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01/07/2004: New Article: The Amazing Bag O’ Crap!

Well, this one is different. The latest article reviews one of my recent finds, the infamous Bag O’ Crap. Found at a thrift store a few weeks back, it’s a giant Ziploc bag filled to the top with cereal premiums, toys, candies, and other novelties from the 70s and 80s. A lot of the stuff was cool enough to be worth mentioning, but still too small for their own reviews. This article lumps it all together — 49 different mini-reviews and pics, all trapped in one giant picture. You’ll see what I mean, enjoy! I will never try this again! Enjoy! The next article hopes you’re hungry.


Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

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Discussion Thread: 146 comments

Try putting punky T-rex in the freezer. If he changes color then you’ll know he’s from a long forgotten Fruity Pebbles promotion. I have two of these guys (different models), which I keep in my parents’ freezer. Every other year or so, my Mom tries to "give" them to me in my xmas stocking (they’re already mine!). In theory you could use it tell if you’re freezer’s working — mighty valuable if you’re one of those people who can’t feel hot or cold.

Ghosted by purple_monkey_dishwasher @ 01/07/2004 4:09 PM EST

Matt you are killin’ it! Keep going man, you- are- onnnn- fire!

Ghosted by Gerald james @ 01/07/2004 4:28 PM EST

The little flip-r-flyers can be found in the oddest places, you can order them from catalogs like oriental trading company, or win them with ski-ball tickets.

Ghosted by kingklash @ 01/07/2004 4:33 PM EST

Now this is a classic X-E article. I distinctly remember eating the "candy" from that plastic Batman bust. It had a unique flavor that has yet to be replicated. Its odd that I remember eating that candy out of the many things I did as a little kid.

Ghosted by Sirkus Peanuts @ 01/07/2004 4:38 PM EST

king, yup. My father’s company has a lot of redemption ticket machines. They order from this company (besides Oriental Trading) and in that catalog are similar things. I really love that kind of thing. That must be why every year someone gives me one of those plastic disk shooters.

Ghosted by Killer Duck @ 01/07/2004 4:39 PM EST

The previous owner was none other than Nathan Bitner, creator of Photog.

Been a while since that fake Bitner posted on teh SuperBlog, and I wanted to make sure the name came up in multiple search hits.

Ghosted by FreeBird @ 01/07/2004 4:51 PM EST

I was farking one day and came across this site… just wanted to tell you how awesome I think it is. I’m glad to know someone’s keeping all the 80’s crap alive. I LOVED the macys thanksgiving parade review. I actually took some of the video clips and made a screensaver. (don’t worry, you’re not the only one with too much time on hand.)

Ghosted by Sarah @ 01/07/2004 4:54 PM EST

boy oh boy do I wish I had something to say about these. The only one I ever had was the "Expos" baseball hat thingy. I remember begging my parents day after day to take me to Dairy Queen so I could try to get the "Twins" one. It was the only thing I ever begged for like that. Any other time I got my hide tanned. Wonder why they let me whine for a stupid baseball hat?

Ghosted by brandon @ 01/07/2004 4:54 PM EST

I think I know what that Aladdin spinner is. I believe that you put the genie stickers on the top. You would ask a yes/no question. then you’d spin it and stop it with your finger. The Lamp you touched would then reveil your anwser. It was silly, but fun.

Ghosted by Chris @ 01/07/2004 5:03 PM EST

Man, now I really want to see that Felix cartoon… Could you post it up in full sometime, Matt?

Ghosted by Lone_Psycho @ 01/07/2004 5:07 PM EST

You have outdone yourself this time. What a find!

Ghosted by starnes @ 01/07/2004 5:09 PM EST

This article nailed me a date with a beautiful girl! I was trying to ask her out, got the heebee-jeebies, and read this article, laughed, felt better, got the date. W00T! All Hail Matt! King of the Swedish!

Ghosted by Prince Corwin @ 01/07/2004 5:17 PM EST

A long time ago, before some of you were born, I used to buy UFO candy. It came in a big round disc. when you finished with the candy, you could pry open the disc, and find a short description of a famous UFO on the inside of one half. And…(oboy, giggle, here it comes) you could use one half to launch the other half like a flip-r-thingamajiggerflyingdoohickeyamabob. Yes, the 70’s were odd times. On the plus side, we still had dangerous toys that caused either physical damage (poink! my eye!) or psychological (why are Skipper’s boobs growing?).

Ghosted by kingklash @ 01/07/2004 5:26 PM EST

I seriously want that 50th item, the swan/turtle card and figure thing. I lurve weird stuff like that

Ghosted by iscabibble @ 01/07/2004 5:36 PM EST

Ho-lee crap…The Aladdin fortune teller thing is one of my favorite burger kids’ meal toys EVER.

