The X-Entertainment Blog

08/27/2004: 84 Mewtwos, 200 Gray Gorillas.

When faced with a clearance sale — a major clearance sale — I often encounter trouble. Instead of just buying a single liquidated item, I tend to buy as many as possible regardless of need or even desire to own them. The sickness first surfaced eons ago (eons meaning several years of course) at Toys ‘R’ Us, where I found Wheeled Warriors accessory packs marked down to a literal eight cents each. (these were the blisterpacks containing extra tires, alien brains and guns for Saw Boss and pals) When I realized that a measly buck could a dozen toys, some little bell went off in my head and has consistently forced me to repeat the process whenever the opportunity presented itself. With that…

Some of you might have noticed TRU’s major clearance sales going on — not sure if this plays into the alleged “no more toys” rule, but whatever the case, shit’s cheap. They’ve got this deal where anything with an already marked-down green price tag is 50% off, so you’re really clashing oars with all the housewives doing their early Christmas shopping. If you can survive that, treasures await — check out that bag of Pokemon Mewtwo plushies. Quarter a pop. I have no conceivable use for 84 Mewtwo dolls, but stand confident that, someday, I will undoubtedly safe a life using 84 Mewtwo dolls.

And, found at a nearby closeout store, here’s a bag of 29-cent promotional Congo figures. Gray gorillas! The chilling fact that promotional figures for Congo actually exist notwithstanding, it’s always interesting to waltz up to a tired checkout girl and dump a basket full of plastic monkeys on the table. I think there’s twenty of ‘em or so. Twenty gray gorillas, 84 Mewtwos, another chunk of the closet that can no longer be used for clothes.

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!

This is a whole new meaning to Gotta Catch’em All. And I salute you for it, sir.

I’m going to TRU right now. You’re talking about Times Square right. Cool, only a block away.

Nah wasn’t talking about that one, but I had seen some greeners there. Check near the big JP dinosaur up the ramp, there should be a section lined against the top of the ramp with assorted junk.

I officially resign as The-Person Who-Has-Too-Much-Crap and pass on the crown and sceptre to you. Wow.

btw, what is that ball called that the kings hold? I googled it and got a whole bunch of classy porn (aka artsy-fartsy photography).

You could build a Mew-Two army and take over the world. Use the gorillas as personal body gaurds.

There is SO much you could do with this. Any chance of setting them all up in various positions around the room and getting some photos?

I gotsta go look! More legal looting, fellow posters! Quick, into the KlashKart!

I went to toys r us last weekend and got the GI Joe mobile command center for 25 bucks and a he-man transformer bird thingy for 2.50. Most of the orange tags were half- off too. And that definitely "a good thing.

matt, have you considered ebay? or starting fires? Nothing burns faster than children’s toys. But really, ebay only might work, because I doubt too many people would pay a dollar for a toy and then three for shipping. feh, it’s worth a shot, I’d say. But now I’m just rambling. And I’m going to subject you all to it. And you can’t do anything about it, unless you…shit. You stopped reading three lines ago. well, I lose.

Is there any reasons why TRU is having a crazy discount sale? Someone told me that the company was closing down their TRU stores or something?? o.O? I hope that’s not true- where will I get my toys from then? O_O!

I might go to my local TRU and pretend it is one of the old time contests they used to have to see how many toys I can fill a cart with and race to the cashier. If they ask how I am going to pay for all of it, I will lick the tip of index finger and make a 1 in the air in tribute to the wizard guy in the opening of "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors".

Thanks to Matt mentioning Wheeled Warriors the wizard guy will haunt me for the rest of the day no matter what happens.

Matt, you could make a small fortune off of them once you get tired of…erm…playing with them ;p

Yeah…its true, Bogling. Jeffy is finally throwing in his pretty lil’ Barbie towel….but not entirely.

They want to stop selling toys, but continue the wildly-popular Babies-R-Us and I think Kids-R-Us. Basically the competition finally stifled that lovable mammalian’s pocketbook. And the competition? Wal-Mart. I don’t have a Wal-Mart ANYWHERE near me or my college, yet I have three TRUs.

If you shop at Wal-Mart, tell me about it, because I have never been to one. To quote Paris Hilton "do they, like, sell walls there or something?" But according to my newspaper, they’ve been dominating all sorts of industries lately (including toys and housewares). Crazy.

I have such fond memories of TRU and its video game stations. I bet wal-mart doesn’t have THAT!

Oh, I was in Maine recently, and there was an outdoor restaurant/ice cream parlor that served, of all things, lobster ice cream. I neglected to try it.

