STARTING OUT THE NEW YEAR 2011

It has been a while since my last post when I got addicted to my Donkey Kong game and got distracted from my blog.
This time my absence was based on a few reasons.
1.) I got a new computer and had to transfer all of my files to the new one (this took a lot more time than I'd expected).
2.) I got a case of the winter "blahs" which took away a lot of my motivation.
3.) I got addicted to yet another damn video game.

I bought a Playstation at a garage sale last summer for a dollar and had it sitting around until early December I decided to order one of my favorite old games Spyro the Dragon. I had a lot of fun replaying it again.



I had a really great holiday season and not only bought my family some great stuff, but got a few neat things for myself.

My dad gave me a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble which was nice because I can always find so many cool books there that I wish I had.

I was scouring the discount and sale books when I came across "The Completely Mad Don Martin" which is Mad artist Don Martin's complete work in two large hardbound books. I saw this years ago for $150 but of course could not afford it at the time. It was marked 50% the discounted price of $25 which came out to $13. I couldn't believe I got such an excellent deal ($13 for a $150 book set). It's a large and entertaining read, I'm only 1/4 of the way through it.



I was lucky during the holidays to win a Ebay auction for a full box of Gross Bears pins which were illustrated by my favorite artist Tom Bunk in 1985. They are tough to find in general but even harder to find an original box full.

I stuck the box up on a shelf in my studio along with a new Donkey Kong figure to remind me how much enjoyment I got playing that damn game.



As far as the pins themselves, I mounted them on a board for display by my computer.





I also got myself a few Garbage Pail Kids items from my favorite card dealer Marchant Cards. They are the company I buy most of my old trading cards from. They had some excellent holiday sales and I got 3 GPK 3-d wall plaks for $4 a piece (cheap). They are 3-dimensional and have fake wooden frames.



I also ordered some other trading card crap from Marchant Cards including a full box of Trash Can Trolls from 1992. I actually remember buying these from the store when they first came out and how much they reminded me of the old GPKs. I had a full set but it was real nice to finally get a hold of the box which has fluffy troll hair on it and came in four colors.



I put it up on a shelf with my two-headed Norfin troll.



I also lucked out recently when I came across a nice bookshelf that someone had chucked to the curb. I needed one real bad for my Mad collection which had grown and threatened to collapse my old bookshelf which had began to buckle under the weight. I drug it home and it is just the size I needed.



Last of all, I finally completed my Diener space aliens/monster eraser collection. I've been trying to find them all for a while and acquired a whole bunch of other Diener erasers in the process. I've done a couple previous posts on these before but the monsters/aliens were always the ones I hoped to find the most. I filled my whole display.



One of my New Years resolutions is to blog frequently and now my only problem is what to post first. I've got a whole bunch of stuff to share, it's just a matter of where to start first.

TOPPS GROSS BEARS 1985

Back in 1985 when the Garbage Pail Kids were just beginning to disgust the world the Gross Bears were hiding in the shadows getting the cold shoulder. A wonderful series in my opinion all painted by Tom Bunk they kind of seemed to get swept under the rug.
The Gross Bears were a set of 29 pins depicting Care Bear-like characters in GPK style. During this time Bunk was also busy at Topps working on the card backs for series 1 & 2 of the Garbage Pail Kids. He started his work on the fronts with the 3rd series.



I missed the Gross Bears back in the day and now that I'm highly interested the buttons are not only hard to find but pricey. I spent a long time searching for good scans of Tom's artwork for the series but came up empty handed. Eventually I found the best thing to do was go straight to the source. Tom emailed me some decent scans of not only the full set, but package art and some artwork that never made it into the set.



#14 TEAR BEAR
#7 HEADY BEAR
#6 PIG-OUT BEAR
#5 GOODBYE BEAR
#28 BUTT BEAR
#29 BARE BEAR



#2 KILLER BEAR
#19 CYCLOPS BEAR
#26 BAT BEAR
#8 RAMBEAR
#18 LOUSY BEAR
#4 BARF BEAR
#24 BONY BEAR
#20 SCAR BEAR
#25 TRASH BEAR
#15 FRANKENBEAR
#10 RUG BEAR
#23 MELTED BEAR



#3 FLAT BEAR
#17 GO BEAR
#13 SPIKY BEAR
#27 BICEP BEAR
#12 BONKERS BEAR
#21 PUNK BEAR
#16 B.O. BEAR
#1 FLARE BEAR
#22 ZIT BEAR
#9 BIG SHOT BEAR
#11 EVERYWHERE BEAR



Here's the little box the buttons come in.



Tom also sent me a scan of a few bears that didn't make the set.



Not-all-there Bear
Deady Bear
Blender Bear??

The first and third were remade into Garbage Pail Kids later on.



The fourth "lost" bear is one of my favorites. GPK artist Mark Pingitore heard I was looking for good scans and sent me this photo of "Have it your way Burger Bear". He bought the original art off Ebay. Thanks again Mark.



This idea was also used later for the Garbage Pail Kids.



So I finally broke down and bought a pin off Ebay. The one I got was Spiky Bear which kind of sucked because I already had the t-shirt iron-on and I was hoping to see one of the other ones up close.



I drew a couple Gross Bear inspired illustrations from the little box.





Thanks Tom and Mark for the help with the photos. Hopefully I'll be able to get a complete collection someday.

TOPPS T-SHIRT FACTORY IRON-ONS 1988

A while back I saw some of the artwork for these on Tom Bunk's blog and I thought they looked neat. I have a pathetic wardrobe and I figured if I ordered a box of these t-shirt iron-ons I could get some blank shirts and make a whole set of summer tees for myself.
I had only seen the three or four pics that Tom posted so I was eager to see what the other iron-ons looked like. There are 18 in all and they are fabulouso.

If I remember right, there were 36 in the box. I was just hoping they would still adhere after 22 years.


Wonderful box art by the Bunkster

Here's the wrapper front and back with the checklist:





I dug up a t-shirt and the iron and got started making my first shirt. I forgot to read the directions...



but it came out pretty nice.



I made some for my family too...

Here's all 18 of the iron-ons. Since they are reversed I had to iron them on to shirts and chunks of canvas to scan them all.











These two images were also used in the the Gross Bears buttons set.





























I've ironed about 8-9 shirts already. If you see any summer pics of me chances are I will be wearing one of these shirts.