Ghosted by Behonkiss @ 01/07/2004 5:51 PM EST

MUST REMEMBER! WILL NOT STOP!
I just had a flashback! when I was a child, I would purchase "powder candy" that came in injection- molded plastic packages. The cool thing about the candy was that the plastic containers connected togethere to make spaceships or robots. I can’t remember which! anyone else remember this candy?

Ghosted by crowbar @ 01/07/2004 5:52 PM EST

There is no mystery 50th item that people keep referring to, the bag contained over 50 items and Matt selected 49 that he deemed note-worthy, and note-worthy they were, great article.

Ghosted by Brentantation @ 01/07/2004 5:55 PM EST

AHH! That goddamn plasic chicken!
i know it! dont know how but i do

Ghosted by Jared @ 01/07/2004 6:15 PM EST

There was a miscolored garfield ceral promotion, other than the pnecil topper. I rember getting several garfield bike reflectors in various colors. They were basicaly lare garfield heads with the eyes made out of reflectings stuff and you would put the thing on one of the wheels of your bike.

Ghosted by Bright Noah @ 01/07/2004 6:35 PM EST

Damn, I had that one. It must be pretty old — I remember never really knowing what it was. The flickering eyes were great.

Ghosted by Matt @ 01/07/2004 6:37 PM EST

I never thought I’d live to see a Tony the Tiger butt-plug. Too bad there was no Crispy Critters lubricant.

Ghosted by Russ G. @ 01/07/2004 6:41 PM EST

Believe it or not, I was actually one of those lucky bastards that won a Huffy bike from the good Cap’n. I was three or four at the time, so that puts the contest at about ‘83 or so. I ate my cereal, looked at the box, told my mom that I’d won the bike, and then went outside to play. After saying, "That’s nice, dear," she happened to glance at the box and realize I was right. So she called the number and I got to go to Toys ‘R Us to pick up a bike that was too large for me to ride for several years. It is now slowly decentigrating in the attic of my parents’ house.

Good times. Way better than the stupid Garfield pencil toppers.

Ghosted by Jeremy Hull @ 01/07/2004 6:59 PM EST

Yes, the Garfield pencil toppers! I think there was also an Odie one, and, believe it or not, it was his TONGUE you wagged to make him blink. But then again, I may be smoking crack.

And Kingklash, I remember both glowing monster stickers (I’m guessing also from the monster cereals) and glowing dinosaur track stickers (maybe from Krispy Kritters). Very cool blue and orange and red glowing glows. I decorated my bulletin board in my room with them, but I took them down shortly…because the glowing monster stickers led to nightmares… THAT is sad.

And the elongated Darth Vader candy holder…"it’s almost as if Topps wanted to illustrate how Vader would appear when surprised." Just the mental image of this tickles me to no end. I can imagine one of his imperial goons telling him rebels have infiltrated his ship…and Darth, all still and emotionless, with a brief elongation of the helmet. Classic. Nay, brilliant.

Ghosted by Nachokhaki @ 01/07/2004 7:13 PM EST

All that and I forgot to provide my thanks. Matt, boss, that article rawks. Thanks again, man.

Ghosted by Nachokhaki @ 01/07/2004 7:15 PM EST

btw that candy skate was filled with some of the best cany i have ever had. i can’t remember what it was shaped like but it was the chalky yet slightly fruity type. similar to my all time faves which were shaped like bones and came in a tombstone.

anyways yeah that thing made a fun addition to action figures, smaller ppl like legos and such could use it as a mode of tranportation. my brother broke his and the bottom was then used as a skateboard an idea decades ahead of its time!

Ghosted by Coughlin @ 01/07/2004 7:17 PM EST

Hey I don’t know if anyone else was obsessed with those mini baseball helmets (there were also football helmets with stickers you put on yourself) as I was – I thought they were amazing. My friend and I would collect them to see who could get all 26 (?) first. Anyway, I remember getting them in cereal, but mostly those little 25 cent machines in front of the grocery store. When I think about all the money I wasted while trying to find the last one…and subsequently getting that goddamn Yankees helmet everytime…ahh, as usual, thanks for the warm fuzzy reminder of my incredibly dorky childhood, Matt.

Ghosted by Aaron @ 01/07/2004 7:31 PM EST

This article will DEFINATELY go down in X-E history.

