Category: Movies

Pezzes Are Cool?

December 16, 2014

I thought, since many of you have asked, it’s time to showcase my Pez collection.

What is a Pez? It’s a horrible, horrible candy that I never eat. I really hate them – they taste like medicine to supertasters such as myself. However they are often sold with little sculptured dispensors, and occasionally I have been known to buy them just for the dispensor. Many people collect these avidly (indeed, the pursuit of rare Pez dispensors is what led to the original creation of ebay). I don’t. I just buy them at the checkout line in Wal-Mart every now and then.

Over the years these became a bit of a ‘gag gift’ for Christmas. In the last few years that trend increased as I started giving AW collectors sets every Christmas. Alas, 2014 bore no such set (so you’re safe this year Adam).

But enough blathering, let’s get to my collection:

That’s the first collector set I bought. It was released a few years ago and has characters from the original Lord of The Rings series. It sits proudly on a shelf, never to be opened. I gave this one to Adam and I believe it quickly became his favourite Pez set of all time.

This Star Trek: TNG set is also a couple of years old now. I had trouble finding it at first, and then was never able to find the limited version that replaced one of them (Beverly?) with Locutus of Borg. Again I gave this to AW, and again he treasured it, but not as much as SFL, who surely lists this on top of her list of favourite Pez collectors sets 😉

Last year’s Hobbit set, obviously following on from the LOTR set from 2011, is another that proudly adorns a shelf in my library. Again AW got this one for Christmas last year, but it’s probable that Bernard (who was there) loved it even more than AW since he was heard to bellow “What a grand Pez Collectors Set!”

Many times these past twelve months I daydreamed about what sets they could have done for xmas 2014… Avengers? Guardians Of The Galaxy? Godzilla? AKB48? Sadly, the store shelves remain bare of new sets this year.

Say it with me now: OMG! I bet you didn’t know about the US President series now did you? This is of course an entirely original idea by Pez, since they couldn’t have possibly been influenced by the US President series of $1 coins that started about the same time. Happily, I was able to collect both. (Jokes aside, the sculpting on these guys is very impressive). This first set came out way back, and (as with almost everything in this post) I purchased it on a whim in Wal-Mart one night. Months (years?) passed and I assumed there would never be another. But then…

And (oh my god, why) then…

Yes I have five different sets. These aren’t particularly expensive (I think about $10 or $12 per set) but even so I don’t know why I bought them. Even now I weep a single tear as I see them all on my shelves.

Pause for a moment here to remember I hate Pez candy and will never, ever eat it.

Here’s a C3PO Pez:

And this is a C3PO Pez:

And here, good readers, is a C3PO Pez:

What’s that you say? “They are all the same?” But are they?

Check out these completely different R2D2 Pez’s for instance:

Yep, completely different.

I’ve been purchasing Star Wars pez’s for aeons, and most of them have ended up in boxes destined to be forgotten for ever. It took some time to collect up as many as I could find for this photo:

But I’m quite sure that’s not the extent of the collection. I also suspect there are some I don’t have, since (once again) I never bother to check what’s available, I just buy one every now and then at the store. If you ever see a SW Pez I don’t own, please buy it for me 🙂

So what’s left? Well… nothing. I have no interest in any other Pez’s! I only buy the licensed sets (+ Presidents) and the SW stuff. There’s about eighty-megillion others out there but I don’t care. I’m not a collector of Pez’s. In fact I’ll go further to say I sortof hate them, including the ones I own. And I really, really hate the candy.

So please don’t give me a Pez, since I hate them. Unless it’s one I don’t have from the above series, in which case I must own it 😉

At Last! The Annual List Of What My Brother Will Buy Me For Christmas!

October 30, 2014

The other week I got this text from a certain brother-of-mine:

I was astounded. In previous years I had produced such lists, but little did I know that they had worked their way into the tapestry of my brothers christmas-shopping life (so to speak).

He went on to say “money is no object“ and “the more obscure and difficult to find, the better“. Sadly I forgot to screenshot those bits.

So Bernard, as requested…

Books Category

The ZX Spectrum Book (Andrew Rollins)

A few years back Bernard got me ‘The Commodore 64 Book‘ which was just fab. I quickly snapped up the followup (‘The 8-bit Book‘) but have been tragically unable to acquire the first book from this small publisher. This is perhaps not surprising, since it was published over five years ago in small quantities and is long out of print. I don’t know exactly where he’s going to find it, but when I open this beauty on Christmas day I’ll be a happy reader indeed!

