Recollecting: Into the Inferno

A few months back I wrote briefly about JC's Things, a local second-hand shop that I had previously ignored for years before finally checking it out. What I believed to be a junk furniture store ended up being so much more; a building filled to the brims with all sorts of outdated wares, stacks of records, VHS and decades-old greeting cards. I still haven't shared a glimpse at the treasures I uncovered during that inaugural visit. And here we are again, me mentioning the shop and refusing to show off the goods. That's because a more recent trip actually surpassed the original by a narrow margin.

My father only recently, the middle of this last year, retired from firefighting. I was blissfully unaware the inherent dangers of such a profession when I was a kid, content to visit my dad at the station. Something that afforded me plenty of opportunities to try on his gear and climb all over the various trucks. So, of course, I loved collecting toy-versions of engines; Hot Wheels and Tonka and, most importantly, Takara/Hasbro. No surprise then that Inferno was my first major Transformers toy.

That also means he was probably one of the first casualties; lost in the ether like so many of my childhood possessions. Carelessly tossed aside when something better came along. Oh, poor Inferno, forgotten and ignored, until a parent decided I no longer needed him, and either threw him away or donated him. Instead, I like to imagine him alongside the other fallen Transformers [and Gobots] from my youth, protecting Cybertron from the forces of evil.

Since he was originally released in 1985, I initially believed this Inferno to be part of Hasbro's Commemorative Series, reissues that were made available in Toys"R"Us during the '00s. The condition was a little too good to be a legit '85-version, wasn't it? I mean, sure, he's missing both his hands and any additional accessories, but the plastic was so crisp and clean that it looked like he just came out of the package. A little digging revealed that this was, however, a G1 Inferno and not a reissue. Something to do with the forearms being retooled on later releases to remove the "missile-firing" action that the original, this very same one, possessed.

So, yes, despite a few missing pieces, I'd say he was a solid score for a measly two bucks.

One Month Later

Excuses and apologies.

They've become par for the course around these parts the last several months. It looks like I run a blog of infrequent updates and broken promises. I'm back and gone again, back and gone again, until the inevitable day where the posts just stop altogether. Too easily distracted by social medias that require the bare minimum of effort; Twitter with its 140-character "updates" and an Instagram full of quick pics with little thought put into each caption. Both accounts have already well surpassed this blog in terms of followers, which shouldn't bother me at all, but totally does.

I feel pathetic admitting that, because how can I expect anyone to come here and stick around when there's never any new content.

Oh, but the plans that I had when I started It's Trash Culture. There's always plans that wind up as broken promises to myself, ideas that never materialize or projects that end long before they truly begin. All these self-fulfilling prophecies of doom whenever I think of attempting something creative. The evidence speaks for itself.

This is what several years worth of notes looks like. Lunch-breaks and late nights spent jotting down concepts, scenes and snippets of dialogue. Yeah, I've always wanted to write comic books. I grew up wanting to create worlds full of ridiculous characters and trippy adventures and all the brightly-colored bullshit that I read and loved in the pages of my favorite comics. It's one of the few things that I have wanted to do since I was a kid, but besides the scribbles you see up above, well, I haven't made any attempts to achieve this life-goal. Some of these concepts are over a decade old, so it seems unlikely they'll ever move beyond those index cards and random sheets of paper.

I realized earlier that this blog was starting to suffer a similar fate. Wasting time trying to brainstorm ideas for posts, writing them down on the back of receipts and scraps of napkins, but never taking the time to post them. Sometimes I'd go so far as to take pictures, upload them with the intention of sharing them here, but I'd get distracted, too easily distracted, by reruns of The Golden Girls or napping on the couch.

I could go for a nap right now, actually.

All this may mean nothing going forward, but my hope is that I finally get my fucking act together and start posting here more. No promises, no guarantees, but I hope.

I hope.

Flea Market Finds: Cars, Cards & Comics

Back to brag!

