My Sticker Book from the 1980s

My older sis­ter and I didn’t have much in com­mon grow­ing up, aside from hav­ing been pushed through the same vag and the few mor­ti­fy­ing occa­sions our mom forced us to wear match­ing out­fits. My sis­ter, the prissy straight “A” stu­dent who was into clothes and make-up, ver­sus me, the tomboy who was into pretty much all the same (read: much cooler) crap I’m still into now.

One of the few ways our inter­ests over­lapped was our mutual love for stick­ers. Then again, every kid in the 80s col­lected stick­ers, so say­ing we had this in com­mon is like say­ing we’re both fans of breathing.

We were never “hard­core” in our sticker-acquiring aspi­ra­tions, but we did enjoy fill­ing up this sticker book with our shared trea­sures, giv­ing care­ful thought and atten­tion as to how they should be arranged. Well, sometimes.

I’m sure at the time it seemed like a good idea to “pro­tect” our stick­ers inside this old album meant for pho­tos, with its sticky pages and clear plas­tic page cov­ers that would yel­low and wither over time. I may not have learned much in the 20 years since I last touched this sticker book, but I think I can safely say that was a fuck­ing hor­ri­ble idea. Of course it wasn’t mine.

Also not my idea was the inclu­sion of lame-ass stick­ers like Padding­ton Bear, but one of the rea­sons I love this sticker book so much is that it’s a time cap­sule that reveals the dif­fer­ences (and some­times sim­i­lar­i­ties) between its two curators.

Those Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles plas­tered on the inside back cover? All me.

It’s fun to flip through these worn pages and try to remem­ber who con­tributed what in cases where it’s less cut and dry. That Poochie sticker could have been either of us.

Also worth not­ing are the loosely adhered-to “themes” we attempted to cre­ate on some of the pages, which I’ve pro­vided my best guesses for below (when it isn’t some­thing obvi­ous, like uni­corns). As was often the case, my sis­ter, ever the more cau­tious and detail-oriented daugh­ter, would get a good theme going until I came along and fucked it all up with my ran­dom sticker bombs and less than art­ful place­ment. STICKER ANARCHY!

And now, to sim­u­late the full expe­ri­ence of trad­ing stick­ers back in the 80s…

“GUYS! GUYS! GUYS! LOOK AT MY STICKERS!”

Page 1 — Candy & Sweets

Page 2 — Moodies

Who remem­bers these lit­tle guys?

Page 3 — Metal­lic Mes­sages & Music

Page 4 — Hearts

Page 5 — Bears

Page 6 — Fuzzy Things

Page 7 — Kittens

Page 8 — Hot Air Bal­loons & Garfield

Page 9 — Ice Cream

Page 10 — More Ice Cream

Page 11 — Peaches ‘n Cream

Page 12 — Junk Food

Page 13 — 80s-Tastic!

Page 14 — Easter

Page 15 — Skat­ing & Ballerinas

Page 16 — Sparkles & Shiny Objects

Page 17 — School

Page 18 — Cab­bage Patch Kids

Page 19 — Mup­pet Babies

Page 20 — Puffy Stick­ers & Goo­gly Eyes

Page 21 — Lemons

Page 22 — Valentines

Page 23 — Chore Rewards

Page 24 — Straw­berry Shortcake

Page 25 — Dogs

Page 26 — Teddy Bears

Page 27 — (Not Really) Balloons

Page 28 — Unicorns

Who wants to trade stickers?

Hav­ing got­ten reac­quainted with my check­ered sticker col­lect­ing past, I think I’m inspired now to start an adult sticker book (NOT the kind you’re think­ing of) to give a proper home to all of the rad stick­ers I’ve accu­mu­lated from my blog­ging friends lately, between Branded in the 80s , Top Hat Sasquatch , Strange Kids Club , etc. which reminds me–have you seen the totally kick­ass Cult Film Club stick­ers we’re selling?

Do also check out Redis­cover the 80s totally rad sticker album from 1984 ! It puts this col­lec­tion to shame.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I Can Hug!

Rabid TMNT fan­girlism + child­hood mem­o­ries + tax refund =buy­ing all four of the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Cud­dle Pil­lows (or “Pil­low Bud­dies”, depend­ing on which store you buy them from).

There was really never any ques­tion that I would end up own­ing these, but I need to thank Tommy over at  Top Hat Sasquatch  for tip­ping me off that  Walmart.com has them  for less than $18 each. With free Site-to-Store ship­ping, I got mine in a mat­ter of a few days.

Here they all are, chillin’ in my bed­room (and you should feel spe­cial, because I NEVER make my bed):

From left to right: Michelan­gelo, Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael

If the order of the Tur­tles looks famil­iar it’s prob­a­bly because a few days ago I posted a photo of what my bed­room looked like in 1989 , the pièce de résis­tance being my Ninja Tur­tle plushies all lined up on my bed:

Here’s a closer look at the 2013 ver­sion of that photo:

And some shots of the indi­vid­ual Turtles:

Leo

Leonardo’s the leader in blue, he’ll do any­thing it takes to get his Nin­jas through.

Donnie

Donatello is the fel­low, has a way with machines.

Raph

Raphael’s got the most atti­tude on the team.

Mikey

Michelan­gelo, he’s one of a kind, and you’ll know just where to find him when it’s party time.

Hi, my name is Jaime, I am 31 years old, and I like Ninja Tur­tles…

My Bedroom, Circa 1989 (Mildly TMNT-Related)

I recently dug up this photo from one of my family’s albums. Why on earth they had a pic­ture of my bed­room on a ran­dom day in 1989, I don’t know, but I’m glad it exists if only so I can re-live the magic of get­ting splin­ters from my unfin­ished pine fur­ni­ture and star­ing loath­somely at the ugly pas­tel wallpaper.

Let’s take a tour!

This was taken around the time I had started to tran­si­tion away from girly stuff and get more into comics and video games, and obvi­ously, Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. The striped wall­pa­per, flo­ral bor­der and “ugly art thing” I’ve so help­fully pointed out in the above photo are holdovers from when my bed­room was floor-to-ceiling peach. (I know. Ew.) That bed used to be a four-poster affair with a big, frilly canopy that matched my frilly peach bed­spread, but I demanded my dad saw it off. I think my offi­cial rea­son­ing was so that my room would be “less gay.”

I still had a cou­ple of dolls, but they were of the col­lectible “do not touch” vari­ety my mom would bitch if I messed up. I’m dying to know what cas­sette tapes those are over in the cor­ner there. I’m think­ing prob­a­bly Cal­i­for­nia Raisins, the sound­track to the first Bat­man movie, and Paula Abdul. Yeah, let’s go with that.

I’m pretty dis­ap­pointed in the angle of this photo. If you could pan another foot or so to the right, you’d see the bitchin’ neon-colored Habi­trail setup where my ham­sters lived. On the oppo­site wall from my bed there was an armoire (also of rough pine that gave me splin­ters) that housed my TV and video games.

Oh, and if you’re won­der­ing why Raphael’s mask is loose, it’s because I had a dog who was fond of eat­ing my stuffed ani­mals and Raph was a fre­quent vic­tim. Just had to be the Tur­tle I loved the most.

Reunited with one of my best buds. It’s a Kodak moment…

This past week­end I went spelunk­ing for price­less child­hood arti­facts over at my par­ents’ house and didn’t come away dis­ap­pointed. Between their attic, base­ment and crawl­space I was able to find a num­ber of items I prob­a­bly haven’t laid eyes on in over 15 years, hav­ing long ago chalked them up as rot­ting away in some land­fill. One of those items–this stuffed Michelan­gelo, circa 1989–may as well have been.

Poor Mikey. He’s seen bet­ter days …

Judg­ing from the chewed-up appear­ance of his belt, I have a feel­ing he may, at some point, have been a play­thing for my family’s old dog, which was Raphael’s fate:

(Also, my dog was pos­si­bly a Terminator.)

Now Michelan­gelo is the only sur­viv­ing mem­ber of my four­some of plush green heroes, which back in the day I would not have hes­i­tated to call my most cher­ished possessions.

By day “the guys” hung out in the most cov­eted spot in my room– front and cen­ter on my bed –and by night they slept snugly in my arms (or, if Raph and Leo were fight­ing, in groups of two on either side of me).  The Tur­tles accom­pa­nied me on play dates, beach vaca­tions, camp­ing trips (bet you didn’t know I was a Girl Scout!), that time I “moved out” into my play­house, and I wouldn’t dream of open­ing up my presents on Christ­mas morn­ing with­out them beside me to share in my–I mean  our –delight if I got some­thing TMNT-related. I told them all my secrets and would often seek their advice on ever­day mat­ters of impor­tance, like what Sega game to rent, or if I should cheat on my math test. Which Tur­tle I asked depended on the answer I was hop­ing to get.