I wish I could take advantage of the big liquidation going on at Toys R Us, but I’m only interested in out-of-print video games that are good. Toys R Us doesn’t stock many CURRENT video games that are good.

Matt: Keep the tags on those MewTwos, keep them in the bag. Then stuff them somewhere dark for the next 15 years, then pull them out again. There will now be an entire horde of nostalgic people who would do anything to have an untouched MewTwo from 1999. You’ll be rich!

Holy crap you found a load of Wheeled Warriors stuff at discount? That was my favourite cartoon when I was a kid, still got any of the stuff?

Promotional Congo Monkeys. Now say that over and over again. Now thing to yourself that you paid over $6 on plastic Congo Monkeys that were originally given away for free. CONGO!! Tim Curry.

I used to be a pretty smart shopper, but I too have to say that I’ve found myself beginning to hoard stuff, especially if it’s on sale. I mean, not just useful stuff, like the twenty gajillion pens I go through during the school year. Useless crap. I mean, how many change purses does a person who almost invariably uses her debit card really need?

Matt, I have already begun to see Mountain Dew Pitch Black in supermarkets. Cases of cans and 20 oz. bottles. It doesn’t look "Pitch Black" though. More like Grape Soda.

I can’t believe TRU is getting out of the toy biz. The "I don’t wanna grow up" song is written in my brain with a permanent sharpee. I drive by their corp headquarters everyday on RT. 17 in Paramus. I even had the honor of designing a part of their store called Super-Hero City when I worked at Marvel in the 90’s…
Goodnight sweet Giraffe…

On the bright side, we now have a completely new reason to hate, despise, and ultimately revolt against the Wal-Mart machine. Because they’re not really in it for the money. They’re in it because they enjoy destroying your town. ~John Stewart

Maybe you could hold more coloring contests and send the winners an autographed Mewtwo…I don’t care about Pokemon but I love kitties!

I buy too many used books from clearance shelves. Too many to read. To many to store easily.

If you ever decide to start doing the account thing for posting here, you could always give a MewTwo to the first 84 to create accounts. Did I say doing?

The best deal around is finding stuff at the local thrift store w/ the price tags still on. I don’t care what they are, I have to buy them. An electronic foot bath from Bradlees one going for $24.85? Mine! A 2XL flowery muumuu made out of polyester, originally priced $14.99? Even more mine! I bring them home and stack them in my re-gift closet. Ya never know when the occasion might arrise where I need a gift for some distant relative’s 50th birthday and don’t have time/money to shop.

sovietrocket, Wal-Mart is a miserable place where miserable people go to die and work. They are also a place where the po’ kids go to play playstation II, gamecube, x-box, and gameboy advanced. I will continue with more magical tales of Wal-Mart should anyone request any. Like the much beloved tale of the cashier beotch. If something scans cheaper then the price tag the cashier will argue with you so she can keep it and buy it later.

Speaking of sales, I bought Unicron (the one Matt reviewed) for 13 bucks at Target.

CONGO???
Wow.
Those toys have been sitting in the back room for almost a decade.
Its no Hi-C or chicken Spaghettio’s, but I’d call that some kind of… "find".

When some little brat in your family has a birthday, you could make a kick ass gift bag for everyone.

Who the f@*%k even decided to name it "Wal-Mart". "Toys R’ US" or the cheery cherry "Target" is so much more appealing and comforting. The name "Wal-Mart" evokes images of dry wall and asbestos.
And um…has anyone heard of a chain of stores called "Piggly Wiggly"? I wanna go I wanna go.

Can I befriend someone in the south just to visit that store with such a magical name?

Well, I surivive my first week of college, and I can see Matt found some interesting things for us to talk about. I agree with everyone else, Wal-mart is indeed evil, force everyone out of buisness or ruining them(eg. Toy-R-Us and Thriftway, a grocery store chain in Cincinnati, OH., and the government is doing nothing to stop them.

But, I glad Matt found some cheaps mewtwo plush and Congo Gorilla for us to look at.

Wal-Mart is also very evil. However, I really can’t diss them too much, because I grocery shop there due to lower prices and have been known to end up buying DVDs while I’m there as well. At least for the local Wally Worlds, the toy selection sucks. No Simpsons figures = BAD toy selection.

However, I’ll never understand why they won’t sell explicit content CDs but they’ll display "Kill Bill" front and center.

One time the 1/2 price store had a bunch of bulk star wars stuff for sale, They were, like, Ackbars in promo bags and others and trays with weapons in them. I grabbed several of Ackbar’s stick things.

I’ve found wal-mart is a good source of discounted Lego..If I’m looking for something REALLY old..

