2016 Flea Market Finds, Part 1!
And we’re off!
The 2016 flea market and yard sale season has begun, and I’m super excited to spend the next umpteen weekends buying dirty garbage from total strangers. Thank God I have this site to help justify so many frivolous purchases. Remember this when I toss an iffy GoFundMe up during Dino Drac’s closing week.
Since the flea market in Englishtown, New Jersey treated me so well last year, I decided to play it safe and start this year’s hunts over there. (And big thanks to Jay for driving while my car was otherwise indisposed.)
After only an hour, I was carrying so many repurposed supermarket bags that I could barely squeeze through the dirt-floored aisles. Several of those bags had shredded in the process, and by the end of the trip, I was literally pouring out Micro Machines like the world’s dopiest but most hyper-specific robot dispenser. I looked like Crystal from the mall episode of Roseanne.
Below are seven of my best scores. In addition to all of these goodies, I found enough materials for the next two editions of Five Random Action Figures. All in all, a great haul!
Pile of Micro Machines! ($1)
I’m a sucker for Micro Machines, specifically the earliest ones, when the cars looked like cars and none of them came with six-bladed propellers shaped like futuristic throwing stars.
One buck was an amazing deal for that pile. All except one are legitimate Micro Machines — a neat feat considering how many knock-off lines there were — but the one that isn’t just happens to be the best of ‘em all, because it’s the goddamned Joker Van from 1989. Sweeeeeeet. Read More…
Meet my new cat.
We adopted a new cat.
She doesn’t have a name yet, though we’re testing out several. “Storm” is among the contenders, so for the moment, let’s just call her that.
Adopting a new cat was not at all on our radar. During a weak moment, I started looking over a list of shelter cats in danger of being destroyed, and there Storm was. If you’ve been following me for a while, you can probably guess why I thought fate had a hand in this… Read More…
Purple Stuff Podcast: All About 1992!
1992 was an interesting year for me. I was still very much a kid, but the climate of junior high had a way of pressuring me away from “baby” stuff in favor of more “mature” arenas… like comic books, dumbass sneakers and TV shows about space aliens. No, it didn’t make any sense.
Still, I think junior high is when you start working out who you actually are, so I have lots of super strong memories about ‘92. That works, since 1992 is the focus of the latest Purple Stuff Podcast!
This week, me and Jay from The Sexy Armpit rattle off a dozen memories about 1992, covering some of that year’s biggest movies, geek fads and more. Everything from Batman Returns to Wayne’s World to Mortal Kombat to, uh, Great Bluedini Kool-Aid.
Our picks may differ from yours, but this is the stuff that meant the most to us.
Give us a listen by clicking the giant play button below!
You can also download this week’s episode by right-clicking here.
Reminder: The Purple Stuff Podcast can also be found on iTunes, Stitcher and Podbean.
As always, thank you tons for listening! This episode is going up later than usual, and we were both secretly pleased with how many folks gently complained about that. We took it as a compliment. 🙂
If the podcast puts you in the mood for more ’90s nostalgia, here are some Dino Drac articles that fit the bill!
Blockbuster Video Bonus Boxes! | 1990s Comic Book Ads!
1990s Halloween Cereals | The 1990 JCPenney Catalog!
1990s Fast Food Bags | Batman Tortilla Chips!
Enjoy the show!
This Fright Flicks poster is my everything.
One of Dino Drac’s very first articles was about Fright Flicks trading cards, released by Topps in 1989.
Whereas most of Topps’s trading card sets dealt with only one property, Fright Flicks tackled tons of them. A huge pile of classic horror movies were represented, from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Fright Night to Pumpkinhead to Predator. (Even Ghostbusters was in there, because kids who were apprehensive about Freddy Krueger were still so ready for Slimer.)
These were “movie cards” in the traditional sense, where single frames from various films were immortalized in cardboard. Topps didn’t pull many punches in the ‘80s, so a fair amount of them featured truly frightening images with all sorts of gore and gross-outs. Neutralizing them were the goofy captions, which managed to give even the most upsetting scenes an air of comedy… and make them more digestible to kids who were only beginning to cut their teeth with spooky stuff!
Course, I’ve already written about this. It’s not why I’m here! Read More…