I've returned to show off all the goods I scored this morning at the flea market, well before revealing the stuff I promised to share several weeks ago. That's just how we roll here, I guess, with the false promises and always pulling swerves. It is probably a good thing that no one cares about anything going on here. Not even me.

Here's some things, non-existent readers.

One of the booths that I've been passing by for years belongs to an older gentleman and it consists entirely of "vintage" sports-cards and various long-boxes of comic books. I usually skip on flipping through bins of comics at the flea market, mostly because I have my local comic shops with their dollar-bins to peruse on a regular basis. However, my collecting has transitioned lately to completing runs of titles, something I've never been concerned with before, so now I have a reason to dig through any boxes of books I stumble upon.

Of course, only a handful of the dollar books that I picked up today add to the particular runs that I'm aiming to finish off. The rest were a series of single issues that caught my eye with their bizarre subject matter. Most notable, and my personal favorite find, is DC Special #27, dated May 1977, which features characters like Captain Comet and Tommy Tomorrow battling both traditional dinosaurs and oddly-dressed dino-men hybrids.

Also, dig that Archie Meets The Punisher.

I don't really have much to say about these Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wax-packs. I have a fondness for anything TMNT, and my love and adoration for trading cards is well-documented.

Cowabunga..?

What hasn't been mentioned here before on the blog is ReBoot, one of my favorite Saturday morning cartoons from the mid-'90s. A Canadian-produced series, it was the first to feature entirely computer-generated animation, and was the result of over a decade's worth of hard-work and dedication from Mainframe Entertainment. It originally aired on ABC starting in 1994 and ran for four seasons.

I was nearly a teen when the show first started, so the idea of collecting action-figures based on it was far from an appealing one. Of course, here we are, two decades later, and I have zero reservations when it comes to picking them up now. In fact, I was pretty psyched when I discovered Bob and Megabyte sitting in a box surrounded by various other loose figures. There was no way that I was going to leave them behind, especially where they were only a couple bucks each.

Here's a few more of their box-mates that I rescued.

I'm not ashamed to admit that all three of these items are duplicate purchases; I own or did own every single one of these guys at some point. I've actually picked up Panda Khan six times over the course of my life, though nearly all of them have found other homes. This one is no exception. He'll be going out in a package shortly, part of the prize for a contest I'm running over on Instagram [@itstrashculture].

Weed-Killer is staying with me, since he's a replacement for his duplicate "older brother" that I had before. My original was gifted to Brian from Awake Oh Sleeper, one of my favorite artists/bloggers, and a genuinely friendly and extremely generous dude. Go check out his site [if you don't already] and admire his unique and totally rad aesthetic sensibilities. Seriously, I am always in awe and envious of his work.

And no, your eyes do not deceive you, that third item is a McDonalds Happy Meal toy from Batman: The Animated Series. I am not going to reveal which one, though, because it is also part of my prize-pack giveaway and I don't want to risk ruining the surprise should the winner read this.

Even though I can almost guarantee that he/she will not.

The same vendor that I scored those loose figures from also had a set of Ertl Dick Tracy collectible cars. They were released back in 1990, the same time as the feature-film, and there were four different vehicles to choose from. The only one of the quartet that I cared about was Dick Tracy's patrol-car, but here I am several hours later and I'm starting to regret leaving behind Itchy's car.

I can't reenact a chase-scene with only one car, can I..?

This was the big score, the main reason that I walked away with anything from the seller's booth. I can't recall the last time I ran across a sealed box of Marvel Universe trading cards, never mind the several that this particular vendor was offering. Series one through three were available, so naturally I split the difference and picked up 1991's Series II.

I was already a dedicated Marvel Zombie when these cards were originally released, and discovering the more obscure characters featured in this set was the real draw for me. Instead of the pages of their comics, it was Marvel trading cards that first introduced me to characters like Death's Head, Sleepwalker and The Grim Reaper. My friends and I must have spent hours pouring over and trading this particular series, trying to be the first of our group to put together a complete set, including the much-desired Limited Edition Holograms.

