That vid may or may not work because Youtube has been being an ass lately. Someone forgot to wake up Billie Joe Armstrong again.
But with that aside, I finally got to visit the Flea Market this year! Either the weather didn't work out or I was doing something else, I was only able to go to the Bellmore Flea Market a few Sundays ago. But I found some great treasures this time!
A genuine copper toilet, for just $300!
A genuine velvet Elvis!
One of a few instruments there, but hey, hadn't seen a saxophone there before.
I didn't want to solve the mystery of what bone was used for that.
This one wasn't working or else I would've snagged it. Or at the very least, it needed batteries.
A $90 comic. I mean, I've never seen this one before, but why is it $90?!
Next to the Velvet Elvis was this frame with nine signatures from the cast of Glee. $70 was kind of a steal since one of them is big (Jane Lynch), and one of them is dead (Cory Monteith).
A store display of Halo toys, most likely liberated from a Toys R Us or a Target.
A Nintendo handheld I don't recognize that was going for $200.
And finally, what I walked away with. A 1984 Olympics button, and THREE Pro badges from past NY Comic Cons (2017, 18, and 19)! They were all a buck each, how could I not grab them? I just had to clean them off and they were as good as new.
Speaking of NYCC, that's next month, and I'm sure to have fun then!
2023 comes to a close, and already we had to say goodbye to some people since the last time I posted here.
Marty Krofft
Tom Smothers
Shane MacGowan
Norman Lear
And just today, Shecky Greene.
But the saddest of all, among many others, we lost Andre Braugher.
Captain Holt died! It's not fair, man. The above quote sums it up perfectly. Brooklyn Nine-Nine was such a great show, but Andre Braugher really was the glue that held it together. He was one of the best to ever do it.
On top of that, I got this for an early Christmas gift:
Covid! It felt like a cold, and thankfully got over it within a week. And it got me out of work the week before Christmas. And it was the week the Pokemon Scarlet/Violet DLC dropped. Oh noooo, I have so much time to play it, whatever will I do?
But with that, let's get to Christmas!
I saw Santa!!
And here's my tree:
So cozy, right? And let's see what I got this year!
I actually got Simpsons stuff this year!
And Bobs Burgers and Super Mario Wonder!
My favorite bbq sauce!
And my advent calendar full of scratchers. I won $33 and two free Take 5 tickets.
And here's some things I bought for myself because you do that when you're in your thirties with no other immediate family besides your parents.
I never realized that the Not Pizza Planet Truck transformer hailed from Stranger Things, and I managed to snag it when Target had a 30% off sale before their toy section was blown out. Same with the Zelda amiibo, I managed to find the last one Target had, since it was the only TOTK one I missed out on.
And I can't wait to finally play the Super Mario RPG remake since the Pokemon DLC took up most of my free time.
And I picked up the Peanuts and Rankin-Bass collections at Wal-Mart since they had them there. No more pirating for me! At least for these.
I found the Kerwin Frost McNuggets! Dig that box art.
Well, it's not the one that looks like Svengoolie, but I'll take it. Apparently this chill one was a sought after one?
And lastly, here was my favorite pickup from Wintercon at the beginning of the month. A Carvel comic! "Where are Fudgie and Cookie Puss?!" You ask. Well, the comic hails from 1973, so it predates those two by quite a few years, or else they would've had starring roles on the cover instead of the Flying Saucers.
But that also means that last week was my 36th birthday!
While I'm more fond of multiples of five, 36 is a good, even number. I don't like the idea of being in my MID-Thirties, but so far so good. My hair is starting to grow gray.
And like I said last month, birthdays means presents!
I pre-ordered this Masterpiece Skyfire months ago, and it just so happened to arrive as a late birthday gift to myself.
I don't usually splurge for Masterpiece, and this one wasn't cheap. But a show-accurate, well-articulated figure of Skyfire is something I've wanted to exist since I was six years old, and it's finally a reality.
My first impression? Holy Moses, is this thing big. They say this is the biggest Masterpiece figure so far, and I believe it.
Here he is posed with a minifig of Optimus that came with him. He also came with tiny figures of Jazz and Wheeljack to pose in his open compartments. You see, in the show, he was big enough to fit the regular characters in his cockpit, and I love that they included that here.
He also comes with removable chest plates. You see, in his first episode, he switches allegiances from Decepticon to Autobot by switching out the insignia on his chest.
And as you can see,
It's pretty inconsistent.
And just for fun, here he is posed with my G1 Jetfire.
He also comes with three alternate faces. Two different expressions besides the neutral one, plus a mask that evokes the original figure. The new version is definitely not a repainted Macross figure, but all in all, a great addition to the collection.
And in an impulse eBay buy on my birthday, I got in this signed picture of Dabney Coleman. Blame the Daily Simpsons Thursday Simpsons stream for that one. He was streaming an episode of Drexell's Class (his sitcom from 1991) after the episode and I wondered how much a signed picture of him went for these days.
Well, this one was pretty cheap, compared to the rest of the stuff I found. No Drexell's Class stuff. Hell, not even anything from 9 to 5. It was either stuff from Cloak & Dagger or some other movies I'd never heard of.
I found out that he voiced Principal Prickley from Recess, if there was any other reason to love him.
Last week, I also went back to NYC to try Ichiran again. Turns out the best time to go was on a Tuesday afternoon. I don't think I waited more than ten minutes to get in.
Just look at that beautiful bowl! They brought back their classic round bowls this time. When I went almost a year ago, they served their ramen in square bowls.
