Over the weekend, me and Jay from The Sexy Armpit visited a little comic book show in Clifton, New Jersey. (We went to the same show last year, if you wanna see what little New Jersey comic shows actually look like.)

We were both hunting the same thing: Cheap, unloved comic books. Several of the dealers had longboxes filled with wildly inexpensive comics. My best finds were from the “50 for $20” boxes, but I even saw one dealer selling 100 comics for that much. Score!

For those dealers, it’s less about profit margins and more about getting anything out of old books that they’d otherwise throw away to make space. Fortunately for me, those are exactly the kinds of comics that I love best. (Hell, I end up dissecting most of them for the retro ads, anyway.)

I went home with 100+ issues and the sore arms to prove it. Below are ten of my favorite finds, featuring everyone from Slimer to Serpentor. When you’re done here, go check out Jay’s list to see his best grabs!

Madballs #6, October 1987

Madballs #6 introduced the lovely Madbelle, created by Dr. Frankenbeans with the hopes of driving hot-blooded Madballs into fits of jealous rage. His plan backfired, but at least we got this insanely great cover out of it. Read More…

Let’s head back to the ‘90s to go grocery shopping. Assume we have a time machine and low aspirations. And that I’m the tallest.

Below: Eight great junk foods from the 1990s, immortalized in old newspaper advertisements.

Wise Crazy Calypso Chips!
(1993)

Augh, finally! I’ve been trying to dig up evidence of these DELICIOUS THINGS for close to a decade! Wise’s Crazy Calypso chips might sound only a little offbeat by today’s standards, but back in the early ‘90s, this was a big stretch.

Wise’s prior flavors included regular, barbecue and sour cream & onion, and then WHAM, they smacked you in the face with SWEET & SPICY CARIBBEAN STYLE CRAZY CALYPSO CHIPS. Minds could not process! We’ve since had like 250 additional varieties of Wise chips, and by all rights, they still shouldn’t be up to Crazy Calypso.

Perhaps that’s why the flavor was short-lived. The public just wasn’t ready for THAT LEVEL of chip. It’s a shame, because these were honestly some of the best potato chips that I’ve ever eaten. They tasted like they’d been dusted with dehydrated french dressing. So good.

Hostess Ninja Turtles Pies!
(1991)

Colloquially known as Turtle Pies, these were generous squirts of vanilla pudding trapped inside calzone-like shells that were then frosted with green icing. A figurative and literal mouthful. They looked like Ninja Turtle kidneys, and biting into one was like popping the world’s largest zit.

I’m not a fan of pudding pies in general, but there was something uniquely spirited about Turtle Pies. They were like the perfect blend of Toys “R” Us and the trashy corner store. Now that Ecto Cooler made its return, I’d call Hostess Turtle Pies the next big thing that has to come back. Read More…

Welcome to the 36th edition of Five Random Action Figures, featuring alien brains and bounty hunters and Henry Silva. We’re gonna have a time.

Boba Fett
Star Wars (1979)

Arguably the coolest figure in the entire Star Wars collection, Boba Fett looks like a stormtrooper mixed with a carnival. The figure’s suit is lined with nondescript tools and mysterious pockets, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid who spent hours wondering what purposes they served.

Tl; dr: Even Fett’s left leg was more interesting than most action figures.

Like the character, Boba Fett’s toy has a winding history. Before The Empire Strikes Back premiered, Kenner used Fett to drum up interest in their soon-to-expand toy line. The figure was initially advertised with a “rocket firing” mechanism, one that proved too dangerous to actually execute. Though a few prototypes of that figure exist, a mutant strain of the Mandela Effect led scores of Star Wars fans to distinctly remember owning a rocket firing Fett. (None did.)

There aren’t many Star Wars figures that take nearly this much textual geekery to explain. Thank you, Boba Fett, for helping me lose the audience early. Read More…