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 would’ve been in the eighth grade at the time, a little less into action figures, but desperate to not let anyone know that I was still into them at all. Video games and shitty sneakers were safer picks, but I still managed to satisfy my inner six-year-old whenever no one was looking. (Hip hip hooray for Christmas vacation.)
Street Fighter II Tabletop Game!
($39.99)
Essentially a souped-up version of Rock ‘em Sock ’em Robots, here we had Guile and Ryu beating the holy hell out of each other. I’m glad that they didn’t go with the safer-but-boring Ryu/Ken matchup, but the perfect world version of this game would’ve so obviously pitted Blanka against Dhalsim.
The warriors’ kicks and punches were scored by strange electronic noises, which I suppose made up for the fact that this Rock ‘em ripoff didn’t let you punch Ryu and Guile’s heads off of their bodies. C’mon! Read More…
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 competing for my debit swipes. If you’re into this sort of thing, below are five foods to keep an eye out for!
Christmas Crunch Cereal!
Ahh, they finally updated the box! This is huge!
Christmas Crunch fans openly pleaded with Quaker to ditch the previous box design, not because it was bad, but because they’d used it for four straight years. Christmas Crunch is one of the season’s tastiest traditions, yes, but it was hard to act like buying the exact same cereal in the exact same box was just as exciting after the fourth consecutive year.
It’s why General Mills makes such a big deal about their annually-changing Monster Cereal box designs. Even if they do occasionally misfire (and I concede that this year’s “election” theme was in retrospect a big wah-wahh), those cereals would never maintain their online buzz without the yearly art swaps.
So thanks for takin’ care of business, Quaker. The new-for-2016 design has some detractors, but I friggin’ LOVE it. With Cap’n Crunch subtly evoking Clark Griswold, it’s a merry mess of snow and string lights. I like how it blends in-your-face Christmas imagery with that “nondenominationally icy” stuff. Mixing the two is a way cool look.
GRADE: A. Read More…
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 patronage, you’ll receive boxes of retro-and-new goodies for as long as you stay subscribed. Subscriptions are $25 per month (including shipping), and you can cancel at any time without penalty.
Scroll to the bottom for more info. First, let’s see what’s inside the November 2016 Funpack!
This month’s Funpack mixes vintage collectibles with some other stuff that’s just perfect for Thanksgiving. Like cans of blue slime. There are over ten items in every box! Read More…
“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-law’s camera had a feature that automatically shot one second of video every thirty seconds, I knew that I was on the cusp of my opus. (Or opuses, as the case was.)
Animation Wars and its sequel starred my collection of vintage Star Wars figures. Even by 1990, Kenner’s Star Wars collection was long discontinued, and not more than two of those figures were leftovers from my childhood. The rest were procured through classifieds from the back of Starlog, and at the occasional flea market. Read More…