The horror of it all

Like most years since starting this blog, I had planned on doing on something special here for Halloween. But, as is so often the case these days, lack of time, and to a lesser degree, sucky health things, have conspired against me. So, instead of doing some elaborate and/or creative post, I find myself scrambling at the last minute for something to replace that with. The only thing that I can think of is to do what I did last year, which was to go through all of my scan folders (I have so much stuff waiting to be blogged about!) and pull out anything and everything that could possibly be interpreted as holiday appropriate.

I couldn't find as much as last year, but what I did find will have to do. My only solace is that at least a few of the cards in here are not the sort that one is likely to come across on the blogs very often.

1980 Topps Weird Wheels #'s 27, 36, & 49

This is a set that I've only recently become sort of enamoured with. I've known of its existence for a long time, but had never really paid much attention to it until I came across some of them on COMC. After looking at some of the singles, I found myself unable to pass this trio of monster/spooky themed vehicles (and their drivers). I don't think the set sells for very much, so that may be in my future as well.

1994 CARDZ Julie Bell #19

I'm too old for video games now, but there was a time way back when I could've been a called a "gamer"-- though, we didn't use that dumb term back then, thankfully. I, like a lot of kids, enjoyed horror themed games, this despite there not being very many such games at the time. One of the few exceptions during the early to mid 90's was the Splatterhouse series. I never owned any of them myself, if only because I never actually saw any of them for sale anywhere. I did, however, rent the heck out of volumes 2 and 3 on the Genesis. Looking back, they really weren't all that great, and old me now thinks that such games shouldn't have been being played by kids, but as they say, "It is what it is", or in this case, "It was what it was". I couldn't imagine wasting any of my remaining time on these sort of games now, and while I do wish that I would've spent some of those youthful years more wisely, it is still a period of my life that I'd like to not forget; and finding a card like the one shown that represents the series is a good way to help me remember. It'd also serve as a reminder for time misspent; lest I ever start to slip back into my old less productive ways.

1940 Bridgewater Film Stars 8th Series #18

Dorothy Lamour is best remembered for many things, horror not being one of them. That being said, she did appear in one of the Creepshow 2 stories. I liked the first film as a kid (not as an adult though), but the sequel never did much for me.

1993 Topps Jurassic Park #135

Despite some scary moments, I don't think anyone would classify Jurassic Park as a horror film. The picture's animatronic dinosaurs were created by Stan Winston (as on this card) though, and he himself was known for creating/designing many a scary thing throughout his career.

It's also scary to think how long it took me to get this card. It had been on my want list for years. One wouldn't think that a single card from a base set that came out in 1993 would be so hard to obtain, but this one proved to be quite elusive.

1935 Gallaher Portraits of Famous Stars #44

Beetlejuice may not be a horror picture, but there's no shortage of Halloween-esque doings in the film. It was a small part, but Sylvia Sidney's role as Juno is very memorable. That's partly due to it being a good character, but even more so because Sylvia had been appearing in pictures for a lot of years by that point, and knew what to do when she was in front of camera.

1974 Topps Monster Initial Stickers #NNO

Artwork-wise, I've always thought this set looked like it should've been a Japanese release. I've never looked into it, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the images were at the very least done by Japanese artists. All things Dracula and Godzilla were major staples of my childhood, which now makes this one of the more nostalgia-inducing cards in my collection.

1950 Dutch Gum Series A Black & White #9

Barbara Hale is best known for her role as Della Street in Perry Mason, and this card was gotten for my Perry Mason collection, but the card itself works well for this post, as she also appeared in The Giant Spider Invasion. It's been decades since I last saw that picture, but I did like it quite a bit as a kid.

1995-96 TV Week #3

Depending on the episode, The X-Files could very much be considered a horror show. Looking back, I personally think that many of the episodes would've held up better had they focused on horror more often. The scary standalone episodes are still very watchable, much more so than the jumbled story arc's that just kept getting more and more nonsensical with each passing season. Chris Carter was good at creating shows, but bad at knowing where to take them once he got them greenlit.

