Episode 24B: Holiday Special #2 (Part 2)

Cambridge or Sean is a weirding Way Media podcast. Oh Kitties and Happy New Year. Welcome back to our holiday special Part two. Hope everyone had a marvelous holiday time. Let's hope for.

A wonderful twenty twenty five. On with the Show. Twenty twenty four has been the year of the cartoon collection of Masters of the Universe. I was super hesitant to dive into what they're calling the cartoon collection, which is really figures that are based on the filmation cartoon he Man and the Masters of the Universe. They're at the same price point as their origins line, which is based on the vintage Masters of the Universe action figures, so they're at that scale.

They're about six inches five and a half inches, closer to six if you stand them up straight. I was hesitant because the first figures that I saw advertised that were of interest to me were Skeletorn beast Man, and they were okay. But since then they've come out with a trap Jaw and Evil lynn A Tela, Clowel, Spike or Merman, and they all look fantastic. Mattel really stepped up their game in making these figures look like they walked right off the screen. They're using this matt Finished plastic the bright colors of the cartoon.

Some people have complained with the colors a little too bright. It all depends on what version of the cartoon you're watching. They're really cool and I've picked up several of them. I totally don't regret it. My favorite one so far is Merman.

Merman is always great, but this version of Merman, he's like, if you watch the filmation cartoon, there are a few scenes where he's like, he looks surprised or lost in his thoughts. He's a bit airheaded in the cartoon, and the face sculpe that they chose for him is that look of dumbfounded surprise, which is very cool. Got those and it seems like there's nothing stopping Mattel right now. So I'm trying to be more conservative with my master's collecting these days, but it's sometimes difficult, actually, because they really pushed that nostalgia button for me. It's stuff we got mark.

So anyway, my next item is something that I've almost completely forgotten about, But every time I see it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I forgot about those guys. When I talked about the Vick's Rubber Hulk figure. Yeah, I thought, oh, I should check my rack Toys book from Brian Hyler. I still don't know how his last name is pronounced, but the guy from Plaid Stallions and the Mega Museum and Toy Ventures and et cetera, et cetera. He has got a book about cheap rack toys and that Vix Rubber Hulk was a cheap rack toy.

And I could have sworn that there was something in there about it, and I don't think there is, or maybe there's just a picture. But anyway, as I was flipping through the book, I stumbled on this item, and I'm like, oh my god, totally forgot about those. So I immediately go to eBay and look them up. As usual, find a pretty good assortment that they're overpriced or they're in bad shape. It took me a while before I sort of narrowed it down to some choices.

But these are little rubber paratrooper guys, which was a very popular thing back in the seventies, putting whatever on a parachute. There are Planet of the Apes figures with parachutes, superhero figures with parachutes, army men with paras all this stuff. I mean that army makes sense that thin sheet of vinyl attached to strings that eventually ripped through the vinyl that you would throw up in the air and hope that it would open up and come down as a parachute. These, though, were little gumball machine prize guys called Poopa Troopers, and I don't know that I knew the name of them back then, but they are much smaller than the ractoy type stuff like the Planet of the Apes or whatever that you could get.

They all come in these weird positions like they're falling through the sky and great distress. They're always like hands and legs spread or outwards, and their faces are all in a grimace or whatever. I was like, Oh man, I remember having a couple of these when I was a kid and absolutely loving them. They were being made all the way up until I think the early two thousands by Imperial Toys. There are quite a few packaged versions of them that you can get on eBay of those newer ones, and it's basically the same sculpt and stuff and same idea and same bright colors.

But I got a pair of vintage Imperial Toys Poopa Troopers for ten bucks or something, just to have them sitting there. They've still got like tacky little strips of broken rubber band around the parachute. The string is still intact, hasn't been ripped out of the hole on top of their head as they normally would be, and just a cute oddball thing that was not something that necessarily stuck. But anytime I would encounter it, I'd be like, oh, yes, I remember those. I'm we're getting those and playing with them and loving them and then losing them or whatever and forgetting about them for years totally.

I remember the paratrooper toys. I think I had some like army guys that had the parachutes. Super generic yeah things, but it was so much fun. You throw them up in the sky and watch. Them barely float down and yeah, often just fall down, but it was fun.