However, TRU beats Wally World hands down in selection of toys–all kinds, not just Lego. They also have good sales, sometimes, and I still enjoy just going in and looking around.

However, part of the problem, IMO, is not Wally World’s fault; Kids simply don’t seem to buy as many toys as they used to. More money is getting spent on Video Games, DVD players, and other electronics in an attempt to get little Jimmy whatever the hot electronic product is for Christmas, so he can be popular.

However, I think TRU is stupid to want to get out of the Toy Business. TRU has HUGE brand name-recognition. Ideally, they should want to get parents hooked on "Babies-R-Us," then migrate to "Kids-R-Us" and then finally start spending the big bucks at TRU.

Ok, enough Ranting…I need to head to my TRU to see if they’ve got cool stuff on clearance!

I got almost all of my Pokemon stuffed animals for 99 cents or less (though none from Toys R’ Us). It’s a good question, though. Why IS Toys ‘R Us getting out of the toy business? I’ve heard Babies ‘R Us and Kids ‘R Us aren’t doing spectacular, either. If kids are buying electronics, why not expand their electronics department, instead of shutting down all together?

As for Wal-Mart…I have mixed feelings. I’ve heard some very nasty things about them, how they don’t treat their workers well and drive the competition out of buisness. However, the only real shopping in the entire Southern New Jersey area is one medium-sized K-Mart in Rio Grande. Every other department store in the area has gone belly-up in the last ten years, replaced by grocery stores or discount stores like Big Lots. When you have to take two busses for almost two hours just to buy some things at a decent price…you know it’s time for a change.

Supposedly, we’re getting a Wal-Mart here very soon, so I guess I’ll find out first-hand within a few years.

Matt, this is a little off topic but oh well. Have you seen these commercials for Apple Jacks lately? They’ve returned to their old shape but now they come with a dvd explaining the mystery behind the fucked up shapes and colors of the past year or so. Finally, we will all have answers to the blue carrot mystery!

Down with wal-mart! Matt will you sell me a discounted mewtwo? Last year I found a giant stuffed togepi at TRU for $1.50. I was going to get the meowth too at the same price, but it was really dirty and the charm was wrecked.

fuck wal-mart. Praise the giraffe. My most fond memories were drooling all over the "World of Nintendo" section of Toys ‘R’ Us each time i went. It only pissed me off everytime I saw there weren’t any more tags for Super Mario 2 and Super Mario 3 everytime I went to buy those games (super mario took me 3 months to find in stock at ANY store). So alas mighty Geoffery, we all love ya and will miss ya when they give you the ax…

Yeah, "World of Nintendo" Rocked!!! At my local TRU, they still have the "World of Nintendo" signs in the aisles…Of course, no displays, but oh well.

That rocks Cameron T!!!! You should try to buy it off of them seeing that they just wanna give everything away anyways. It would surely be a collector’s item and also a cherished keepsake for any wide eyed kid from the mid to late 80’s. Another thing that rocked about Toy’s ‘R’ Us was that thier video games were always Cheaper than Children’s Palace/Child World which was located across the street from TRU back in the day where i shopped. No wonder Children’s Palace was totally crushed by Geoffery and his minions. Now that building has since become a Cicuit City which is now across the street from Best Buy, although the TRU is still intact.

Just wanted to point out that Nichole Ritchie was the one who thought people buy walls at WalMart. While we’re talking about Paris Hilton: Guess who’s releasing their freaking memoirs next month? What great life lessons has she learned at 23 that she absolutely needs to impart on the world at large? Eh, I can talk shit, but I’ll probably buy the damn thing. Loves it.

I’m going to Toys R Us next month to buy the new Pokémon game! So I guess I too am going to get Pokémon at Toys R Us too! Except I’ll be paying like $40… I guess it’s not as much of a bargain.

Hmmmm… I’d be disturbed knowing that you bought so many pokemon, period. I am rather more disturbed that you bought so many of the same pokemon plushies. Let’s face it here, you have got an impulse buying problem. This problem is even worse that you just shove them in a closet with all your other impulse items. I also have a problem, but even I do not buy 84 of the same pokemon plushy. Not matter what the price. *Wink*

Isn’t Walm-Mart named afer the guy who founded them - Sam Walston? Or did I just dream that?

Hey…we should all praise impulse buying. After Matt reviewed the TMNT X-mas special, We Wish You a Turtle Christmas, I found a used copy online and bought it within a half hour of reading the article. I haven’t regretted it yet.

