Born into a family with three much older moviegoing brothers, I was taught the ways of The Force from very early on. I used this so-called "Force" to make my parents buy me every Star Wars toy, game, doodad and gizmo I could find. Somehow, the official Star Wars tissue brand eluded me.

The Puffs Company hooked up with George and an Ugnaught to provide The Empire Strikes Back Puffs tissues, which were just your ordinary everyday Puffs tissues...in a cooler box. Actually, there were several ESB boxes available, depicting everything from a Dagobah scene to an AT-AT onslaught on Hoth. I guess you bought the Dagobah tissues when you had one of those really mindfuckingly contemplative flus, and the AT-AT attack box when you just had to viciously sneeze constantly.

Though unmentioned in the commercial from which the screengrabs above were taken, each box had a cutout character poster on the bottom. The posters were left uncolored -- that task was left for any kids brave enough to try to color in laminated cardboard with a Crayola crayon. Shit don't work, son.

While the television commercial is technically an '80s ad, its motif is far more similar to the many Star Wars toy commercials of the '70s, where the featured product was given a back-seat, so a kid with limited vocational skills could say more in thirty-seconds than John Moschitta Jr. ever did. In the case of the Puffs commercial, at least he's sharing the wordcount with an actress playing his Maw, and later, with C-3P0 and R2-D2. No, really.

First, the mother stuff. She walks in, and the kid's obviously sick, but he wants to play football, so he's acting all bitchy about it. Mom knows just what to do. Yanking a box of Star Wars Puffs from thin air, the child accepts his fate gracefully, apparently believing that being stuck inside sick with a Star Wars tissue box is better than being outside playing with friends. It's not that I don't wholeheartedly agree, but it's hard to imagine a kid who liked football shaking on a deal like this. The football kids were better than us, see.

Quickly losing himself in a sea of Star Wars, the kid's bedroom turns into outer space, and C-3P0 and R2-D2 appear, evidently able to walk around outer space as if it had full gravity and a system of invisible sidewalks. The Droids never address our snot-ridden hero directly, making obvious the fact that we're reusin' some of that fancy green screen footage shot for the film here.

Returning to reality as his mother reenters the room, the child is now a huge proponent of having a cold, and he "can't wait to sneeze again!"

Wait until he notices the cutout poster on the bottom of the box. Boy's gonna piss himself.

Click here to watch the Star Wars Puffs Tissues commercial.

I'm seeing dead leaves. It's windy, kind of cold and halfway to stormy. It smells like the inside of a freshly used washing machine outside. Autumnesque Saturday Night Threads were always my favorite.

While cleaning out some boxes, I came across a suspicious plastic bag filled with really old vending machine eggs/toys that I have absolutely no recollection of purchasing. The eggs are really small and the contents universally antiquated to the point where I'm going to say they're '70s era at the youngest, and if for no other reason than to justify the fact that I own them, tonight we are going to see what's inside.

Unworthy of more than a passing mention was a bunch of crappy plastic jewelry, but what's seen above warms my heart to degrees five thousand times greater. Squirmels! Baby Squirmels! "Squirmels," for those unaware, was a collection of soft, fuzzy worms with friendly eyes with an "invisible" wad of twine attached to the each of their noses. The idea was that kids could hold the twine and manipulate the cute worms to look like they were running around under their own power, and lord, I loved those things. These worms aren't of the official Squirmels brand variety, but they're exactly alike in everything except size. If I could hug them without disintegrating them, I would. There were at least ten of 'em in the bag, and that's at least ten reasons for me to do this:

With junky jewelry and happy Squirmels eliminated, what was left was a hodgepodge of goofy toys and charms that remind me very much of the basket full of freebies my childhood dentist would offer up to all the cavity-ridden kids who took their sentences like men. The skeleton figure is a favorite, but I'm also fond of the weird monkey pendant and random black alligator, probably because it gives me the chance to make up some connected history shared between the two. The lady fingertip thing is almost worth another set of emoticons. On the lesser side are the inoperable lockets, stupid yellow cat and lousy balloon. I will chew and swallow them now.

I had to go buy a birthday card this afternoon, and while the lady at my local pharmacy rung up a card and gift bag that cost three times more than any cards and gift bags should, I spotted the weird packages of Tic Tacs seen above. And then...I goofed.

While my mind said "OOOH!" like it usually does whenever strange new candy is first spotted, this time, my mouth decided to follow suit. My dumb stupid mouth. I don't think I can ever go back to this particular pharmacy. I'll forever be known as the "guy who 'ooohed' over new Tic Tacs." They're probably talking shit about me right now.

Anyway, starting with the lesser of the two, "Citrus Twist" Tic Tacs blend lemony yellow and limey green mints together for an assault on the eyes and the tongue and -- if you count the pleasant chattering of a box of Tic Tacs in one's pocket -- the ears. Pretty sure I could do without another lemon Tic Tac for the rest of my life, but the lime mints are at least interesting, and very, very limey. They would've been better served ditching the lemons, keeping the limes and calling 'em "Margarita" Tic Tacs. Tell me you wouldn't buy "Margarita" Tic Tacs. With a straight face, I mean.

The "Fruit Festival" Tic Tacs are a bigger production; they come in a BIG box that makes me hands look so demure, and the label tells me that they're, in fact, a "limited edition" variation. These are really, really good. Unless you're cherry picking with a watchful eye, there's no way to prepare your mouth for the sensations of various surprise fruit flavors as they dissolve and conspire to make all the saliva in your mouth taste like fruit salad. I don't even mind the lemon Tic Tacs so much when they're hitching rides with cherry and orange.

I mean WHOA HEY, new Tic Tacs! Can today possibly have any more major events in store for me?

I don't feel good tonight. Can I owe you one?