We were looking through our Halloween stuff and there were this kind of goes into something I'll talk about a little bit. Target always has a little selection of cheap o I'm not even really toys, but things you can buy almost in bulk to hand out, you know, rubber eyeballs and yeah, plastic skeletons and one year they had a bunch of little ghosts, witches, Frankenstein's and whatever that had parachutes. So there's a bunch in our Halloween decorations that we've held on to. Oh that's cool. These are just like my pupa Troopers.

Imperial is the same company that came out with those dinosaurs, right, Dinosa and Sagons. Yeah, I think so good stuff. Yeah, they did a lot of cheap o rack toys and yeah. If you've been watching my channel, I've been sort of trying to consolidate my collection a little bit. And this is where I'm entering into this new chapter.

I guess. I know. I just got done talking about how cool some of the new Masters of the Universe stuff is it's been coming out. I'm actually trying to be more disciplined when it comes to that stuff, because I think as people discover when they're collecting, there's a reason why they're collecting a thing. Sometimes it's like a particular character, like for me, beast Man or Merman or Skeletor will always be appealing to me, and I'm always interested to see different versions of those characters.

But when it comes to the other characters that I grew attached to as a kid less or so than those three main baddies, especially with Masters, I realized lately that it's mainly the vintage stuff that really calls to me. Recently, Mattel announced a new version of a character called Moduloc that's coming out, and I had an incomplete Moduloc so just recently, actually, I got a bag of parts from eBay. Very affordable having a vintage version of Moduloc where I have the option to So for those of you that don't know about Moduloc, he's a character that has multiple arms, multiple legs, multiple body parts, and two heads. All those pieces are modular. You can remove them or add them on, depending on what you'd like to do.

I've always fantasized about having a Moduloc that could just be like the thing from John Carpenter's The Thing You've gotta be fucking kidding, just a mess of pieces. Rather than wait and spend thirty dollars or so on a new version of Moduloc or sixty to get two of them, I thought, why don't I do what my heart is telling me to do and look on eBay for vintage pieces, And so I did, and I'm so happy I did, because that's really what I wanted to do. There's this thing that I've discovered about myself and might be shared by you too in a similar way, Mark, but maybe not. I get really excited about a thing, but I have to go through a phase where I realize that the version of the thing I need to acquire shouldn't be the most immediate version, the one that's right at hand.

So if I were to see Modulock in a store March, you can't see him. He's falling asleep and trying to keep him away. Oh, I'm trying to comprehend what you just said. If you go to a vintage toy store, or if you go to Target right now with occasionally there are Masters of the Universe things on the shelves. Recently, I saw a complete Moduleck in a vintage toy store that was sixty dollars.

I saw online that the new Modulock is coming out and it's going to be about forty dollars. Maybe it was thirty dollars, I can't remember the exact price. If you wait and you look on eBay, or you consider the different options, you'll often find yourself more pleased with what you get at a lesser price. That's what I'm trying to get at. That was a very convoluted way to get to that point.

Yeah, Hey, convolution is my middle name. I'm very excited because I got some moduluc pieces at are Vintage and I was able to play with that and it really took me back to that experience as a kid. That's another thing that's on my master's list. And now we'll move into Star Wars territory when it comes back to my turn. Don't get ahead of yourself far.

Pa let this far. Speaking of Target and their Halloween stuff or their cheap stuff, I had seen a little bit before Halloween world around when they start to put that stuff out. I saw on Instagram somebody post this plastic item of an ice cream cone turned upside down and the ice cream was in the shape of a skull. And I was like, Oh, that's a cool looking thing. What is that?

And so I read the description there like oh I just found these as a Target. This is great blah blah blah, and I'm like, oh fuck, And I figured not gonna be a Fresno Target. In one of the descriptions found what the company was and then I was like, well, maybe I could just buy it from their website. As fuck Target, They're not going to have them here and really didn't come up with anything other than the design work that they do, and I thought, well, I'll check Target on my phone and see if I can find this particular item, and it came up. It's one of those things like if you look up Star Wars toys or other toys, it'll be very vague about whether they even have it in stock anywhere, because they don't want you to put it in your shopping cart and take it out of the hands of somebody that's actually in the store.

So anyway, on one of my trips out to that fancy Target, they were just putting out the Halloween stuff and I thought, Okay, this is most likely going to be in that section where you find the cheap junkie little items. And I went and I'm like, oh, they haven't even gotten to that stuff yet. They don't have everything out yet. So I went on my merry way and kind of forgot about it. More recently saw on Instagram again someone was like, oh, I just picked these up a Target, and the picture was of them by a huge display of them, and I'm like, oh, they're in that section of the store.