They were, in short, my best buds.

Out­side the car­toons and movies on VHS, my plushies were one of the few tan­gi­ble pieces of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles fan­dom I was allowed, which is part of the rea­son I loved them so much.  My mom never liked the idea of me play­ing with “boy toys” so I barely had any TMNT action fig­ures to speak of, even though I always asked for them at Christ­mas (aside: that’s how I orig­i­nally started to sus­pect the whole Santa thing might be a sham) and birthdays.

Speak­ing of birth­day parties…

Yes, I’m well aware I had the worst hair­cut ever. It was a com­bi­na­tion of a perm gone wrong and me try­ing to take mat­ters into my own hands with the scis­sors. It’s a mir­a­cle I even had any friends left to invite to this party. By all means, make fun of my hair if you must, but if you’re going to make fun of any­thing , it should be my pants. I have no excuse for those.

Remember to Stop and Blow Some (Ice Cream-Scented) Bubbles

Here’s some totally unso­licited life advice from me to you:

Remem­ber to stop and blow some bub­bles every now and then.

By that I mean take some time out to do some­thing that makes you feel like a kid again. Today it’s bub­bles, but this could really be a metaphor for any­thing you loved doing as a kid–coloring, roller skat­ing, draw­ing on the side­walk with chalk, going for a swing, build­ing a sand cas­tle. Remem­ber how happy you were in those moments? When the only thing that mat­tered was how much fun you were having?

Every now and then I need to be reminded that there was a time before the pres­sures of adult life–work, bills, rela­tion­ships, taxes, pol­i­tics, health problems–when all I needed to be happy was myself and maybe a fresh box of crayons or a run through the sprin­kler. Not hav­ing chil­dren means I don’t have a built-in excuse for doing silly things like blow­ing bub­bles, but I’ve got plenty of stress and respon­si­bil­i­ties, and some­times   I just  need to do these things, neigh­bors who give me funny looks be damned.

Today is one of those days, as the tax dead­line is Mon­day and I’m fil­ing today , like a boss. (Yup, I’m  that per­son.) I’m also send­ing out pos­i­tive thoughts to a friend who’s going through a rough time and gear­ing up to spend my Sun­day night work­ing to meet a Mon­day morn­ing deadline–thank God for DVR. (Sorry  Mad Men and Game of Thrones, but I’ll make it up to you.)

These ice cream-scented bub­bles (holy crap, there are ice cream-scented bub­bles!) are exactly what I needed:

I found these at the gro­cery store a few weeks ago–two for $3!–and have been wait­ing for the right time to head out to the back­yard and have some fun. Spring has offi­cially arrived in Mary­land, which I can always tell by the cherry tree in bloom in my front yard (and the unholy amount of cat hairs I keep find­ing every­where). The fresh air and after­noon sun was a per­fect back­drop for bubble-blowing, and the slight breeze car­ried my iri­des­cent, chocolate-scented spheres all across the neighborhood.

The breeze made tak­ing pic­tures chal­leng­ing (pic­ture me blow­ing bub­bles then fran­ti­cally try­ing to cap­ture them with my cam­era before they dis­ap­peared or blew too far away), but I kept try­ing even though I’m no pho­tog­ra­pher. I’m glad I did, because I was rewarded with some of the loveli­est pho­tos I’ve ever taken.

Have you blown any bub­bles lately, metaphor­i­cally speaking?

Box Full of Awesome = Boxsome Nostalgia Packs!

When I heard my friend Tommy from Top Hat Sasquatch was start­ing up a busi­ness sell­ing geeky nos­tal­gia packs, I had a feel­ing it was going to be awe­some, just based on the fact that Tommy’s an awe­some dude. Really, I didn’t need any more con­vinc­ing than that. Judg­ing from the pack­age I got in the mail today, I know this to be true.

Look!

The new ven­ture is Box­some , a mail-order ser­vice deliv­er­ing “Nos­tal­gia Packs” right to your mail­box. Every box or bun­dle is crammed full of cool geeky, nos­tal­gic stuff, like unopened wax packs, trad­ing cards, stick­ers, Pogs (remem­ber those?), and other small items you prob­a­bly col­lected as a kid. You get a whole lot of awe­some for less than $10 (each pack is $7 + $2.50 ship­ping), and you can cus­tomize each pack to your inter­ests based on the avail­able themes. Of course, I went with Ninja Tur­tles and Nintendo.

Here’s a bet­ter look at every­thing in my cus­tomized Nos­tal­gia Pack :

Even though you can choose which wax packs you want, the fun of Box­some is all the sur­prise items you get, like a mail-order grab bag! I got some Star Wars, Lion King and Simp­sons pogs, Nin­tendo cards, Pizza Point stick­ers, Bat­man cards, and other assorted geek­ery you can have fun iden­ti­fy­ing in the photo above. It’s a pretty good deal for all you get, and there’s no sub­scrip­tions, fees or other B.S. Just pay once and get cool stuff! Who doesn’t love get­ting cool stuff in the mail?

Want your own Nos­tal­gia Pack? Get yours for 20% off!

Tommy is hook­ing up ShezCrafti read­ers with a 20% dis­count! (I told you he’s an awe­some dude.) Just enter code “SHEZCRAFTI” when you check out.

If you decide to take the plunge, be sure to post some pics of your loot on Twit­ter or Insta­gram and give a shout-out to @HeyBoxsome ! You could end up in the Box­some Gallery and be inter­net famous.

Here’s mine:

It’s so bad!

For Trade/Sale: My Catwoman Comics

This week The League is trad­ing our unwanted stuff ! I’ve got plenty of that around here, but I tried to pick some­thing that I know you guys in The League might actu­ally want–that is, unless any of you are inter­ested in Hello Kitty stuff or Insane Clown Posse CDs… Any­one? Bueller?

Didn’t think so.

So, here’s what I’m hop­ing to unload:

Are you sur­prised I have Cat­woman comics? See, back in the 90s I was obsessed with X-MEN after get­ting hooked on the car­toon, so I started col­lect­ing the comics. I still have hun­dreds of them, between X-MEN, Uncanny X-MEN, X-Factor, X-Force, X-MEN 2099, X-MEN Adven­tures, all the character-centric titles like Wolver­ine, Cable, Storm, etc. etc. etc. I even have some Avengers crossovers. Here’s a glimpse:

Feel­ing overly entrenched in the Mar­vel uni­verse, I decided at some point to branch out a lit­tle and try some­thing new. For what­ever rea­son, Cat­woman is the book I chose to do that with. I loved Bat­man, but was over­whelmed by the vol­ume of Bat­man comics out there and didn’t know where to start. I’ve also never been one to col­lect comic books just for the sake of collecting–I actu­ally do read the sto­ries and I won’t buy a book that I’m not “into” story or character-wise. When I saw Cat­woman #1 hit the stands back in 1993, I thought here was good chance to get into some­thing Batman-related from the start so I jumped on it.

Plus, the cover is embossed, so you can totally feel up Selina Kyle’s cat-bewbz. Fun, right?

I tried my best to get into Cat­woman, col­lect­ing it for about a year or so, but unfor­tu­nately it never grabbed me the way X-MEN did, so I gave up. It did, how­ever, teach me a valu­able les­son: that I shouldn’t have to “try” to get into some­thing. If you’re try­ing too hard to like some­thing, it prob­a­bly means you don’t. And if you don’t like some­thing, stop col­lect­ing it. Oth­er­wise it’s just a waste of time and money. That’s what these books rep­re­sent to me–a waste of time and money. I have no emo­tional invest­ment in them what­so­ever, and I’d be more than happy to pass them on to some­one who’ll actu­ally appre­ci­ate them.

So here’s exactly what I have up for trade:

• Cat­woman #1 — Aug 1993
• Cat­woman #2 — Sep 1993
• Cat­woman #3 — Oct 1993
• Cat­woman #4 — Nov 1993
• Cat­woman #5 — Dec 1993
• Cat­woman #6 — Jan 1994 (2x copies of this one)
• Cat­woman #7 — Feb 1994
• Cat­woman #8 — Mar 1994
• Cat­woman #9 — Apr 1994
• Cat­woman #10 — May 1994
• Cat­woman #11 — Jun 1994
• (I don’t have #12 for some rea­son…)
• Cat­woman #13 — Aug 1994
• Cat­woman #14 — Sep 1994 (2x copies of this one)
• (I don’t have #15 either)
• Cat­woman #16 — Dec 1994
• Cat­woman #0 — Oct 1994
• Cat­woman Annual #1 — 1994

All of these comics are bagged and boarded and have been rest­ing undis­turbed in my comic boxes since 1994. In other words, they’re in great condition.