The photo on this card was originally used for a magazine cover, back when the show was the hottest thing around, and you couldn't go more than week without seeing our intrepid agents on the cover of some periodical. I remember those days quite vividly, though, at this point it feels like that was multiple lifetimes ago.

1969 Globe Imports #NNO

I grew up with the Universal Monsters. I wouldn't even want to guess how many times I've seen a couple of their flagship films. In some ways those were like security blanket for me as a kid. Depending on which day you asked me, I'd say that The Wolfman is my favourite, but I could just as easily say Dracula, too. Young me would have said Creature from the Black Lagoon was his favourite, and would've had evidence to back it up to, as he wore out our VHS copy.

1996 Fleer Metal Universe #84

Being surrounded by floating eyeballs would be pretty scary, right? Well, maybe a little less so were you to be wielding a baseball bat at the time.

This scan was kind of poopy, so I tried to go the photo route as well...

That's a tad better.

1934 Godfrey Phillips Stars of the Screen #49

Frederic March ranks pretty high with me in terms of favourite actors. No matter how much time passes, and how many different versions are made, Fred's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will always be the best, and his portrayal of the title character(s) will forever stand amongst the better performances in a horror picture.

Normally I try to remember to scan the backs of any older cards I'm gonna show on here, but it appears that as far as the cards in this post go, I only did so for this one...

1978 Wonder Bread Battlestar Galactica #12 

Roy Thinnes starred in one of my all-time favourite television movies, The Norliss Tapes. Like many of the 70's television movies, especially those of the horror variety, Norliss was made as a pilot. Its creator, Dan Curtis, was shopping it, along with Kolchak: The Night Stalker around at the same time.  Kolchak wound up getting the okay, while Norliss faded into memory. Both shows were similarly themed, so there wasn't any chance of both of them being picked up. Kolchak is my favourite show of all-time, but even so, I would've very much liked to have seen where a Norliss series might've gone. I've often thought that if I were a writer, and one who was inclined to do fan fiction, that Norliss would make for a wonderful series of books.

1937 Sinclair Film Stars #16

Colin Clive does not have very many cards, so it feels like cause for celebration whenever I get one of them. He, of course, is best known for his portrayals of Henry Frankenstein in Universal's Frankenstein and its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. It's hard to believe that all 19 of his films were made in span of just seven years. Having not been one of the actual Universal Monsters, I suspect that, had he not died so young, he would've easily shed any possible typecasting in the future.

Hopefully some of you will be doing something fun tonight, i.e. something holiday related. Me? I'll probably just be doing my usual boring old man stuff, i.e. nothing holiday related.

Scaring up something for Halloween

I've been trying to come up with something fun to do on here for Halloween this year, but me and fun don't seem to be on the same wavelength as of late.

I hate to be yet another blogger using 'I've been busy' as an excuse, but I'm gonna have to in this instance. Things have been go, go, go since summer started, and have somehow managed to move into an even higher gear over the last few weeks. I don't expect this pace to continue much longer; which will be nice, because I. Am. Tired. Mentally and physically. In the meantime though, all of my blogs have suffered. Creativity and desire have been on back order for many months now, and I don't know when the supply chain will get caught up.

Between a couple of COMC orders (that now go back at least three years), some select items from the Sportlots box I got earlier this year, and about half a dozen eBay wins from last year, I'm sitting on quite the stockpile of scans. Not being able to think of anything else, I decided to look through all of my scan folders and see if there was anything that would be appropriate for a Halloween post. To my surprise, there was; quite a bit in fact. So, as it turns out, I guess I'm doing an old-fashioned scan dump for Halloween. And while isn't creative in the least, I think I can honestly say that there's a few things in here that you don't see on the blogs very often, if ever, so that's something, I guess.

Starting with the COMC folders...

Ray Milland garnered a bit of a reputation later in life for accepting pretty much any role he was offered, and as such ended up appearing in a number of low budget horror films; often times being the best part of said low-budget horror films. He did make a few earlier in his career as well, including one of my all-time favorites, The Uninvited. 