So the next time I went to Target, right at the front of most Targets, they have that cheap o area where there are bins and bins of seasonal stuff. Usually seasonally, yea fourth of July, there's going to be a bunch of flag stuff in this area, you know, anywhere from a dollar to like five dollars. And so they are these very interesting sculps of ice cream cones that are flipped over like they've fallen on the ground and they have a skull image on the ice cream itself. One is a sugar cone and the other one's like the pointy waffle cone. Yep.

And they are called mister ice scream Man or something like that. They're hollow inside, and they're three bucks. It was a mint green one and a pink one. Yep. I should have bought more, at least two of each of these, yes, but I bought one of each for six bucks, and I just thought they were the coolest thing.

I'm like, I hope whoever this company is keeps doing this stuff for different holidays throughout the year, because these are great, totally cheap o plastic toy. Amazing. Yeah, Carly to put them in my office here and I was like, hey, I'm going to keep these out all year. I don't have to just be for Halloween. These are awesome.

They are They're awesome. You sent me a picture and I was like, yep, got them, yeah, because I saw them come up on Instagram too, and I was like, oh my god, those are amazing. And then we walked into a target and sure enough there they were. Yeah, there were tons of them, and the one where I actually got them, and then I kept seeing them later. I'm like, oh man, they're going to have so many of these left over.

It's funny. I had the same feeling too, like I should have gotten more. I mean for that price exactly. Maybe there'll be some next year that are different colors. They should have been a black one, black and white.

Actually last Halloween previously, the one we just had, that's when they first launched their like fluorescent neon pinks and blue skeletons. So I got a pink and blue skull back then. And now this year they had a few other Neon colors skulls and for five bucks a Neon skull, like it's a good deal, such a cool idea too. I was just like, that's where Target wins whoever it is that they're working with. That These design teams are willing to take interesting chances like that, and I love that.

And now they're all in landfills because people didn't buy them. But whatever, this is what we're contributing to. Yeah, what's your next item. I've been on a vintage Star Wars kick for like half of the year. Yeah, it sort of began in the summer early summer.

I've also been trading in toys, stuff that I know I'm not going to pine for later on. I feel like I just have one more of these characters to get. I started a very small collection of the twelve inch vintage Star Wars figures by trading in newer toys in abundance, which I dragged into the stores almost shamefully because it's like, there's a bunch of stuff you probably don't want. I was able to get spending very little of my own money. A storm Trooper, the vintage twelve inch storm Trooper he's missing his blaster rifle of course, and then the vintage C three po and then I was able to find a Darth Vader on eBay for a very affordable price.

That's what has sort of started me delving back into vintage Star Wars territory, which I've been comfortably resting the last few months. Those three will hold me over until I can come across one of those R two D twos from the same line. These are things that I coveted as a kid and happy to have them. Yeah. I think when you brought those up earlier, I was like, yeah, I don't.

I just don't remember seeing them or being interested in them. Yeah, tell you man, that scale doesn't work for me. Yeah, it's there's something about the C three PO in particular. I mean, I had the Darth Vader as a kid. As we've talked about, I can see why people wouldn't be that interested in it.

It's more like a tactile desire for me. But this is something about the way C three PO looks in that scale. It's just really kind of amazing. I get a lot more detail in a twelve inch figure, and then it's under four inch. And he's also a little awkward too, which appeals to me.

Makes sense because you are, if nothing else, yeah, rather awkward. Yep, what else you got. I'm getting my bigs in today, man, I know you're having a blast entertaining myself as you should. Nice to see at the video Fame, how rude. We talked in great length about McDonald land at somewhere you did well.

I only bought an officer Big Mac, and you gave me a Ronald McDonald. I don't know if I did it on this show, but I know on your show when I was a guest, at one point I mentioned, you know, I'd like to kind of just get another officer Big Mac for the head itself. I kept that in the back of my mind throughout the year and looked off and on and even incomplete stuff was too much. I'm like, I'm not paying twenty five dollars just to get an officer Big Mac head to put on my desk. Finally one rolled around that had no outfit, that wasn't in bad shape, and the head itself looked good, and so I put it on my watch list like I do, hoping to get an offer from the cell or I don't think I did on this, but it's hard to remember all of the times that's happened over the year.