Dang. I couldn’t find anything older than the Digimon E-Z Bake Oven(or something to that extent) at my location. I did, however, manage to snag one of those keen deluxe talking Gollums with changable heads at half off. How could anybody pass a toy that sings the "Wish for a fish" song?

I want to feel some measure of grief that TRU is closing up shop, but the truth is that my three local stores have sucked very badly for a long, long time now. But here’s a tear for nostalgia’s sake. Wait, I just realized that this means no more "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sales on video games… Damn it. Tear #2.

Wal-Mart serves its purpose as a retailer of cheaply-priced, cheaply-made products, that’s all. I don’t really see that as a good or bad thing, it is what it is. Sometimes I need stuff like that in my life, sometimes I don’t. I’m not going to bother with inciteful comments about how the company is "evil" but I will say that whenever I visit my nearest Wal-Mart — which is implausibly located in the shopping plaza of an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood — it’s like I’ve been transported away from urban Southern California and into trailer trash town, complete with scraggly handlebar-sporting rednecks wearing dingy flannels and worn hunting caps. I swear I’ve never seen those Wal-Mart customers anywhere else, just within the confines of that store…

Wal-Mart (n) - a place for white trash families who may or may not all have mullets to publicly beat their children.

I live in an area where such people are commonplace, but something about Wal-Mart seems to attract them more than any other place. I’m just thankful that I live within a short walk of the only Starbucks within 100 miles and that there aren’t any open spaces nearby for new Wal-Marts to rise from the fires of hell… I shall now go to TRU and enjoy it while I can, like visiting some dying relative. I’m hoping for an army of Poliwhirls, but we shall see…

Everyone is very right; Wal-Mart stocks lots and lots of creepy people, no matter which one you go to. I’ll never forget the first time I stepped into a Wal-Mart; it was pretty surreal. Not only is everyone trailer trash, they also each come with about 5 screaming greedy kids. I walked past this waddling crying kid yelling over and over, "I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!!!" And you know what he was holding? A Britney Spears doll. o_O

Okay, we can save Wal-Mart. We just nees to: 1. Buy NOTHING from the evil Wal-Mart (DO YOU HEAR ME! NOTHING!) 2. Put Flaming Bags of DOG Poop on the porch of EVERY Wal Mart Manager and 3. BUY AS MUCH AS YOU CAN FROM TOYS R US, EVEN IF IT SUCKS!
PS. Matt, howcome you haven’t fufilled my request for a Bionicle article (bzpower.com)? And also WHEN WILL WE GET THE PROMISED SUPER-NATURALS ARTICLE?!

Hmm…Maybe my discounted Pokemon hair scrunchies (.25 from TRU) could get together with Matt’s Mewtwos. A Poke Party!

Went to TRU today. They had the 50% off sales, too, but no Mew-Twos. :( I think they are just reducing stock and getting ready for Christmas season.

BTW, I remember reading that TRU wouldn’t close any stores or say any more about getting out of the toy business until after Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, at Target today, I found the Playmobil Advent Calendar for this year. You better go get one now, Matt, before they’re all sold out!

Just adding to tom’s idea, besides not buying at Wal-Mart, go in there and demand they stock all kinds of items. Confuse them! Make them have to order large amounts of stuff due to "Consumer Demand" then, not buy them.
The place ain’t just the same since Mr. Sam died. Once, he heard tell of complaints about a shift manager at the W-M in Chickasha (big town west of my town of Anadarko) and decided to see for himself what was up. He comes in, about the time said manager was on-shift, and starts to check out the store. If you ever seen photos of Boss Walton out and about among the rabble that frequent his stores, you know that he dressed like any other elder in shopping mode, in fact, you wouldn’t have looked at him twice if you passed him by. Soon he began to ask questions about the service and asked to see the manager. He shows up and treats Mr. Sam poorly, thinking that he can just shoo this old man away with his ugly charms. Boss W soon had his fill of sour holier-than-thou ‘tude, and says "Get your stuff and get out of the store!" "What? Who are you to say that?" "I am your boss. Get out now." "You are not. I’ll call the real boss, the man who owns this store, and make him throw you out!" Sam pulls out a portable phone, "Don’t bother, I’ll do it." A button press later, and a few quick words, the Store owner rushes over and the first thing he tells the shift manager is, "This is Sam Walton, and you are fired." No chance of that kind of justice nowadays.

I mean east of my town. My brain went for a little walk and forgot to leave a note.

I am awaiting an adventure in-line with Spiderman counts Crayons, or some such thing… involving all of the Mew2’s.

