// Category Archive for: Toys and Collectibles

Lost & Never Found Again: Gyroscope

Published on March 26th, 2010 in: Lost & Never Found Again, Toys and Collectibles |

gyroscope SMALL

When I was very young, maybe three or four years old, my Grandmother worked at a grocery store, Best Way, in the small Louisiana town where we lived; she was the butcher, actually, but that’s another story.

The Best Way always had an impressive selection of comic books, Cracked, and Mad magazines that I’d read in the break room while visiting my Mam at work, and a pretty decent selection of cheesy toys: cap guns, puffy Batman stickers, jacks, and paddleballs and whatnot, but occasionally, they’d have something special.
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Lost & Never Found Again: Badges And Plastic Babies

Published on March 24th, 2010 in: Lost & Never Found Again, Music, Toys and Collectibles |

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I had a pair of Sparks badges, Kimono My House-era, that I bought on Ebay when I first got into Sparks. (Yes, I was a latecomer). I loved them dearly and wore them on my green winter jacket. A few winters ago, I went on a trip to Amsterdam with my friend Zoe. When we got off the train from Schilpol to Amsterdam Centraal, there was naturally a huge group of people, and even as we were on the platform, I realized that I had lost my Ron badge, but it was too late. There was not going to be any searching around on the ground with such a massive hubbub. I like to think a Dutch Sparks fan found it and they lived happily ever after.
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The Sick Brick: Eric Weber’s Lego Art

Published on September 29th, 2009 in: Art, Current Faves, Halloween, Horror, Issues, Movies, Q&A, Toys and Collectibles, Underground/Cult |

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

Eric Weber is an incredibly interesting and inspirational person. He’s a cult movie junkie, horror film fanatic, Divine devotée, and luckily for us, he writes about these things for Popshifter.

He’s also a visual artist who includes sketching, painting, and photography in his repertoire.

When he’s not following one of his many artistic and creative pursuits, he reenacts scenes from some of his favorite films in Lego form and photographs them.

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Out Of My Shell: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Me

Published on July 30th, 2008 in: Cartoons, Comics, Issues, Movies, Retrovirus, Toys and Collectibles, TV |

By Megashaun

I was in the sixth grade, eleven years old, and I didn’t understand why I wasn’t cool. I only knew I wasn’t. I liked Ninja Turtles and Batman in a time when everyone else in my class was into MC Hammer, Technotronic, and Public Enemy. I didn’t own any albums. I didn’t try chasing the girls. One of my classmates—a boy—asked me which girl I liked and I said I didn’t like any (which was a lie; I didn’t want that secret getting out and risk being made fun of for it) and he asked me if I was gay.
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Top Five Thrift Store Finds

Published on January 30th, 2008 in: Issues, Top Five Lists, Toys and Collectibles |

By Lisa Haviland

author
Mrs. Lou Reed
Sunglasses from Buffalo Exchange, Brooklyn, NY; 2007

The Commack Flea Market was a teenage thrift-store-junkie’s dream: rows upon rows of inexpensive mini-stores—more like clothing bodegas than actual stores—in a multi-level arena five minutes from my parents’ house. It was in the confines of this Long Island mall-reprieve maze that I learned to dig through the chintz and hone in on second-hand gold.
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Kris Kringle Konfessions

Published on November 29th, 2007 in: Holidays, Issues, Toys and Collectibles |

By John Lane

I admit it: I’m old enough to remember (and can now say somewhat unashamedly with the distance of years) when I actually found myself praying—praying—for the complete Welcome Back, Kotter action figures. What did I know? Could I fathom that Travolta would one day be riding the hot rails toward Scientology? Or that Boom-Boom Washington would not pass gracefully into the eighties? Only TV could make a squalid, inner-city school look so attractive, to a Catholic-school kid like me wearing the obligatory monkey-suit every day.
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Reindeer Games

Published on November 29th, 2007 in: Holidays, Issues, Toys and Collectibles |

By Less Lee Moore

reindeer games2
More fun than reindeer
should be allowed to have.

Fear not: this is no paean to the 2000 movie with Charlize Theron and Ben Affleck woefully miscast as two-timing criminal lovers. This is a tribute to a storied family tradition, one involving bizarre rituals and the relentless search for functioning batteries.

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How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Robot

Published on November 29th, 2007 in: Issues, Movies, Science and Technology, Toys and Collectibles, TV |

By Queen Spajina

From sci-fi novels to bartending to chic hotel bars, robots are made to wear many hats and cater to our every whim and desire, ideally without any regard for their own health or welfare.
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