But anyway, regardless of that, I purchased it and got it. And when I was looking at the pictures of them, knowing that you had at least two variations of the figure, I was like, oh, I'm curious because I can tell the paint application is much different on this, so I kind of assumed I was getting the big head version of him. And then he showed up. I held him up next to the one I already had, and I was like, oh, no, I have the big head version. This is the small head version.

I heated it up. I don't do the hot water not the name big as a shit about this. I don't use the hot water method. I used the hair dryer method. Yeah, I heat it up his head so I could pull it off the stump that it's on.

And I was looking at the two heads and I'm like, wait a minute, it's the exact same sculpt This isn't really a variation. I think it was just a matter of either material m HM or these just dried differently and they shrunk. That's what. It's the exact same sculpt. I mean.

I was looking at the placement of fucking sesame seeds on the top of their heads, and it is. The exact same. It's just a matter of factory or material slightly different vinyl or after I heated it up, it was a little bit tough to pull off. So I think these shrunk too much. Yeah, just a different material.

Yeah, I mean they're both vinyl, but this one is so much harder than the one I have. That one is squishy and this one is. Unless it's heated up, it is very firm. It's set differently somehow, and or they processed it differently on purpose so that it would be smaller. I don't know.

Yeah, so I ripped them off the body and just have them sitting on my desk. So, which do you prefer? The big head? Yeah, because I like squishy vinyl. I don't know which I prefer, But I did get a kick out of having two different versions to hold.

The paint application on The smaller one that I have is more interesting. He's got like a more toasty bun on top. Yeah. The squishy one that I have is very pale, not as well painted, but as far as feel and look, I prefer the big head version. I wonder which came first.

Who knows, Maybe there'll be a documentary about it. Someday saying there will be The optimist in me knows there will be the Remco documentary Everybody's on Pins and Needles for that. That takes me to my second to last thing. This one does align with an episode. It aligns with the previous episode that we just recorded earlier today that you heard a few weeks ago, and it lines up with the holiday movie that I mentioned, which is The Empire strikes Back.

As a kid, I love the Stormtroopers. But when Empire strikes back and. The tat Walkers or the at At Walkers showed up on the screen and Empire strikes Back the snow Troopers showed. Up, they're badass. I fell in love with those character designs, deeply fell in love with them when I got them.

As a kid, I played with those figures probably more than any of my other Star Wars action figures. It just happened to be that way. I don't know how or why. Maybe it can all be traced back to Rudolph the Redness Reindeer. Yeah, they are white, they are white.

I recently found two really good deals on eBay. I was able to get the Atat or at At Pilot. He's very similar to the tie Fighter Pilot Stormtrooper, which I also loved because he was all black. That was super cool. I think that's next on my list actually try and explore on eBay.

And I had been waiting for a good version of the snow Trooper to show up because it's hard to get him with the vinyl skirt attachment, and I did end up finding one at a very reasonable price, got him as well, and he happened to come with his rifle, the blue plastic rifle. So it's very cool to finally have these figures back in my possession. I've got an Empire shelf back behind me. Oh and another one that's on its way that I found at a really good price. Anakin Original Trilogy Anakin Skywalker.

I think it was a mail away figure back when Returned the Jedi came out. I'm never going to put a Hayden Christiansen on my toy shelf, but I was able to find that. Paint his face over the Yeah. Yeah, oh that still gets my goat. Yeah.

I know, I hate that it doesn't make any sense. We're not going to get into it, but of all the changes, that's one of the most egregious you don't get started. Don't get started anyways, I'm excited is on his way. The real Anakin is honest. I have one of those nice.

And these yours free just by sending five groups of bridges from any Star Wars action figures to return of the Jedi Box five nine six, Young America, Minnesota. But urry this offer, will and. I'll combine my next two items since they're related. Cool. I think this all started because I follow or followed since he's no longer on Twitter, Walter Williams, who created mister Bill, who I talked about on the seven or five episode.

Gee, I was just thinking how fun it must be to be a cone heent on Saturday Night. Tonight, Well, mister Bill, you can be a conehead too. Every once in a while he would post over there a little illustration of mister Bill that related to whatever day it was. It dawned on me, after however many times he did this, that there must have been a mister Bill calendar with little illustrations of mister Bill, and I'm like, these are charming, charming illustrations. I looked it up at one point and was like, oh, that's kind of pricey.

