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 Sales #16 – Season Finale

Well, yesterday kicked off the beginning of fall.  I can’t say that I mind the change.  Although I’m going to miss the nice weather, the fall season has it’s perks.  One of them is not yard sales.  I’m sure this will be my last post about yard sales until April-May 2013.  And it’s sad, because you can really find some great stuff(for some great prices).  It’s really hit or miss when it comes to thrift stores and second hand shops(not to mention hit or miss prices…everyone is an expert 🙂 ).  But this installment yielded a very nice selection of stuff that I’m into.

We’ll start with cool, and end with coolest.

This was one of two Alfs spotted at the first sale that we stopped at.  This one and the other that I passed on were from a Burger King promotion, back in 1988.  This one had it’s tag intact(the other didn’t), so I figured it was worth the $1 asking price.  This will fit nicely with my unintentional Alf collection(we’ll have to see that one of these days).

Anything Zelda related is a must-buy in my book, as it’s my favorite video game franchise ever(I’m sure I’ve mentioned this a bunch of times)!  The best part is that the woman running the sale only wanted $1 each!  Both of these guides are for Twilight Princess.  The awesome hard cover edition is normally selling for $20-$30 dollars(or more).  And I’m sure the other(the Nintendo Power one), goes for around the same.  The thing with finds like these is, while they may be worth a little something on the secondary market, I’m not really inclined to get rid of them.

A little confession.

Twilight Princess, while I own it(for gamecube), and it’s from my favorite franchise, it’s the only Zelda game I have never played(I will work to rectify that)!

I got these at Richie Rich’s(you’ve heard about this place from me plenty of times before), so this may be consideere cheating…but I went to Richie’s while I was yard saling.  So, it counts.  These guys were hidden behind a few plush bears, but I spotted them!  They were marked at $4 each.  I countered with $1 each(they’re pretty rough).  I was told that I could take them at $2 each.  But the American Picker in me offered $3 for both.  And my deal was accepted.  Panthro appears to be okay, and his “action” works(for the most part).  Monkian’s face is roughed up badly, and his “action” does not work at all.  The villians from Thundercats seem hard to come by, and any Monkian, is better than no Monkian.

Normally, old-school Thundercats figures would be the find of the day.  But that was not the case this time around.

Oh no.  I found these guys!

Germs!  I hardly remember these guys, and I’ve seen them on a bunch of sites, but I’m having a hard time recalling if I actually owned any!  They seem right up my alley, and I immediately knew what they were when I saw them on a table ten feet away from me.  For 50 cents each, there was no way I was leaving them behind.

On the right is “Huppahickasilia”; “Commonly known as the hiccup”*.  And on the left we have “Sweatystinkiosis”; “Commonly known as body odor”*.  These are very fun, and quite nice looking to the eye.  It’ll be a fat chance before I find any of these again!

When I took them out of their test tubes(I’d take a guess that these are often missing), they felt(and smelled like ), they were brand new.  Taking a look at what the going rate for some of these, I’d say they were a pretty sweet find!  But as always, I’m not interested in getting rid of them!

What a great way to send off the 2012 season!

* – information obtained from The Dork Dimension.

New Stuff and a Pretty Awesome Find

Where does the time go?!  We’re already in September, and the cooler weather is moving in.  I had my last camping trip of the summer this past weekend, and I had one of my best friends visit me the weekend before.  Before I knew it, almost two weeks had gone by without a single post.

So that’s the story.  But in the time I was away, I managed to have a few items come my way.

Whether good or bad, I always love to get new NES games to add to the collection.  In my opinion both of these are decent games.  Stinger was given to me from my friend Mike.  He was at a video game store, picked up two copies, and gave one to me.  The boss at the end of the first stage is a giant slice of anthropomorphic watermelon!  Mystery Quest was an Ebay find, nothing too special.  I had this game when I was a kid, but I don’t remember much of it.  The only thing that I specifically remembered, was that your health was referred to as “vitality”.  It’s a little bit of a rip-off of a mario game, but it’s different enough to be enjoyable.