This "card" is from my oldest COMC scan folder of unshown items. I think it was purchased during the height of Corona-mania, back when we had to wait years to get our items shipped. Ah, good times! I really like the old Dixie ice cream lids, but rarely think to search for them. This one is from '42, and I wanna say that I paid around two bucks for it, which I thought was pretty good considering it's immaculate condition.

Elsa Lanchester appeared in a number of horror films as well, none more famous than The Bride of Frankenstein, which incidentally was the first Frankenstein picture that I ever saw. Conversely, she also appeared in my second favorite Christmas film, The Bishop's Wife. This card was actually gotten for a themed Bishop's page that's still in progress.

I like the '75 and '76 Marvel sticker sets quite a bit, and if I didn't have a so many other things to collect already, I'd probably try to complete the sets. As it stands as of now though, I'm only really trying to get a few choice ones, this Dracula being one of them. If I recall correctly, Dracula has three total stickers from those two sets. This one is my favorite of those three.

Alien was one of the first modern scary horror/sci-fi pictures that I saw. As such, I don't think I'll ever forget a couple of those jump scares. There pretty ingrained in my head. This card is part of my Kolchak

collection. I don't expect anyone reading this to care, but he starred in the episode "The Devil's Platform"

There was nothing scary about Irwin Allen's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but without any context, this card could appear to be of a scary nature. Horrors of the deep? Most of the cards in this set are surprisingly boring, mostly because they're all just from the first season. Had they made any follow-up sets, cards based on future seasons would've been a lot more interesting, as the fun stuff really picked up after that first year. This is by far the best card in the set, and had been a want of mine for many years. And at around $4, it's also the third most expensive card in this post.

Seems like another time when pictures like Alien and Jaws 2 got card sets that were marketed towards children, though Jaws 2 was a PG film. I don't think it would get a PG rating in 2023. It would've been a lot neater if the first film hadn't gotten a card set, but the set for Jaws 2 did provide a couple of cool cards, like this sticker. I'd like to fill a whole page with this one, but I'm a ways away, as I think that this was only my second or third copy.

Like a lot of folks my age, I grew up with GPK; for better or worse. I think I might have lost interest in them a lot sooner than most kids though. One can see a Cabbage Patch kid vomiting or being maimed in some terrible way only so many times before it becomes repetitive and/or repulsive. That being said, I bought these two strictly because of their theme (and because they weren't gross). Had the sets been more like this, I might've stuck around a little longer. 

[Note: I can never remember which way to scan things side by side so that they appear in order, hence these being backwards]

Despite my having seen all of the original Nightmare on Elm Street films, mostly at parties or sleepovers, I am not a fan. I couldn't tell you why, they just never did anything for me. That being said, I am a fan of Robert Englund's other work, and of him as a person. I have a page in a binder just for him. I've never watched any iteration of Babylon 5, so this card of his flew under my radar for a long time.

Bo Diddley's "Bo Meets the Monster" has been appeared on a few Halloween compilations over the years, and is probably on a million internet playlists these days, so I think that's enough to warrant his inclusion into this post.

Another 70's set from Topps to target a slightly older audience was 1976's Shock Theatre. It was marketed as set celebrating all things Hammer (Films), but instead focused very heavily on their Dracula pictures. It's still an awesome set , albeit a little expensive, if you're into their Dracula series, but could've been a lot more interesting had they featured scenes from the studios entire horror catalogue. And I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm not big on assigning "rookie card" status to non-sport subjects. That being said, for those that are into that sort of thing, despite not being mentioned anywhere, the card on the right could be considered Caroline Munro's "rookie card". Oh, and Caroline Munro 😍. She was one of my early crushes.

It's not very impressive, but I do have a bit of a Jack O' Lantern collection going. I probably could've save myself a bunch of time and just showed for today.

If it were even remotely possible to collect all of the dozens (hundreds?) of Dutch Gum sets that came out from the 50's through the 70's, I would probably try to do so. That'd be a lifetime endeavor, and I'm much too old to start such a pursuit at this point, but that's okay, I'm more than content to just pick up a few choice cards here and there. I have a bit of a Yvonne De Carlo collection going, which, like a lot of my collections, probably wouldn't impress many, but I thought that this was a nice add. The Munsters were a staple of my childhood, and I'm a big fan of her earlier, non-horror, pictures. Like Ray Milland, she didn't seem to turn down anything later in life, and as such appeared in a ton of bad horror films; much more than Ray.

