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.

  • Commercials from He-Man’s Xmas Special!

    He-Man & She-Ra: A Christmas Special premiered in December of ‘85, and I was one of the presumed millions who watched it with their jaws to the floor. He-Man, in prime time?! That was huge! The special featured just about every character from both He-Man and She-Ra’s cartoons, eve

  • 2016’s Hottest Holiday Junk Food, Part 2!

    Christmas is a little over a week away. I’m horrified. Counting Halloween’s early burn, I’ve spent nearly five months using holiday nonsense to spackle every crack in my heart — “spackle every crack in my heart” of course being an unused lyric from the back pages of Whites

  • 12 Awesome Holiday Tunes!

    At the start of the holiday season, I always have grand plans dancing in my head. I imagine a December filled with yuletide adventures, where half of my waking moments will be spent among blinking lights, brisk winds and spiked punches. Eventually, the reality sets in: December may look pr

  • Dino Drac’s December 2016 Funpack!

    You’ve probably spent December buying junk for other people, but what about YOU? Don’t you deserve YOUR OWN JUNK? I think you do! And I can help. (LIMITED TIME! AVAILABLE IN THE UNITED STATES ONLY!) FINALLY, Dino Drac’s December 2016 has arrived! I’m getting a late start this month

  • Five Random Action Figures, Part 35!

    Welcome to a special holiday edition of Five Random Action Figures. For maximum effect, you gotta drink eggnog and wear footie pajamas while reading this. This time, I’m limiting myself only to figures that I personally got for Christmas back in the ‘80s. Two were already in my collec

  • More Highlights from the ’89 Wish Book!

    Let’s dig up more highlights from the 1989 Sears Wish Book. I’ve already plucked a dozen of the catalog’s best items for an older Dino Drac article, but it seemed silly to waste the rest of it. After all, Sears Wish Books have more pages than most novels, and beyond the 8-12 items th

  • Christmas Eve, 1986.

    Christmas Eve, 1986. That was the big one. My family’s biggest Christmas party ever, with a houseful of rarely seen aunts and uncles, kids under every table, well-wishing passersby, one dog and two ferrets. It was insane. One of my cousins filmed the highlights on our clunky Panasonic vi

  • Classic Christmas Commercials, Volume 8!

    Scary truth: Christmas is less than a month away, and if you so much as blink, the season will be over. Gobble it up while you still can! Look at pretty lights and listen to cheesy music. Watch Scrooged, and nod along with Frank’s meaning-of-Christmas speech. Suck the end of a candy cane

  • Dino Drac’s Stuffed Artichokes Recipe!

    Let’s talk about artichokes. Many of you do not fully comprehend artichokes, and that’s understandable. They’re vegetables with fifteen asterisks, and they look like tiny sleeping Audrey IIs. Hell, even I don’t fully comprehend them. Nevertheless, in my family, no Thanksgiving or C

  • 10 Weird Things We’re Thankful For!

    The holiday gods have chosen me for their annual sacrifice! I have a fever that’s getting worse by the hour, and a light congestion that’s actively baiting me to cough so it can reveal itself as much, much worse congestion. Fun! If this stays the course — and knowing my body, it

  • Dino Drac’s Thanksgiving Stuffing Recipe!

    Well, here’s my recipe for Thanksgiving stuffing — a perfect fit for this ‘80s/’90s nostalgia blog. Stuffing is my only must-have Thanksgiving dish. The turkey is okay and I love a good artichoke, but all I really need is the stuffing. Piles of it. Enough to build a decoy Matt

  • Toys from the 1993 JCPenney Catalog!

    Sit. Make a cup of coffee. Wrap yourself one of those $10 throw blankets, because I know they’re your vice. This one’s gonna take a while. Below are nine finds from the 1993 JCPenney Christmas catalog, a 600+ page behemoth filled with toys and video games and lime green lingerie. I wou

  • 2016’s Hottest Holiday Junk Food, Part 1!

    The Christmas/holiday season never beats Halloween on the candy front, but you still get plenty of reasons to jump for junk food joy and gain forty pounds. Judging by what I’ve seen so far, the 2016 season brings an unusually robust assortment, with all manner of chips and chocolates com

  • Dino Drac’s November Funpack!

    If you could use a pick-me-up this holiday season, gimme your money! (UNITED STATES ONLY. LIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE!) Dino Drac’s November 2016 Funpack is available now! For the few newbies: I sell monthly Funpacks. Without them, there would be no Dino Drac! In return for your patrona

  • “Animation Wars,” from December of 1990.

    In December of 1990, I borrowed my brother-in-law’s camcorder to film Animation Wars and Animation Wars: Part II. Now there’s an opener you didn’t expect. Watch ‘em both, down below: I was already dabbling with stop-motion shorts before then, but after learning that my brother-in-l

  • Five Random Action Figures, Part 34!

    Since we’re in the thick of Dino Drac’s 2016 holiday celebration, I’m adding a special theme to this edition of Five Random Action Figures. In this batch, every figure has something to do with ice or snow. This despite the fact that it still won’t be winter even a month from now. R

  • Toys from the 1991 JCPenney Catalog!

    Ahhh, can you feel it? That crisp morning chill! Those extra thick retail catalogs! This divisive election that threatens to split the world in half like a coconut! Yes indeed, CHRISTMAS is in the air! Okay, maybe it’s a little early, but I’ll tell you this: As a kid, it was always at

  • Classic Creepy Commercials, Volume 15!

    Happy Halloween, everyone! Course, by the time most of you read this, it’ll be November. Hell, it might technically be November even by the time this gets posted. Oh well. I like November, too. Stove Top and Sunday circulars. I hope you had a tremendous season, and I hope Dino Drac playe

  • My Pet Monster!

    I did it. I took the plunge. I am now the proud owner of a vintage My Pet Monster doll, complete with break-apart handcuffs. He’s two feet of adorable terror, with stoner eyes, shark teeth and an alien dick nose. I love him. I’ve hugged him. Released by American Greetings in 1986, My P

  • Five Random Action Figures, Part 33!

    I wanted to do another edition of Five Random Action Figures before Halloween, lest I waste the excuse to take pictures of plastic monsters out in the freezing rain. So here we are, hours later, with me sneezing and my phone’s touchscreen on the fritz. I suffer for you. Rancor Monster St