Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 21:54:42

       Remember the good old days when a toy run was all you needed to cheer you up???  Well, for me that time is long gone with evil scalper-folk and stuff  <crowd goes 'Duh Hex!'>, but anyway...  It's Saturday!  My only day off this week and best of all it's a beautiful day outside!  I really wanted to go to the local flea market, but getting up early has not been happening as of late, not to mention I needed to take my mighty car to the brake-shop so I don't grind the rotors into funny grooved things.

     So, I'm up and around and one of my friends calls me up and says, 'Hey! Want to get lunch?' Cool.  We go to this place called "Big Sky Bread Co." -- Read, tasty carbohydrate-loaded munchies.:v]  We grab a bite there, B.S. about the stupidity of UPS going on strike, how we feel that our places of work is populated by screaming nincompoops -- you get the picture.  My friend (Kelly) wants to go to Kentucky and check out one of the malls out there -- at least a 20 mile drive -- I suggest we skip the mall and hit an exit before that since I had some good luck out there finding toys I collect.  (That would be primarily Beast Wars for those of you who tuned in late in the program...)

     We hit Wal-Mart and are just gawking at all the stuff everywhere.  Why is it, that almost every Wal-Mart looks like a bomb went off in the toy department?  It's not just the Star Wars, where nearly everyone and their brother paws through the pegs at least once a day, the whole flaming aisle is trashed!

" Medic! " --(I can't recall); Silent Movie
" Bactene please. " --Opus; various Bloom County/Outland strips

     We dig around in the mess for a while and point out assorted things of interest to one another.   Mind you, this is not a  'The race is on!'  kind of toy run, this is the leisurely kind where you are just enjoying making fun of what stinks and  'ooohing'  at the cool stuff.  I picked up a second Beast Wars B'Boom, (What drugs do those marketing folks take to come up with these names??? and why aren't they sharing?!?) and Kelly picks up a Hercules Pain, Panic, and Danny DiVito. /;v]  We also spotted the usual picked over Star Wars stuff -- Kelly 'oohs' over the nifty blow-apart probe droid...  Also spotted, all of the Marvel Universe figures (might pick up a Stealth Iron man, since I broke mine.)  for $2.50US, and the usual boring stuff...  A few doors down, is a Toy Works -- the only semi-local Toy Works I'm aware of (it's KayBee, but still...)  I was hoping to score the last Skeleton Warriors tape I was missing since we found two of them at another KB store.  We poke around and I paw about through the Machine Wars (grab a Skywarp & Thundercracker) and Captain Simian and the Space Monkeys.  (found Rhesus 2, but I wanted Dr. Splitz and Shao-lin )  Lots of Gor-illas -- which has such a mean face, and really should not; since at least in the cartoon, he's just a big lug-nut. :v]

More poking about produces a Dark Nemesis for $3.34US.  This was one figure that I chalked up as absolute crap and refused to pay $6 for it.  As Kelly and I are poking around, touching Tickle me Elmos -- then declaring them as beasts of evil.  While checking out the boffo 3-D puzzles, the friendly attendant goes, "Can I help you?".  We say no, and continue to poke about.   Then I check out the clearanced IBM software -- $10 or less games are tolerable deals in my opinion.  I pick up Mega Man X and Street Fighter: The New Challengers.  (You know, somewhere I have about 3 different beta copies of Street Fighter 2 some with characters from Fatal fury and some with Turbo moves... Remember when playing fighting games was semi-sane and not this ultra combo 32 hit with a fatality that turns your opponent into a casaba melon and you smoosh it with a mallet!?!  Ah well this is moot, but it does make me want to dredge up those old files and have a bit of nostalgia on a different level.)  As I'm checking out, the friendly clerk says  "You get a free game worth $10 or less."  Oh!  cool!  Now...  uhhh...  the rest of these games suck...  Except...  I found 'Sam & Max Hit the Road'.

     This game is wrong! -- and horribly funny.  My sister, Kelly, & I laughed our tushes off with the intro alone.  Here's a funny thing...  the clerk goes, "Our Star Wars shipment is coming in tomorrow <hint hint>".  My response is, "And??? I care not for Star Wars".  He was agape...  it was hilarious...  this prompted me to continue to break his mind (in a nice way of course) -- the comment about having him take a picture of me to alert all the other Star Wars fans that I am not competing with them for stuff had Kelly in pain and the clerk bewildered.  Ah well, it was nice of him to at least mention it to us.:v]

     We bore of Kentucky, and hup off to another mall...  This time in a more wealthy area -- Keying a BMW; now that is a good feeling. (kidding)   We check out the Kay Bee here -- nada.   Boooring....  We grab a quick bite, and check out the Warner Brothers store.  The only WB store in the city.  It feels good not to have to go to Chicago or Columbus to score Legends of Batman stuff.  No Total Justice 3, no Superman: The Animated Series Darkseid...  What a drag.

     Kelly and I amuse ourselves looking at the animation cells and I point out to him that the PC that lets you look at various pieces is running OS/2.  (Since I have run the OS I was happy to see it in use somewhere other than just barely on my home computer.)  I then find a nifty 1,100 piece jigsaw puzzle of Bugs Bunny characters in a coffee house in a very beatnik kind of setting for $12. I get this (a 2' x 3' puzzle).  A great find; provided I put it together.

Hex.
[ " What's Underwear? " --Max ]

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