The Trash Pack Advent Calendar!
I took a few days to lose the post-Halloween doldrums, but now I’m back, and ready to talk about candy canes. Almost.
Dino Drac’s 2013 Holiday Season has arrived, and with it, another swank logo courtesy of Jason Week. We’ll come up with something else for December, but a “Thanksgiving Day Parade” motif seemed like the right thing for right now.
I’m not making any promises as far as post frequency, partly because I can’t, but also because I just want to wing it this year. Write when I want to write, read old Star Wars Galaxy Guides when I want to read old Star Wars Galaxy Guides. Even so, I’m confident that I will make you ABSOLUTELY SICK OF SANTA CLAUS before 2014.
Let’s start now!
I found The Trash Pack Advent Calendar on Amazon, and even with its bloated price, buying one was a no-brainer.
Those who have read me since the Dark Ages know that I have a long and somewhat sordid history with toy-stuffed advent calendars, dating back to 2002. At that time, Playmobil was the only show in town, but now there’s an advent calendar for everything. (And Playmobil, desperate to retain their turf, can only respond by debuting sixty different advent calendars each year.)
It’s become overwhelming, to the point where my impulse is to just ignore all advent calendars, lest I spent 15 minutes in a K-hole at Target, trying to choose between the LEGO, Imaginext and Mega Bloks versions.
It takes a lot to make me jump at an advent calendar nowadays. A Trash Pack version was not only justification for jumping, but justification for jumping high enough to crack my head open on the ceiling. By the complete lack of give, I estimate that mine was crafted with something other than sheetrock.
Assuming you do things as instructed, you’ll open one window box each day, from December 1st through Christmas Eve. If you’re new to the Trash Pack hobby, you have my personal guarantee that this is the slowest possible way to build a collection.
I ain’t having it. I’m BLOWING MY WAD.
Yeah, I opened ‘em all. Deal with it.
Each figure – or “Trashie,” as they’re affectionately known – comes in a sealed plastic baggie. The plastic baggies are the biggest defense for opening them day by day, because getting through 24 of them at once has left my teeth chipped and my resolve forever weakened. God, tearing bags open is seriously the worst thing in the world. We just don’t notice because it’s usually over so quickly. Go spend ten minutes doing nothing but that, and tell me you’re not in the mood to kill everything that breathes.
I don’t know the names, allegiances or rarities of the Trashies I picked up. I’m a Trash Pack fan, but I’m not a fanatic. I guess what I’m saying is, I’m an apparatus with rotating blades that creates a current of air for cooling or ventilation.
I’m curious about them, though. Are any of them exclusive to this set? Are the Trashies completely randomized, meaning that I’d get an entirely different assortment if I bought a second advent calendar? A bit of research might answer these questions, but since I refuse to go through the trouble, I guess I’m not as curious as I thought.
Whatever the case, it’s a good mix. I got a bird, a pretzel and a toilet, so that’s probably stating the obvious. I’m disappointed over having received so many color-swapped doubles, but that’s a quibble far outweighed by the glory of owning the official “chair” Trashie.
Despite my limited knowledge, I had a suspicion that this guy was rare. Call it intuition, or maybe common sense, since he’s the only one covered in super metallic paint.
Turns out, I was right. His name is “Alley Alien,” and he’s considered “ultra rare.” Sadly, my notions of riches were quickly dashed by the sight of so many eBay sellers failing to get seven dollar bids. In a perfect world, I could hawk this thing to a desperate collector and make the other 23 Trashies technically-free.
That’s the problem with this set. It’s expensive. I paid thirty bucks, and because I was almost too embarrassed to admit that, it must be out of bounds. That’s more than a dollar per Trashie!
In the company’s defense, $30 might be above the original retail price. This set is a year or two old, so it’s possible that some third-party Amazon jerk took me for a ride in a shitty car that I helped pay for.
Twenty bucks sounds more reasonable, but it’s a great set either way. Given the massive thematic discrepancies between Christmas and Trashies, blending the two was a completely welcomed WTF moment. Letting Trash Pack toys fuel a kid’s holiday celebration? That’s pretty cool.
