Thrift Store Halloweekends – Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD Handheld Game (Micro Games)

In our first Hallo-weekend post, we’ll be looking at the Tales from the Cryptkeeper LCD handheld game, made by Micro Games in 1994. I paid a buck for this in our local thrift store.

It’s hard to believe in this era of smartphones and incredibly sophisticated consoles, but handheld video games were a big deal in the 1980’s! Before technology allowed video games the portability they began to enjoy in the mid Nineties, these simple toys utilized “liquid crystal displays” to give players a video game like experience. Designed something like a cartoon, the LCD screen featured a number of printed images that worked in tandem with one another to replicate movement based on user interface. In other words, it was as low-fi as a video game could get and still be considered a game.

Despite their limitations, handheld LCD games remained quite popular even after more sophisticated handheld consoles like Nintendo’s GameBoy and Sega’s Game Gear opened the market. LCD games were far cheaper than a GameBoy cartridge and like I said… most gamers were, if not contented by the limited game play, they were at least somewhat mollified. I also think one of the keys to the LCD handheld’s continued success after their day had come and gone was branding. Every TV show, movie, and video game worth a damn had a dedicated LCD game on the shelves. For some properties, this was a natural progression – as a kid, I owned a Tiger Electronics’ Batman game based on the ’89 movie I loved, as well as several others.

The game we’re going to be looking at today is an adaptation of Tales from the Cryptkeeper, an animated series based on the HBO original series Tales from the Crypt… which itself was an adaptation of the famous horror title published by EC Comics in the 1950’s.

Thrift Store Finds: Robotman – The Untold Story

This week, we’re going to look at Robotman: The Untold Story by Jim Meddick, published by Topper Books in 1986.

I paid a quarter for this bad boy and truth be told, I’ve been looking for some Robotman stuff to talk about here for quite awhile.

Thrift Store Finds: HPB quarter bins

I did a little digging in my Half-Price Books’ quarter bins recently and pulled out about $6 dollars worth of DC Comics from the recent past.

Thrift Store Finds: Rejected Finds!

Most of the time when I buy stuff from thrift stores, I manage to squeeze a couple hundred words out of those purchases for a Thrift Store Finds post on Saturday mornings. Sometimes I’ll buy things and… I don’t know, it’s just not meant to be. Here’s a couple of rejected (but hopefully still interesting!) finds.

This was perhaps my favorite find in awhile: A plush ALF toy manufactured by Coleco in 1987. You all know I’m a big ALF fan, so of course I owned one of these in the Eighties… although I owned the Wisecracking ALF which included a voice box. This is just your standard stuff animal, although it’s in pretty great shape for being over twenty years old. I scooped this up for $4 bucks and I consider that a bargain. I rejected this for a longer post because… man, it’s just a stuffed animal of a beloved 1980’s icon. There’s really nothing much to say about this beyond “I found it and I’m happy with it.”

Another square-sized collection of For Better or For Worse I found for fifty cents, Pushing 40 collects a bunch of FBoFW strips from the late 1980’s… so Michael Patterson’s just starting puberty and there are lots of armpit hair jokes. I rejected this find for a longer post because I already wrote about Lynn Johnston’s work back in 2011 when I looked at It’s All Downhill From Here. I was pretty thorough in that post about how much I like FBoFW and I remain fairly proud of that piece.

Finally, TWO Nintendo GameBoy finds: 1992’s Looney Tunes for the GameBoy and 1999’s Looney Tunes Twouble for GameBoy Color. Two licensed games featuring many of the same characters separated by almost a decade; if I asked you to pick which one of these two games was the better, sight unseen, you’d probably pick the one made in ’99, right? You probably would and you’d be DEAD WRONG because Twouble is HORRIBLE. It makes a stab at being sort of a three-dimensional puzzle games and it just bites. The ’92 Looney Tunes cart however, is a completely solid and fun side-scroller. I haven’t played all the way through but you start as Daffy Duck, making your way through several other characters.

I rejected this find because, as always when it comes to GameBoy games, I don’t have a great way to show you the game I’m writing about.

Bookery Fantasy Finds!

Here’s a comix shopping recommendation from me to you, if you’re ever in the greater Dayton area. Bookery Fantasy, man. BF is a store specializing in all the things I love: comics, paperbacks, and magazines new and old as well as gaming supplies (which I don’t care about so much, but you might!).

The store is so massive, it’s TWO stores, across the street from one another. A weird, fun shopping experience for sure. One of my favorite things about BF is the massive “discount warehouse” set-up, which includes an entire basement full of single issue comic books for a buck apiece. I spent an hour and a half digging through their archives and I barely made a dent… but the above picture includes most of my spoils.

HPB Black Friday finds

 

I hit up the Half-Price Books Black Friday sale every year. My main goal is to pick up stocking stuffers for Ellen and the boys but I have to admit, I indulge pretty heavily in some buying for myself. This year, although they stuck with the standard $5 gift certificate for early bird shoppers, HPB switched things up a bit. Whereas the store normally offers a blanked percentage off your entire purchase, this year you could either get 40% off one thing… or $15 bucks off of a purchase of $50 dollars. I went with the latter sale and above are a few of my purchases.