Bonanza was on, and extremely popular, during most of the time that Dutch Gum were producing sets. Knowing that, it should come as no surprise that it's stars appeared on dozens of cards over the years. And given that sets were marketed to young people at the time, it's even less of surprise that of the show's stars, Michael Landon seems to have appeared the most. To me, he'll always be Tony Rivers in I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and to a slightly lesser extent, Jonathan Smith in Highway to Heaven.

There's nothing that I can say about Boris Karloff that hasn't been said by many people before. He and Bela Lugosi were a major part of my childhood, as 30's and 40's horror was a mainstay on our television. Boris had a much more successful career, thus he appeared on considerably more trading cards than Bela. It's not very often that I can add a "playing days" card of Boris to my collection, so it's always kind of a big deal when I do.

That's the end of the COMC portion of the post. I guess if I'm trying to go chronologically, scan-wise, a pair of eBay gets from late last year should go next.

I've tried on two separate occasions over the years to get into Twin Peaks, but I just can't seem to do so. As the kids might say, it's apparently not my jam. Never getting past the first two episodes, I have no idea how large of a role Everett McGill played in the series, but I do know that he had a major role in Silver Bullet, as Reverend Lowe; which is why this had been yet another card that I had wanted for a few years before finally winning this semi-cheap copy (I think it was around $15 at the time). Silver Bullet had a big impact on me as a child, and not in a good way. I love the film as an adult, but that wasn't always the case. This post is already getting longer than most of you would want, so I'll save my Silver Bullet story for another time. That'll probably be one for my Nonsense blog, as there'll be no cards involved.

Forever Knight was one of my favorite shows as a kid/teen. The first run of episodes were part of CBS' Crimetime after Primetime. They were on pretty late, so we used to record them to watch the next day (I wish I still had some of those original recordings, but tapes were usually reused until they started showing signs of wear). Things were made easier a few years later when the show went into syndication on the Sci-Fi channel. The marathons were especially appreciated, what with the show still being some years away from being released on DVD and all. Only three people from the show have official autographed cards out there, John Kapelos being the biggest name of the bunch. He played Nick Knight's (the main character) partner, Det. Schanke, for the first two seasons. None of the vampires from the show have autographs, or even any commercially produced cards; which is terribly annoying. I've thought about trying to get one of the blogosphere's custom makers to make me cards of them, to either try to get signed through the mail, or to just have for a binder page -- but haven't gone any further with the idea yet.

Earlier this year I got my first box shipment from Sportlots, which was mildly exciting at the time. I thought that its contents were gonna provide at least a few posts worth of, well, content -- but after getting it, and seeing that there was around 200 cards to potentially scan, my plan to post about them kind of fell by the wayside. That's just too many cards for me to scan anymore. I think I ended up doing about a quarter of them, and so far, maybe 3-4 of those have appeared on the blog. The good news is though, of those 50 or so scanned cards, I actually found 8 that were appropriate for this post, so...

Another Robert Englund card for his page, this time from one of the Charmed sets, which is another show that I never watched. The cards in this sets done on some kind of greenish/aqua colored foil, and look really good in person, not so much in this scan though.

This one is a bit of a stretch for this post, but the 1985 Garfield Halloween special has been amongst my favorite Halloween things for basically as far back as I can remember. I can't remember every specific year, but I do know for a fact that I've seen it every year since it's original airing (the same goes for the Thanksgiving and Christmas specials as well). I got a few cards from this set to make up a page for my childhood binder, this one being my favorite. And with Jim in a costume, it seemed like the appropriate card to use in this post.

The two Cornerstone Hammer Films sets that came out in '95 and '96, are in many ways what Topps' Shock Theatre should've been. They could've been a tad more expansive, but they did cover more than just the Dracula pictures. Here we get a second sighting of both Christopher Lee and Caroline Munro.