And here’s what I’m inter­ested in for trade:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles any­thing, espe­cially if it’s related to the first movie
• Retro gam­ing stuff (NES carts, Atari, Sega Gen­e­sis, etc.)
• Choose Your Own Adven­ture Books (Hardcover)
• Vin­tage board games or card games
• Atari Hot Wheels (I need the 2600 GMC Motorhome and the Cen­tipede van)

Of course, money’s always good too if you’d rather just out­right buy them. I have no idea what the’re worth though, so you could prob­a­bly swin­dle me pretty good.

Let’s make a deal.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to post items we want to trade or sell . Here’s what we’ve got on the trad­ing post:

• William Bruce West — Hot Wheels, War­craft, Motown CDs, and signed Lenore books
• Team Hel­lions — Star Wars radio dra­mas, Empow­ered graphic nov­els, NASCAR Monopoly
• Calvin’s Cana­dian Cave of Cool — The Hunger Games Kat­niss Bar­bie
• Secret Agent Spit­ting Cobra — Bat­man collectibles
• Cool and Col­lected — Hodge­podge of cool 80s stuff includ­ing E.T, TMNT, MOTU, Thun­der­cats, Pee-Wee Colorforms
• My Vin­tage Toy­box — Vari­ety of loose fig­ures, includ­ing Beast­man, Harry Pot­ter, TMNT and The Shadow
• Stunt Zom­bie — Ran­dom toyes, includ­ing Lego Hero Fac­tory, Sav­age Dragon, G.I. Joe, Transformers
• For­tune and Glory Days — Star Wars & Indi­ana Jones toys
• AEIOU and Some­times Why — Star Wars toys
• Neato Coolville — Archer Spacemen

Best $3 I Ever Spent: Bicycle Zombie Playing Cards

When the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse hap­pens– and it will –you’re going to need a good set of play­ing cards to pass the time with other survivors.

I sug­gest Bicy­cle Zom­bie Play­ing Cards :

You really can’t go wrong with Bicy­cles. They’ve been mak­ing these cards since 1885.  You think a lit­tle thing like the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse is going to stop them?

I picked these up in Wal­greens the other day for just $3. With price­less zom­bie sur­vival tips printed on every card, this deck has already paid for itself.

The face cards for every suit fea­ture different-looking zom­bies. Clubs are a sickly flesh color, clearly in the early stages of decay. Hearts are a pale, icy blue–perhaps these are cold-weather zom­bies? Dia­monds are a putrid yel­low rem­i­nis­cent of puss. Finally, Spade zom­bies are a clas­sic grayish-green.

The Joker card pays homage to the orig­i­nal, with a zomb­i­fied King ris­ing from his grave marked 808. Nice touch.

The backs of the cards fea­ture a bloody take on the zom­bie King theme, with rot­ting hands stretch­ing into the four corners.

I’ve already stashed these away in my sur­vival kit. If you’re lucky enough to end up in my group of sur­vivors, you won’t be with­out entertainment.

The Walking Drunk and Disorderly Dead

I was on my way to the bank this morn­ing when I saw this sign:

My first reac­tion was excite­ment, think­ing the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse had finally come. Then I got a lit­tle fur­ther into town–where all the bars are–and real­ized it’s St. Patty’s Day week­end, and by “walk­ers” this sign is refer­ring to drunk and dis­or­derly white peo­ple. That’s all Bel Air, Mary­land has to offer, really. But it was fun for a few sec­onds to think  at any moment I might have to start run­ning down undead bitches with my Civic.

While I’m on the sub­ject of The Walk­ing Dead , I recently added the board game to my col­lec­tion. I picked it up at Best Buy, of all places, because I had some Rewards money. It’s pretty rare for me to walk in there and not come out with a video game of some sort, but it wasn’t for lack of try­ing. I must have hit it on a bad day because their selec­tion of games  sucked.

So instead I set­tled for some good old-fashioned ana­log entertainment.

It’s a shitty, depress­ing day out­side, so I thought it was per­fect for pho­tos con­sid­er­ing the sub­ject mat­ter. Enjoy the serene beauty of my muddy back­yard and rot­ting deck.

I haven’t yet had the oppor­tu­nity to play game, as you can prob­a­bly tell from the un-punched play­ing pieces, but already this game has a huge strike against it:

No Daryl.

It does, how­ever, have a Sin­gle Player mode just for losers like me!

The actual “board” part of this board game is pretty cool, too, because it’s made of flex­i­ble fab­ric and rub­ber, like a mat. It rolls up for stor­ing neatly in its own com­part­ment in the box. I guess you could also attempt to used it as a weapon when the real zom­bie apoc­a­lypse hap­pens, but I would not rec­om­mend that.

Accord­ing to the back of the box, this game is a “Zom­bie Apoc­a­lypse Sur­vival Kit.”

I don’t know where the game mak­ers are get­ting their infor­ma­tion, but I doubt there’s much inside this box that would save you from one zom­bie, let alone mul­ti­ple zom­bies who all want to eat your face off. If you have a good arm, maybe you could throw dice at them hard enough and take out an eye?

6 Inches of Vintage Turtle Power!

What does it say about me that on my recent fan­tasy shop­ping spree to  Hakes Amer­i­cana & Col­lectibles I only came away with $1639.00 worth of stuff? I had carte blanche with my pre­tend money to pur­chase all the coolest, most ridicu­lously expen­sive pop cul­ture arti­facts I wanted, but wound up buy­ing tschotskes and a cou­ple of cheap but­tons . I suck at being rich. If I ever sud­denly come into a lot of money because I invent Vapoorize or some­thing, I’ll prob­a­bly still eat at McDonald’s and drink Arbor Mist.

One of the items I was most excited about was (of course) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-related–this two-pack of 6-inch TMNT buttons:

I ended up snag­ging the pair, not because these but­tons are rare or even all that par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, but because I had one as a kid. Don’t ask me which Tur­tle it was, though, because I don’t remem­ber. I just remem­ber it felt impor­tant at the time to boldly dis­play my Tur­tle Power to coun­ter­act the scourge of ridicu­lously over-sized New Kids on the Block but­tons  that seemed to be every­where. That was worth get­ting mocked relent­lessly for, right? (In related news, HOLY HELL there’s a lot of cheap   NKOTB stuff on Ebay. Which one of you is flood­ing the mar­ket with Cover Girl cassingles?)

A while back I had picked up Donatello, Michelan­gelo, and Leonardo but­tons from Just For Fun Col­lectibles , a local store that buys and sells old toys, comics, and games, among tons of other cool crap that fills its tiny retail space from floor to ceil­ing. I was thrilled to find these guys buried in a plas­tic bin full of Pez dis­pensers and the shop owner gave me a good deal on all three of them, how­ever   I was super-bummed they didn’t have Raphael. Fig­ures it would be the most impor­tant one.

But thanks to Hake’s, the cool but crude Tur­tle has finally joined his broth­ers and com­pleted the awe­some foursome:

If you haven’t checked out Hake’s auc­tion site yet and all the awe­some pop cul­ture mem­o­ra­bilia  they have for sale, you might want to cut up your credit cards before tak­ing a look! Just sayin’.

Fantasy Shopping Spree at Hake’s Americana & Collectibles

I want money, lots and lots of money, so I can buy all this cool stuff at Hake’s!

This week’s assign­ment from The League was to pre­tend money is no object and go on a fan­tasy shop­ping spree at Hake’s Amer­i­cana & Col­lectibles . Part of Baltimore’s famous Geppi’s Enter­tain­ment Museum, Hake’s is a huge auc­tion site filled with tons of nos­tal­gic col­lectibles and pop cul­ture mem­o­ra­bilia, rang­ing in price from sur­pris­ingly rea­son­able to somebody’s going to have to donate a kid­ney. Brows­ing through the hun­dreds of pages of toys, nov­el­ties, comics, pins, posters, auto­graphs and every­thing in between, I was over­whelmed at how much stuff they have. I spent a good hour or so just click­ing through all the links and typ­ing in ran­dom searches to see what I could find. Nat­u­rally I checked out their Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles stuff first ‚ how­ever, I did resist the urge to fill up a blog post with just TMNT col­lectibles. You should be proud of me.

Any­way, cue the cheesy mon­tage music. It’s time to go shopping!

