am a PS1 fan.  75 cents was about what I was willing to pay for it, so it was a good deal for both sides.

I know the above three items don’t look like much, but all three were mine for 25 cents!  The Officer Big Mac car is made by Ertl, but I’m not sure if it was a Happy Meal premium or sold in stores.  It’s marked 1984 and has the Ertl logo on the bottom, and the pull-back action still works like new.  I can never say no to either series of McDonald’s Changeables(the robots or dinosaurs), as long as I don’t already have them.  And obviously, I didn’t previously have this one.  The McDonald’s Happy Meal box is iconic, and this is a pretty neat toy.  The pack of NBA trading cards is a premium that was inserted into boxes of Drakes Cakes back in 1992.  I remember this promotion, as I was heavily into trading cards at the time(NHL, NBA and non-sports).  This is something you don’t see everyday, and I couldn’t pass it up.  I will not open them, but John Stockton is the top card, so that’s not half bad.

And now, the action figures.  I passed on Tabe from Chuck Norris Karate Kommandos because he was really dirty and was pretty much naked.  Even for $1, I just couldn’t make the purchase.  I also passed on a Transformers Animated Ultra Magnus.  But I had reasoning behind why I didn’t grab it.  I like the look of the Animated figures, and Ultra Magnus looks cool.  But When I picked him up, he was in robot mode, and I wasn’t sure if anything was missing.  It was $3, so it wasn’t too big a risk, but room is at a premium right now, and he is one of the larger figures from the Animated line(probably taller than my Voltron).  I’ll grab it next year if the old woman still has it, as I make it a point to visit her set-up every year(she always ahs a ton of action figures).

These three came from the old woman I briefly mentioned above.  And they cost her usual $1 per figure, of which I had no qualms of paying.  I found the Beetlejuice figure on my second time through(my first from the line).  Whiplash is a little dirty, but that will not be a problem that can’t be solved with a little soap and warm water.  And Fugitoid looked to be in pretty good shape, and you know I’m always looking for new additions to my old-school TMNT collection!

I spent a total of $4 on the day(everything you see above), so I didn’t do too bad.  I just wish that we didn’t get all the rain we did, because there would have been at least 3 times as many sales as there actually was.  But still a fun hunt nonetheless.

Yard Sale Finds #5

The yard sale season is finally upon us.  This is when others’  “junk” becomes our treasure.  In the coming months, bordering towns/villages, will hold village wide garage/yard sales on the weekends.  It’s not every weekend, but only one village wide garage sale will be on any given weekend.  This weekend was the town of Esperance’s village wide sale.

I found a bunch of stuff, but came home with very little in the toy department.  I spent around five dollars for everything you will see here today.

It was an overcast day yesterday, but still warm enough to be outside in a t-shirt.  I woke up at 7:30am(on a day I could sleep in), but I didn’t head out until about 10:45am.  This was probably the reason that I didn’t get a lot of cool toys.  It could also be that I have been hitting the annual sale in Esperance for the last 4 years!  There’s only so many old-school toys in a single location, but I’m with the same train of thought as The New York Lottery….”Hey, you never know.”

I came across some really great deals on books.  I came home with six really cool books, which cost me a grand total of just .95 cents!  And the books came from 3 different sellers!  Here’s the first 4 I found yesterday morning.

From 1979, we have Mercer Mayer’s “Little Monster’s Alphabet Book”.  I remember thinking that the little monster on the cover was a cool looking character when I was a kid.  While this book came out the year I was born, I remember liking this Little Monster series in my early years.  Then we have Sesame Street’s “The Little Red Hen”.  This came out in 1983.  I don’t remember this specific book, but the Sesame Street books that came out in this period were great books for their target demographic(the best Sesame Street book is “The Monster at the End of this Book”, in case you wanted to know).  Lastly we have “Like, MAD” and “Fighting MAD”, from 1960 and 1961 respectively.  These came out many years before my time, but if you’re a fan of MAD, your a fan of their complete works.  Don Martin is my favorite of all MAD artists, and you can see some of his early work within these pages.  It’s not exactly the work I remember from the 80’s, but it’s cool to see some of his early work, as it was kind of rough(but you would still know it was his work).

And here are the other 2 books that I purchased.

From 1963, we have 2 books from the LIFE Nature Library.  The first is a book called The Sea.  I have had a fascination with animals since I can remember.  My obsessions when I was a kid(besides toys and cartoons), were animals, dinosaurs and outer space.  I still retain interest in all of those categories, and the sea is a great place to find some of the weirdest life forms on earth.  Secondly we have The Forest.  While not as cool as sea animals, this is very informative for the life that lives in the world’s forests.  A damn good deal at .25 cents a piece!

In a rare event, I actually found a couple of video games at such a price, that it wasn’t necessary to haggle!

At one dollar per game, I thought it was a hell of a deal!  Spawn The Eternal is from 1997, The Die Hard Trilogy is from 1996.  I haven’t played the Spawn game, but I remember playing the Die Hard Trilogy on the PS1, as well as the arcade version.  Despite being hard as hell at times, The Die Hard Trilogy is a blast to play.

If you’ve read some of my other yard sale posts, you’ll know that I’m a sucker for old-school cups and glasses.  And this weekend proved to provide a nice assortment of vintage drink receptacles.

The Far Side mug will now be my mug of choice when I’m drinking coffee.  I think everyone can relate to this.  Where I live, there are plenty of dairy farms, so I see my fair share of cows.  I’m pretty sure that when 99% of people drive by and they see a cow, they let out an audible “Moo”.  This mug depicts the reversal of roles, and I find that hilarious!  In the middle is a McDonald’s “Mac Tonight” collector’s cup from 1987.  I don’t know why we haven’t seen more of Mac, but I will enjoy drinking out of this cup.  And on the right, is a McDonald’s Garfield collector’s glass from 1978.  I now have 4 of these(3 different, with 1 duplicate).  I love Garfield, and if you don’t, you have no soul.

Let’s wrap this up!

From 1995, it’s a “BK Kids Club Cooler”.  I can only remember Kid Vid and Jaws.  Research tells me that this “Snaps”.  Kid Vid is obviously the chaser.  If any male my age says that Kid Vid was not their favorite, they’re a dirty liar!  Totally worth the dime the seller was asking.  That little wizard guy appears to be hand made, and there’s no date of any tell tale markings of being a production piece, so I’m guessing it was made by a student or in a craft class.  Two quarters was all it took to make it mine!  The black tray is a Discover card check tray(?).  It is shrink wrapped and does not appeared to be used.  I got this from the same seller who sold me the Snaps Cooler, for .10 cents as well.  For a nickel, my wife found that neat little Pepsi Cola truck.  While I have nothing against Coke, and I drink it from time to time, I come from a Pepsi family.  Now, I finally have one of these cool Dark Knight figures found in boxes of various General Mills cereals back in 2008(this is the one with the uppercut action).  The hunt was fun, and I made out okay, so I can’t complain.  I love to go garage saling, as it’s a defining activity of my summer.  And you can bet we’ll see more as the weather gets warmer.