I got like 20 cards from the first series, but only scanned three, as I didn't think there'd be much interest in them. I really like the movie poster cards in the set, which if I recall correctly, I got all of them. The Gorgon is my favorite Hammer film, although depending on what day you asked me, I might also say that it's tied with Captain Kronos for my favorite (rounding out the top 3 would be The Mummy). The other card here features a wonderful shot of Peter Cushing and Susan Denberg from Frankenstein Created Woman, in what I believe is the best looking card in the first series.

Here's another one for the Jack O' Lantern collection. I don't know if anyone remembers this set, but if you don't, each card is basically a small Where's Waldo. There's a few more cards in the set that might work in a Halloween post, but this is the only one that I have so far.

Even though they weren't what he was best known for, Glenn Strange did make a few horror pictures, most notably as Frankenstein's Monster in House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I bet you weren't expecting to see Two ALF cards in a Halloween post. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to find two Halloweeny (Halloweenie?) ALF cards amongst my scans for this post. This one makes the post for Lon Chaney Jr. era Mummy Punch Me, or Bop Bag (those blow-up punching bags were sold under many different names over the decades). I liked ALF a lot back when it was new, and I still like ALF a lot now that it's old. Even after all of these years, it's still just as funny to me, possibly even more so.

That's it, you've reached the end of my Halloween scan dump. If you made it this far, congratulations! If you didn't, I understand; it was a bit long and wordy. Though, if you didn't, I guess you wouldn't be reading this part, would you?

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Much like the last few years, I had planned on doing some fun stuff (fun for me) here on the blog leading up to Halloween, but once again, ended up doing none of it (insert sad face emoji here). I have my usual excuses, which I'll touch on at the end of the post -- before that though, here's a few last second Halloween-ish items that I've thrown together to try and salvage some semblance of holiday spirit around here 👻.

I can't recall exactly when it was, but sometime earlier this year I bought a few items from a German seller on eBay. I think I bought four celebrity tobacco cards (German tobacco cards), and two old Ross Verlag photos/postcards, one of which featured this great image of Ida Lupino holding a jack-o-lantern. I'm assuming that most people clicking on this post either don't know who Ida Lupino is and/or don't care who she was -- so no long diatribe about her career is forthcoming. She was a fairly big star in her prime, and then had quite a bit of success on the other side of the camera later in her career. And if her with the jack-o-lantern isn't enough to be included in a Halloween post, she did appear in two horror films, The Devil's Rain, and The Food of the Gods; as well as a few horror-esque television programs, namely Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Thriller, and The Twilight Zone.

I needed a card of Clive Barker (famous writer, and occasional director, of horror) for a binder page that I'm working on. To my knowledge he's only appeared on two cards, both coming from the rarely mentioned 1992 Eclipse Hellraiser set. For page purposes, a vertical card would've been preferred, but both of his are horizontal, so this one was chosen because I think it's the better of the two. I bought a few more choice cards from this set (among other cards from this seller), which thankfully just arrived yesterday, but only felt like scanning this one for now. [Note: technically speaking, Clive had three cards in that set, two were base cards, and the third is a crazy-rare autographed chase card. Since the auto can fetch hundreds of dollars, it wasn't, and likely never will be, an option for this particular blogger; hence my only mentioning two cards during the write-up]

And finally, a recently unearthed photo of yours truly, circa Halloween 1986. This is four-year old me all ready to head out trick or treating in my Lion-O costume. I don't recall ever having seen this photo before, but I was big Thundercats fan for a few years there, and as such, am not surprised to see myself sporting one of those old Ben Cooper costumes of the lead Thundercat himself. It's too bad my bag is in the way, as it would've been nice to have a full shot of that plastic smock, especially the midsection with it's printed belt that says "Lion-O", lest anyone not know who the wearer is supposed to be. I'm guessing that I would've played in this outfit long after Halloween, or at least until the eggshell-thin plastic mask would've broke, so there's no way that I could've hung onto the ensemble for very long, but still, it would've been a fun thing to still have after all of these years. And without even looking, I'm gonna go ahead and say that packaged examples probably sell for more then I'd be willing (or able) to pay.