Just recently and within the last month he posted one must have been it was either Columbus Day or Halloween. I think it was Columbus Day though, and I was like, oh, that's hysterical. I replied to him, I need to track down one of these calendars. He sent an image from something of the whole package, and so I looked again on eBay and one had just sold. So they showed me an ended auction for some reason, maybe I did a Google search again.

I'm like, that's kind of high price. There was only one on eBay at the time, so I thought, oh, it's kind of high price too. But we had just gotten some tax refunds from our income tax pretty decent amount back. Actually, I put that in my savings, which means that I don't have to squirrel away money for the rest of the year for our this year's taxes. Next year, I'm filling a little freer with my money, which was kind of nice.

So this was a complete mister Bill's School Days nineteen eighty two calendar. Nice old school. Calendar with the ring binding, twelve months, full ten x twelve inch or whatever, with all of these pictures, much like the old picture book that I have of mister Bill being terrorized by Slugo and his cohorts at school. And then the little illustrations are you know, on certain days of the month within the calendar. That illustrations are tiny.

On the actual calendar. It's sort of hard for me to read, actually, because I'm old. It also came with a flexi disc like the book did, a little student identification card for Slugo Memorial School, and then a refund or a rebate quote unquote of ninety nine sense that's just basically a fake dollar bill with mister Bill's face on it. That's all you got to frame that. Yeah, it's really cool.

And then a little promotional not sticker, but thing for mister Bill greeting cards. Now I got to look for the greeting cards, which I did, but they're really ridiculously priced. They're interesting, but there's no way while I'm looking for one thing. As you know, stuff shows up down at the bottom if you're inside of a listing. And I kept seeing these little pins of mister Bill very almost like outsider art, like primitive pins pi in.

I caught my attention real quick, and I'm like, are those homemade? So I clicked on one and I started looking at I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, something's happening in my brain here. Yeah, I'm starting. To have some memories. So I looked up mister Bill Vintage pins.

Multiple listings for this little guy popped up, and I clicked through some, clicked through the pictures on one, and it showed the back of the pin, which is just totally flat like stark white material with the little clasp on it, and that, for some reason hit me like that fucking music box Dancer. I had one of these. I have totally forgotten about it, even in buying the book last year or whatever and my finding my mister Bill plush. I had one of these pins when I was a kid, and I remember, as this comes back to me breaking the leg off of it and my mom regluing it and then having it attached to my had a little tacboard in my room that I had a bunch of pins on that I would stick in there, and it being one of them on there.

Had totally forgotten about it. There's multiple listings for these little guys and they're all crudely painted. They are composite material, which always makes me laugh. So I kind of went down a little rabbit hole for that, because I'm like, I know what composite is, but I don't know what composite is, and I always relate it to little figurines that are made of plastic but look like they're made of wood. It's just resin or something, but they call it composite, and so I thought, well, these look like they're made to look like wood.

They're kind of more made to look like they're ceramic or something, which they are. It's just some cheap plastic that breaks easily. And then a couple of them have their shirt and pants reversed in color and the paint leads off into the back of them. And I found a couple that were not so horribly painted, and I added those to my watch list and waited for an offer, and one of them was an auction, but it said you can make an offer. I did for like a dollar less than what the starting price was or the auction, and that person accepted it, and it happened immediately.

They take your money and they ship it to you. So I've got one, and I'm trying to be very careful. I have it on my shirt right now, but there's no way I'm wearing this thing around because I know it's. Like it is going to bring it. Yeah, you got to take a photo so we can post that.

It looks great, it's amazing. It looks like it was handmade, as it should. Whoever sculpted it was an amateur at best. But they're all the same, so it's like, yeah, they're not a homemade thing. But well, that's kind of the charm of mister Bill too, is right.

He always looks different in play for him anyway. And then that led down another rabbit hole where as I was looking at pins and cards and things, shirts started popping up and I had the same kind of experience where there were a couple of shirts that were made from iron on transfers. There was one that I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute again, kind of ringing bells, but bells that are covered in a towel or something like something about that rings true, but I can't place it. Then I looked up mister Bill iron on transfers and there was another one that's very similar to the book cover that I had. It was on a tan old T shirt and I'm like, did I have a mister Bill's shirt.