So, we’re sup­posed to pre­tend like we’re buy­ing stuff to dec­o­rate our man­sions, but if I were filthy rich I’d totally live on a huge yacht like Goldie Hawn in  Over­board  com­plete with use­less, empty, hair-polishing, toe-polishing  rich bitch sun tan­ning days . Instead of trav­el­ing the world col­lect­ing fine works of art, I’d fill up my yacht with vin­tage video games, valu­able comics, toys, movie mem­o­ra­bilia, rare Ninja Tur­tles stuff, and other price­less (to me) trea­sures from all over. Basi­cally it’d be just like  Over­board  except I’d own much cooler stuff and my crew would play ‘80s music around the clock. And also I wouldn’t be a total bitch.

Here’s what I bought!

I know it’s a lot to take in. Believe me, I had a hard time nar­row­ing it down to just this stuff. Here’s a break­down of every­thing I pur­chased with my pre­tend monies, and why:

1. ‘Blues Broth­ers’ Button

The Blues Broth­ers is one of the best movies of all time. If you dis­agree, you are wrong. The Blues Broth­ers were a few years before my time, but I grew up watch­ing the iconic film with my Dad and catch­ing up on those early years of Sat­ur­day Night Live (some­where along the way I also devel­oped a mini-crush on John Belushi which is pretty weird being that he’s a dead guy, and all). This vin­tage Blues Broth­ers but­ton pre­dates the 1980 film and depicts Dan Ack­royd and John Belushi in char­ac­ter as Elwood and Jake.

Price: $12.00

2. Buster Brown Plas­tic Ring

The mall in my town where I’ve lived for over 30 years used to have a Buster Brown children’s shoe store back in the early 80s, and every time my mom took me there to buy a new pair of shoes, it meant I would get one of these cheap plas­tic Buster Brown rings . For me, that was the whole point of going because I  hated shoes and still do. I think I must have been trau­ma­tized by a shoe sales­man at an early age or some­thing. I know it’s atyp­i­cal because I’m a woman and we’re sup­posed to like shoes, but if I could get away with going bare­foot or wear­ing flip-flops year-round, I would.

Price: $15.00

3. ‘Star Wars’ Ken Steacy Signed Lithograph

This Star Wars print is so bad ass! Not only do I love the copi­ous amount of hot pink, but the per­spec­tive makes Darth Vader look like a giant. Either that or some­body shrunk the Death Star. This Star Wars lith­o­graph is from a lim­ited run of just 50 prints and is signed by artist Ken Steacy.

Price: $150.00

4. Pair of 6″ Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Buttons

You knew there was going to be  some Ninja Tur­tles stuff here, right? These over­size 6″ but­tons are the kind that have a pop-out card­board stand on the back to prop them up. I already have the match­ing Donatello, Leonardo and Michelan­gelo ver­sions; I just need Raphael and the group shot with the logo, which are sold together in this TMNT but­ton lot .

Price: $35.00

5. David Bowie ‘Seri­ous Moon­light’ Tour Pin

This super 80s-tastic David Bowie pin (I seem to have a thing for pins) is from his 1983 Seri­ous Moon­light tour. I was only two years old in 1983, but I love me some David Bowie–especially 80s Bowie (blame Labyrinth !)–and I love this abstract style of art. Thank God for YouTube which is like a time machine where I can watch the whole con­cert . Lets dance!

Price: $15.00

6. Jim Henson’s Mup­pet Watches

I love all things Jim Hen­son and Mup­pets, so this Ker­mit watch with a Rain­bow Con­nec­tion theme caught my eye. It’s part of a larger store dis­play of Mup­pet watches and clocks from 1982. I really like the sim­plic­ity of the art­work and the green color of the band which matches Kermit.

Price: $250.00

7. Nin­tendo Power — ‘Final Fan­tasy’ Crys­tal Orb Prize

Here’s one of the few video game-related things I could find at Hake’s, but it’s a good one! Back in 1990, Nin­tendo Power ran Final Fantasy-themed Trea­sure Con­test and sec­ond prize was one of fifty cus­tom dec­o­ra­tive Final Fan­tasy crys­tal orbs with the game’s name and emblem etched into the glass. As a nice bonus, it even comes with a copy of the Nin­tendo Power issue it was announced in, which is awe­some too because the cover is ded­i­cated to Maniac Man­sion, one of my favorite NES games.

Price: $250.00

8. ‘Star Wars: Return of the Jedi’ Roller Skates

I had no idea Star Wars roller skates existed, but now that I do, I must pos­sess them. I guess I really shouldn’t be sur­prised, since there is Star Wars every­thing . Another thing I’d own if I were rich is my own pri­vate roller rink mod­eled after a late-80s Skate Land. You’d all be invited to come hang out any­time you want, of course. And if skat­ing in wide cir­cles to The Cars is not your thing, don’t worry–there’ll also be a bitchin’ arcade and pizza parlor.

Price: $100.00

9. Mechan­i­cal Mighty Robot with Spark

I don’t really know any­thing about this mechan­i­cal windup robot toy, except that he seems like a lot of fun and looks totally rad. The descrip­tion on the web­site tells me he’s from Japan and was made in the 1960s. Sup­pos­edly when you wind him up he walks for­ward and you can see sparks shoot­ing off inside his chest win­dow. See what I mean? Totally rad.

Price: $50.00

10. Bat­man Out­fit with Button

Who doesn’t want to be Bat­man for a day? With this cape, mask, and offi­cial “Char­ter Mem­ber Bat­man & Robin Soci­ety” badge, you could be. I just like the silli­ness of it all, and how the pack­ag­ing says “TV Cape” instead of Bat­man. I don’t know what that’s all about, but evi­dently this Bat­man out­fit only costed 98 cents back in 1966. Being Bat­man for less than a dol­lar sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me.

Price: $75.00

11. X-Men Comic Panel Buttons

You might not know this about me, but for a time in the early 90s I was even more obsessed with X-MEN than I was Ninja Tur­tles. I have since gone back to Tur­tles almost exclu­sively but I still keep up with X-MEN to a loose degree, and still hold on to sev­eral long boxes full of comics that doc­u­ment that period of my life. These X-MEN comic panel but­tons are from 1986–1987 and fea­ture awe­some art­work, includ­ing my favorite 80s-era red and brown Wolver­ine style.

Price: $35.00

12. ‘Top Gun’ Show­time Button

More but­tons! I could prob­a­bly eas­ily fill up a whole wall of but­tons, or at the very least, a whole jean jacket. This one is a Top Gun promo but­ton  from 1987 pro­mot­ing the Show­time net­work. I don’t really care about that part, I just like it because it’s Top Gun.

Price: $15.00

13. Miss Piggy Cam­paign Button

Did you know Miss Piggy ran for pres­i­dent back in 1980? This Miss Piggy for Pres­i­dent  but­ton was dis­trib­uted as part of her cam­paign, along with an appear­ance in Life mag­a­zine. Per­son­ally, I would not have voted for Miss Piggy and her fem­i­nist agenda, but it’s fun to imag­ine what the coun­try would be like today if she had won. #Beaker4President, amirite?

Price: $25.00

14. Walt Disney’s Game Parade Board Game

This vin­tage 1940’s Dis­ney Game Parade caught my eye because of the box art and inter­est­ing design. Sup­pos­edly this thing is 15 board games in one, using dif­fer­ent boards and play­ing pieces. But the real rea­son I like it so much is because Toby Tor­toise is rep­re­sented on the cover. You just don’t see that guy around much. It’s a shame he never became more pop­u­lar after his Silly Sym­phony days.

Price: $125.00

15. Toby Tor­toise Tooth­brush Holder

Speak­ing of Toby Tor­toise, check out this keen Toby Tor­toise tooth­brush holder from the 30s, which was back when they said things like “keen.” It makes sense that Toby would store your tooth­brush in his shell, you know, because he’s a tur­tle. Just like how it also makes sense that he’s wear­ing box­ing gloves, because he’s a boxer.  In a way, Toby Tor­toise is kind of a pre­cur­sor to the Ninja Tur­tles. He’s def­i­nitely cool enough to war­rant more car­toon appear­ances than the few lousy ones he got. I’m root­ing for ya, lit­tle buddy.

Price: $200.00

16. ‘Tales from the Crypt’ Pin­ball Adver­tis­ing Button

Though I’m too young to have grown up with the orig­i­nal comics, one of my favorite hor­ror anthol­ogy shows was HBO’s Tales from the Crypt . My mom used to let me and my sis­ter stay up late and watch it with her over a shared bowl of pop­corn. This Tales from the Crypt but­ton is asso­ci­ated with the pin­ball machine that was pro­duced in 1993. Sadly, Hake’s doesn’t have the whole pin­ball machine or I’d buy that, because why not, I’m all rich and stuff now? The Crypt Keeper is def­i­nitely some­one I’d hang out with on Fri­day nights. At the very least he deserves credit for my love of ter­ri­ble puns.

