Highlights from TRU’s 1986 Summer Catalog!
I was separating a stack of papers into “keep” and “toss” piles, and buried underneath so many hotel receipts and menus for dead restaurants, there it was…
Yeah, this one went into the “keep” pile. It’s the Toys “R” Us Summer Fun Book, from 1986! Lightweight and only around a dozen pages, I’m guessing they came packed with Sunday newspapers. The contents aren’t nearly as voluminous as what we used to see in Sears Wish Books, but there was certainly enough to make me a remember a time when toys were my everything. Here are the highlights: Read More…
Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups from 1997!
I wasn’t sure if today’s topic truly deserved to be one, so I asked the folks on Twitter:
Does anyone want to read about really old Fruit Roll-Ups?
— Dinosaur Dracula (@DinosaurDracula) July 31, 2014
They said yes. And that’s how you came to read 750 words about old Fruit Roll-Ups.
…and not just any old Fruit Roll-Ups, mind you. These are Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups, made to promote The Lost World back in ’97. As a fan of all things dinosaurs and all things fruit snacks, I will forever hold my peace about this marriage.
I love Fruit Roll-Ups. I must’ve eaten a thousand of them by now. They prettied up my lunch boxes like vases on end tables. To this day, I know few finer comfort foods.
I love Jurassic Park, too. The first one, the second one, the third one, and even the still-incubating fourth one, which I believe will include mutants and space aliens. Whenever the mailman drops off a package I’ve been waiting for, I still hum the JP theme. Whenever I meet a woman named Amber, I want to grab her face and scream about mosquitos.
Yes, yes, yes. Jurassic Park Fruit Roll-Ups are so up my alley. Read More…
The five best CHUCKY items on eBay.
Hi, I’m Matt. Child’s Play fan.
I was a late bloomer with horror, but Chucky was an exception. From Day One, I was on his side. Of the right age to clearly recognize him as a riff on Hasbro’s My Buddy dolls, I stupidly assumed that the Child’s Play franchise was at least partially targeted at kids. It wasn’t, but I fell in love all the same. My earliest memories of horror movies come in blips and bleeps, but with Child’s Play, I was all-in.
In my mind, there’s no bad Child’s Play movie. The second one is my favorite, but even the more polarizing fourth and fifth films worked for me. Chucky started as a straight-up slasher, evolved into a sort of cartoon, and eventually settled into something approaching “outsider art.” I adored all of it.
To celebrate Chucky — because that’s what we’re doing today — I thought I’d dust off an abandoned Dino Drac series. Below are the five best Child’s Play items currently on eBay.
(And when I say “best,” I usually mean “weirdest.”) Read More…
Flea Market Finds.
I took a break from the yard sales this week, wanting to try my luck at a flea market at least once before summer was over. I begged Jay to tag along so I wouldn’t have to haggle alone, and off we went to Englishtown, New Jersey.
I’ve written about the Englishtown flea market before. It’s a crapshoot. You’ll see plenty of desirable things there; the issue is finding something desirable and reasonably priced.
Like, you might come upon a seller with several bins filled with action figures, all lined up on the ground outside. But then you’ll notice that most of those bins are stuffed with fast food toys and generic army men. And then you’ll find out that the seller wants two dollars per figure, regardless of how destroyed it is.
There’s a lot of that in Englishtown.
The flea market is so large that you’d need to devote an entire day to seeing it all. Since it was 550 degrees on Sunday, we only allowed ourselves an hour. Here’s what I was able to dig up… Read More…