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.

  • Yard Sailin’, Volume III.

    Another weekend spent shamelessly rummaging through strangers’ trash! We only went to a few yard sales this weekend, owing to a late start and temperatures that could melt steel. Even so, my luck held. This is the third time in a row that I found dusty gold on foreign front lawns. Side s

  • OMFG, CHOCODILES HAVE RETURNED.

    Oh. Oh my. This. Words. Fireworks. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re sitting down. Hostess Chocodiles… HAVE RETURNED. I’ve been staring at this mostly-blank screen for five minutes, unable to come up with sentences worthy of delivering such news. Maybe there aren’t any. Maybe I s

  • Vintage Vending #21: Wrecking Power!

    On today’s edition of Vintage Vending, you will bow before the mighty power of a glow-in-the-dark sticky fist. Truth. The “Wrecking Power” collection arrived in the early ‘90s, and while it isn’t as showy as many of the sets previously featured on Dino Drac, I think I’m in love

  • Rediscovering Life Savers Holes!

    Today I pay tribute to Life Savers Holes. Tomorrow, I vacuum the upholstery in my car. Life Savers Holes! They came, they saw, and while I was convinced that they’d conquered, the fact that they no longer exist suggests otherwise. The world at large was not ready to accept the supposed

  • Ten Things I Saw in Wildwood, NJ.

    This was a very short trip, so I can’t give you a full blow-by-blow on everything Wildwood has to offer. Even so, it seems I took just enough pictures and saw just enough interesting things to spend the next four hours writing loving tributes to dark rides and cereal-infused ice cream su

  • More Yard Sale Scores.

    After my success at last week’s yard sales, I wondered if lightning would strike twice. It did! The gods of trash blessed me even harder this time, with cheap, geeky goods that I might have expected to find at yard sales 15-20 years ago. Much of this week’s haul came from a multi-famil

  • Yard Sailin’ for Fun and Profit.

    We went yard sailin’ on Saturday morning, and I think I hit the jackpot. (No, that’s not the jackpot.) I don’t go to yard sales as often as I did before everyone turned into a wannabe antique dealer. These days, you can barely buy paper plates without hearing about how they’re

  • Summer Berry Pebbles Cereal!

    “It’s the first day of summer” is both the truth and the opening line to my debut rap single, I Can’t Stand To Sit. I thought we’d celebrate the shift in seasons with the most summery thing imaginable: Bamm-Bamm Rubble beating the shit out of cereal. New from Post, it’s Pebbles

  • Little Debbie’s Sea Life Snacks!

    Guys. We need to have a serious discussion about Little Debbie. No stranger to seasonally-shaped snacks, Little Debbie had something special in mind for the 2014 summer season: Cookies and cakes based on sea animals. It’d be one thing if she picked sharks and dolphins, but Debbie went

  • Ecto Cooler spotted in movies and TV!

    The weekend marks the 30th anniversary of Ghostbusters. Let’s celebrate with Ecto Cooler! Yeah, Hi-C Ecto Cooler, something I’ve written about four thousand times before, but never from this angle. Some friends tipped me off about extremely implausible yet entirely provable Ecto Cooler

  • Marino’s Italian Ice is good shit.

    I’d like to remind everyone that Marino’s Italian Ice is the best possible ice. Never heard of Marino’s? I’m pretty sure most of you haven’t. It’s regional. Apologies in advance for championing a water ice that you have absolutely no access to. I was first intr

  • Vintage Vending #20: Sea World!

    It’s been over two months since my last post, because stuff happens, and we must sometimes accept that life is a big ball of shit aimed directly at our heads. But I didn’t want to let Memorial Day — my 16th favorite holiday — slide by without some Dino Drac action. So here

  • Five Great Old Cereals.

    I own many ancient cereal boxes. Most of them live in plastic bins on a high shelf, trapped in cramped quarters with nothing to do except barely breathe. I believe it was the Dino Pebbles, or maybe the Smurfberry Crunch, that contacted me telepathically. “Brother, we need air.”

  • eBay’s Mixed Lots = Works of Art.

    I started searching for mixed lots years ago, when it was still common to find good deals on eBay. Generally speaking, mixed lots go hand in hand with sellers who have no clue what they have. When you catch something desirable in the spread, it's rarely mentioned in the auction title or de

  • Ninja Turtles Cereal from Dimension X.

    Made by Nabisco in 1991, it’s like the cereal we grew up with, but from an alternate universe. So much is different, and yet, so much is the same. Compare this with the other box, and you’ll notice how the four Turtles are basically in the same positions, and are sort of making the exa

  • Stuff I found at Monster-Mania 27.

    On Friday, we found ourselves back on the familiar floors of Cherry Hill’s Crowne Plaza, ready to drink through the latest Monster-Mania convention. This was the 27th Monster-Mania. The first one I went to was only their third ever. Almost ten years later, and I still get a kick out it.

  • Free Stuff For Kids, from 1992!

    Remember those book club flyers that we used to get in elementary school? I lived for those. Dinosaur books with ten words and fifty pictures! Sticker sheets starring ballerina bears that shouted various encouragements via word balloons! The errant Garfield bookmark! Most of the time, the

  • Vintage Vending #19: TMNT Balloons!

    It’s been over four months since the last edition of Vintage Vending. Let’s fix that. HERE ARE BALLOONS. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles balloons, even! This is from 1989, when literally everything branded with a Ninja Turtles logo was a must-buy. Though the teaser card lacks a sample, we

  • 5 Misfit Toys, from the Flea Market.

    Saturday was spent at the Englishtown flea market with Ms. X and Jay. We three marveled at old records, cajun peanuts, and what I swear was a lipstick-wearing John Cena, immortalized on an unlicensed throw blanket that was large enough to double as a circus tent. The highlight — if y

  • Six Popsicles from the Year 2000.

    I’ve been absent for a while, busy with work, and even busier navigating the mountains of snow on the way to work. 2014 wasted no time in turning me into someone who thinks winter should be illegal. I picture a snowman on the witness stand, melting under the stress of hard questions. Unr