Price: $60.00

17. ‘Reform School Girls’ Large Pro­mo­tional Button

This is a large promo but­ton from the 1986 extreme low bud­get B-movie Reform School Girls. Don’t be sur­prised if we–and by “we” I mean “I”–end up cov­er­ing this one over at Cult Film Club .

Price: $28.00

18. “The Swingers” Beatles-Like Fig­urines on Card

I had no idea The Shitty Bea­t­les existed out­side of Wayne’s World. This set of “The Swingers” plas­tic fig­urines is clearly a knock-off of The Bea­t­les. The fact that they’re made in Hong Kong is a dead give­away. I think knock-off prod­ucts are hilar­i­ous, espe­cially when they have such sexy names.

Price: $25.00

19. Rea­gan Satir­i­cal 1980s Post­card Lot

Not much to say about these satir­i­cal Rea­gan post­cards , except that I find them hilar­i­ous because I’m imma­ture. Ronald Rea­gan + Rambo = RONBO. Ronald Rea­gan + Ronald McDon­ald= Ronald McRea­gan. DO YOU GET IT, GUYS? I just want them for kitsch points, and also because the lot includes a card where Rea­gan has a giant penis on his head .

Price: $35.00

20. Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Power Rings Set

Okay, I had to sneak one more TMNT item in here. These are a set of eight Ninja Tur­tles “Power Rings” that came from Nabisco Shred­dies (hurr hurr!) cereal in Canada. I like that the Tur­tles are all mak­ing dif­fer­ent faces, which is rare for pieces like this; usu­ally they just use the same sculpt and change the mask color. I’m also a lit­tle upset there’s no Bebop, but these are just tri­fles. In no way does that mean I want the whole set any less than I do, which is badly.

Price: $35.00

21. ‘E.T.’ Jew­elry Neck­lace Lot

I don’t wear a lot of jew­elry, if at all. I hardly even own any “nice” jew­elry. When I do wear jew­elry, I like it cheap and crappy like these gold­tone E.T. neck­laces , or even the plas­tic stuff from vend­ing machines. It’s not that I don’t appre­ci­ate nice jew­elry, it’s just highly imprac­ti­cal for me and I’ve lost more than one nice rock. I’d wear the shit out of these E.T. neck­laces, though, which come in  four dif­fer­ent designs, includ­ing my favorite, Trans­ves­tite E.T.

Price: $20.00

22. Disney’s ‘Robin Hood’ Lunch Box

Here’s another fun ShezCrafti fact: my Dad’s name is Robin Hood. No joke. As a result, I’ve always been kind of drawn to Robin Hood-related stuff since my fam­ily has always sort of unof­fi­cially col­lected it. This Robin Hood lunch box is a lit­tle beat up, but I love Disney’s ver­sion of the Robin Hood leg­end and I like the artwork.

Price: $60.00

23. ‘The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show’ Sou­venir But­ton Trio

Lastly, I couldn’t resist this set of three Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show sou­venir  but­tons . Again with the but­tons. Not only do I love the movie, but it’s the ulti­mate cult film.

Price: $24.00

So, how much did all this awe­some­ness cost?

$1,639.oo. Yup, I’m going to have to donate a kidney.

What would you buy from Hake’s if money were no object?

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to go on a fan­tasy shop­ping spree at Hake’s Amer­i­cana & Col­lectibles . I pur­posely did not look at what my fel­low Lea­guers posted before putting together my own list, so I can’t wait to take a peek at all the crazy things they bought. Or maybe it’s just me who went crazy?

I’ll update this sec­tion with more links & info as every­one fin­ishes the assign­ment and I actu­ally get a chance to read them.

• Progress 13
• The Lair of the Dork Horde
• Branded in the 80s
• The Robot’s Paja­mas
• Hench­girl
• For­tune & Glory Days
• The Blog­ger from Planet X
• Achieve­ments in Gam­ing
• Nerd Lunch
• The Com­bat Work­shop
• AEIOU and Some­times Why

Huge Thank You to Shawn Robare for this Epic Care Package!

When my buddy Shawn from Branded in the 80s told me he was send­ing a cou­ple of TMNT comic books my way, that’s all I expected–a cou­ple of TMNT comic books. I didn’t expect a giant box full of extra good­ies and TMNT stuff  in addi­tion to  the comics, but this is Shawn, and he’s famous for his awe­some care pack­ages, so I guess I shouldn’t be too sur­prised! I’m just over­whelmed at how much cool stuff Shawn crammed into this thing, and find myself won­der­ing what I did to deserve such a great friend who sends “just because” gifts.

It was a rainy night when I got home to find this box wait­ing on my door step. I knew who it was from right away, and by the Ninja Tur­tle wrap­ping paper lin­ing the box, I also knew it was going to con­tain lots of awesome.

Inside the box was a large Nick­elodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles gift bag that you can bet your ass I was extremely care­ful to pre­serve as I unpacked it. I’ve actu­ally been look­ing for Nick­Tur­tles gift bags, but have only been able to find rolls of wrap­ping paper. I haven’t even dug into the real goods yet and I’m already excited. Over a gift bag. (Yeah, I know I need help.)

Shawn’s atten­tion to detail is amaz­ing. Tucked inside the pack­age was this card with a very nice hand­writ­ten note, dec­o­rated with Shawn’s art­work of my favorite Tur­tle! There is noth­ing I love more than get­ting sent orig­i­nal draw­ings, espe­cially from peo­ple I know, and more espe­cially from tal­ented artists, which Shawn is. I mean, have you seen the awe­some­ness he designed for Cult Film Club ? So again, I’m already lov­ing this pack­age and I haven’t even got­ten to the meat yet.

Also inside was this very detailed let­ter explain­ing each and every thing inside the pack­age and why Shawn sent it. Did I men­tion his atten­tion to detail? I think he may have missed his call­ing as an archivist. Dec­o­rat­ing the pages were more orig­i­nal art and some rad stick­ers. Always with the stick­ers! That’s why Shawn’s pack­ages are the best.

Here’s a closer look at that draw­ing, and the mini fig­ure that inspired it. OMFG IT’S A PURPLE POOP MONSTER! With an out­house as a body! How bizarre yet insanely cool. Of course, I had to know more about it, so I took to Google and dis­cov­ered OMFG! (Out­landish Mini Fig­ure Guys)  who make all sorts of cool lit­tle guys like this. Now I rec­og­nize that sticker in the pre­vi­ous pic­ture! How appro­pri­ate is that name, by the way? “OMFG” is pretty much the reac­tion I had. You know, because it’s A PURPLE POOP MONSTER WITH AN OUTHOUSE AS A BODY.

Accord­ing to the OMFG web­site, this mini fig­ure is named “Phan­tom Out­house.” But what­ever! He’s “Pur­ple Poop Mon­ster” to me! Maybe even “Pur­ple Poop Mon­ster, Jr.” because the Out­house “shell” makes him seem very young to me, like a Poop Mon­ster that hasn’t fully hatched. Kind of like Shel­don from Garfield and Friends . (Wow, did my mind really just go there? Yeah. It did.) It took every­thing I had to put Pur­ple Poop Mon­ster Jr. down and stop imag­in­ing all kinds of dis­gust­ingly awe­some sce­nar­ios for how he came into being.

Now we’re get­ting into the real meat and pota­toes, and the orig­i­nal rea­son why Shawn sent me this pack­age– Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles comics! Shawn had been clean­ing out his sin­gle issue stash and asked around on Twit­ter if any­body needed his extras. Although I have a lot of TMNT comics, there’s def­i­nitely a few gaps in my col­lec­tion that I’ve slowly been try­ing to fill. These were three books that I didn’t have.

Shawn also threw in this auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal indie comic called Drink­ing at the Movies by artist  Julia Wertz . It looks hilar­i­ous, and I like Julia’s style. I plan to read it one one of my lunch breaks this week.

Nes­tled in with the comics were these retro TMNT Sto­ry­book Adven­ture books! I remem­ber hav­ing a cou­ple of these as a kid, but like most cool things I had from my child­hood, I have no idea what hap­pened to them. Hold­ing these books in my hands was like re-capturing a lit­tle piece of my child­hood, and that’s some­thing that I con­sider precious.

Isn’t it crazy how you slowly lose things like toys, books and games over time when you’re grow­ing up, as dif­fer­ent things become more or less impor­tant in your life? In my case, I had a mother who was bor­der­line OCD about clean­ing and orga­ni­za­tion, and every cou­ple of months she’d make my sis­ter and I go all through the house and round up things to sell at yard sales or give to Good­will, which is what hap­pened to a lot of my stuff over the years. On the one hand I’m thank­ful because her OCD rubbed off and made me the very neat, clean per­son I am today. On the other hand…I miss my stuff.