I don't know that iron On really rings a bell and strikes to chord with me. So I don't know if I had one for a short time and it fell apart, or the iron On transfer came off, or if it was something I saw in a record store and covet it over or a friend had, or I saw on the mag is. I don't know. I don't know if I actually had one or not. But I am toying with the idea of buying one of the iron On transfers, putting it on a T shirt.

You got it, you got it? That may be the next year's holiday special. Yeah, we should do a whole episode on iron On transfers. And when I was looking for stuff like that, you know, the cone head one came up and some other center at Live Ones, and I was like, man, I don't know, it looks familiar, but I don't recall having them, like I easily recall having that book. But I didn't remember the pen either.

But I know I had one. I mean that came back kind of in full. But I don't know. I don't know about the shirt. I don't know about the iron On transfer.

No, no idea that's amazing. If I did, I was a pretty cool kid man. I had all tons of mister Bill, shit, well you are a cool kid, Mark. Yeah, I was cutting edge. I went through this whole phase due to cereal boxes with iron on transfers.

In the early eighties, Alphabets had like a deal with DC Comics and they did a bunch of iron on transfers on the backs of their cereal boxes. I know I had a few as a kid. I don't remember what though. Yeah, that was a big thing. Cheat, it's cheat, cheap exactly.

Put it on one of year old Rady T shirts. That's a good one, Mark, you should get that T shirt, or you should get the transfer or whatever. Yeah. I think there's a place just down the street that does heat transfer onto shoets. So it probably cost twenty bucks.

Yeah, I end up having a fifty dollars. No, somebody was selling a vintage T shirt for two hundred dollars of one of these iron on transfer mister Bill, And I'm like, you gotta be fucking Ada'm like, did you mistype that and meant because that's ridiculous. They taped it incorrectly. Good luck someone will buy it. You'll see.

Gee, if I'd stepped on that skateboard, I might have done one of those crazy phones like Chivy Chitch used to do. I should have to do tonight. Well, that brings me to my last item, and it's the biggest item both personally and physically for me from this year's and spiritually and spiritually seriously, this year's been an exciting year. I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff, and I've honed my collection and focused more in on some vintage things, and with Jeff sending me that beast Man and me acquiring a few things along the way, like I feel like my collection is getting to a place where I feel I might be less prone to coveting items as an arrow my collection a little bit. Anyways, I traded a bunch of things, including a very large item which I had in my collection, which I got through trading a couple of my builds for which was the attorney a playset.

I traded in a bunch of things, including that playset for some cash which was really nice, and an almost complete Millennium Falcon. And the Millennium Falcon has been on my list for a very very long time. After I posted my video on my channel. You messaged me and my video. I tried to put batteries in there and it didn't work, and you mentioned to clean the contax.

What was that the contacts? Yeah, the contacts inside the compartment, and I haven't done that, even though they do kind of look clean, but I'm going to try cleaning them anyways. Could also be a loose wire, yeah, there could. I'm thinking it's a loose wire that's beside the point. It's near complete.

It's missing a few stickers, It's got almost all of the internal parts. Most Millennium Falcons that you buy vintage like this are missing the training ball. So it's missing the training ball. I'll probably going to get a replica because getting the vintage one is very expensive. You know, there's certain elements in there that are often missing that it comes with that it has, so I'm happy about that.

The cardboard, interior, electronics wall is mint. It's beautiful. There's a lot of discussion on what is the coolest vintage play set. I know there are several that people argue for that, and I agree there are a lot of cool ones out there, but the Millennium Falcon is at the top. For me, it's one of the coolest things ever made.

I have a vintage Chewbacca, can to have him sit in the pilot's seat, and I just need to get a vintage Big Head Han. It's another goal that I have for twenty twenty five. For Big Head Han shouldn't be too hard. There's a lot of them out there. I'd give you mine, but no, only you got to keep your We're not that good of friends.

It'll happen and then I'll have my two little guys piloting the Millennium Falcon. I'm really really happy with that. Yeah, that's cool. And if you go down that route, check toy ploy for stickers. He's probably created a batch of replaced sticks.

I saw those, and I know for a long time a lot of the stuff that he created based on existing material is free. But I don't know if that's the case anymore. It might be charging for most of the stickers. After I sent that text about the contacts, I'm like, well, it's not going to do you any good. If it's a loose wire, which is most likely the actual problem.

