Dino Drac’s December Funpack is here!
Hey! It’s time to show ya Dino Drac’s December Funpack. It’s ho ho hot.
U.S. ONLY! LIMITED SUPPLY!
Maaaan guys, this is a good one — a great mix of stuff that’s perfect as a holiday gift to yourself!
If you’re already a subscriber, good news, you’re locked in!
If you’re not a subscriber and you want this Funpack, here’s the deal: Subscriptions are currently closed, but I do have a small amount of extras that I can sell on an individual basis. These are very limited and may not last long. Scroll to the bottom to grab one, or keep reading to learn about everything in this month’s box! Read More…
Highlights from the 1986 JCPenney Catalog!
December is moving way too fast. I should be used to it, since it always does. What is it about this month? Why is December ten minutes long?
I can’t slow December down, but I can make the most of what’s left of it. By “make the most” I of course mean thousand-word articles about toy catalogs from 1986.
Today we’re gonna look at highlights from JCPenney’s 1986 Christmas catalog. I tried to avoid the most obvious stuff, which wasn’t hard since my catalog was missing 30-40 key pages. (If you’re looking for that year’s heavyweights, check out my older review of the 1986 Sears Wish Book.)
Enjoy this trip back to a time when kids rode robots instead of bicycles. It was a different world.
Armstrong Mobile Command Poweride!
($119.99)
This was produced by Tomy, the same company that gave us Verbot, Omnibot and so many other robot toys of the ‘80s. If anyone was gonna turn a tricycle into R2-D2, it had to be Tomy.
The Armstrong Mobile Command Poweride was a motorized scooter with an insane amount of features. Not only could kids drive him around, but Armstrong could even pick things up with his red robot hands. Assorted buttons triggered laser-like sound effects, and he even came with a microphone that made your voice sound robotic!
This was thirty-five years ago, but I guarantee you that all prior Armstrong owners still think about him every day. I’m sure you have distinct memories of riding your first Big Wheel. Well, imagine if your first Big Wheel had a robot head and arms that could lift bottles of soda. Jesus Christ! Read More…
2021’s Best Holiday Junk Food, Part 1!
Oof, there’s a lot of new holiday junk food out this year. I should’ve started this series weeks ago, because Christmas is like five minutes away and I fear that I’ll never be able to catalog all of this hot new candy before Santa arrives.
But ya gotta start somewhere, so here I am, fueled by sugar and typing with sticky fingers. Below are five of 2021’s hottest holiday junk foods, from soda that tastes like gingerbread to candy canes that taste like cake.
Reese’s Peanut Brittle Cups!
(Found at CVS)
These feel more like a proper dessert than something you’d mindlessly devour, like so many other checkout-line candies. I could see an upscale coffee shop billing these as “gourmet” and charging 3.99 a piece. Instead I got ‘em at CVS along with cough drops and expired cat food.
I don’t know if I would’ve guessed “peanut brittle” on a blind test, but they’re very good, and very peanut buttery. To mimic peanut brittle’s rocky texture, these are filled with crunchy peanut butter, giving them a mouthfeel similar to Hershey’s Krackel bars.
GRADE: A. I predict that these won’t be a one-and-done for 2021. They’re such a home run that I can see Reese’s bringing ‘em back year after year, slowly transforming Peanut Brittle Cups into an all-out holiday tradition. The best part is, if I’m wrong, nobody will remember. Read More…
More Highlights from the 1987 JCPenney Catalog!
Pour some coffee and wrap yourself in a throw blanket, because you’re mine for the next fifteen minutes.
Let’s walk through the highlights from JCPenney’s 1987 Christmas catalog. Yeah, I already mined it for another article, but there are like 500 pages in this thing. I’m allowed!
These old catalogs spark so many memories for me. Not just about the toys I grew up loving, but also the stuff surrounding them. I see an action figure I had as a kid, and suddenly I can remember the color of my old bedroom walls. (Pastel green, like Imodium A-D.)
May the following doodads unlock rusty parts of your brains, too.
Talking ALF & ALF Watch!
($69.99 & $8.95)
These items come from an era when ALF was inarguably The Shit. If you were too young/not alive to catch ALF in his heyday, he was the coolest “person” a kid could name.
Case in point: Coleco’s standard ALF doll, which looked like the Talking ALF shown above, was probably the best Christmas present I ever got. I can’t think of another gift I wanted more as a kid, and that was just a simple plush doll, competing against the likes of the Nintendo Entertainment System.
I never had the Talking ALF shown here, but it was essentially his version of Teddy Ruxpin. On the goofier side was that wristwatch, which bordered close to ALF taxidermy. Read More…