Ghosted by Freezair @ 01/07/2004 7:31 PM EST

well there is a lot of comments so instead of reading them all, I’m just going to leave my comments on some of the things. The Diver/space explorer guy is in fact a space explorer. I had a whole bunch of these guys.. I think they may still be in my basement actually. The roller skate candy thing seems strangely familiar. As for the Captain Crunch propelled disk whatchama thinger.. I actaully had these with Dark Wing Duck on them. the little plastic bit goes in the slit ont he side of the disk and you pull back the disk and fling it. At least it looks like one of those to me. I also had a fair collection of those plastic baseball caps. Damn I want those chiclets. Don’t ask my why. And lastly.. I had that Batman candy head thing too. I think the hats and the batman head thing may possibly still exist in my basement as well.

Ghosted by Toxicity- @ 01/07/2004 8:05 PM EST

Re: "Series Five" and Galaxy Rangers. It’s not supposed to imply that there were four previous series of GR license plates or even four previous series of promo items. Rather, each of the Rangers had a "Series Five Brain Implant" that enhanced innate powers or gave them new ones. So each of the main characters was a Series Five Ranger, or somesuch, and a license plate on a child’s bicycle would presumably be a warning that you are (a) equipped with vaguely defined superpowers and (b) an agent of a government that doesn’t exist. We really, REALLY need that show on DVD; I remember it as being one of the most unique and deep programs of its time but if I watched it now it’d probably be as bad as Transformers.

Peace,
Zach (no guts no glory, no pain no gain)

Ghosted by ZQ Adams @ 01/07/2004 8:59 PM EST

Hmm… kind of a pain for people to not read all the posts and keep posting the same thing over and over, eh? But those Garfield reflectors! I’m so glad someone mentioned those, or I would have forgotten until my life’s final flashback on my deathbed. Those were definitely in the "sweet" classification of things. Mine was a pink colour, probably due to fading in the sun.

Ghosted by Tadashi @ 01/07/2004 9:15 PM EST

I had the Garfield pencil topper when I was in the fifth grade,which was in ‘87-’88,so that’s probably when it was rereleased if it had a 1981 copyright date on it.

Ghosted by Overlord @ 01/07/2004 9:44 PM EST

Matt, these types of articles are awesome, since practically every X-E reader can identify with at least one of the items. Personally, I’d love to see more of these, but hey, anything you write is good enough for me :)

Ghosted by Rob @ 01/07/2004 9:47 PM EST

Was just readint through some of the comments. I think this blog entry might be even more popular than the advent calendar. Something like 80 comments in less than 24 hours.
King, it’s a mind for trivia, actually. In school I could not remember anything but ask me bits of trivia about old tv shows, shit like that, I am so on it. Of everything I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

Ghosted by Killer Duck @ 01/07/2004 9:50 PM EST

Wow… Just… Wow…

Hey, why didn’t you look at the Japanes Phone Card I could see in the bag?

Ghosted by Mr. Mr. Mr. @ 01/07/2004 10:09 PM EST

I think purple_monkey_dishwasher is right about the punky t-rex. I had one when I was little, and I think it turned white?

Ghosted by Anita @ 01/07/2004 10:27 PM EST

Ahh, the memories. I can’t believe I remember some of this stuff. Of the items listed that my sisters and I had, the unqualified favorite was the Tony the Tiger bobber. I recognized it instantly. We used to spend hours filling up empty soda bottles and letting Tony float to the top.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had a few plastic baseball caps floating around – they were probably used as props for Barbie dolls or action figures, since none of us were (or are) big baseball fans.

I remember the "Who’s the Real Cap’n" promotion, but don’t ask me what the toy is. My memory doesn’t work THAT well. We probably had the toy. The good Cap’n was one of the few cereals my sisters would eat and I wouldn’t touch unless someone already scarfed every other bit of edible cereal in the house. We probably had the Cap’n "Islands of Adventure" figure, and I know we had the treasure chest, because we used it for years as place for our She-Ra and Thundercat figures to find fabulous treasure (or whatever coins we could find under couch pillows that would fit in the chest).

The Duck Tails figure is familiar. I don’t think we had Webby, but we may have had the boys. Incidentally, my favorite character on the show was Launchpad McQuack, the pilot who couldn’t stay in the air. He was so popular, he was one of two DT characters carried over to "Darkwing Duck" (Gizmo Duck being the other).

