SPRING GARAGE SALE HUNTING 2010 week 2

A decent weekend of garage sales with great spring weather. A lot of small toys to dig through. I was hoping to find certain things, but as usual I tend to come across a bunch of unexpected junk I didn't expect to find.
I couldn't believe the amount of Smurf and Garfield collectibles I kept running into? They kept popping up at one garage sale after the next. It was strange. I went to this one garage sale in an upper-class neighborhood with a lot of electronics and higher-priced furniture where there was nothing antique or old whatsoever, and on my way back to my van I see sitting on one of the tables a Smurf toy bus. Totally out of place. Bizarre.
Anyway here's some photos of the stuff I bought:



Wax koala from a zoo, Brainy smurf action figure, Twizzlers wind-up lips, Alvin and the Chipmunks wind-up Simon.



Sesame Street Telly and female Snufflupacus pvcs, 2 Garfield pvcs, and a Get-Along Gang pvc.



Tomy wind-up skiing bear, Snagglepuss fast-food toy, Garfield and Odie die-casts.



Mighty mouse fast-food suction toy, Smokey the bear figure, alligator cereal prize, Pokey the horse figure, and a weird goblin rubber bookmark clip.



Set of Disney pullback vehicles (fast-food toys)



McDonalds pull-back vehicles



Some lady convinced me to buy these Flintstones lunch bags from 1980 (10 cents).



Miss Piggy 1981 calendar. Each month has her on the cover of popular magazines. The middle is a mock Playboy centerfold.









Maybe I'll find some better stuff next weekend?

TOPPS "CREATURE FEATURE" 1980

I've done a bunch of posts on trading cards in the past (mainly Garbage Pail Kids and Wacky Packages) but I really have a love for trading cards in general. I enjoy reliving the childhood feelings of collecting along with the grown-up respect for all the great art.
Deciding what I want to blog about is sometimes frustrating because there are so many wonderful things that interest me and behind the scenes my brain goes about a million miles an hour flitting back and forth between this and that.
I find it is a lot easier to break things up into groups and focus on one chunk at a time.
Since I was born in 1977 I fortunately don't remember much of anything from the 70's so I figured I'd stop posting blog posts on pre-80's pop-culture just because I like the art or artist. There's more than enough junk from "my" generation to occupy my blog for the time being.
I'm going to do some posts spotlighting trading cards throughout the 80's (specifically Topps) in about the most anal and organized way I can think of: 1980-89, alphabetical order, one series at a time.
Even with the massive amount of information available through the internet I still get frustrated at times trying to find high-quality scans of certain things (especially when the art is so great) so although it seems to take an eternity, I'm going to scan my own personal collections when I need to so the next person out there can get a better image in the future.

So here we go with TOPPS "CREATURE FEATURE" cards 1980...



The Topps "Creature Feature" series is actually the third incarnation of a card series most commonly referred to by collectors/fans as "You'll Die Laughing" cards.
The first cards were created by Topps in 1959 as "Funny Monsters". This was actually the first
of a heyday of "monster" card series that would continue throughout the 60's.
These were all gags involving monsters illustrated by Jack Davis who was well known for his
work with E.C. comics. They couldn't have picked a better guy to set the stage for
the monster card craze.
(FUNTIME FACT): Topps (who was fairly new at this time to the trading card business) published the cards under the name Bubbles Inc. as you can see on the wrapper scan.
Each card had a funny joke printed at the bottom and the "You'll Die Laughing" quote on the
back. Kids began referring to the cards immediately as "You'll Die Laughing" cards and it kind of stuck. There were 66 cards in this set.













(FUNTIME FACT): A group of mothers in Racine, Washington formed a large protest group mailing petitions to Topps and their advertising clients. This did nothing to stop the feverish sales.

14 years and a dozen spin-offs later, Topps resurrected the "You'll Die Laughing" cards with
the 1973 release of the first "Creature Feature" card series. Series 1 is cards 1-64, and series 2
cards 65-128. This time around the reverse side of the cards stayed the same but the Davis art
on the front was replaced with black and white monster movie images. The gag lines continued
like before. I can't find a decent scan of the box, and don't really feel like paying $300 dollars
to buy an empty one to scan. Also there aren't decent scans of the reverse side of the cards
but they are almost identical to the 1959 series.





The third and final rebirth of the Creature Feature cards is the 1980s version. This set is a lot
like the '73 set except this time the cards have funky colored borders and on the back they list
which movie the monster images are from. The jokes on the back could have been pulled from any 101 Silly Monster Jokes book and definitely wouldn't make any kid laugh himself to death. The set has 88 cards and 22 stickers. 13 of the stickers have a "Monster Hall of Fame" theme featuring heads of famous movie monsters and
the other 9 are miniature monster movie posters and images. The reverse side of the stickers
is a puzzle of the creature from the black lagoon.







I have the full sticker set but only half of the card set. Here are the scans:

















COMING UP NEXT: TOPPS EMPIRE STRIKES BACK CARDS 1980

SPRING GARAGE SALE HUNTING 2010

So far, spring garage sale hunting can be summed up in three words: CHILLY, WINDY, RAINY.
I haven't had much luck finding treasures so far but I thought I'd share the few things I found.

I found this Care Bears suitcase at a neighborhood garage sale. The lady gave it to me for free. I always wonder why people do that. The point of a garage sale is to make money right? Anyway, I figured this would be great to put all my Care Bears in when I'm going to grandma's house. Right now I have them up on shelves in my studio with Wuzzles and Godzilla.