More sticker cards! Garbage Pail Kids are always a wel­come sight, and fre­quently turn up in Shawn’s mail­ings. I’m slowly build­ing up a nice col­lec­tion just from the loose cards Shawn and a cou­ple of other blog­gers have sent me. Mixed in with the Garbage Pail Kids were Cereal Killers cards from Wax Eye! Until now I only had a sin­gle pack of these cards which I won from Wax Eye’s Face­book page , so I’m stoked to have more to add to my collection–and even bet­ter that they’re cards I don’t already have! I think you must be psy­chic, Shawn.

Now here’s some­thing that goes straight to my heart–TMNT Valen­tines! I had men­tioned on my blog that I was hav­ing a tough time find­ing these awe­some sticker card Valen­tines (even though I did find this totally sweet TMNT Valen­tine watch ), so Shawn sent me his left­overs. When it comes to TMNT, I don’t mind sloppy sec­onds in the least! I love the design of these cards, and how non-committal they are as kid-friendly Valen­tines go. There are no hearts or the word “love” any­where to be found, which is what you want to look for in a Valen­tine you’re plan­ning to give to school­mates who could poten­tially mis­in­ter­pret your ges­ture as a crush, or worse, beat the shit out of you.

Some­where around these parts I also men­tioned very recently that I’ve never seen V . This caused much shock and dis­be­lief among my cir­cle of blog­gers, and I guess Shawn felt it was his duty to rem­edy that. My geek cred was at stake! He passed on these well-loved DVD copies of V: The Orig­i­nal Mini Series and V: The Final Bat­tle to me, which were tucked inside a TMNT goodie bag. I can’t wait to start watch­ing, because appar­ently I’ve really been miss­ing out on a good show, accord­ing to what every­one has told me. I think I’ll try to knock out an episode per night.

Some­thing that’s also always a wel­come sight: candy! Espe­cially when it comes in retro video game tins. This Atari Joy­stick makes an excel­lent addi­tion to the small col­lec­tion I now have of video game candy tins, includ­ing the Pac-Man Arcade candy tin Shawn sent me for Christ­mas . He also threw in a pack of Straw­berry Hi-Chew, because they have a sim­i­lar taste to Pink Star­burst, which Shawn knows  I have an obses­sion for. These are already gone, by the way.

So much awe­some stuff and I’m not even done yet! Also buried in the pack­age was this set of four TMNT pens, which each hang by a lan­yard that matches the Tur­tles’ mask col­ors. I’m guess­ing these are meant to be party favors for TMNT-themed birth­days? Cer­tainly not office attire, but that’s not going to stop me from wear­ing them around mine just so I can be there at the ready when some­one asks, “Any­one got a pen?” and I whip out my Raphael pen with ninja-like reflexes, impress­ing every­one around me.

Last but def­i­nitely not least, Shawn included this jar of what looks like peanut but­ter, but is actu­ally some­thing called cookie but­ter. When he first men­tioned it to me, I was skep­ti­cal because “cookie but­ter” sounds like some­thing that’s too amaz­ing and mag­i­cal to exist, like uni­corns. But here it is, a whole jar of the stuff, which is mar­keted as “deli­ciously unusual.” Let’s play a game: raise your hand if you think Jaime imme­di­ately opened the jar of cookie but­ter, vio­lently tore the seal off, and plunged a fin­ger into its gooey depths then into her mouth because you can do that kind of thing when you live alone? If your hand is raised, you’re a win­ner. I don’t really have any prizes to give away, so as a reward I will describe the taste of cookie but­ter to you:

Shame. It tastes like shame.

Shawn, for reals man, I am so hum­bled by how thought­ful and gen­er­ous you are, and your atten­tion to every­thing that went into this care pack­age. I feel so lucky to have friends like you in my life, even though we’ve never met!

Speaking of TMNT watches…

Not to keep turn­ing this blog into “Hey! Look at my Ninja Tur­tles stuff!” but I thought some of you might want a closer look at the sweet Nick Tur­tles watch I scored last week­end at Toys R’ Us. I only went there to buy a TMNT iPhone case , I swear it, but this ele­gant time­piece ended up com­ing home with me too.

Flash­ing, color-changing LED lights!! Like I said, ele­gant.  The flash­ing lights effect is actu­ally pretty cool. (I wish I had thought ahead enough to take a video of it, but if you’re a reg­u­lar reader you should know by now I’m always wing­ing it.) The color changes rapidly between blue, red, green, and pur­ple and then slows to a more sooth­ing, pul­sat­ing pat­tern. The dis­play lasts about 30 seconds–plenty of time to annoy the shit out of every­one around you!–which is a per­fectly good rea­son to wear this thing, if you were look­ing for one. Not rec­om­mended for use around peo­ple with epilepsy.

The Tur­tles’ faces are ren­dered in the 2D style (which I’ve really grown to love!) of Nickelodeon’s 3D ani­ma­tion, pre­serv­ing all their most dis­tin­guish­able fea­tures, like the gap in Don’s teeth and Mikey’s baby­face. The dif­fer­ent shades of green used for their skin col­ors are rel­a­tively the same, but here their eye col­ors are all black instead of indi­vid­ual col­ors like in the car­toon. I can live with that, I guess, though I do miss the sharp green of Raph’s icy stare.

I love too how the Tur­tles are strate­gi­cally arranged around the watch face. Leonardo is the leader, so of course he would be in front. That’s Ninja Tur­tles 101. And when­ever Raph is flank­ing Leo’s right side and Don­nie and Mike are on the left, I’m always reminded of the very first panel of the orig­i­nal Mirage comic book to which we owe the entire Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles phenomenon:

Let’s also talk about how the watch face is a NYC man­hole cover, and how I always have trou­ble say­ing “man­hole” with a straight face, because hon­estly, I’m run­ning out of things to talk about.  If you’re plan­ning to buy this watch, you might also con­sider hang­ing on to the pack­ag­ing or tak­ing a photo of it, because that’s where the instruc­tions are. But who cares about that–MANHOLE! LOLOLOLOLOLOL!

I also wanted to men­tion the sub­stan­tial size of this thing. Here it is on my del­i­cate, lady-sized wrist:

Even with­out the flash­ing lights, it’s an attention-getter for sure. It’s socially accept­able to be 31 and wear a Ninja Tur­tles watch, right?

What’s this? A TMNT Valentine Watch!?

It was love at first sight, you guys.

There I was at my local Wal­mart doing some under­wear shop­ping (TMI, I know) when I spot­ted this thing. If you’re famil­iar with how Wal­marts are laid out, you’re forced to walk past the dis­plays of sea­sonal crap to get to the clothes, and my eyes locked on that unmis­tak­able com­bi­na­tion of pur­ple and green like a laser-guided mis­sile. It didn’t hit me until I was stand­ing in the check­out line how sad and pathetic it is to buy myself a valen­tine, but what­ever, TURTLES! On a cheap watch! In a heart-shaped package!

I think this thing may have been sur­rounded by other licensed, gift-ready Valentine’s Day watches, but I only had eyes for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. They were flirt­ing with me. Look at that flirty lit­tle red bow. Such a tease!

Can you imag­ine being a kid and get­ting this watch from some­one in your class? This is the kind of valen­tine that would have made me kiss you behind the bleach­ers AND let you copy my home­work. That’s worth the $5 price tag, right?

Here’s a close-up of the face, which is encir­cled by orange plas­tic. I don’t know if this is the only color avail­able, but it’s all Wal­mart had. I was kind of hop­ing for dif­fer­ent watch designs in each of the four Turtle’s mask colors–how cool would it be to be able to gift your crush his/her favorite Tur­tle on a watch? But that’s prob­a­bly ask­ing too much from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Valentine’s Day watch. I’m ecsta­tic a Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Valentine’s Day watch even  exists.

This is so much cooler than those Nick­elodeon TMNT candy valen­tines . Some­one blew a golden oppor­tu­nity to make those lol­lipops pizza-flavored.

Ninja Turtle-izing my iPhone 5

So, I just got a shiny new iPhone 5 (I know, I never thought it would come to this , either) and it was look­ing rather naked, so my imme­di­ate goal was to trans­form it into the most Ninja Turtle-iest phone possible.

Until they come out with real  T-phones  ( and not this plas­tic piece of crap  which doesn’t even use the real voice actors), or at the very least, some kind of cool case that trans­forms your iPhone into a Shell­Cell, I have to set­tle for the next best thing.