Ghosted by starwenn @ 01/07/2004 10:28 PM EST

Accidentally pushed the "Post This Comment" button before I could add that the Honeycomb mini-frisbee (we used it as a really big plate for Barbie dolls or a really small coaster), the Garfield pencil topper (and the reflectors Bright Noah mentioned – one of my sisters grabbed those), and the Willow coin trick (my brother may still have that in his room somewhere, I know I saw it for years…) also ring proverbial bells. It’s amazing how something as simple as a vaguely tiger-shaped or round glow-in-the-dark pieces of plastic can trigger so many memories…

My favorite of the items I’d never seen before was the pencil-shaped pencil sharpner. My mom made me a glasses case in the shape of a pencil, so there’s been stranger uses of a common writing utencil.

Ghosted by starwenn @ 01/07/2004 10:33 PM EST

I have one of those Odie pencil toppers, which my grandma held onto for quite a while then gave to me. o_O you do indeed pull on his tongue to make his tail wag.

Ghosted by GJ @ 01/07/2004 10:45 PM EST

This whole article thing got me thinking about cereal prizes and shit like that. Way way back (not as far back as king remembers, though), we got some cereal with a contest going on. Thrill of thrills, we were an instant winner! (I keep saying "we" because in this house the folks tried to get the three kids to share) We had won third prize and needed to send the little game piece in and everything…third prize was "A TREASURE CHEST FULL OF GAMES!!!!!" Wowowowowowow! I had never had a treasure chest before, let alone one full of games! I thought about the Bozo show where the kids would win the chest O toys and thought it was perhaps the best day ever! I mean there was going to be something like 50 games here! So we all waited 6 to 8 weeks for delivery. The day it came everyone was jangled with excitement. Yes, jangled. The box was kind of small…the TREASURE CHEST FULL OF GAMES was very thin cardboard box full of small cheap plastic checkers, chess bits, and varied other generic nanoparticles to use with about ten paper-ish game boards. The feeling of being let down was palpable, I tell you…never again did I allow myself to get excited about cereal contests.

Ghosted by Killer Duck @ 01/07/2004 10:53 PM EST

Yes the Glow in the Dark Cap’n Crunch Toy is I believe called a Flippy Flier. The tab device is the launcher and it is held in one hand while you set it in the notch in the disk, pullback on disk (thereby bending the launch tab) release the disk and your flippy flier will soar through the air!

Ghosted by FarSighted @ 01/07/2004 11:08 PM EST

Matt – I want those old hollywood card things from the article! My wife collects hollywood crap. I’ll trade you a TMNT tv tray from the original run for them…

Ghosted by planet garp @ 01/07/2004 11:12 PM EST

over 90 comments…looks like this article was a success! :D

Ghosted by heeloyd @ 01/07/2004 11:40 PM EST

One thing about the Chiclets… didn’t they bring back the old logo for a while, since it had much more personality than the italicized, sans-serif font they were using in the 1990s? And I think they never changed the Chiclets logo in some countries.

Ghosted by Steve Brandon @ 01/08/2004 12:19 PM EST

Damnit! Now I want a mini-plastic baseball hat! I wonder where I can get one these days.

Ghosted by Bento Bunny @ 01/08/2004 12:26 PM EST

Haha I think we have to subtract about 10 or so posts from the total, since that is probably how many repeated instructions there are for how to work the Aladdin fortune teller… and the Tony the Tiger diver thingy… and whatever that whirly Cap’n Crunch thing is.

Ghosted by Gabbylicious @ 01/08/2004 12:30 PM EST

when matilda was released on video, the video shop around the corner gave us a matilda badge except it was bigger.

ah, wizz fizz. how did you manage to migrate so far away from home? my sister and i used to get a ‘jug ‘o gum’ or something like that. it was purple and it had sand in it which turned into bubblegum when you chewed it.

Ghosted by Rachel Cakes @ 01/08/2004 12:35 PM EST

Oh, I forgot. Since you’re all insane, you might want to find out which historical lunatic you are. I’m Charles VI the mad king of France. Here’s the link http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/tests/lunatics/

Ghosted by Gabbylicious @ 01/08/2004 12:36 PM EST

Yes the red plastic figure is an astronaut, I remember having him back in the 70’s, I think he came with a toy space rocket and other plastic astronaut figures in different poses.

Ghosted by Nuke @ 01/08/2004 12:36 PM EST

OMG I HAD ALL THOSE THINGS! This is the best article. Matt is a genius once again.

You are now redeemed for writing that critters 3 article.

Ghosted by wack0 @ 01/08/2004 1:24 AM EST

Gabbs…what horrors hath you wrought upon me? I am highly disturbed to find out that I am Ludwig II, the Swan King of Bavaria. It’s bad enough that I am some dolt I have never heard of, also, apparently, I am a male swan or something. Funny, I think I would have noticed the feathers and penis.

Ghosted by Killer Duck @ 01/08/2004 2:14 AM EST

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