Not including shipping, I paid $2.05 for this 1992 April.  Not bad.  Not bad.  The card is a little warped, but may be able to be fixed.  It’s also unpunched.  As you can see, this is a 5th anniversary figure(“New for ’92!”).  Any time I can get a carded, old-school TMNT figure for a great price, I won’t pass it up.

And here is the most recent, but also, most awesome find.

Ready?

Bam!

This has to be one of my favorite finds ever!  And I almost didn’t see it.  I was at the “Red Barn”, and happened to catch it out of the corner of my eye when I was starting to leave.  I grabbed and just could not believe it.  It’s just one of those toys you don’t expect to find in the wild anymore.  Voltron is a long time favorite of mine, but I was much more into the show when I was a kid.  This was one of the toys that I always wanted, but never got(I do have one from ’97-’98).  My friend Rob got it for me, and said it was the birthday gift he forgot to give me.  What a guy!

The best part?  The lions are in excellent shape!  As you can see on the box, this is the blue and red lion set.  We’ll take a closer look at these in the near future, but here’s this for now.

Yard Sale Finds #15

I had high expectations for yard sales for the past couple of weeks.  And while I have found some things, there hasn’t been much that has interested me.  On top of that, some people are asking for too much for a lot of things.  This past weekend, I found a handful of things.  The weekend before, I hardly found anything.  So I lumped both weekends together, to make a more robust post.

First we’ll start with some reading material.

I am nowhere near as into wresting as I was back in the day.  I stopped watching somwhere back in 2002.  It seemed like it was more of a soap opera more than anything else.  I liked to watch it for the matches, and it seems like there’s too much dialogue, and plots to actually give you that consistantly.  But Hulk Hogan has been a favorite of mine since I was like 5 years old.  And from what I’ve read in the past, wresting biographies are a decent read.  This book has a cover price of $26!  But I got it for 25 cents.  So even if it’s horrible, I won’t be kicking myself for buying it.  The Guiness Book of World Records, is a bit dated since it’s the 2004 edition(not to mention it’s the paperback).  But it’s always a good book to flip though, making it perfect bathroom reading.  And for 25 cents, it was hard to resist.

Everything above set me back $3.75.  The Game Cube games were a mere $1 each.  Which was refreshing, because you have people these days, trying to sell the crappiest PS2 games for $5 or more.  The same people were also selling Wii games for $3 each(these people had great prices for everything), but there wasn’t anything I was interested in.  Bloodsport was still in the factory shrinkwrap, and was sold to me for $1.50.  I bought it at “The World’s Biggest Yard Sale”(it really wasn’t), from a seller who had probably more than 1000 DVDs(some brand new, and some used).  I didn’t stick around for too long to check everything out, as people were all up on this great deal.  The Pee-Wee’s Playhouse tape was 25 cents at a sale we stopped at later in the day.  It’s one of the original VHS releases from 1988.  The funny thing is that I found a brand new VCR head cleaner(still sealed with the FYE price tag in tact), which comes in handy, since I do have a small collection of VHS tapes.

Pretty much the only toys I saw were either newer toys from properties that were from somwhere in the last 10 years, or they were of the fast food variety.  So it was slim pickin’s.

Although her nose seems to be chewed off, there was no way I could turn down this Cheetarah figure for 50 cents.  She was my last fing of the day, and I almost didn’t see her!  I’m happy if I could find figures from the eighties, as they are getting harder and harder to find in the wild.  My old-school Thundercats collection is lacking, so I’ll take what I can find.  And lastly, I found a Micro Machine for 25 cents.  Unlike my last yard sale post, this one is an official Micro Machine by Galoob.  I checked on that before I inquired about it.  I probably still would have bought it even if it “wasn’t the real thing!”.

And that’s it.  I did pick up a few new things that I plan on reviewing this week.  I know I was MIA in July for the most part, but I would like to rectify that.  I have the urge to write more, and I have some stuff that I want to write about(a winning combination).

Bazooka

Howdy everyone!  I needed to take a bit of a hiatus from blogging but I’m back now!  It’s been a little dry in regards to toys, but I do have some stuff that I can make(at least little) posts for.

