Dino Drac’s 31 Days of Christmas!
Friday, December 15th:
From 1982, it’s the Pac-Man Christmas Album! The cover art is incredible, and should be studied. It seems so warm and inviting at first, but then you notice how the entire Pac family looks exhausted and defeated. (Even Baby Pac is opening his present with all the gusto of someone who is being forced to celebrate at gunpoint.)
Meanwhile, the ghosts are in the back laboring over Pac-Man’s Christmas tree, which seems uncharacteristic for several reasons, not the least of which being their historical war with his entire clan. If this was a temporary truce in honor of the holidays, you’d think everyone would look happier about it.
The whole album is on YouTube, and I’ll diplomatically state that it’s a “you-had-to-be-there” sort of thing. Whatever, it’s not like I bought this to spin. I just wanted that weird art. I’ll be framing this soon and hanging it on my Wall of Treasures.
Thursday, December 14th:
Here’s a 7-minute compilation of Christmassy TV commercials from the ‘80s and ‘90s, all pulled from my VHS collection. (Including a bunch that I’m putting online for the first time!)
I’ll warn you, there aren’t any heavy-hitters in here. You won’t find Fred or Barney arguing over cereal, or Ronald McDonald teaching sad kids how to skate. I made this compilation specifically to highlight obscure commercials. (After all, the only way I’m gonna get you to watch a local spot for an artificial tree shop is by bookending it with Dunkin’ Donuts and Rice Krispies Treats. I know you.)
Anyway, it’s a cozy, festive video for you to enjoy over your morning coffee, or if you’re like me, your nonsensical always-a-bad-idea midnight coffee.
Wednesday, December 13th:
This was a lucky find. I’m assuming y’all remember this Pepsi commercial from 1989, featuring Super Mario and the “Nintendo Holiday Game.” (I mean, you should remember it, because I run it on every account I own like five times a year. I know where my panettone is buttered.)
Well, shown above is one of the game pieces from that promotion, which also happened to be the cap from a two-liter bottle of Pepsi. This was back when the bottle caps were still made of metal. (Remember how the scent of soda would get stuck in those caps? So good.)
Needless to say, this was not a winning piece. The underside of the cap more or less told me to fuck off. Still, it’s a Pepsi cap with a picture of Mario dressed like Santa on it, which to me seems like a prize in of itself.
I paid five bucks for this, which is excessive for an old bottle cap, but extremely cheap for any memorabilia tied to that famous Nintendo promo. A worthy purchase!
Tuesday, December 12th:
One of my favorite shots in A Christmas Story was of Miss Shields’s drawer full of confiscated toys and pranks. The film may have been set in 1940, but as a kid who grew up on Johnson-Smith catalogs and Spencer Gifts, chattering teeth and Groucho glasses were extremely up my alley!
Monday, December 11th:
The return of the McNugget Buddies isn’t really a “holiday” thing, but it happened in December and one of them is dressed like Mr. Freeze, so I’m working ‘em in.
The new set of McNugget Buddies hit McDonald’s today, designed by Kerwin Frost, a guy I’d never heard of before he popped up in a top hat holding a bunch of plastic chicken meat.
I’m exhausted by the discourse surrounding this Happy Meal, but the tl;dr is that lots of folks were confused and/or pissed that the McNugget Buddies were tied to some artist they didn’t know, and weren’t patterned more closely after the old ones. People are also ticked that they had to buy a fairly enormous combo meal to get one.
I’ve become soft in my old age, so none of that stuff really rattles me. Obviously I would’ve been more into a typical Happy Meal with the resurgent McNugget Buddies dressed like elves and reindeer or whatever, but I still think they’re very nice toys, and I understand the angle.
I even understand why McD’s isn’t selling them separately, without food. Can you imagine the chaos at the drive-thrus if they did that? They’re not really in the “toy biz.” All of these promos are, at root, to sell more fries.
Maybe I’d be more blah about it if I didn’t get one of the good ones. Uptown Moe wasn’t my favorite from the bunch, but he’s way cool, and he has train tunnels for arms. I am satisfied! If I decide I need the rest, I’ll just find them on eBay.
Overall, my take on these is the same as it’s been for all of the other modern McD’s promos that people griped about, from those four-eyed Cactus Plant figures to the lidless Boo Buckets. They’re not exactly what I would’ve wanted from a perfect world that catered specifically to my tastes, but few things are, and I’m still happy it happened!
Sunday, December 10th:
I bought this box of Christmas Crunch from 1994 because duh, look at it, it’s gorgeous. It also pops up on the collectors’ market way less than any other Christmas Crunch box, and I think I’ve figured out why.
Check out the extremely conspicuous sticker on the lower-left. That “6 fun shapes” text was a cover story. The REAL reason that sticker existed was to illustrate that the cereal still included Cap’n Crunch’s standard “barrel” shapes – something the rest of the box somehow neglected to do.
Research indicates that the cereal had poor distribution in 1994, and I’m betting this mishap was why. These sorts of issues were production nightmares, and it stands to reason that it impacted that year’s crop in a big way.
So yeah, I bought this box because it was pretty, but I think I accidentally stumbled upon the darkest moment in Christmas Crunch’s long history. Cool!
Saturday, December 9th:
Here’s a gorgeous spread of Ninja Turtles toys, from a 1989 Christmas catalog. (Look close and you’ll notice that Ace Duck’s wings are upside-down, and that the Mouser figure is an oddly-colored prototype.)
I actually received *my* first Ninja Turtles figures for Christmas in ‘89. It was the standard Raphael and the “Wacky Action” Mikey. They kicked my blossoming obsession into high gear, and by the following Christmas, I owned more TMNT junk than Eastman and Laird combined.
What’s wild isn’t that I had most of the toys shown on this page (many kids did), but that I can distinctly recall how I got each one.
Krang was an off-season gift from my mother, who found him at Bradlees. Ace Duck came from Lionel Kiddie City, and I only picked him because he was literally the only figure they had in stock. Baxter was from a classmate who attended my famous fifth grade birthday party at a New Jersey arcade complex. (That arcade would later become a Fuddruckers. Now it’s a parking lot.)