I also found this clown doll for a dollar which I thought was a Cooky the cook doll from the Bozo Show, but after I took a better look at it I figured out it was just a dumb clown.




Bozo and Cooky

I found this Noah's Ark Playset for 75 cents and pretty much bought it for the plastic animals.









I have hundreds of plastic animals in a bin in my basement but in this set I found one I'd never seen before. A baby kangaroo that fits inside a pouch on the mom kangaroo's belly? I guess I'm easily amused.





Yesterday I stopped by an old man's garage sale in the rain and was excited to find some smelly markers and a couple diener erasers in a huge box of pens and pencils. I already had two of the fire engine erasers red/yellow but I didn't have the frog. Once again the old man sitting on his porch in the rain said I could have them for free but I made him take my 75 cents.



I'm hoping the garage sales will pick up this spring and I'll have more exciting finds to share next time.

DON'T EAT COLORFORMS

Lately I've been keeping my eye out for Colorforms at garage sales and thrift stores. I can remember getting Colorforms sets quite a few times during the 80's for Christmas or birthdays and they were a lot of fun until you lost all the pieces. A few years back I found a large amount of the 70s/80s sets all mixed up in zip-lock bags at a garage sale and I bought them just for the fun of it. Recently I've been finding quite a few complete sets, some of them never opened.



Here's a list of the Colorforms sets from the 80's. You may remember having one or more of these, they created a lot of sets based on whatever was popular for kids at the time.

1980
PACMAN PLAYSET
MISS PIGGY DRESS UP SET
MUPPET SHOW
1982
G.I. JOE
SHIRT TALES
E.T. THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL ADVENTURE PLAYSET
E.T. DRESS UP SET
1983
CABBAGE PATCH PLAYHOUSE
MARVEL SUPER HEROES PLATSET
BARBIE DRESS UP SET
A-TEAM ADVENTURE SET
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ADVENTURE SET
Q*BERT PLAY SET
1984
MICHAEL JACKSON DRESS UP SET
ROBOT MAN & FRIENDS
GREMLINS PLAYSET
MUPPET BABIES PLAY SET
SECTAURS WARRIORS OF SYMBION ADVENTURE SET
WUZZLES PLAY SET
1985
POUND PUPPIES PLAY SET
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE ADVENTURE SET
THUNDERCATS 3-D PLAY SET
1986
ERNIE & BERT PLAYHOUSE
SILVERHAWKS ADVENTURE SET
POPPLES PLAY SET
THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS PLAY SET
1987
MICKEY MOUSE PLAY HOUSE
BIG BIRD PLAY SET
THE CALIFORNIA RAISINS PLAY SET
LOVABLE DINOSAURS AND THE CAVE KIDS
PEE WEE'S PLAY SET
1988
ALF CARTOON PLAY SET
1989
COOL TIMES BARBIE

Usually the set contained a medium sized board used as a background. Sometimes a larger fold-out board for a bigger "adventure set". There were also dress-up sets which were more like paper dolls where instead of a background board you just applied the vinyl clothes and accessories to a particular character who was just a cut-out and could be placed upright with a stand.





As with many classic toy origins, the beginning of Colorforms starts with an interesting story. In this case, Harry and Patricia Kislevitz were a married couple attending New York University together but who found themselves (like most students) rather low on funds; when their bathroom needed painting, instead of purchasing the more expensive paint they instead tried sticking thin, colored sheets of vinyl on the wall (probably as a proto-beatnik pop art happening). It didn't quite work out, but the Kislevitzes were interested to find that their houseguests were spending great amounts of time in their bathroom - playing with the colored vinyl pieces and the pair of scissors that had been used to cut them. Naturally, a money-making idea developed therefrom.

Purchasing rolls of vinyl in the different primary colors, the couple started trying to market their new toy idea to various local retailers, and soon large orders were being placed. The original toy (whose name simply referred to the 'color forms' the shapes of vinyl took) was meant to be primarily an educational one - small children could create their own unique, abstract art pieces with the little pieces of plastic. Nevertheless, it was an instant success, and soon the young couple moved their headquarters to a house in New Jersey - and later several factories in the area.

The big moment for Colorforms came, however, when the idea was conceived of actually using characters within the sets - giving children a more humanized, imagination-based play than the previous sets of shapes, numbers, and letters. Popeye was the first licensed character, starting in 1957; soon others would follow, including Mickey Mouse, the Peanuts gang, and various other movie, TV, and comic characters.

Colorforms continued to grow over the years to the point where over one billion box sets have been sold worldwide. In 1997 the Kislevitzes sold the company to Toy Biz, which in turn sold it to University Games the next year. Regardless of ownership, however, Colorforms are still being produced, in affordable sets and utilizing characters that kids love.

About a month ago I found two full sets of the E.T. Colorforms Adventure Set at the thrift store. Neither of them had been opened and were still sealed in the cellophane. I paid a dollar for both of them and opened up one so me and the kids could play with it. I was surprised at how something so simple could entertain not only my kids but a bunch of the neighbor kids too. Just goes to show how timeless the toy line still is. There's also a bunch of humorous youtube animations done using Colorforms I've seen lately.

Here's some scans/pics of a couple of my recent Colorform finds. P.S. (don't eat the blue ones).


1982 E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL ADVENTURE PLAYSET








1980 MISS PIGGY DRESS-UP SET