That’s an awesome Sam Walston story, kingklash. When did he die? I just read Nickel and Dimed, about a upper middle class author who decides to see if she can make it by only working minimum wage jobs. She ends up at Walmart and actually tries to get a labor union started. I think she worked there in 1999, so I was wondering when (in relation) that Sam died, and if it was as bad as she said it was beforehand.

Ah, Wal-Mart. If I wanted edited/botched crap, I’d go to one of those bootleg video game stores in Taiwan or Singapore or whatever.

I have never been in a TRU store before. Ever.
Up here in Canadia, things are looking up for the company though.

The best thing to do is to throw them off a tall building, and put notes on each of them: ‘Yours if you want it’.

I can hear the news now: ‘Crazy man throws 84 Mewtwo’s off building, sparks new pokemon craze worldwide’.

Pokemon is still around, although it is not as strong recently. The release of two new games (fire red and leaf green) may fuel the fire–though these games are just remixes of the original first two games. However, this in itself may bring older players back who wish to capitalize on nostalgia.

I, for one, am just happy to see a return to the orginal 150 monsters. I never got into gold/silver and the rest because I didn’t like all the new monsters….

I just wanna clear something up before rumors about TRU closing continue any further. First off, Kids R Us and the Imaginarium stores closed about a year ago…which comes as no suprise, because neither of these stores where profitable. BRU does make alot more money then TRU, this much is true, but they wont announce if they will split the company until after the holidays, duh. Even if they do, they will only close about 200 TRU stores, and most of those will be either international stores or ones that TRU owns the property outright, since thats how they would make all their money, on sale of the land and building. I dont mean to get huffy about this issue, but I work for TRU and im tired of people coming to me and saying things like "Hey is it true your store is gonna close, your all gonna lose your jobs and have to go on welfare and food stamps to feed your kids? Cause if so I REALLY wanna catch that clearance sale!" So to sum it up, unless you live near a really small TRU or one that the company owns outright, enjoy the green tag sale, the company is just liqudating crap it couldnt otherwise sell(who else besides Matt would buy a bagful of Congo apes?) but dont expect your TRU to close at the start of the next fiscal quarter.

Thanks for the info, MGG. I would be sad beyond reason if the nearby TRU went down; without that store, there certainly would never have been an X-E.

Haha I like King’s idea of MewTwos going out to the first 84 people to set up an account. Is that still in the works? Not like I’m around much anymore, but still!

I’ve tried to figure out ways to do it to no avail; it can be done, but it would involve changing the blog into a different format. We’ll see. There could be ways around it but I lack the skillz yo.

Is this site PhP able? or is it just HTML?
I’m pretty knowledable in PhP and could help.

Thanks for the inside stuff, MGG, but not all Kid’s "Backwards R" Us’s are closed…I think the one attached to my TRU is still open. Or did you mean stand-alone KRU?

I can only imagine the conversation that happens before a trip to Walmart/Target/ even TRU:

Dad: YO JUAN, JUANGO, GO, ELIZA, NADIA, GUIDO, CONSUELO, JOSE, ANTONIO, AND ALL THE OTHER 782 KIDS WHO YOUR MOTHER BIRTHED ON THE SMUGGING VAN TO THE US! WE’RE GOING TO TARGET! OH YEAH, I GOT PROMOTED AT MCDONALDS! I’M NOW A JANITOR!

Billy Clem Bubba Joe: He paw, I wanna see them fancy clothes with the zippers and the fuzzy stuff not made from roadkill!

Mom: We can’t afford that! So Billy Clem Bubba Joe, sneak it out un’rneath y’all mullet! (gives birth to another baby)

TRU may be better for toys, but go to specialty stores like EB Games for deals on Video Games

Hey,
Matt have you ever met Seanbaby from http://www.seanbaby.com. Seanbaby and you have alot in common.

I miss Captain Power and the soldiers of the future. Kids could use a role model like lieutentant Tank Ellis nowadays. I played the home videos relentlessly using the Phantom Striker blasting away at those flashing orange targets and avaoiding the yellow ones. Thats another long awaited toy i received from toys r us back in the day. sigh…..

I too, like MintGreenGoblin work at TRU…have for the last year. The only reason TRU is in the news is the fact that Babies R Us is splittling off from TRU as it brings it far more income and will help with the company.

There’s a new CEO of TRU recently, and this is just one of the plans he has to get the wrinkled surface of TRU shining again. Worry not kiddies, although Walmart is still ass raping us on toy sales, TRU is going to be around for a while.

Though if they do close, and a spree of mass murders starts happening in the Twin Cities (we’re talking Minnesota here folks) it’s all my doing.

Even at 50% off, the Masters of the Universe stuff they had was a little to expensive for me.