Nick Tur­tles iPod 5 Case

This case is meant for an iPod 5, not an iPhone 5, but dammit, it’s the only offi­cial Nick­elodeon TMNT case that exists, which means I HAD TO HAVE IT. I asked around on Twit­ter to see if any­one knew if iPod 5 cases would fit iPhone 5, and ya’ll gave me some ter­ri­ble advice because this thing totally fits my iPhone 5, and pretty snugly at that. I’m glad I decided to ignore you and go with my gut. At Toys ‘R Us this thing costs  $19.99 and doesn’t count as elec­tron­ics, which means the 90-day return pol­icy still applies, even for open items. You can tell I really took a big risk here.

The iPod 5 case fits my iPhone 5 sur­pris­ingly snugly, how­ever the iPhone is a tad thicker than the iPod, so there is about 1.5mm of exposed hard­ware. But I don’t care because OMG NINJA TURTLES!

T-Phone Ringtone

Next order of busi­ness was to cus­tomize the ring­tone. A TMNT fan over at the Techn­odrome Forums had the good sense to upload an MP3 of the exact T-Phone ring­tone that’s used in the Nick­elodeon show, which can be heard when­ever the Tur­tles call each other. You can down­load it from File­Drop­per right here .

Here’s what it sounds like:

Nick­Tur­tles Wallpaper

And lastly, I needed some iPhone 5-sized (640 x 1136) wall­pa­per. Sur­pris­ingly, I couldn’t find any offi­cial TMNT iPhone wall­pa­per online, and as far as 5 min­utes of Google-searching tells me, nobody has both­ered to make any. So I had to get cre­ative and make my own. I made two designs–one for the home screen, and one for the lock screen.

Feel free to down­load these and use on your iPhone 5.

(Click to enlarge)

(Click to enlarge)

Bonus! Booy­akasha Ringtone

One of my Twit­ter bud­dies and fel­low TMNT fans, Justin Edwards ( @DUSTINDUSTRIES ), made an awe­some “BOOYAKASHA!” ring­tone for me, which I uploaded to SoundCloud:

You can down­load it here: Booy­akasha! Ring­tone

Thanks Justin!

Toddler Turtle Raph is now the cutest toy in my collection.

(Well, you know. That col­lec­tion I keep insist­ing I don’t have.)

When my good Twit­ter buddy Eric Stettmeier a.k.a.  @BubbaShelby , who is an avid toy col­lec­tor (AND awe­some artist , by the way), offered me his extra Tod­dler Tur­tle  fig­ure for the incred­i­bly gen­er­ous price of free, you know I was all over it. Eric must have seen my Tod­dler Mutant Ninja Tur­tles post awhile back–the one where I wished there was an entire Mup­pet Babies –style show about toddler-aged TMNT get­ting into kid-friendly shenanigans–and it was super cool of him for think­ing of me.

A full set of these Tod­dler Tur­tle fig­ures go for ridicu­lous prices on Ebay, so I’ve been hold­ing off on pick­ing them up. I would have been excited about get­ting  any of these lit­tle guys, but Eric hooked me up with my favorite Tur­tle, Raph!

LOOK HOW CUTE!

We actu­ally had a semi-nice day here today, so I was able to take these shots out­side on my deck. By his expres­sion, I have to assume Tod­dler Raph is a much hap­pier, more well-adjusted indi­vid­ual than Teenage Raph. I won­der at what age he went wrong?

Thank you, Eric, for sens­ing that I needed Tod­dler Raph in my life, and for the always awe­some #TMNT ban­ter on Twitter!

So effin’ cute: NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles BATSU Figures

Work­ing title for this post: “I’m Not a Toy Col­lec­tor, I Swear!”

I didn’t know about these  Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles  BATSU fig­ures from NECA until I saw them over at Top Hat Sasquatch  (sup, Tommy?) a few months ago, while ran­domly brows­ing old TMNT-related posts. And then last month Ama­zon had Donatello on sale for only $10, so I picked it up as a Geek­mas gift for my buddy Wes of Turtle-a-Day , and I thought it was such an insanely cool toy it took every­thing in my power not to keep it for myself. (Yeah, you almost got shafted, Wes. Sorry.)

I wasn’t really plan­ning on buy­ing these for myself, but I had a bunch of Ama­zon credit left, and I’ve already pre-ordered the two video games I’m most antic­i­pat­ing this year ( Ni No Kuni and The Last of Us , in case you’re won­der­ing), but some­thing about these just spoke to me .   I mean, they’re ridicu­lously cute, obvi­ously, but so char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally Japan­ese. I would watch a whole anime of the Tur­tles done in this style. I also like that they’ve all got red masks, like in the orig­i­nal Mirage comics. Clas­sic.

I took each Tur­tle out of the boxes so you can get a closer look, but hon­estly, I like the design of the boxes so much I think I’ll leave them in there. For now…

Leonardo

Leo’s mak­ing the clas­sic dou­ble gritted-teeth “TMNT face” and comes armed with his deadly katanas. Remem­ber that one time when he sliced The Shredder’s head off? That was awe­some. (Sorry. This blog could very eas­ily regress into The Chris Far­ley Show .)

Michelangelo

Mikey, unsur­pris­ingly, is mak­ing the most ridicu­lous face. It’s half delighted, half embarrassed–like he just made a ter­ri­ble joke. One that prob­a­bly involved a groan-worthy pun. Why does Mikey get to be the only Tur­tle whose weapon is described as “lethal”?

Donatello

Donatello is more dignified-looking with his closed-mouth, self-satisfied smirk. I love the way his staff looks, with the “tape” wrapped around it. He’s super cute.

Raphael (a.k.a. The Best Turtle*)

Raphael, pre­dictably, has gone full rage-face here. WHY IS HE SO ANGRY!? Prob­a­bly because those short, stubby sais don’t look like they could hurt a marsh­mal­low, let alone ene­mies. They are, how­ever, adorable. And this is my favorite fig­ure of the lot, for obvi­ous reasons.

*Yes, I’m trolling you non-Raphael fans.

The cool surprises in the mail just keep coming. (I heart UnderScoopFire!)

When I came home this evening after nine gru­el­ing hours at the office (ten if we’re count­ing my com­mute) and saw a pack­age in my mail­box from Under­Scoop­Fire , one of my most favoritest places in all of inter­net­landia, my crappy mood melted away and it was almost as if I hadn’t just spent all day in a drab, fluorescent-lit server farm with no win­dows, which is totally what it’s like where I work now, but hey, I’m not com­plain­ing because it pays my bills and keeps me in video games, and damn this sen­tence is get­ting kinda long.

If you’re a reg­u­lar around these parts, you should already be famil­iar with Under­Scoop­Fire.  Headed up by Howie Decker, Under­Scoop­Fire is one of THE great­est web­sites for chil­dren of the 80s –you know, us cool kids who grew up dur­ing the rad­dest decade in pop cul­ture his­tory and now have these things called “jobs” and “grown-up respon­si­bil­i­ties.” It’s like, a total drag, FER SURE. That’s why I love Howie’s site so much. It reminds me of the days when my biggest wor­ries were not hav­ing a cool lunch box and miss­ing car­toons on Sat­ur­day .

Howie sent me a really kind, per­sonal, hand­writ­ten note, which I won’t share, but (spoiler) it basi­cally says I’m awe­some. The feel­ing is mutual, Mr. Hecker Decker. Here’s what else was in the package:

• 2 packs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles movie cards (because, well, I’m me)
• 1 pack of Mar­vel Uni­verse Grab Zags, Series 1
• 1 pack of Avengers Grab Zags , Series 1
• 2 loose Mar­vel Grab Zags: a Wolver­ine Light-Up Pro­jec­tor, and a Hulk Pen (totally awesome!)
• …and an Under­Scoop­Fire sticker, with its mas­cot Hashy look­ing par­tic­u­larly men­ac­ing as he wields The Force

This also happened:

My cat Simon Bel­mont knows cool stuff when he sees it. Or sniffs it…

I decided to leave those TMNT movie cards in the pack because I have a com­plete set of them, but don’t have any unopened packs, so these are per­fect to keep with them.  But you know I couldn’t resist open­ing up those Grab Zags right away. Here’s what was inside the Avengers pack:

An Avengers Disc Launcher! It may not look like much, but this lit­tle baby is POWERFUL. I was half-expecting the thing not to even work when I squeezed the trig­ger, but damn if it didn’t hurl that disc all the way into the next room, much to my cat’s delight. So much fun. I’ve already had to con­fis­cate it twice.

Mov­ing on, here’s what was poten­tially inside the Mar­vel pack:

And here’s what was actu­ally inside:

It’s…another…Hulk Pen. (Wah wah wah.) I had a 90% chance of get­ting some­thing dif­fer­ent than the loose items Howie already put in the pack­age, and this is what I got instead. But it’s all in good fun, and hon­estly, the best part is rip­ping that lit­tle mys­tery pack­age open! And hey–my extra Hulk Pen is up for grabs to any­one who wants it. First per­son to email me their mail­ing address gets it.