You could get in there and see if that's the case, and then you know, I don't know how a depth you are at soldering. But and you can also buy replacement contacts if cleaning doesn't work. Yeah, yeah, that's probably a loose wire more likely than not. I'm conflicted too. You know.

It's like you hunt for or yearn for a particular item, and I'm tempted to just not touch it, you know, like yeah, but at the same time, I'm like tempted. It also could be a very easy Fix's kind of maybe my point. That's a good point. Where before I would have thought the same thing, I would have put some in and been like, oh fuck, it doesn't work. But having watched all these videos, yeah it might be an easy fix.

Yeah. Toyployd is just such a great resource. I did watch several Millennium Falcon fixer upper videos that he did. The problem with getting to the wires is taken into part and then having to put it back together. That's what worries me the most, especially with that cardboard insert.

Oh yeah, and and some of those plastics get a little bit more brittle, oh yeah, over the years, especially the long flat pieces. Yeah. I'm just stoked to have it. I'm stoked that I could put figures in there and fly it around your backyard. I'm going to go out there right now.

Well, my last item could fly along with it. As mentioned on the last episode, I got me a collapsible Santa Slake. Yeah, there it is. That is an idiot. That's why I was so brief about them on that previous episode, because I figured I would go through the history on the holiday special.

This is one of the original items from my list, my master list of Cambridge I with Sean Topics. I was like, yeah, every year I waited for this thing to come out of the storage area above our pantry and he played with along with the little tubular matches, and I thought, oh god, this is going to be another one of those things that I'm just never going to be able to track down because what do you look for. The only thing I knew about it it was collapsible, it was plastic, and it's a Santa Sleigh. So I use those four words collapsible, plastic, Santa Slay in the old eBay search bar, and immediately they came up. I mean, it's one of those ubiquitous things.

So there were tons of different items. They are all very poorly painted. I didn't jump on this Immediately, I just thought, oh, that was easy to look for, So when I'm ready to get one, I'll just use the same search term. There are wood ones, there are sort of more recent ones, but I think they're all wood, and they all do the same thing. They close up.

They are constructed with elastic between them, and then you can close them up put them away. And so as I was looking for those two items, I was thinking to myself again, well, what the what is this form? Why would you have this other than as is decor. They are for you to put your Christmas cards in. Oh, that makes sense.

So when you get Christmas cards from people, you display them in your little foldable, collapsible. Plastic Santa slay. That totally makes sense. So I told you via text that I had some stuff coming my way, and some of that was the Mister Bill stuff. One of them was this.

I was getting all this stuff all around the same time, and they were all shipping out around the same time thanks to that tax refund money. Yeah. The one that I originally purchased was the only in original package version I had found, So it came bagged. Talk about cheap rack toys. Came in a plastic bag.

With a just totally cheesy header card. So I'm like, Welsh, I might as well buy a bagged version, right. I could even tell them the description of the painting was just sloppy, just sloppy. I get it. I opened the box up.

There it is in its packaging. I mean, the packaging was brittle and gross, and I'm like, I'm just getting rid of this packaging. Take it out of there. It expands and immediately breaks. Is that elastic had been under tension, you know, when it's collapsed, it's actually stretching the little elastic that's holding it together for I don't know.

These things are probably from the sixties. I mean we had them when I was a kid. My mom probably had him for god knows how long before that, over fifty years old. It just fell apart and I was like, well shit, and I thought I can most likely fix this with some kind of plastic glue. There's no way I'm trying to restring it because it's done in such a manner that there are these little you know, talk about the Millennium falcon.

The string runs through to the sides where there are these little plastic bolts quote unquote bolts that have been plastic welded over the ends of the elastic string, so I'd have to tear the whole thing apart to try and actually, oh, the only thing to do would be to basically glue everything together, which I will attempt to do so, or I got another one pretty cheap, much cheaper. I'm like, these things are never going to look very good. The paint application on them is horrible on all the versions I've seen, So I got one that was pictured open and together. Of course, the person folded it collapsed it when they shipped it opened that up the bottom fell out, But that's a much easier fix than having the front two pieces falling out.

Like I can hold it right now. It would actually display like this pretty easily. Yeah, so I've got it, and I put my little ego human torch in there, like, yeah, these are Migo sized. That's what I did with is. As you remembered.

