Vintage Vending #3: Button-Button!
I know you were expecting a full tour of Iguana’s house, but I haven’t had a chance to complete it yet. My printer isn’t being cooperative, and without going into detail on why I need a printer to build a house for a paper lizard, I assure you that I absolutely do.
So that will have to wait.
For the moment, let’s knock out another edition of Vintage Vending. It seems just brainless enough for me to pull off on four hours sleep and with enough crud in my eyes to be 80% blind.
Button – Button, or so they called it. Likely released in 1990, this collection represents nearly everything I was obsessed with at the time. Honestly, if you replaced one of the Batman buttons with something from Gremlins 2, I’d have no choice but to marry this vending machine teaser card.
Of the dozen buttons featured, only one would’ve been a disaster for me – and no, it isn’t Madonna. It’s that “Born to Shop” deal. Aside from being a generic fool in a sea of licensed glories, a predisposition for shopping was not something I’d have been comfortable advertising.
Before I dive into the others, let’s not-literally talk about the title of this display.
“Button – Button. Who’s got the buttons?”
I feel like that must be a play on a line from some song, but it’s not coming to me. The closest I can get is Jeepers Creepers.
“Jeepers, Creepers. Where’d you get them peepers?”
“Button – Button. Who’s got the buttons?”
It only works if you really, really want it to.
Actually, no, it doesn’t work at all. So all I’ve really established is that the umbrella title for these buttons was in no way a nod to Louis Armstrong. Sorry, Satchmo. Read More…
Make your own Toucan Sam!
Before today, it’d been a long time since my last box of Froot Loops.
Don’t get me wrong. Froot Loops is great, but for me, it was always a rebound. If one of the cereals I really liked did something to piss me off, I’d slide back to Froot Loops for a bit, and then, when I was ready, try something new.
It’s tasty stuff and it’s been around forever, but there’s only so hard I can fall for a smug bird with a nose obsession. Noses are gross.
Still, I had a good reason to hop into Toucan Sam’s nest again. Look closely at the latest Froot Loops box, and you’ll spot it.
“You can make your own Toucan Sam.”
That’s how you do it, Kellogg’s. Toucan Sam may be an icon, but he’s also eerily similar to Generic Grandpa. This guy needs the boost, and I don’t need to consult Merriam-Webster to know that making Toucan Sam out of cut up cardboard is the exact definition of “boost.” Read More…
Blue Cheese.
Here’s Dino Drac, written out in Nickelodeon Floam:
And here’s Dino Drac, written out in Cheez-It Scrabble Junior crackers:
And here’s a new feature about random Nintendo memories, because if you only keep up with Dino Drac via RSS, you definitely did not see it.
I hope you’re having an amazing Monday.
Vintage Vending #2: Sticky Stuff!
Today we recall a true old faithful of the twenty-five cent prize arena: Sticky toys that stuck to things with their stickiness.
It’s Sticky Stuff! A collection of gooey doodads that will, quote, discolor paint! Yessss!
The photo looks bad, but rest assured, it’s just as blurry and crude in real life. That’s why I love it. It’s like Mrs. Peshill’s second grade art class doubled as a sweatshop for vending machine teaser card production.
From the low-rent logo to the odd positioning of the prizes, this was truly the work of the mad. If I remove the vision of imaginary Mrs. Peshill, all that’s left is some Igor-like creature, haphazardly assembling balls and bugs in his dead master’s laboratory.
“I ALSO AM WORK,” he’d say. To the mutant rats.
Prizes like these were available in the majority of vending machine areas. For us, they were the perfect backups. If everything else in K-Mart’s vending machines sucked, we could always shoot for a slimy grabber hand. It wasn’t #1 on our lists, but it sure beat stale Banana Runts. Hell, anything did.
This time, picking a favorite was easy. It’s that hot pink spiked mace! The common phrase, “it looks like friendly watermelons but can actually kill you,” has never been so apt.