I dunno if its been said, but Juicy Fruit (or whatever you mentioned) is now 30 cents. Seriously.

Also, I just read a recipe for quails that involved eating them whole, holding them by the beak. Ew.

And one of those chickens in a family restaurant for some reason sent me and my step-sister into conniptions of laughter and I fell on the floor in the lobby cackling. We were on vacation so no one knew us.
I don’t remember what was so funny about it…

Back in my hometown (Patterson, California just you try to find it on a map) there is a machine in a local pizza place (Pizza Plus) much like the chicken machine, except, instead of the chicken it’s Dino from the Flintstones, when you pop in a quarter, Dino spins around, the voice Fred says "YABBA DABBA DO! YABBA DABBA DO! DINO FAXED YOU!" and a plastic peice of Dino shit pops out. Joy ensues.

Matt–the comment link at the end of the vending machine article incorrectly leads here. Might want to fix it…

I’ve seen a vending machine like the chicken one, only it was a clown. I hate clowns. I HATE THEM!!!

We had these children’s shops, called "Reggie’s". We’d always hang around in them while Mom did grocery shopping… Drool over all the pc games, silly plastic boardgames, barbie horsies, etch-a-sketches, and thundercatses. South Africa never had the second thundercats series, even, although we got the figures for them. We just had no clue who they were. I thought Pumyra was "Punyura" for years, cos let’s face it, 6-year-olds can’t read.

Reggies eventually closed, as was too damn expensive. Back when the rand was on par with dollars, barbie horses cost 100 bucks. Bloody sanctions. So my whole life was about "look and don’t touch". Toys back then were conspicuous consumption. You had status if you could afford to buy your kids more than ten action-figures… Needless to say, I had two barbies, four mylittle ponies and the barbie horse. That’s all, apart from the lego. We don’t have a toys-are-us here, although there are huge ones in Joburg. ::glowers enviously::

Only matt would buy 160000 of the ugliest plush pokemon on earth. Go matt! Now all I need to do is go to The Land Of Opportunity and help everyone to blow up the Walmarts.

Great article, Matt- and stop dissing your Spiderman crayon review! I thought it was an amazing adventure through a box of crayons. Nice GUMMI BEARS plug!

I’m talking about the Gummi Bears reference in the vending maching article…not spidey’s review. Gummi Bears rocked mega hardcore. Gummi Bears? or Gummie Bears? hmmm…i loved them, but dont know how to spell!

Matt,
After reading this entry, I would be very interested in an article that would tour your place of residence. I can’t imagine with all the stuff and items you have that you would have to climb over piles just to get out your door. Unless you have like 3 storage units at the EZ-U Storage. It would be like XE-Cribs.

Once in the lettercol of ToyFare, A boy wrote to say he had a way to keep the really annoying, airheaded, giggling girls away from him: he bought a few cheap Pokemon plushes (some of the really cute ones), gutted them, and wore the pelts on his backpack. Maybe if Matt can get a couple hundred more, he can make a coat.

I saw on of those chicken vending machines at a garage sale about a month ago, it looked to be from the 60’s or 70’s and was all metal. I did not inquire about the price because I had no desire to buy it.

We had a button quail as a pet for about 6 months, and they are not good pets (unless you raise then from birth, I hear). If you take them out of their cage and try to hold them, they freak out and lose half their feathers, and then run around the room and sometimes under the stove. Then you spend the next 3 hours trying to coax them out from under the stove, worrying that they will somehow catch fire from the pilot light. So we just left ours in its cage, feeding it corn meal and gravel. The only good thing about them is that they are super cute and make little crowing sounds at dawn, and when they miss you. Ours was a male, and I would make female mating calls to him and he would respond, so I guess he was sexually attracted to me.

There was a sale like that out here in Ohio at Toys R Us. But that was with Psyducks, Raichus, a few Venusaurs, and a crapload of Mewtwos.

I guess this is the place to drop a comment about the vending machines although it looks like Pokemon is the hot subject here.?

I always like to list my favorite quote from Matt’s article which this time is….

"but the last time I voiced displeasure against this particular deli, the storeowners suddenly forgot English, made a bunch of duck noises and kept pointing to bags of sunflower seeds."

I once went on a vending machine quest to get a keychain Rubix Cube. It took a month of searching. I found a few that had Rubix "like" key chains but only half the thing would twist thus not making it a real puzzle (unless if you think 4 combinations is hard to figure out)

Yup, I know their’s a fully functional cube keychain out there somewhere, but instead I settled forking over 15 bucks to get one shipped direct from the Rubix’s website.