And in the meantime between the two of those, I had found a cheap listing for the little packets of Santa matches actually a five pack in its original packaging, Wow, for much less than I was finding Like on Etsy. A lot of Etsy sellers were selling them two for twenty dollars or three for twenty Now, I'm like, no fucking way. So I got an unopened pack of five of those, which I will most likely open because I don't give a shit about that stuff and throw in here and that'll be my little addition to the Christmas display this year. That's so awesome. Well, that's cool because you're extending a legacy, you know, you know again because of toy ploy.

I'm like, oh, this is that hard plastic the plastic world will work on and I'll be able to do that and it'll be like a bond stronger than the original. Yeah. And then I was like, you know what, fuck it, I'll just get super glue. I mean, I already know how I'm going to do it, so I just got to get rid of the little pieces of elastic that broke in two and put it together. That is a journey, for sure.

But what you got there is beautiful, pretty funny. Yeah, it's worth it for these things that trigger us in a pause it away. Yeah, it's funny what sticks, you know? Yeah, sounds amazing. Cheap ass card holder that wasn't meant to survive fifty something years and really doesn't, but that captured my imagination.

It's so much better that something like that ends up in your home than pil. And I remember it more clearly than I remember any particular Christmas as a kid, to be honest with you, Now, I got to find that weird little birdhouse ornament, that little tiny red Yeah, I got it. Now I'm going to go talk to my mom about ornaments too. Yeah, do we have any of those from when I was a kid. My mom probably still has that one.

Who knows. We'll let you know if we find in the same people. Yeah. Well, well, well I think. We've gone on long enough unless you have something.

Else that was epic, super epic, and it goes to show like that together with your friends can really inspire you to spend more money. Yeah, we'll see what happens this next year. That's right, Listen, I'm not looking forward to next year. I do know that we have episodes to look forward to. So there's that.

That's our mark and Ronnie Rebellion right there. Yeah, the cost of doing this and king to go up. But hear more ads unfortunately, sorry is what it is. So happy holidays everybody. Yeah, I hope you have a go ahead.

You first, have a safe holiday season, whatever it is that you celebrate. Be smart, don't drink and drive. Don't get into a major political argument with your family. Yeah, good idea to avoid that. And if that's a possibility, maybe just don't see family this year.

Yeah, that's such good advice. Some folks may just have to head that direction and that's a okay. Or you tough it out and try to keep your chins up and just don't talk about that stuff. Yep. With that being said, remember until we meet again, have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting.

And thanks for listening. I enjoy this recording I made of the Mister Bill's school Day's calendar FLEXI disc as our special holiday treat for. You, Mister Bill's School Days. Oh everybody, I'm really. In January, all the kids return to school from the Christmas holidays.

They brought along all the fun new toys they'd received. Oh hey, look at the small model? Why that God? Well, what did you all get? In February, mister Bill found his first love when he was struck by Cupid's.

Arrowy slogan, say is it okay if I carry your books? Hun? March was time to concentrate on his studies, like in chemistry. Lab said, slug, can you hear me that bigger hunt of ser guys? You want to be careful with that thing.

Along with the April showers came the annual Easter egg hunt. The month of May meant the school year was almost coming to an end, but not before the May Festival. In June came graduation day, but Billy was caught cheating on his final exam and would have to return to school in September to repeat the year. Bill. In July, the Bills celebrated Independence Day at home.

Same mom, how can I go out and shoot this bottom rock? Okay, but be careful. August was the month to have fun and the great outdoors at camp slugo. Oh, Gia, I think we might need some more firewood. Billy's summer vacation drew to a close, and September went back to school to make friends with a whole new bunch of classmates.

Oh, why everybody, I'm Billy, Gia. I guess I give the same worker. I'll say, has anybody seen my daughter's bat? In October, Billy went out for the football team and even had a chance to be a big hero, and Billy didn't win the game. If he makes this last second, there's the snap start.

Crossbar. Too bad, Billy loses. November was the month of the Homecoming dance. Billy had quite a night in the dance floor. I see us, love it, I have some punch please.

Well, December came and Billy was able to go home for the Christmas holidays after exchanging gifts with his classmates. Well, gee, I guess I'll see y'all and you have a merry Christmas. Okay and ay, bye bye Billy. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that Jimney Knight, He's gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. You're a goofy.

Don't kiss me off Art Cambridge An Shawn is a weirding Way media podcast