A Great Weekend-Part II

This is the continuation of the little spending spree I had this past weekend.  Yesterday, I revealed my finds from non-retail establishments(thrift-type stores).  Today will showcase my retail findings(with reviews of some of the items soon).

I’m not going to list my finds in chronological order, but I will list the toys last.

I took the requisite trip to Wal-Mart on Saturday so we could do some grocery shopping, checked the toy section, and would you believe it?  There was nothing I really wanted.  So, I decided to see what graphic t-shirts they had.  There were quite a few more I’d like to pick up.  I had a black Bullet Bill shirt in my hand ready to go find my wife, until I looked down and saw this.

I had to get this shirt!  It exudes all types of awesome!  On a side note, I also needed new pajama pants, and they are of the Pac-Man variety as well(I’m wearing them right now).

On Friday, after exiting the movie theater, we decided to hit up the Barnes & Noble right next door(well, in between the movie and Barnes & Noble, we had a few drinks at The Cheesecake Factory on the other side of the theater.  We only had about 15-20 minutes, as it was around 10:40pm.  I stumbled across 2 books in the heavily marked down clearance racks.

The Far Side is one of my all-time favorite comic strips(?).  I have about 4 other collections of The Far Side.  As you can see, this was released for the strip’ 10 year anniversary(published in 1989).  Inside tells you the story of how The Far Side came to be, as well as the short lived strip that Gary Larson did before The Far Side.  I think the cover is sweet looking.  I can’t decide which is cooler, the T-Rex skeleton or the 3-D rendering of Larson’s classic nerd kid.  I also picked up a new Bathroom Reader, as I recently finished reading the one I got for Christmas.  I had a different one in my hand when I saw this one.  But this one was marked down to $6.98.  This series has great facts as well as plenty of useless trivia, and is just a very interesting read.

Now we’ll get to see the toys I ended giving a home to.

Toys R Us was our first stop upon hitting Albany on Friday night.  I was disappointed with their selection and some of the prices.  The first one we’ll look at was purchased more because of it’s clearance tag, rather than being a toy I would purchase even at full price.

Jurassic Park must be a hot license if they’re making toys for them in 2009(that’s when these were released).  There was a good selection of this line, priced to go at $3.98.  You had the choice of getting a figure and a dinosaur, or getting a two-pack of dinosaurs.  This one has a launching projectile with it, and you can’t go wrong with a dinosaur and a shooting projectile in a toy(review coming soon).

The Toys R Us I went to still had a huge amount of figures from the Transformers-Revenge of the Fallen, and they were selling them at full price.  There were no recently released figures(Generations, Reveal the Shield), but I did manage to find a decent figure that was marked down.

Decepticon Bludgeon!  This guy(voyager class) was going for just about a dollar more than the deluxe class figures from the same line.  I couldn’t turn it down.  This will also be reviewed in the near future.  I hope my next trip to Toys R Us is a bit more fruitful.

We’ll end with the last find of the weekend.  I stopped by the local comic shop after we left Wal-Mart on Saturday, and picked this up.

It’s Landfill.  After I brought this home, I did a little research, and found out that I over paid for this, and the guns he came with aren’t correct.  He is clean and the stickers are in good shape, so I don’t mind, as this is for my collection anyway.

Stay tuned for another awesome acquisition post, as well as some toy reviews.

Herman

First off.  Happy Labor Day everyone!

One of the things I loved doing for a good portion of my life, was reading the comics in the daily newspaper(Sundays were the best.  They were in color).  For more than 3 years now, I have not read any daily newspapers.  Now, everyone has their favorites.  A few of my favorites include, The Far Side, The Wizard of Id, One Big Happy, Calvin and Hobbes, Foxtrot and  Herman.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of reading Herman…Herman was a comic strip in the same vein as Gary Larson’s “The Far Side”, and Wiley Miller’s “Non Sequitur”.  The comics say everything in one panel, and range from stupidly funny to some dry ones that make you scratch your head.  So, I was on my way to the grocery store to return some recyclables, and there happened to be a lawn sale on the way to the aforementioned grocery store.  Of course I stopped!  There was a lot of antique looking stuff, some junk, a pay phone and some books.  A stack of about six or seven were collected books of Herman.  I was low on cash and knew I’d have to at least score one.  I asked the man in charge, and he said “a buck a piece”.  Here’s the one I was able to aquire.

 I never realized how old this comic is.  Inside of the book, it says, “First Printing 1979” “Twenty-fifth Printing 1986”.  The man in the frame that Herman is holding, is Jim Unger.  Jim Unger is the creator/cartoonist of Herman.  I’m pretty sure I started reading it beacause of Unger’s unique style.  Generally, if the artwork is a bit weird, I’m gonna love it.  Here’s a sampling of this volume’s contents.

My favorite one on this particular page, is the one where the Herman is turning into a monkey beacause of an all banana diet.  Like I said, stupidly funny to dry.  This one gets a strong reccomendation from me.