Man was I pissed to find it a year later at a Wizards of the Coast store for 5 bucks. Meh, I need a new one anyways. The stickers have gotten greasy and are starting to peel and turn colors.

Hey man, I got a couple of them quarter machine refugees myself. I have a blue translucent ninja which I obtained not at a quarter machine but at a pizza place–ya know one of those chuckie cheese ripoff’s but not as fun? I got the little booger for one ticket. I’ve also got one of them light up rings and I know how to turn these suckers on.

If you still got one that’s complete then what you do is simply turn it clockwise, if it falls apart put it back together and turn it counter-clockwise, you hafta turn them slowly so be careful but they should light up for ya.

It sucks Toys R us is actually considering doing away with their toy stock since they are really the ONLY stinkin’ toy store in existence that actually has what you want.

Oh and one other thing you might find kinda intresting. before the itlian and clown homie knockoffs there were Mijo’s.

I used to like Homies but upon seeing the much cooler Mijo’s I lost intrest in the homies.

even cooler than the Mijo’s are the Mijo clowns–yes you read right, Mijo clowns.

these are the kings of the Homie-type figurines. they got them with demonic little smiles holding canes, giant hammers, and torches-sure there are a couple lame crappy ones (one sits on an eight ball and another is squatting like he’s in the middle of taking a crap)but most of the Mijo clowns are pretty cool.

As if that isn’t enough there are now–and I swear I am not making this up, giant Mijo action figures that sit in the action figure aslies in wal-mart and Target right along side Batman!

P.S. I was just about to close this when I remembered that there is yet another variation from the Homies lot–bobblehead homies–too bad the heads don’t actually bobble.

the one neat thing about the bobbleheads is that you can pretend to be Freddy or Jason or Micheal Myers and rip off their heads….

Didn’t I just see a thing on the news about vending machine jewelry having some kind of toxic base? Or something? I’m totally serious, and I know they did some huge recall. This was maybe 3 or 4 months ago. I thought you would have mentioned it.

Actually, it’s green DROP drink. And who can forget "Where ground?" and "Ugly woman!". Oh, the great quotes from Congo. Timeless.

That’s not unusual for KB Toys around here to have sales on old junk. They still have Spice Girls mini bio books from 1997. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sliders trading cards there, either.

My blinky ring works just fine. I gave it to my girlfriend and she keeps it in her jewlery box when she is not wearing it.

It’s absolutely criminal what’s happening to the shining Providence of my youth. When I was young, there was one reflex answer to "Which store would you want to be accidently locked in overnight?" Toys R Us, my brethren, and I should think the answer was the same for many of you. Imagine, if you can, a world without Toys R Us. You don’t like it, do you? Neither do I, friend… neither do I.

And on top of it all, they’re keeping BABIES R US open… I don’t know, some marketing double-talk about how Toys R Us has been "losing money" and how Babies R Us has been "making money". Tell me, who likes babies more than toys? NOBODY, that’s who.

I have a friend who used to work in Wal-Mart (which is, yes, an evil and soulless entity that destroys marriages and orphans children). He said he really wants to get a hand on a copy of the training tape they made him watch. It was supposed to familiarize new employees with the color-coded alert system they have in place. The entire concept is insanely amusing to me… they have codes for chemical spills, contaminants (in the video, a new employee was seen literally cleaning up a corpse-sized pool of blood), and HOSTAGE SITUATIONS.

It might be silly, but I suppose it’s not that far out… the Wal-Mart in my hich hometown is the size of a small city, and they DO sell guns, right? I just can’t imagine deciding to go out in a glorious last stand as WAL-MART.

God I wish we could edit posts V_V (or I could alternately take the freakin’ time to read them over before posting, I guess…)

But yeah.. it’s hard to believe that toys r us is less profitable than babies r us. I figured when you’re no longer a Baby R Them, you become a Kid R Them, and you’re old enough to whine and complain for expensive shit for christmas.

legend, thats some sweet test or rather experiment you took on there…. i always wondered what theym bastards dropped… lol…

Then write 20 articles and bill the price of the chicken machine to your company.

A chicken machine? When I was little a store in my town had a parrot machine…it even "talked" when you walked by!

I am very under the weather. I almost vomited while laughing several times at the prize machine article.

I may need your address matt, if any of the other articles I havent looked at as of yet do make me vomit, I will have to mail you some…

I used to call Chuck E. Cheese’s "Chucking up cheese" since the pizza was so horrible. I’m surprised that place was never busted for health code violations.

Anyone remember the joke items you could get in one of those machines like the plastic insects, hand buzzer, whooppee cushion, etc? I think we got a few things from those.

