So I’ve been chomping at the bit for the eventual Halloween explosion in stores around here. I’m a pretty big fan as it is, but this year I just can’t seem to wait and I keep getting these urges to run out to various mega-marts looking for little bits of cheap plastic gory fun. For instance, Matt over at X-Entertainment stumbled upon these weird zombie finger puppets at Target and I found myself inexplicably driving up there the other day in hopes of finding the dollar bins filled with cheap scary goodness. Alas, only the finger puppets were to be found, though there was a display in the back with some orange and black flashlights, but flashlights just aren’t what I’m jonesing for.
I don’t know, I even went so far as to pick up a set of the Polar Lights re-issues of the monsters in silly cars model kits. I’ve never really been a big model-making fan, as I hate model glue and never got the hang of painting them. I’m hoping between the fiancée and I we’ll be able to get them done up right.
On an unrelated note, I also broke my self-imposed rule about re-buying stuff from my childhood. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of picking that kind of stuff up on Ebay, like Transformers or G.I. Joe figures because it feels like I’d be buying someone else’s memories or something. I have been thinking about doing another podcast (on 80’s school supplies) recently and I sort of want to write an article with pictures and stuff to flesh it out, but I don’t have any of the stuff I wanted to talk about. Well I hit a little antique/flea market store in this little abandoned looking strip mall in Lilburn a couple weeks ago and I saw some school supply stuff there and I struggled with whether or not to buy some. There was a brand new E.T. eraser still mint on card as well as an E.T. pencil bag. The pencil bag was pretty cheap, but the eraser was $5 and that seemed like a lot to pay for something that’s just going to go into a box and probably only looked at one or two more times. Well I ended up deciding against them but when I got home I looked on Ebay just for the hell of it and I soon found myself wrapped up in 80’s eraser heaven. I couldn’t help myself, I just started bidding on a few items here and there and the next thing I knew, I dropped $15 on erasers. Freaking erasers for crying out loud. Oh well, hopefully they’ll make a nice visual aid and it’ll prompt me to do the podcast before I turn forty or something.
This also reminds me of something else. At that flea market there were a lot of 80’s Burger King promotional glasses from the Great Muppet Caper, Star Wars, and like the Shirt Tales and stuff that were really cheap. But here’s the thing, what do you do with a 20 year old drinking glass that you know has been used a million times in someone else’s household? I mean I don’t think I could drink out of them, and I’m not sure if I would enjoy displaying them, but the pull to buy them was so strong. Would you be comfortable using them? I know logically there’s nothing wrong with them, it’s not like there are microbes stuck forever to the surface of the glass, but it still seems wrong. I don’t know….
