Saturday, October 15, 2011

Local Toy Fair Haul!: Ewoks! Alf! Rock Lord!??

Every three months, a local community centre here in Western Australia hosts a mini "toy fair", transforming their gym into an Aladdin's cave of both brand new and secondhand toys, collectibles, and crap! It's become customary for me to post my quarterly haul on my own site, but this time it's particularly apt to post it here as I've dug up some rare treasures that the Fruitless Pursuits staff and I have been enthusiastically discussing over the past few weeks.

For example, any guesses as to what this is?...


OH. MY. GOD. See this plasticky blob take on its true form, and plenty more (ALF fans rejoice!) after the jump!



But let's not get all crazy and half-cocked! We have to our vegetables before skipping to dessert! Let's take a look at the most obvious one first...


Yes, after months of unsuccessful searching, I finally broke down at bought my 2011 vintage collection Logray (disgraced witchdoctor cannibal ewok!) at a ridiculous premium! I already ranted on Episode Four of our Fruitless Pursuitscast about how we are currently suffering from a worldwide Star Wars figure famine and how I had to cancel my One-of-Each-Figure subscription from Brian's Toys after they decided to jack up the price and charge me $70 (including shipping) for three figures (without notifying me of the change!). So I am now officially a Star Wars nomad again, foraging in the wilds for traces of new figures. And after a lacklustre showing at New York Comic Con yesterday, I'm just about ready to give up on it. Oh well, at least I got my man-eating ewok.

But this is what you're really here for, right? You may recall my post from last week where I was dumbfounded at imcomprehensibly bizarre Gobots spin-off Rock Lords. Where kids really getting jazzed about alien robots that transformed into indistinct blocky lumps in the eighties? It was even cruelly suggested in the comments section that I made the whole thing up!

Well did I make up this? Could it possibly be?....


Sure, it looks like a shapeless lump of indistinguishable crap that Santa might shove in the stocking of bastard kids but... OMG YOU GUYS! IT'S MOVING...


What is it dong? What is it transforming into?


A rocky ED-209? No! It's not finished yet!...


Clearly, it's going to be glorious!

A couple of more adjustments and... WILL YOU LOOK AT THAT!...

It's Sticks 'n' Stones! The Rock Lord that I claimed was the very best of all! And now he is mine to own, covered in a thick layer of perfectly preserved 1980's dust! There were actually a surprising amount of Rock Lords at our toy fair yesterday. Tiny golden dynamo Nuggit had already been snapped up, but no less than two sellers had near complete runs of the remaining guys. I got mine for $5 and nearly picked up good guy leader Boulder as well (lucky I didn't, right!), and another dealer was selling loose, but near mint, Rock Lords complete with weapons for a princely $20 each. As much as I love you all, I was not prepared to pay $20 for lulz on the site. That said, my new Rock Lord is pretty awesome. Here's a shot for scale...


ROCK ON, MY PROUD BROTHER! Ewoks don't eat rocks, so you're safe.

Oh, and I also got some cool Star Wars Kubricks to fill in a couple of gaps in my faux Lego collection. Quick draw Greedo, and Lando's favourite drinking buddy...


But that's not all!

A few weeks back I posted about the dubious merits of trading cards, again failing to understand what urged us, as children, to collect cardboard prints of muddy stills from our favourite films. Then on Episode 2 of our podcast I urged fellow contributors to share their own juvenile trading card memories, at which point Taylor reminisced about a set of trading cards celebrating cat-eating puppet alien sticom star ALF.

WELL GET A LOAD OF THESE...


It's like a snake eating its own tail! Everything is connecting like a jigsaw or a Nolan movie, or a Roman orgy! I scored (relative term) unopened wax packages of ALF series two, Garbage Pail Kids, and The Dark Crystal trading cards and stickers.

Let's start with the most underwhelming and work our way to the best! Dark Crystal is nothing special. There's the nostaglic novelty of how eighties they are, but they're really just stills from the film - there's not even a character sticker or anything. Although I do like the sheer inappropriate terror of a card that depicts a cute pod person being tortured...


 The back of the cards are just descriptions of the scenes. This one will give you nightmares...


And apparently the torture is continued on the next card! Perfect! And I do love the retro purple design and curved corners.

Remember Garbage Pail Kids? The gross-out parody of the dubiously-origined Cabbage Patch Kids? How could I resist buying a packet of these stickers? I couldn't resist! Because clearly I am an imbecile...


These are fun enough but nothing show-stopping. I guess they just don't have the same impact as they did when I was a kid. They're also pretty tame compared to what's currently happening in things like... oh you know... DC comics. ZING. When I was nineteen I made a cute hipster girl a yo-yo (hey, she wanted one) and adorned it with a sticker of the Garbage Pail Kids greaser guy with the knife. It was the most badass yo-yo ever, but suffice to say it failed to get me anywhere.

That's okay, I'll get over it, because now I own the greatest sticker ever made!:


No, ALF. I'm giving YOU the thumbs up. For your crazy shirt, crazy quips, and crazy attitude. Some of you may be too young to even know who ALF is. FUCK YOU. 

These cards are so randomly bizarre and awesome that they're difficult to describe. There is no rhyme or reason at play here and I love them with every fibre of my trembling body. Some of them are just pictures of the ALF puppet dressed in different costumes...


HAR! HAR! indeed, ALF! HAR! HAR! (That was the "lol" of the eighties).

And I got the checklist/title card...


How can you not love that grin! I wish there were 666 cards and 1,111,111,111 stickers!

These art cards are kind of like Melmacian (ALF is from Melmac) baseball cards but also kind of not, because this one is a hot ALF girl in a lobster bib. For some reason...


And she's holding a fish. HAR HAR!

There are still cards with stills from the show, but the captions on them read like they were created by a random phrase generator. This one is my favourite...


No, ALF! I told YOU to be careful with those velcro eyebrows! Whatever that means! HAR HAR! I also love the ALF icon in the bottom left corner, because back in the eighties ALF would occasionally just lean out of your TV and stare at you.

And it gets better because the backs of the cards are also completely random...


Yes. Some Melmacians "squirt pudding". Let that one sink in for a moment. Yiiikes!

And that, Dear Reader, is my haul! I KILL ME! HAR HAR!

Tell me about something stupid you bought.

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