The World Of The Dark Crystal (Brian Froud)

Given there is now a sequel to the film coming, I believe Christmas 2014 would be the perfect time for my brother to put on his sleuth’s hat and solve an outstanding mystery. You see I don’t just want any copy of this book, I want my copy. Truth is, as a youngling sprout, I purchased myself a copy of this lovely tome from Angus & Robertson Charlestown Square. This would have been back in ’82, when the film came out. It was a mildly expensive book, and I had to utilize lay-by to get it! And oh how I loved it! It was one of my most treasured possessions, ‘my precious’ if you will. And then some soulless inhuman thief nicked it :<

As I hinted, the mystery of who stole my book is as yet unsolved. The only lead I’ve had these 32 long years is this photo taken by a security camera:

I’m hoping, in the spirit of Christmas, Bernard may finally discover the identity of the thief and return to me my beloved tome…

Trial Of Champions (Ian Livingstone)

Of course I own this book. Multiple copies in fact. But I don’t own the version shown, which is the US imprint. It was the last FF book released in the US during the initial series, and I have all the others. But not this one. And I have looked, oh how have I looked! The problem is sellers very, very rarely (ie. never) bother to specify the imprint when they sell this book online. And given there was probably 80 quadrillion copies of the UK version printed to every US copy, taking a chance is a fool’s errand. I consider myself one of the world’s foremost ‘online searchers for and buyers of’ gamebooks, and boast a bookshelf of more than four hundred. And yet I’ve never seen this one. I look forward to that changing this Christmas day.

DVD Section

It Couldn’t Happen Here (1988)

Otherwise known as ‘The Pet Shop Boys film’. I saw this a few years after it came out, probably at the Enmore theatre, probably with a lass named Caraid who I forget everything about except her unusual name. I think she looked like Karen Gillan though, and her mum gave me a beer once within 30 seconds of visiting her house. Weird. Anyway I want to see this film again, which means I want it on DVD. This is a tall order, since it’s never been released on DVD. Which limits my options to two: VHS or Laserdisc. The first option is of course absurd, but the second is a possibility since I own a working LD player. Maybe. So that’s the hard part out of the way, now all I need is the disc, in NTSC format of course. I’ve made your work easy Bernard 🙂

Adam Adamant Lives! (1966)

I’ve never seen this show since it never screen outside of England and I’m not an Englishman. Firstly, the BBC trashed a bunch of episodes so it doesn’t even exist in it’s entirety. Secondly, it’s never been released on anything outside of England. And lastly the DVD set (containing the 17 existing episodes) is long out of print. All these considerations aside, given that this show inspired Doctor Who and The Avengers (and some of Kim Newman’s characters) I obviously need to see it. And I shall, when Bernard gives me the Region 2 box set loaded with extras for Christmas.

Toy Section

Dark Horn ‘Harry Special’ (HM Zoid Kit)

There’s a lot of beautiful things in this world, and then there’s the limited ‘Harry Special’ variant HM Zoid Dark Horn kit. I mean look at that! Could there even exist a better looking model kit? Of course not, and I therefore must own it. Bernard will undoubtedly agree, and I’m just going to be ebullient when he gives it to me for Christm–

Oh to hell with it! This guy’s so pretty I just can’t goddamn wait until Christmas! Hang on a second, while I go buy it…

Ok, taken care of. It’s now mine, all mine. And in case you don’t believe me, let Emi prove it to you:

OMG the box is bigger than Emi! Sorry Bernard. Guess I ruined that as a potential gift 😉

L.E.D. Mirage V3: Inferno Napalm (FSS 1:100 kit)

If I ever met anyone that claimed that any other kit was better looking than this, I’d start by punching them, and I’d end by never being their friend. We all know that Five Star Stories mech’s are stupidly pretty and the jewel-in-the-crown of FSS model kits is unquestionably this one. Sure it costs more than almost every piece of furniture in my house, is supposedly extremely difficult to assemble and when you do takes hundreds of hours, but gosh it’s pretty. Even prettier, I suspect, than Caraid, the girl I saw a movie with 25 years ago and have forgotten about. Oh and Bernard, when you budget for this guy, be sure to add on another $50 or so for the sizeable cost of shipping the collossal box all the way across the USA 😉

Game Section

The Sacred Armor of Antiriad (C64, 1986)

