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. 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.
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.
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.
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 ]