Matt, glad you saw the redundancy with "final conclusion." I’m anal about that stuff and was going to be the annoying asshole in grade school English class who says his favorite book is whatever the English teacher says is hers. I was going to drop a line immediately, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt and happily saw your revelation at the end. Cheers.

Matt you gotta go in dressed up like Little Mac and punch a fat guy in the stomach and be like "hah, in your face King Hippo, I’m from the Bronx bitch!"

Toys R Us is not closing down. I work there. We’re splitting Babies R Us off of us to form a new company. The green tag sale is to get rid of all the old old toys thatnobody wants to spend real money on anymore

I have that very same gun keychain! along with about 40 others. I used to use them with my 12" G.I. Joe figures because they fit great if you cut the plastic ring off and they’re scaled to a more realistic size.

Hey man. This site is freaking awesome. Just wanted to say u r doing a great job and i’ve enjoyed many of your articles. i’m only a year younger than you and this stuff brings back memories.

we have one of those chicken machines, at a grocery store in our hometown. it doesn’t play music though, but still lays eggs.

Keep trying on the Blinky Rings - I got two, one worked (.500 average??). The working ones are very cool - worth getting a few duds. Most likely the batteries are reversed/dead. It seems like if the ring rattles apart on the trip over from whatever distant slave archepelago they are made, the batteries might short out on the metal ring parts in the capsule. Most of the rings had fallen apart in the machine that I found. The ring that worked, was the one which was intact in the capsule.

Ok, so I’m 35, and not to sound too terribly fartishly old, this really brings back memories of the mid-70s when my friends and I would slavishly pump quarters into one of these things in the always vain hope of getting the lighter. There was this gold or silver lighter in a lot of the quarter machines, but only one person I knew ever got one. And it actually worked.

God, the seventies were great, if only because then people trusted their children with the secret of fire.

Of course, the snakering i kept getting was quite wicked too. Too bad I gave them away to Tabitha, who gave me only cooties and heartache in return.

the ring you that lights up has the batterys put in backwards.I gave it to my girl as a promise ring:) But now all she says is that, I think shes only worth 50 cents.

I guess I m just an Inconsiderate bastard. So much for trying to be cute.

Holly crap. You make me laugh. I poopy so hard. You me like funny ha ha. I like machine gift giver with more happiness. Thank you.

I’m still curious about these machines whenever I pass them. That’s a really great part of having a 7 yr.old daughter, I look like a wonderful dad giving his kid a thrill whenever I give her a quarter for one, but I get almost as big a kick out of it.

Incidently, she’s into the Shrek and alien figurines (both just a quarter) what a deal!

I wonder what the TRU down here in Honolulu is like, I haven’t been there for at least 10 years. I was at Times Square a few months ago, and there was this huge line into the TRU. I couldn’t figure it out.

Hahaha that was the funniest work time killer i think i have ever read. Holy crap that feed us a live insect machine is just scary

Ever wonder that if you were to put in just one more quarter you would receive that FM radio? Just a thought…

what do clearnance items have to do with vending machines? i can see a connection but i’m not sure i understand… i suppose this makes more sense than the giant worm link leading to the front page.

anywho, you missed the paratroopers, they were the of the coolest things kids could get at the grocery store in my neighborhood. yep it was them and the fake mad balls that were small and made of plastic. further, about the chicken machine… for me it wasn’t the chicken so much as the eggs themselves which can sometimes be found coming from regular machines. my bro and i used to use these eggs to hold pennies, rocks, water etc. to chuck at animals, cars and of course, each other. these mini grenades split open on impact and whatever was inside splattered out. this was better than just throwing regular eggs because we were dirt poor and ate eggs for dinner.

There’s a chicken machine in this museum of a mall in Baldwinsville, NY. It’s called the Tri-county mall, and walking down its echoey floors you’ll see a vast array of stores that bit the dust years ago. There are disco-balls that hang from the ceiling, for crying out loud. There is only pizza shop and a card shop left, which is enough to bring in the 12 year old boys.

ok so the chicken vending machine…omg i was so excited to see that…there was one at the local supermarket i went to with my grandparents a as a little kid and i always got something from it…it was at a METS supermarket in the Bronx…i havent been back there in years so i dont know if its still there but it was by far THE BEST!

hey, i love those blinking rings. to make them work, though, you have to remove this plastic, black ring around the middle, and screw the top into the bottom! that’s it! and those are some serious batteries in there! give them another chance, they’re worth it!

Anybody who knows where to find those little metal rings they used to sell in vending machines that have the little rivets in them that always broke when you put them on please let me know!

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