I plan on taking my time opening the thirty-six packs within. Some I'll tear into later today, sure, but the rest I'll leave for days that I need a nostalgic pick-me-up to chase away a grey or lonely day. And it will probably be a few years before I work up the nerve to open the last one.

Journey Into Mystery Boxes

Remember when I would occasionally blog about comic books?

Remember when I would occasionally blog..?

I promised to show off some of the goods I picked up at JC's Things a few weeks back, but before I get to bragging about decades-old crayons and Dolly Parton Christmas albums [spoilers], I wanna gab a bit about one of my many weaknesses. There are a number of Kryptonites in my life, but none as enticing and dangerous-to-my-wallet as the comic book grab-box. My local comic shop never has a shortage of them, and it seems like I fall victim to their siren song more often than not.

Let's see you try and resist 50 different comics for a mere $11.99, though.

I've mentioned before that I'm a total sucker for mystery packs and grab-bags, blind-box toys and random packs of trading cards. The idea of opening a package, not entirely knowing what treasures could lurk within, is so appealing to me. There's the risk of discovering nothing worthwhile, the contents within could all be a total wash. It's a gamble, I know, but that thrill of anticipation and uncertainty before digging in is what always draws me back.

Enough yammering on, it's time to get to the comics.

THE BREAKDOWN:

Titles and publishers always vary in these grab-boxes, and so does the initial release-date for books. I've picked up several that featured books from the '70s and '80s, but this particular one didn't date back quite that far. The earliest issue included is cover-dated November 1993, and a majority of the books included are from the last several years.

Marvel Comics made up the bulk of the box, one single issue over half its contents, at twenty-six books. DC was a distant second at sixteen, and the remainder was comprised of several small publishers, including Dynamite, Dark Horse and Valiant. That's about par for the course with the boxes I've purchased in the past.

The real risk is acquiring duplicate copies, books I'd picked up in the past either as monthly purchases or something dug out during my frequent dollar-bin splurges. It's unlikely that I'd ever find a box that didn't contain at least a couple dupes included, and this one was no exception. Of the fifty books lurking inside, I already owned seventeen of them. Not the best turn-out, but the extras make for good trade fodder or little extras in my giveaways.

THE BEST:

My definition of best is pretty unique, because I doubt most collectors would consider mid-'90s DC titles like Extreme Justice or The Book of Fate as great finds. I would never argue that these were top-quality books, but that particular era of comics was when I really started getting into them, so I have a total nostalgic fondness for anything released at that time. Bonus points if they featured C- or D-list characters like Maxima, Guy Gardner or Speedball.

I've not-so-secretly admired third-tier heroes more than their ultra-popular contemporaries since I was a kid, and it's a trend I don't see bucking any time soon. Further evidence of this can be found at my long defunct Tumblr account -- Grade-Z Heroes.

THE WORST: 

Sovereign Seven issue number one, dated April 1995, wins this superlative with ease.

Somehow, in some strange turn of events, I've already owned several copies of this particular comic, despite having no strong positive feelings for the works of Chris Claremont. I can appreciate, and even enjoy at times, his work on Marvel's The Uncanny X-Men title for so many years, but there's almost nothing else in his body of work that I admire. One of the few creator-owned books to sorta' reside in the proper DC Universe, it featured a team of original characters and a very unique interpretation of Darkseid, ruler of Apokolips and one of the most powerful villains in comic history.

I'm not sure what compelled me to pick it up fresh off the stands when it was originally released, but we'll chalk it up to the wildly fluctuating hormones and moods of a recently teenaged Trash Man. I mean, seriously, look how hot their team-leader, Cascade, is.

Ignore the part where her code-name is a brand of detergent.

THE VERDICT:

It certainly wasn't the best grab-box I could have scored, but it contained enough small gems and old favorites to justify pissing away twelve-bucks. There were a handful of really solid books, the type of stuff I'm looking forward to reading and sorting away into my collection. A few to throw in with a large stack of trade-in material, and a few that I'm hoping to share with friends sometime in the New Year.