Even sprang for the fancy pork this time. It was all really good.
I managed to up the spicy sauce this time. I barely felt a level 3, this was level 6. I definitely felt that one, my eyes couldn't stop watering. It definitely cleaned out the sinuses.
After that, I stopped by the NY Public Library to catch their exhibit on rare books.
Most notably, a Gutenberg Bible.
Charles Dickens's writing desk
and of course, the original Winnie The Pooh dolls. They were moved from their home in the Children's Library, which I sadly discovered had been converted into a coat check.
Then I stopped by Nintendo NY and saw big Mario shoes.
And then stopped at the Times Square Disney Store and found Oswald merch! It was all thanks to that Disney 100 promotion they're doing.
There was a bunch more stuff, but people were in the way of the pictures and I didn't want to be awkward.
That about covers the month of March, folks. See you in April!
We've all seen the news: Toys R Us officially closed for business (at least in the states) yesterday, June 29th, 2018.
I think we've all seen the famous picture by now and whoever took this picture lacks a soul. I'm sure they had good intentions, and I know that TRU is planning a comeback, but they knew this was gonna go viral.
This is the one I went to on Thursday, in Carle Place. My attitude since then was like Milhouse right here:
So what was left in that giant store with one day left in business?
Not much, I'm afraid. Literal crap in baskets. This is the only picture I took inside because the rest of the store looked this empty, and also it was too depressing. If anyone wanted the Duck Dynasty game for PS4, the store still had half a dozen copies in what was left of the video game section.
I did, however, not leave the store empty handed.
I don't even know if I actually have this amiibo (not likely), but I liberated it from the store for two bucks and change.
Someone asked me if I walked away with this poster, but I'm sure that some employee already had dibs on it. I'd like this to go to someone who actually worked for the company. If this store had handbaskets with the logo on them, they were long gone, not to mention I wasn't able to haul one of the shopping carts home with me.
My childhood store was this one, in Massapequa.
So many memories in that store. I know I bought my SNES there, among many, many other toys.
The last toy I bought there was this Funko Pop of Sprocket from Fraggle Rock, knowing (correctly) that I wouldn't get a chance to get one once the actual clearance sales started. It sucks knowing that TRU is one less trusted Funko retailer, and that its exclusives (usually the Teen Titans Go line) have either become commons or went off to other companies. Also, yeah, it's stacked with a few of the rarer Pops that I have, be jealous.
But enough of the depressing present. Let's look back at some fond memories, shall we?
Remember Geoffrey Money? Yes kids, before gift cards were the norm, Toys R Us gift certificates came in the form of actual dollar bills. To teach kids how actual money worked, we were given this fake money that was only good at one store to spend at our leisure. Every birthday and Christmas I looked forward to getting cards stuffed with these, and I swore off any relatives that decided to get me something else instead (that weren't already toys or the like, of course). I was seriously bummed when this got phased out, but I know it was for the best. If you lost even one of the bills, there was no getting it back. I wish I saved at least one of them for posterity, though. I can always assume a trip to eBay would indulge me, but I'm afraid to look what the asking price is for one these days.
On that note, Kids R Us used to be a thing, too. I don't have much nostalgia or a lot of fond childhood memories for this place. For those not in the know, this was Toys R Us' foray into kids clothing stores, and were usually situated near other Toys R Us, much like how Babies R Us stores were usually nearby to the mothership.
Because if there's nothing kids love more than toys, it's being forced to shop for clothes with mom! It could really explain why most of them closed down in the late nineties, with the last of them shuttering in 2004. Before empty storefronts were as depressingly common as they are now, my association with dead stores were Kids R Uses that closed twenty years ago and still remain empty to this day. Well, it's not true. Out of the The two I knew of, one stayed vacant for years before Circuit City took it over, and when THAT closed, it stayed empty again until an Aldis moved in about three years back; the other was under a Bally's Fitness and when it closed in the late 90s, stayed empty until the gym finally took it over about a year or two ago. Both were host to Spirit Halloween stores on and off for a few years, but seeing nothing in that space for most of your life really stays with you.
Before Geoffrey became that cartoony giraffe, he used to look like this:
He's got my vote. Geoffrey actually had a number of looks over the years.
The 1988-1999 versions are what I remember the most. I was not a fan of that freaky live-action giraffe. All I remember from that era is this one commercial:
And Geoffrey used to have a family!
In case you're wondering, the wife is Gigi, the son is Geoffrey Jr., and the daughter is Baby Gee. They got phased out over the nineties, but most old stores still had them plastered everywhere well into the last decade. Newer versions of Geoffrey made him a swinging bachelor, the fools.
And who could forget how you bought video games back in the day? You took a slip for whatever you wanted, then brought it over to the window in the corner of the store and then the guy went through that dungeon and brought out your copy of Donkey Kong Country. I was both scared and really intrigued by that little window. It's a shame that the video game section became open air by the time I could drive myself to these places. You could actually SEE all those games behind the glass case, but it wasn't the same.
And I REALLY miss when aisles looked like this. The 80s/early 90s was a magical time, long before three toy companies owned everything and kids actually BOUGHT toys. It's so stuffed with toys, I love it! It's a shame I can't find any pictures of the old school Transformers section, but it looked exactly like this.
Farewell, Toys R Us. We'll always have the commercials.
The reason why I refused to grow up was I always wanted to remain a Toys R Us kid. I may be growing older, but I'll always be a Toys R Us kid...