I went to a few yard sales in the past week or so, but I only obtained one new item!  And it was this guy.

Bazooka was in a bag with a bunch of other G.I. Joes, some of which were broken.  The bag said that they were $3.50 each, but the guy selling them said that he would give me a deal for all of them.  The only others that I noticed were another Bazooka, and a Gung-Ho who was just barely hanging on by his o-ring.  There were others, but I wasn’t familiar with them.  So, I decided against buying them all, and just took the single figure.  The paint is good, and the joints are as tight as the day he was purchased.  Not a homerun, but a decent addition for $2.00.

The League of Extraordinary Bloggers – Holy Grails and White Whales

The League of Extraordinary Bloggers is a project that Brian from Cool and Collected started about 2 months ago(for those of you who are not familiar with this, click here for the scoop).  The topic this week is, as stated in this post’s title, Holy Grails and White Whales.

While I could go on and on with stuff I would love to get, the idea is what would we most like to find, and be able to take home with us.  There’s got to be  something that has eluded you, that you think you may never get, or get the opportunity for a chance at.  There are a few things that instantly came to mind.

I collect video games, among other things, so that’s where we’ll start.

What you see above is the very definition of Holy Grail, when it comes to the Nintendo Entertainment System.

I have many fond memories attached to the NES, which is probably why I have so much interest in the system itself.  I collect games for quite a few consoles,  but I have more NES games than all of my other consoles combined(200+).  If you are not familiar with the story behind these cartridges, I’ll give you a little history.

In 1990, Nintendo held a video game championship across the country(not unlike the one in the movie The Wizard).  There were competitions in cities across the nation, looking for the best Nintendo player in that city.  Then the “best” players from each age group would play against each other in the finals of the tournament to determine the winner.  I’m not sure just how these were distributed, but I do know that some went to the champions and finalists, and some were given away in a Nintendo Power contest.  There are only 90 of the gray cartridges, and just 26 copies of the gold one.

The games contained within are Super Mario Brothers(get 50 coins), Rad Racer(complete the first course), and Tetris(get the highest score you can).  There is a dipswitch on the outside of the cart, that you can use to adjust the amount of time to play.  Even though all the games are pretty common, the cartridges are not.  This is something I’m pretty sure I will never own, but it’s nice to dream of finding it a at a garage sale or flea market.

And there are a few toys that came to mind as well.  Now, there are a lot(tons), of toys that I would love to add to my collection.  There are plenty of lines that I collect, and others that I would like to collect.  But there is one line that stands above the rest, and that’s Transformers.  Or more specifically, Generation 1 Transformers.

The first of the two?

Transformers and I go way back.  My brother and I received our first Transformers on the Christmas of 1984 or 1985.  We got one each, and they were both Megatron.  Megatron is high on my want list, but Ultra Magnus is just a little more important to me.  You see, when I saw Transformers the Movie back in 1987, Ultra Magnus quickly became my new Favorite Transformer.  My older brother ended up getting it for me, I believe, for my 9th birthday in 1988.  For some reason I didn’t have it very long.  My stepmother, took him away for some reason(probably jealous that my younger brother didn’t have one), and I never saw him again.  I’m sure I probably cried my eyes out, because I really wanted that toy, and really loved it for the short time that I had it.  So, maybe, finally getting him again may give me some closure.

And the one I wanted, but never got.

Soundwave, is perhaps the coolest looking Transformer in robot mode(and a little dated in alt mode).  I knew a few kids who had this guy, and boy, did I want it!  There were quite a few times I would pick out cassette 2-packs(for Soundwave or Blaster), when we would ask if we could get a toy(you know what I’m talking about).  I have had a few chances to pick this guy up, but at the time(s), I just didn’t have the $40-$50 to spare.  But that may all change when the toy show comes to town on April 22!

Check out what has eluded Reis over at Lair of the Dork Horde.

Brian talks about the item he would love to add to his ever-growing King Kong collection over at Cool and Collected.

And Tim searches for “The Non-Existent” over at Flashlights are Something to Eat.