Salvage Saturday Spent at JC's Things

Discovering new treasure troves, entire locations full of forgotten pop culture gems, is getting more and more difficult as time marches on. I blame a combination of things, but the biggest culprit has been and still is eBay. People look to that site and see that old, collectible items can occasionally fetch top dollars, so obviously everything that's been buried in their basement these last two decades must be worth a fortune. This belief is often incorrect; their trash is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and usually it's a low, low number. That doesn't stop yard-sales and "antique" shops from marking up their items ten-fold, asking big bucks for worn-and-torn goods, niche items and actual garbage.

Somehow, in some miraculous way, I was able to stumble upon a second-hand shop that wasn't pricing their wares too high. An entire shop full of decades-old products, reasonably priced, and it just happened to be hiding out ten minutes down the road from my house. It was Christmas come about a month too early, and I wasn't complaining.

I'd actually driven past JC's Things plenty of times, but always assumed that it dealt solely with used furniture. Yesterday was no exception. I was on my way to an entirely different thrift shop, a couple towns over, when I was struck with the sudden urge to pull into JC's parking lot. Not sure why, couldn't explain it to you. There was just something magnetic drawing me in, and I am awfully glad that I didn't attempt to resist. I knew from the moment that I stepped inside that there was something special about this place.

Unlike most of my favorite thrift shops, there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the layout; not even a semblance of organized chaos. So, yes, I was immediately in love. There were shelves and shelves of miscellaneous items, old new-stock and rusty tools, bins of vinyl albums, vintage holiday decorations. My heart skipped a beat at the sight of stacks of VHS and boxed Intellivision games.

Yes, you heard correct, they still have complete, boxed Intellivision titles.

It only took a few minutes for me to realize that this was somewhere special, somewhere I could spend hours upon hours searching through boxes of stuff. A place to uncover forgotten treasures, pop cultural relics that needed to be rescued and loved. I'm not embarrassed to admit that I was giddy at the prospect of wasting my Saturday afternoon getting my hands dirty in search of some real, old-school trash.

You'll be happy to hear that I did not walk away empty-handed, but dismayed to learn that I won't be bragging here today. No, you're gonna have to wait a little while before I start showing off the goods. It will be well worth it, though, especially if you're a fan of transforming robots, spinach-eating sailors or country music legend, Dolly Parton.

Stay tuned, boys and girls.

Total Trash Tuesday: Leprechaun: Origins (2014) and Candy Corn Pebbles

There are few things that go as well together as junk food and bad movies. Apologies to PB&J, and so sorry to put you down, Hall & Oates, but it's true. The one-two combo of unhealthy snacks and trashy cinema is a devastatingly sublime thing; and it's a staple of my, uh, lifestyle. Still, no matter how much I enjoy it, or maybe because of, well, you might mistake me for a masochist, what with the absolute shit that I subject myself to.

Today, our inaugural Total Trash Tuesday, perfectly illustrates the type of garbage that I regularly feed my body, my mind, and my soul. 

THE FILM: 

Leprechaun: Origins (2014) is billed as being the seventh film in the series; something of a reboot to the classic franchise featuring Warwick Davis as a murderous, wise-cracking leprechaun. Produced by WWE Studios, and yes, that would the pro-wrestling company that brought the world Hulk Hogan and a villainous dentist known as Isaac Yankem, it "stars" one of the company's former superstars, Dylan "Hornswoggle" Postl, as the titular mythological creature.

Titles aside, there is nothing here that resembles the franchise of old; gone is any dark humor, the charm and, yeah, the silliness that permeates the decade-long series. Viewers are left with a quartet of college-aged Americans backpacking across Ireland, a bland collection of twenty-somethings on a crash-course with an ancient evil that sorta' looks like a reject from The Hobbit.