So there you have it, Halloween stuff! This is one of two days during the year (Christmas being the other) that I kind of wish I had little ones around, I think it would be a lot of fun for all parties involved. Aside from decorating, I don't do very much anymore and I'm a bit isolated now out here in the country from all of the festivities, but this is still my favorite day of the year, and I can't imagine it ever not being so. Hopefully if anyone reading this is doing something tonight, you'll have a spooky good time.

Now, if anyone's made it this far...

It's been a few weeks since I last posted again (seven to be exact), and much like my previous couple of few and far between posts, the usual combination of too busy/tired/depressed have been the main culprits for keeping me away. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, always leading off posts by saying the exact same thing (I don't think it counts as change if I switch things up by closing a post with the same excuses). While always true, it's growing tiresome to always be spouting off the same reasons for not being able to produce the more occasional public missive or two, and I would have to think that it's growing even more tiresome for those of you that still come around here.

Aside from the same old song, I also seem to be quite burned out on sports cards at the moment. This has made keeping up with the blogs very difficult, and commenting on said blogs even more so. I've still been doing card stuff though, including purchasing quite a few, they've just all been of the non-sport variety. Knowing that non-sport cards are like the kiss of the death for a card blog, I'm not sure how many of my recent purchases will make it into future posts. It doesn't help too that a lot of them have been a bit on the older side, so I'm not sure how much interest there'll be in paper squares featuring the likes of Rex Harrison and James Mason.

Has anyone else noticed how many of our bloggers have been calling it a day as of late? I think that fellow from Sports Cards Ate My Brain was the last one, but he was like number five or six in the last 2-3 months. And that's just those that have officially called it quits, I'm sure there's been a few more who have made the decision without saying goodbye. It seems like that boom that the blogs experienced during the early days of the rona has ended, and rather then leveling off, is now trending in the opposite direction. I've seen a lot of folks mention that readership is down as well, and obviously I haven't been posting enough lately to add any validity to that, but if true, that combined with everyone closing up shop is only adding to my lack of desire to keep going on, blogwise that is. The prospect of typing into a void isn't my idea of a good time.

Oh, and if all of that hadn't been enough to keep me away, my printer/scanner crapped out too. It took a few weeks to get a new one, but I didn't have hardly any scans squirreled away for a rainy day, and my phone does not take very good pictures of cards. I got another cheap one, but from the couple of scans I've done already (the Clive Barker card and photo of me up above), it seems to be slightly better then my old one, which, if true, would be a nice surprise; especially given it's price.

Anyways, that's what's up, and yeah, I guess that's all I've got for today.

Happy Haunting!

October hasn't gone as planned here on the blog, of course it didn't do so last year either, so I shouldn't be too bummed about it, but alas, I kind of am. I had ideas, lots of ideas, none of which ended up coming to fruition... again!

Even today's post won't be what I wanted it to be, instead of a grand celebration of what's still my favorite day of the year, you get a generic salutation, accompanied by a HORRORific autograph from my collection:

Like most horror hosts, The Creeper's (also sometimes known as "Jim Sullivan") run was relatively short, lasting but a few short years during the mid 1960's. But also like most horror hosts, no matter how obscure, he will never truly be forgotten. As long as there are people, even those who did not grow up in southern California, and who were never fortunate enough to see an episode (aside from the two clips on YouTube) of Jeepers Creepers Theatre (under any of it's many hosts), there will be fans, and collectors, of all things horror host... this humble blogger being one of them :)

Happy Halloween (scare 'em dead kids!), and thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

It's in the bag

There's been some talk of non-card collections on the blogs as of late, and even though I've already covered plenty of non-card stuff/collections here in the past, I figured that if everyone's jonesing for some non-card stuff, who am I to disappoint?

Today's collection isn't so much of collection as in I go out of my way to collect them, so much as it is that for whatever reason I've saved a bunch of them over the years, and now have a "collection".

Most of this "collection" is still in boxes from cross-country move five years ago, and I wasn't about dig into those just for a post, so you're gonna have settle for just a few examples, or in other words... what I could find in the five minutes or so that I spent searching for them!