Elektra Lives Again is an out of print hardcover; although the material has been reprinted in some Daredevil collections, it hasn’t been presented in this original, oversized edition since 1990. That was good enough for me. Although Miller’s Batman work remains some of my favorite superhero comics, I have to admit, I haven’t read much of his Daredevil run – an isolated issue here or there is about as far as I’ve gotten. I will say this: the book is absolutely GORGEOUS. This was right before Miller started working primarily in black and white over at Dark Horse and as such, the last time Lynn Varley’s coloring really did anything for me. Super glad to have this big book in my collection.

I was excited to locate a copy of Spaceballs: The Book published by Scholastic Press under their Point imprint in 1987. The book was written by “Jovial Bob Stine” who we all know from my previous Thrift Store Find post on movie storybooks, is in fact Goosebumps writer R.L. Stine. I especially wanted a copy of Spaceballs: The Book because it’s clear the people behind this effort were completely in on one of the biggest jokes of Mel Brooks’ send-up… the omnipresent marketing machine behind Star Wars. This paperback looks like it came straight from the scene on Yogurt’s planet (“Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the Lunch box, Spaceballs-the Breakfast Cereal, Spaceballs-the Flame Thrower”) and that’s kinda cool.

Finally, I picked up Batman: Chaos in Gotham for the GameBoy Color… although I’ll be playing it on my GBA:SP. Batman’s weathered some fairly awful games over the years but most of his carts for the GameBoy system are surprisingly solid… and Chaos in Gotham is no exception. It’s a side-scroller with puzzle elements and it’s clear the design team went the extra mile on this one. The animation of the Batman sprite is fluid and appealing. He has a variety of moves and weapons and although I haven’t played very far into the game, there’s apparently a great level variety, with driving stages added into the mix later on.

Thrift Store Finds: Beavis & Butthead #11 (Marvel Comics)

Happy Almost Thanksgiving, everyone! This week, we’re looking at Beavis & Butthead #11, published by Marvel Comics in 1994.

Cover price was $1.95, I paid a quarter. This book was published under the Marvel Humor banner, which later morphed into Marvel Absurd.

Although The Simpsons gets the lion’s share of credit for the reemergence of animation in prime time television during the 1990’s, it’s important not to underestimate the contributions of MTV during this time. MTV’s Liquid Television was a shining beacon of adult-level animated entertainment. It was also a proving ground for many future prime time animated efforts like Aeon Flux (good), The Brothers Grunt (awful), and most popularly, the dim-witted duo Beavis and Butthead. B&B were an unstoppable, omnipresent juggernaut during most of the 1990’s, with their long-running cartoon, the much-hyped big-budget movie, and the plethora of licensed materials for sale in stores.

For those who do not remember the concept, Beavis and Butthead are two incorrigible teenage idiots who are motivated by hormones, television, and food… in that order, pretty much. The animated series divided time equally between the boys’ stupid adventures and time spent killing brain cells in front of the TV watching music videos, in a wonderful “bite the hand that feeds them” stroke of comedy, on MTV itself. The Marvel Comics follows much in the same mold.

Half-Price Books finds

Not exactly a thrift store find this week, I’ll admit. Where I live in Southwest Ohio is within a twenty mile radius of three Half-Price Books. Four times a year, HPB sends out these great coupons where, during a week of sales, you can get 20%, 30%, 40%, and on Sunday a whopping 50% off one purchase. It’s perhaps a bit gluttonous of me, but on those 50% Off Sundays, I hit all three stores and these are my finds.

Thrift Store Finds: We’re All in the Same Boat, Beetle Bailey

This week, we’re looking at We’re All in the Same Boat, Beetle Bailey, a comic strip collection published by Grosset and Dunlap under their Tempo Books banner back in 1973.

There’s no cover price on the book, (perhaps this copy was sold at a book fair) but I paid fifty cents for it at our local St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store.

The United States was embroiled in The Korean War when Beetle Bailey first his newspapers in 1950 and since then, Mort Walker (and a cadre of co-writers) have been taking gentle aim at The Army with the strip’s titular shiftless layabout and the extended cast of characters that inhabit Camp Swampy for over fifty years. During that time, the U.S. has been involved in many military skirmishes abroad. While in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury, B.D. was over in Iraq loosing a leg in service to his country… Beetle Bailey was taking a nap under a tree for a gag or two.

Now Beetle Bailey and Doonesbury are two VERY different comic strips and I’m not suggesting Mort Walker (and his sons who co-write the strip) should relocate to Afghanistan or anything. What I am saying is I have always been interested in how Walker and company handle real life wars in their comic strip. Seeing as this paperback collects strips published during one of the most divisive wars in American history, I thought it might be interesting to see how Beetle Bailey weathered the Vietnam War.

Thrift Store Hallo-weekends: Universal Studios Monsters Magic Pictures Activity Book

This week, we’re looking at Universal Studios Monsters Magic Pictures, a coloring/activity book published by Golden Books/Western Publishing in 1992. I have no idea what the retail price of this was, but I got it for a dollar in a Goodwill store in Hocking Hills, Ohio.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Universal Studios Monsters brand is the Cadillac of Halloween-related products in my eyes. Anyone can sell a generic flat-topped Frankenstein’s Monster costume for Halloween… or a kinda/sorta Creature from the Black Lagoon decoration to hang on your door, but Universal has the market cornered on the look of these classic ghouls.