Dinosaur Dracula!

The Mostly-Complete Dino Drac Archives.

You have some reading to do!

Below are most of the Dino Drac blog archives. Certain categories may be excluded to keep things tidier. If you notice any typos, pretend you didn’t.

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 19!

    Get set for another edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, because I know you’re dying to see Charlie Brown sell life insurance. You’re so ironic. Nickelodeon Sweepstakes Promo! (1986) Here we had Nickelodeon bragging about its many on-air giveaways. If you shipped out 6000 skateboards

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 18!

    In this edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, you’ll see everything from old pizza to old action figures to old cough drops. That’s my pitch. Pizza Hut’s “Great White” Pizza! (1993) I’m low-key obsessed with Pizza Hut’s discontinued specialty pies. By “low-key

  • The Purple Stuff’s Sharkstravaganza!

    I love sharks, you love sharks, everybody loves sharks. Let’s spend the whole day obsessing over sharks! The Purple Stuff Podcast has finally returned, thanks to the peeps who demanded it with pitchforked pleas. (And we appreciate that — you guys rule.) This week, me and Jay from T

  • Six Delicious Facts about Hawaiian Punch.

    Hey, how ‘bout a nice Hawaiian Punch? I love Hawaiian Punch. Everyone does. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying. As a kid, I adored those huge canisters of the powdered mix. As I recall, Hawaiian Punch’s mixes came sugared, so while trying to eat “raw” Kool-Aid would leave you puc

  • Zima is back for the summer of 2017!

    Zima is back, baby. From now through the end of summer, you can find six-packs of Zima — yes, honest-to-goodness original Zima — wherever bottles of happy juice are sold. The “clearmalt” beverage debuted in 1993 and was immediately popular, thanks to a look and taste that w

  • Dino Drac’s June 2017 Funpack!

    There’s no better way to beat the heat than a Dino Drac Funpack! Well, that’s not exactly true. I just have heat on the brain. It’s like 200 degrees out right now. I’m basically Surtur without the superpowers. In any event, Dino Drac’s June Funpack IS HERE, but it will only be av

  • Vicious Videocassette Boxes, Volume VII!

    I’ve been collecting VHS tapes in a pretty hardcore way as of late, spurred by my experiences at those still-running video stores. So far, it’s been a terrific hobby. It’s as cheap as I need it to be, and it’s an excuse to turn every yard sale and thrift shop into a hunting ground.

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 17!

    Here’s another edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, featuring everything from Bartman to steamed hams: McDonald’s Cheddar Melt! (1989) I have a sick fascination with discontinued McDonald’s foods, revering them more as I would extinct species of birds than old sandwiches. Three

  • Grocery Shopping in Old Newspapers!

    Today is Dino Drac’s 5th birthday. I wrote a bit about that on the site’s Facebook page, but here’s the tl;dr version: Thanks for reading! Below: Six mostly-forgotten junk foods from the ‘80s and ‘90s, as seen in old supermarket circulars. It’s exactly this sort of provocative

  • Humdrum Highlights from the Summer of ’92.

    Wanna read my diary? Shown above is my diary — sorry, JOURNAL — from the summer of 1992, when I was between the 7th and 8th grades. I was bored, weird and lonely, but also “purely me” in a way that seems almost alien now. I didn’t have a lot going on, and boy, it

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 16!

    I’ve been absent for a week, which is exactly how long it would take for someone to steal me and leave an android in my place. Food for thought. Below: The latest edition of Five Retro TV Commercials. These ads aired during DuckTales back in ‘88, so imagine them bookending quips from M

  • Dino Drac’s May 2017 Funpack is Here!

    Well, it’s debuting a bit later than I would’ve preferred, but I’m finally ready to unveil Dino Drac’s May Funpack! (AVAILABLE IN THE UNITED STATES ONLY!) The short story, for those who don’t know: Dino Drac is a one man show that requires a great deal of time, money and effort.

  • Five Random Action Figures, Part 40!

    By the end of this article, I’ll have reviewed 200 action figures on Dino Drac. That’s a big deal, guys. It’s why I’m typing this with one hand and eating a whole Carvel cake with the other. Five Random Action Figures has been the site’s most dependable series, and for as long a

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 15!

    Welcome to a special edition of Five Retro TV Commercials. Special to me, at least. Every commercial in this batch aired during The Death of the Incredible Hulk, an NBC television movie that premiered on February 18th, 1990. The Death of the Incredible Hulk got the plush Sunday Night at th

  • Making new action figures out of broken ones.

    A few weeks ago, I bought this: It’s a bag of assorted action figure accessories, plus a few broken figures. I found it at a toy & collectible shop that had a little bit of everything, from vintage Masters of the Universe figures to cartoon-themed lunch boxes. In stores like that, I

  • 1990s Ads from Fangoria Magazine!

    Whenever I find an old issue of Fangoria, I jump straight to the ads. I can read the Tom Savini interview later. First I need to see if anyone made a mask based on the demon doctor from Jacob’s Ladder. My priorities make sense to me. That isn’t to say that the content of the maga

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 14!

    I wasn’t planning to go back to this well so soon, but I found a *really great* Gremlins 2 commercial, and that shit just can’t wait. Every ad featured in this edition of Five Retro TV Commercials premiered in 1990. Most of ’em aired during the same blocks of weekday afternoon s

  • Five Retro TV Commercials, Part 13!

    It’s been months since the last edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, but have no fear: Thanks to some generous donations, I’m now armed with enough old commercials to write about nothing but old commercials from now through 2021. Let’s get this party started, and yes this is how I p

  • 1993 Good Humor Ice Cream Truck Menu!

    My newest acquisition: A genuine Good Humor ice cream truck menu from 1993! It doesn’t photograph so well, but it’s beautiful in person. 1993 would’ve been my last year to chase down ice cream trucks without secretly wondering if I was too old to do that, so I’m super familiar with

  • Video Store Adventure #6: Pepe’s Video!

    After our successful trip to Heights-Terrace Video in Hazleton, we drove another 40 minutes into the bowels of Pennsylvania, looking for more old video stores. That led us to the city of Wyoming. If the little we saw was indicative of its totality, Wyoming is a mix of a sleepy college town