And nat­u­rally, this is the first thing I thought to do with it:

Those triple excla­ma­tion points are TOTALLY deserved.  Thank you, Howie, for this totally cool and unex­pected box of good­ies. I’ve told you this pri­vately before, but it’s worth repeat­ing here — Under­Scoop­Fire is such a great pod­cast and blog, and one that gives me a real sense of belong­ing. You’ve built a com­mu­nity of like-minded, nerdy 80s adult-children that I wouldn’t trade for all the Garbage Pail Kids stick­ers on Earth! It is truly awesome.

P.S.

By a strange twist of fate, the lat­est issue of Game Informer also came in the mail today, which I’m shar­ing because, well, besides being extremely rel­e­vant to what Howie sent me, JUST LOOK HOW FREAKING COOL IT IS:

Oh hello, huge box of TMNT & Nintendo Stuff!

Have I told you lately how much I love The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers ? Just look at this big box full of cool stuff that our great leader Brian of Cool and Col­lected sent me:

Get­ting this truly awe­some care pack­age in the mail put a huge smile on my face and really helped take the edge off the painful breakup I’m still recov­er­ing from. (Pro­tip for any poten­tial suit­ors: Most girls would tell you the way to their heart is through flow­ers and jew­elry. The way to mine is Ninja Tur­tles and video games.) So thank you, Brian, for help­ing to cheer me up!

Here’s a closer look at what was inside:

TMNT Board Game

I’ll start with my favorite thing first–a board game from the 4Kids era of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. 

I love the fact that “SHREDDER” is writ­ten exces­sively in all caps in the games’ descrip­tion. Oroku Saki means busi­ness, you guys.

“In the heart of the city, a tow­er­ing sky­scraper houses the evil SHREDDER, final­iz­ing his plans to take over the world. Four Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles know they must find a way into the sky­scraper in order to bat­tle the vicious SHREDDER and stop his plans. But as they make their way through the sew­ers and along the city streets, they encounter SHREDDER’S hench­men try­ing to stop them. A ride on the sub­way can help the Tur­tles get closer to their goal. A side trip to Bax­ter Stockman’s lab will slow them down. Which Tur­tle will make it past their ene­mies and defeat THE SHREDDER? Will it be you?”

SO INTENSE.

Hey look, It even has all the pieces!

TMNT Pen­cil Case

Here’s a badass-looking pen­cil case, also from the 4Kids TMNT era:

I know it’s meant for pens and pen­cils, but I’m going to use it for makeup. Now that I’m sin­gle I have to, like, actu­ally  try to make myself attrac­tive. When you look like I do, that shit takes work.

Nin­tendo Adven­ture Book

Here’s some­thing fun–a Choose Your Own Adventure-style book about Mario. You have to make deci­sions and solve puz­zles to stop Bowser from–SHOCKER!–taking over the Mush­room King­dom. Doesn’t that guy ever  have any­thing bet­ter to do?

Super Nin­tendo Player’s Guide

This thing is a straight-up nos­tal­gia bomb from the SNES era. It’s full of guides and screen­shots for all those 16-bit gems like Super R-Type , ActRaiser , Super Castl­e­va­nia IV and my per­sonal favorite, The Leg­end of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  There’s a rea­son for that ani­mated GIF of Link you see at the bot­tom of my home­page. I also love that they chose to put the terrible-and-not-even-in-a-good-way  Home Alone game on the front cover as a sell­ing point.

Nin­tendo Game Boy Strate­gies Guide

Another nos­tal­gia bomb, but for the Game Boy hand­held. I’ve owned every ver­sion of the Game Boy since the orig­i­nal, which I still have (sadly, it doesn’t work any­more, though) and I just recently bought myself a 3DS . If you’d like to see some pics of my video game and con­sole col­lec­tion, that post is here .

TMNT Fanny Pack

Who remem­bers these things!? I’m not gonna lie, I totally wore a fanny pack back in the early 90’s, when I was in fourth or fifth grade. But they were in style back then. It was a thing. Trust me.

This one is meant for a child, sadly, or else I’d single-handedly attempt to bring fanny packs back, like Justin Tim­ber­lake did for sexy.

TMNT Duf­fle Bag

I love this thing, and how it’s designed like it’s a sewer tun­nel. And just look at those bright col­ors. It’s a lit­tle worn in places and the zip­per is broke, but I’m going to repair it and use this bag for…something…I don’t know what yet. Maybe my next busi­ness overnighter. Because I’m pro­fes­sional like that.

TMNT McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys

Inside the duf­fle bag were some loose TMNT toys. I’m not much of a col­lec­tor of TMNT toys beyond the new Nick­elodeon stuff (which prob­a­bly sur­prises you), so I wasn’t even sure what these were, apart from their obvi­ous con­nec­tion to TMNT film from 2007, based on the sculpts. I had to ask my buddy John from the Techn­odrome (who, by the way, is sell­ing a bunch of awe­some TMNT stuff on eBay, if you’re inter­ested) who let me know these are actu­ally McDonald’s Happy Meal movie tie-in toys. And that makes me won­der what the hell I was doing back in 2007 to have missed these.

Brian, thank you again for mak­ing my days a lit­tle brighter with this care pack­age, and as always, for giv­ing us the great com­mu­nity of blog­gers that is The League. Seri­ously, you rock!

You guys are the best. (More Christmas stuff & thanks!)

Over the hol­i­day break a num­ber of dif­fer­ent pack­ages arrived unex­pect­edly on my doorstep–Christmas gifts from some of my favorite peo­ple! This has been one of the hard­est hol­i­days I’ve ever had to get through, but com­ing home to these lit­tle sur­prises really helped cheer me up. For real, you guys–it meant a lot.

Thanks Shawn!

Shawn from Branded in the 80s sent me a box full of awe­some. I’ll start with my favorite thing first:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles Movie Poster Book

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:  man I love being a Tur­tle  this TMNT poster book (still shrink-wrapped!) is one of the best gifts I got this year. My favorite TMNT col­lectibles come from the era of the first movie, which for me rep­re­sents the height of Turtle­ma­nia. Not to men­tion   Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles is hands-down my favorite movie of all time.

TMNT Shot Glasses

You know what else helped get me through the hol­i­day? Booze. This pair of Raphael shot glasses was just what I needed.

Fact: vodka tastes bet­ter out of a Ninja Tur­tle shot glass.

Pac-Man Arcade Candy

Have you ever seen a more awe­some candy tin? The candy inside is even yel­low and shaped like Pac-Man.

Garbage Pail Kids & TMNT Stickers

Shawn’s pack­ages are the best because he always includes stick­ers. Not just any stick­ers, though–the really good shit that would have got­ten front-page treat­ment in my sticker book back in the 80’s.

Thanks Kal!

Kal, my friend and Ambas­sador of all that is Cool from  Calvin’s Cana­dian Cave of Cool , sent me this totally rad Foot Clan vehi­cle with “Destructo-Disk!” Sounds highly dan­ger­ous. I wouldn’t have expected any­thing less from Kal, who’s always intro­duc­ing me to Things That Look Unsafe. My TMNT col­lec­tion is seri­ously lack­ing in any­thing from the 4Kids car­toon era, espe­cially the toys, so this was perfect.

Thanks Derek!

Derek, a.k.a. The Good­will Geek , sur­prised me with a care pack­age full of great stuff, includ­ing some orig­i­nal Christmas-themed poems.

McDonald’s Christ­mas Orna­ments = McAwesome

I espe­cially like The Gri­mace, who just can’t seem to man­age those lights with his pathetic, stubby lit­tle T-Rex hands.

A Christ­mas Story Cookie Cutter

I can’t wait ’til next Christ­mas. My neigh­bors and all my friends are going to get a tin of home­made “Elec­tric Sex” cookies.

Oper­a­tion Adhe­sive Bandages

I don’t think these will mend my Bro­ken Heart, but they’re an awe­some addi­tion to my col­lec­tion of pop cul­ture Band-Aids.

Michelan­gelo Happy Meal Toy

This Mikey racer, along with the other TMNT Happy Meal toys I picked up, plus the oth­ers I got in my stock­ing on Christ­mas morn­ing, make a com­plete set for me. BOOYAKASHA!

Thanks Wes (& Emily)!

Last but not least, my buddy Wes and his lovely wife Emily sent some home­made good­ies from their kitchen. I have no idea what these things are, but they’re freak­ing deli­cious. (And Wes–you guys are  totally a “Hall­mark cou­ple,” by the way. That Christ­mas card photo is ridiculous.)