I’m a canny beast. Much like Steven Moffat (aka. the favourite scribe of my illustrious friend Adam ‘The Bold’ W), I like winding secrets into the story of my life. I bet none of you knew back when I penned this that I was in fact laying the groundwork for this very post? That blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to this game was none other than a deliberate mention to plant the thought into my brother’s mind that “Hey, that’d be a good gift to get him for Christmas!” This game was never that great, but it has a lot of nostalgia factor, and I’d like to give it a whirl again one day. Now before you say it, I’ll quote my prestigious friend Florence ‘The Bear’ L: “Emulation, shmemulation!” She knows, as I do, that emulation is for fakers, and I must play the original C64 version. This introduces a… wrinkle into the equation though, for even if my bellowing brother Bernard ‘The Brave’ S gets me this game he’s going to have to get me something to play it on. It’s good thing therefore that this list also contains…

Commodore SX-64 (1984)

Let’s for a moment consider that there even exists a world in which my brother find a US version of one of these portable C64’s in working order and for sale. That alone would be surprising, given the fact they are 30 years old and contain circuitry that has almost certainly worn out after so long (not to mention the screens are infamous for burn-in). But if that happens, we must also consider the chance he would somehow manage to acquire it and not keep it for himself. I would imagine that chance to be miniscule, especially since in good working order this would cost more than that LED Mirage kit mentioned above. These reasons are why this would (no doubt) be a truly heartfelt and appreciated gift. Doubly so when he sends me hundreds of games with it 🙂

Gold Cliff (1988)

Last year I asked for the Zelda Game & Watch, but Santa ignored me. This year I’ll scale down my desire slightly to the even rarer penultimate dual-screen release: Gold Cliff. I saw one of these boxed, in Japan, for almost a thousand dollars. Naturally I’d want a boxed version, so it’s a good thing my brother made that quip about money not being a problem isn’t it? 😉

Miscellaneous Section

Now I’m no fool. I fully realize some of the above are hard to find. And therefore I’ll finish with a brief list of other items that would be wonderful to find under the tree. This list may not contain as much detail as the above, but I can’t do all the work for you now can I?

– t-shirts (large size, preferably with Ultraman on them)
– 4711 soap
– Any other FSS model kit
– A Stonehenge papercraft model kit
– “How to Master The Video Games” (sadly stolen in the same heist that nabbed the Dark Crystal book…)
– Any game & watch that isn’t ‘Turtle Bridge’, ‘Donkey Kong Jr’ or ‘Ball’
– trading cards, preferably sealed packs (of anything non-sport)
– Anything on old lists I don’t have yet (esp. the John Pertwee album of bawdy songs!)

And there we go! Happy hunting 🙂

More Of The Same

July 1, 2014

Yeah yeah, so I like trading cards. Old ones. Very old ones. Like these:

These cards came out in 1990 with the film. I paid $0.25 for this pack (and every other pack seen here today) at a local con a few weeks back. I don’t remember much about this film, but I do remember my brother saying “Woah that was tubular!” after we saw it so he must have loved it! Share the memories:

As a movie card set from that era it of course contained a piece of gum, which I had to try:

Let’s just say it hadn’t aged well 🙂

The next cards are from 1991:

Even thought BBC America plays this movie at least twice a day, and even though I’ve seen it many many times and even thought I know the lyrics for the Bryan Adams theme song by heart I’m going to pretend I know nothing at all about this film except what I’ve learned from the cards in this pack which means it must have been some sort of Christian Slater vehicle:

Let’s move on a couple of years to a beloved sequel:

Ah, the beloved Free Willy 2. Who can forget how moved we were when we saw this masterpiece of cellulose? As Bernard frequently says “Would have been the best film of ’95 if it wasn’t for Johnny Mnemonic!” But what about the card set?

Rubbish! Dreadful! Even at $0.05/card I feel ripped off. I pity the suckers who bought these 19 years ago for full price 🙂

And then we get to an unlikely card set: Young Indiana Jones trading cards (from 1993). The only comment I’ll make about the bulk of the cards in the pack I opened was that they would have been more useful had they been printed on tissue and therefore usable as toilet paper. However…the pack included this gem:

Yes my friends, 3D! See for yourself by squinting at this clever stereoscope I assembled using forbidden technology:

Lots of trash in this post so far, but as I often do I saved the best for last. So here we go:

Omg! Even now I can remember my brothers words as we exited the cinema back in ’83! He said “Those scenes of Richard Pryor using the computer were so cool! I’m going to become a programmer.” And thus the legend was born. Again, share some memories:

Some of those cards are just iconic now. Look at the sticker in the bottom right!! Surely that’s the best sticker ever made???

And what of the gum in this pack, which had matured for no less than 31 years. Is there anyone with nerves of steel enough to eat it?

Let’s just say it was hard to keep it on my tongue for the one second it took to take the photo 🙂

Robot Claw