Look, I may joke about the villainous creature's appearance, but there's some real serious flaws that need to be addressed. The main problem that the film faces is how damn mediocre it is. I get that film-snobs may decry the original Leprechaun (1993) and the five sequels it spawned, but they're frequently fun and always bordering on completely bizarre. Here, another decade later, and the team behind Origins seem to take several steps back, delivering a sub-par slasher that features every hackneyed trope you'd expect in a horror film.

The film's Final Girl fumbles with keys. She trips or falls nearly a half dozen times. Her more promiscuous best-friend even utters the phrase "cabin in the woods" without the slightest bit of irony.

Its complete lack of originality or unique identity are doubly unfortunate, because otherwise, it's a competently made feature. Despite a few missteps, and an obnoxiously overused Leprechaun-vision, director Zach Lipovsky knows what he's doing. And the four young actors are all, I don't know, serviceable. Both facts only further frustrate me as a viewer; realizing that with a bit of creativity, a fresh idea, the people responsible for Origins could have made a really solid flick.

Better luck next time, I guess.

THE FOOD:

Infinitely more surprising, while I wandered the aisles at my local Target, was discovering that Post had released a limited-edition cereal for the Halloween season. All the attention being heaped upon General Mill's trio of terrifying monsters, it appears that Fred and Barney's popular offspring, Pebbles and Bam-Bam, were being overlooked. Gone the Fruity and Cocoa varieties of Pebbles cereal, replaced by a candy corn flavor.

The idea of a candy corn cereal sounds awfully unappealing; pretty damn gross, actually, even with Halloween staring us in the face. Thankfully, it's the last thing you'll think of when you finally muster up the courage to pour yourself a bowl. The cereal's scent, subtly sweet, is the first thing that will hit you. It's pleasant, a faint marshmallow-y, and will not remind you of falling leaves or pumpkins at all. The same goes for the taste; it's a vague, almost bland sweetness that barely resembles candy corn. Fantastic box graphics aside, this could easily stand-in for a Christmas or Fourth of July-themed Pebbles cereal.

Like the film I watched while I half-heartedly finished my bowl, I'd mark these down as nothing special.

The Wonderful World of Toys: Day 666

Hello again, boils and ghouls, and welcome to the final Wonderful Week of Toys entry, the nail in the coffin that's come a little too late. Ah, but with every end, there's a new beginning, isn't there?  As we usher out seven days of assorted action figures and plastic dinosaurs, we look to the weeks ahead. They're all gloom-and-doom, hollowed-out pumpkins and hollowed-out skulls. All Hallow's Eve is closer than you think.

Who better to lead us down this pathway of monsters and mayhem than our good friend, The Crypt Keeper?

I've mentioned before that the popularity of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brought about a strange age of animated series and toy-lines based on peculiar properties. Suddenly, we lived in a world where hyper-violent, R-rated flicks like Robocop (1987) and Predator (1987) could spawn series of action figures meant for children ages seven-plus. Everything was this odd mixture of terrifying and silly, all these brightly-colored nightmares clogging the pegs at your local Bradlees or Kay Bee Toys.

It's a trend that continued on into the early '90s, when you could tune into ABC's Saturday Morning line-up and catch a cartoon based on the macabre HBO-series, Tales From the Crypt. It's a show that both frightened and fascinated me as a pre-teen, so when Nelvana Limited and Warner Bros. teamed up to create a more lighthearted, animated version known as Tales from the Cryptkeeper, which was intended for younger audiences, well, I was there.

I wasn't, however, keen on collecting the toys produced to coincide with the cartoon. On the cusp on being a teenager, I was fine with watching the show on Saturday mornings, but obviously drew a line at owning the action-figures. Odd, I suppose, because nearly two decades later, and I was ecstatic to stumble upon The Crypt Keeper figure at my local thrift shop. There he was, jammed into a bag with a random assortment of Happy Meal toys and a battle-damaged Spider-Man, waiting for me to rescue him from his own nightmare.

I'd be terrified too at the prospect of spending an eternity trapped in a plastic-prison alongside Kung Fu Panda.