I guess this would be a good time to mention that this "collection" that I'm speaking of is... plastic bags... yes, plastic bags! But not just any old grocery store bag mind you, no, I'm talking about the more heavy-duty bags that you would usually (or used to) get from businesses, which were more often than not, of the non-food selling variety.

I don't recall when, or why, I started saving bags, but I did, and have accumulated quite a few over the years, enough that if I ever get around to opening up some boxes, I might have think about doing a part 2, as those currently boxed examples are likely to be far more interesting than what I've got for you here today.

So, is anyone still reading this? I'm gonna go-ahead and assume that there isn't, so from here on out I'll just be talking to myself:

Me: Hey, Jon!
Also me: Yo!
Me: You feeling like checking out some bags?
Still me: Bags? What like... dirtbags... or fleabags... or...
Me: Ha! You're so funny! No smart-a**, like plastic bags.
Me to the second power: Plastic bags? Sounds kind of boring.
Me: Perhaps, but it's not like you have anything else to do right now, and don't try to say that you do, because I'll know that you're lying!
me: ...

Seeing someone Twitter about Amoeba shuttering it's original Hollywood location the other day, was sort of the impetus for this post. Though I've never been to one of their physical locations, it's still unfortunate to hear that such a well known place would have to close a store (which was their first) due to the corona lockdown, but I would imagine that the rent/taxes are pretty incredible there, and were just too much to eat with no customer base coming in. I bought a bunch of cheap CD's from them on multiple different occasions back in the mid-aught's, and got at least one bag with one of those purchases. I was losing my light when I took this photo, so it's hard to tell that bag is much more yellow than it looks, not quite Tower Records yellow, but yellower than this. Oh, and speaking of Tower Records...

Couldn't get the right shade of yellow in this pic either.

What would a pseudo bag collection be without at least one form Tower? I actually have a few Tower bags, all of which are of the older variety, pre-dot.com old. Although this one isn't too bad, if only because of it's heavy-duty snap together handle. Thanks to it's high prices, Tower was never one of my favorite places to purchase things, but it was very easy to spend a couple of hours just walking around and looking at things, especially in the days before the internet, because they used to have a lot of stuff that just couldn't find anywhere else.

Rogue Toys started out in Las Vegas, and then opened up a second store in Portland (OR) of all places, and of course they just had to do so a couple of months after I moved here -- although in retrospect, it was probably a good thing that I moved before it opened, as I know would've ended up going there way too often, and spending way too much money. I think it's been about two years now since I bought a NECA Robocop NES figure from them online, they had it cheaper than everyone else at the time, and although they packed it extremely well, there was no way that they could've packed it well enough to survive the ice pick that the box suffered sometime during it's time with the USPS. I don't that it was actually an ice pick that went through the box (could've been a screwdriver too), all I know is that when I got it there was a very noticeable hole going through the shipping box, through the padding in the box, and in to the figures sealed box. I had heard people say that they've had trouble with the USPS when it comes to paying out claims for damaged items, but I filed a claim, and had it accepted in less than a day, so I don't know if I was just lucky, or if those other people just weren't doing something right.

And here's my newest bag! I just recently bought a few more old issues of Scary Monsters Magazine from a person on the eBay, and to my great surprise they arrived in this circa-'92 SMM bag. The bag has definitely been around, but was still very nice to receive... now if I could just get one of those old catalogs :)

That's gonna do it for what isn't packed away, but I do have one more "sort of the same, but not really" thing that I can tack on to the end of the post...

It should come as no surprise to longtime readers of this blog to find out that I've got quite a few vinyl lunch/trick-or-treat bags from McDonald's as well. This particular McBoo bag was found by my mom at a sale sometime last year, is in minty fresh condition, and the glow-in-the-dark still glows too. I don't feel like looking up the exact year that these came out, but I want to say that it was in either 1990 or '91, because I do remember them fairly well, although I never did use one for procuring candy, because a) They were too nice to take out and get all soiled, and b) They weren't big enough to hold all of the candy that I knew was gonna be gotten... that's what pillow cases were for!

If there is actually anyone who made it through this one, thanks for reading a quick post about bags, and to all that took off early, or didn't even bother to click on, I completely understand!


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.