Adding to the Trash Pile: Super Savers Saturday Edition

There's a couple big posts coming down the pipe-line in the very near future, but I wanted to break up the rhythm here a little while we're waiting. Sprinkle some small posts in between the weekly Bogdanovich Challenges, so it doesn't seem like I'm just half-assed reviewing classic cinema these days. Thankfully, a quick visit to my favorite thrift shop this morning proved to be fruitful. A regular fruitful station, minus Michael B. Jordan or regular Michael Jordan or any of the other guys from ProStars.

Generic He-Man and the Masters of the Universe action figures..!

That's probably the first thing you thought of when you saw the two fellas up above, and really, you're not too far off. These two Adonises, muscles sculpted from plastic-marble, are, in actuality, "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair and Rick "The Model" Martel. Part of Remco's AWA [that's the American Wrestling Association] toy-line from 1985. I never owned either of these as a kid, despite being a huge fan of professional wrestling, because my heart and soul belonged to the House-that-Hulk-Hogan-built, The WWF.

Flair, I remember fondly and best as the ultimate heel; tormenting poor Miss Elizabeth and trying to tear apart her romance with "The Macho Man" Randy Savage, who was [and still is] one of my all-time favorite wrestlers. Flair betraying his former advisor, Mr. Perfect, and losing to him in a "Loser Leaves Town" match on one of the premiere episodes of Monday Night Raw. Flair leading the Four Horsemen, and epic battles with Sting and Lex Luger over in WCW.

I feel less strongly [weakly?] about Rick Martel. First off, his toy is absolutely the most plain-looking action figure I've ever seen. Before I locked down his true identity thanks to various websites, I toyed with the idea that he might be Ricky Steamboat or Tito Santana or Larry Zbysko or or or...

You get the idea.

So, besides having difficulties in identifying a mid-card talent like Martel, he also earns some red-marks for being, well, a mid-card talent. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved guys who weren't in the main-event; guys feuding for the Intercontinental Title or forming random tag-teams, because why not? But Rick Martel was best known [to me, at least] as the narcissistic heel who brought an over-sized bottle of his own "perfume" to the ring, and spraying his opponents in the eyes and blinding them.

The best thing to spring from that was him being forced to compete in a "Blindfold Match" against Jake "The Snake" Roberts at Wrestlemania VII.

I sorta' miss when I used to feel passionately about grown men wearing speedos and tights battling one another in the squared circle, but then I don't at all.

Actually, here's another two from the same AWA wrestling line. I'd never heard of "The Fabulous Ones", a tag-team consisting of Stan Lane and Steve Keirn, before today. Wikipedia informs me that they were credited with being the first team with the "Pretty Boy" gimmick, made famous by later tag-teams like The Rock 'n Roll Express and The Rockers.

God, now I wanna watch Shawn Michaels super-kick his former partner, Marty Jannetty, and then throw him through the window of "The Barbershop".

Wrestling is dumb.

I'll tell you what isn't dumb, though, and it is totally VHS.

Fred Ward portraying The Destroyer in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) is perfection. I haven't watched the film in years, but plan on rectifying that as soon as possible. Maybe once I'm finished showing off this ridiculous junk. Don't be surprised if I can barely muster the energy or enthusiasm to say more than a few words about Disney's Darkwing Duck: His Favorite Adventures.

Actually, I guess the correct title is "Darkly Dawns the Duck", and it's an origin tale for the most beloved caped-and-cowled fowl. That ties it into the Remo Williams film better than I could have planned it to, which is equal parts awesome and really, really stupid.

I take back what I said before about VHS not being dumb. Sometimes it can be, especially if it features Launchpad McQuack.

Also, here's some comic books that I bought. They came from the dollar-bins at my local comic shop, and I didn't need to buy them at all, since I already own thousands and thousands of floppies. Unfortunately, I'm a sucker for Mike Allred's Madman riding an atomic bomb, Mark Waid-written issues of The Flash, and random, awful titles from the '90s, like Malibu Comics' Rune.

There's also a single Spider-Man book, because I definitely needed more of those.

My name now is Bo, and Bo knows nothing about saving a dollar.