Category: Miscellaneous

Let’s Trade Cards (Part 4)!

July 23, 2021

My bottomless stash of weird trading card packs has no end! Time for some more…

Anastasia (1998) was one of those animated films everyone saw and immediately forgot about. These cards are equally forgettable, and since they were always a staple in the discount sections of card shops (remember them?) I imagine they were massively overproduced and none too successful. The only chase of note were lenticular cards showing a scene from the film, but they were rarer than one per box.

Kristin actually bought me a box of Maverick (1994) cards for Christmas so I have a full set of them! I’ve never seen the film, and based on the images on the cards never want to. It’s another by-the-numbers boring movie card set, and the only chase cards (‘tekchrome’) are so similar to the normal cards they’re almost indistinguishable!

Country Classics cards (1992) are another curious relic from the days of ‘sounds like a great idea’ opportunism! Who bought these? I’m no expert on the topic but it seems to me that in ’92 many of these dudes were long in the tooth, so were these cards aimed at senior-citizen card collectors? Obviously they’re of no interest to me, but I can’t deny I wanted to pull the super rare (only two existed!) redemption cards that back in the day could be mailed in for a 24-carat solid gold card!

This is a good contender for the worst card set I’ve ever seen. In the great trash can of repulsive designs, far below the wacky packages and garbage pail kids, you’ll find this dross. Troll Force (1992) cards showcase horribly drawn ‘trolls’ (which don’t resemble any troll I’ve seen) with ‘comedy’ names doing ‘wacky’ things. They’re disturbingly amateur and utterly unappealing in every way. If you ever come into possession of a pack of these, just burn it.

Based on these Saved By The Bell: The College Years cards (1994) this TV series only had a few characters and they were all girls. It’s a stupid-boring set that reprints pseudo-glamour shots of the actresses with nothing of note on the back. In short, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the show (and I suspect it was made before the show screened). Another trash set hardly worth the cardboard.

There’s a box of beanie babies in our attic and I’ve already decided to do a blog post on them soon so stay tuned for that. These Beanie Baby cards (1988) on the other hand… are a total scam! They’re completely unofficial, and feature bad photos of the toys with meaningless statistics on the back. Beanie Babies were very much on the way out when these cards came out but I’m sure the screaming hordes of collectors bought these cards anyway. I reckon they’ve all ended up in landfills alongside the stuffed toys.

Yes there’s even more packs left to open, including one or two ‘good’ ones! I’ll get to them eventually…

Safari!

July 18, 2021

Yesterday we visited a local animal park. We’d been twice before but due to covid they were a bit different this year. Specifically: they’d turned themselves into a drive-through safari!

After paying it was a short drive from the entrance to the first gate, beyond which we saw this:

Yes those are camels, and amongst them were also ostriches. In seconds we were mobbed!

We had little cups of food and the animals knew it. They were absolutely fearless when it came to getting the food of us, and didn’t hesitate to stick their heads right into the car.

Yes that’s a gigantic camel helping itself to food from the caddy between us in the car!

The animal flocked around us (and every car) so much that we couldn’t move until the attendants scared them away just long enough for us to drive forward a bit. Of course the cloud of camels and ostriches simply moved to the next car in line 🙂

A bit further along were some zebra! I hastily closed the window because of all the animals in the safari this was the one with warning signs. Apparently zebra can bite!

Next we drove into a forested section full of fallow deer, sika deer, albino deer, llamas and a certain evil bird (see below). This part overloaded with cuteness, mostly because of all the pretty deer and their big dewy eyes.

Of course had no food left since the ostriches and camels had taken it all!

The evil birds were these guys:

I have an ancestral fear of these (as do all Australians) so we closed the windows when they got near. This guy was tapping on the window with his razor-sharp beak as he stared at me with murderous intent. I gibbered as we drove on…

The last section had rhea, oxen, and a few other unusual cow like things. Alas we had no food for we surely would have fed the elegant rhea! They came right up to the car and looked at us with their lovely gray and blue eyes.

It took us a little under an hour to drive through and it was much better than we expected! They did a great job of converting their zoo, and the density of animals was hilarious. A great time was had by all 🙂

Ramen 8: World of Chook!

July 10, 2021

Time for more chicken ramen!

Lucky Me Chicken (300 Calories, 14 g fat, 1410 mg sodium)

This is a weirdly tasting product, vaguely like ‘Chinese food’ but not at all like (artificial) chicken. The more I ate the greasier it tasted, and about halfway through it had become so repulsive I couldn’t finish it. But I suspect this was more me than the product, and it may be a taste enjoyed by some? An unsure 4/10.

Mama (260 Calories, 11 g fat, 1420 mg sodium)

Another imported product, this time for the Thai market. Once again this tasted nothing like the ‘chicken’ taste I’m used to, and instead was reminiscent of burned toast. The broth was weirdly dark and oily, and the noodles gelatinous. One of the worst I’ve tasted in the dozens I’ve eaten so far. An easy 0/10.

Tradition Chicken Style Noodle Bowl (340 Calories, 15 g fat, 1430 mg sodium)

The last two products by this manufacturer were bad, but I wondered if one of them had a defect since it didn’t contain any flavor. So when I opened this larger-sized version of the same thing I was optimistic since it had not one but two flavor packets – and a tiny fork!

Alas, once prepared it smelled just as bad as the brick version that I also reviewed last time. It’s a truly awful smell – like a dark old house – and difficult to ignore. The noodles had the consistency of electrical wiring and the taste was like dirty water. After three products by this manufacturer, I wonder who their audience is?

I’d give this maybe 1/10, but this score is tempered by the fact that KLS ate it! I therefore asked for her comments, and she said: “Bland and inoffensive, 4/10!”

Robot Claw