It's Been A Long Time... Favorite Stuff I Got Recently: SNES Classic/Star Wars Shirt/Spiderman/Apples/Boo Berry

There's been a lengthy lag in time since my last post.  It's because...  I got a temporary counsel position with a medical device company downtown and have been working since the beginning of September (and therefore, no posts).   I know that's not a valid excuse to stop posting but well, I got busy...  For those who inquired, thanks for caring!!!  This post will break the seal and get me back on my posting schedule.  So, enjoy a glimpse of Pop's world over the past month and a half!!! 

Continuing on my Force Friday II post, Toys R Us in Bloomingdale did get my shirt in after all.  Here are pics of the exclusive Funko shirt:

Chewy

Rey and Porg

I got to Target early on September 29th and was rewarded with... a SNES Classic!!!  Early bird gets the worm, right?

Nothing like the smell of gamers early in the morning!!!

Number 17, woo hoo!!!

Almost there...

Jackpot!!!

With Halloween around the corner, I got part of the inspiration for my Pop's Ghostly moniker, my favorite cereal in the world... Boo Berry!!!

Too bad Halloween is only once a year...

There's Boo himself in all of his berry glory!!!

I paid 13 dollars for a 5-dollar bag of apples from an apple orchard in Woodstock (80 in total for my family).  But Hell, it's all about the experience in picking the apples right?

I did not see any apples that looked like those that you find at Jewel or Mariano's...

The pumpkin did not come off of a tree...

Wifey did make a delicious apple pie though...

Finally, we had a nice trip to Enchanted Castle where I won an awesome Spider-Man in the claw machine!

Do you want a balloon too, Georgie?

What a crappy Go-Kart picture I took.  Small track but big fun racing against a bunch of elementary school-aged girls it was.  All I needed was a Koopa shell and a banana peel.

Still had the U.F.O Catcher glory in me from my Japan days!

Well, got that guilt off of my chest for not posting so long.  Thanks for the read and have a good one!

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Force- Force Friday II; Toys R Us, Bloomingdale, Illinois

Another quick post.  About a week ago, saw this ad for the new Star Wars toys:

Upon seeing it, I immediately wanted to partake in the Star Wars excitement as part of the bonus of being back home in the States.  What I wanted most was the free shirt for attending the festivities, much like in high school and college when we got shirts to prove we were actually at fill-in-the-blank concert.   So, at 11:30pm on Thursday night, I hopped into the Camry and drove 4.8 miles to the closest Toys R Us.

I got to Toys R Us around 11:45pm.  On the way there, I did not hit any stoplights.  To my relief, the crowd was not too large and it looked like I'd be getting my shirt and poster.  I made small talk with the other geeks in line with me and Facebooked and Twittered the fact I was in line so the world would know that Pops was getting a limited edition Star Wars Force Friday II shirt, a poster and whatever goodies that were to be released.

On the dot at midnight, the doors were opened and the small crowd rushed to the action figure aisle.  Immediately I wondered where the free shirts and posters were.  They were not at the door, so I figured they must be at the action figure aisle and joined the rush.  They were not at the action figure aisle either.  At that point though, my curiosity about the new toys took over and I started snapping pics on my iPhone. 

That's mine dammit!!!

The other fans were most interested in the deluxe figures and were looking, or more accurately, jockeying for position and grabbing them.  To be honest, of what was released on Friday, the selection wasn't too great and nothing was too exciting.  This might be the fact that Disney doesn't want to reveal too much before the movie is released.  Here are some pics of what I saw:

Holy Snokes!!!

Porgs

More Porgs

And yet more Porgs

New character!

Another new character!!!

This guy looks bad-ass, much tougher than those imperial guards from ROTJ

Relative to the Sarlacc pit?

New Lego set 1

New Lego set 2

New Lego set 3

New Lego set 4

Worse yet, I still didn't know where the free shirts and posters were.  I asked an employee about the shirts, and to my chagrin, he told me that they had not gotten the shirts.  My first impression was that the whole campaign had been a big lie, a false advertisement to get us into the door.  After a pause, the employee then told me to go to the Service Desk and have them take my name and number so I could be called when the shirts arrive.   I trudged my way over to the Service Desk, gave them my name and number and grabbed a poster, which they did have, and left the store. 

The poster is pretty cool  I admit.

Being late at night, I was disappointed at not returning home with the shirt.  Whether I actually will get a shirt or not is to be seen.  I'll keep you guys posted.  Thanks for the read, and have a good weekend.  

 

The Job Search... Well... Not a Good Sign... From the Magic Eight Ball

The Magic Eight Ball has played an important role in my life.  My then-future wife thought it was funny that I made decisions based on the Eight Ball's advice.  Little did she know that I actually did take heart of the words appearing in the dark liquid within.  You see, the Eight Ball provides stress-free decision making.  Other than the stupidity of being guided by complete chance, you can't blame the Eight Ball for any of the answers it gives.  Like flipping a coin, it has absolutely no biases or faulty thought processes.  In that sense, the advice it gives is pure and beautiful.

I have had an Eight Ball since, well, before I can remember.  And the odd thing is...  It generally has been... correct.  I did spend a long time being single in 1999.   The Blackhawks didn't get past the St. Louis Blues in the first round of the 2002 Stanley Cup Playoffs.  I didn't get the Disney counsel position in 2014.

First things first, I gave my former boss an Eight Ball for Christmas.  After the company let me go in early March, while in her office, I secretly asked it if I would be alright job-wise... And it answered "It is Certain."  That's reassuring.

But today I asked it whether I would get an in-house counsel position soon and it answered:

Ouch.  I need full-time work as soon as possible.   Then I asked it whether I would get adequate hours during my part-time independent contractor legal role.  It answered:

Not good at all.  I like my new boss, the work and working remotely.  That was quite deflating.  Next I asked it whether I would start a successful business with my buddy Al.  It answered:

I waited for less than a second and asked it whether I would start a successful business with Al again.  This time it answered:

Snap.  Al is like one of my best buddies, a really inspirational guy.  Pretty disheartening set of answers, all in a row.  I asked the Eight Ball whether I would be a millionaire by the end of this year.  To that it answered:

Damn, 2017 just won't be my year I guess.  I also got a negative response to whether I would have a full-time job by August of this year.  Finally, I asked it whether I would have a business that would make $500,000 by the end of the year.  It answered:

There is a God!!!  I can sleep easier tonight.  Thanks for the read!!!

Lego Aquazone Aquanauts Store Display

I remember when Lego came out with the Aquazone line, it was the winter of 1994, my senior year of high school.  That winter I had my first job, seasonal cashier at the Toys R Us on Gold Road in Schaumburg.  My cousin Brandon convinced me to join him at the store.  It really wasn't convincing because Toys R Us was already my favorite store and my cousin was my best bud.  The above display was prominently featured in the Lego aisles at Toys R Us, K-Mart, Venture and other stores that have folded since the mid-1990's.

Upon starting the job, I realized what a tough job standing eight-hour shifts tending to grumpy parents was.  Brandon on the other hand had the plum job of looking for toys for callers on the phone.  He donned a headset and took his sweet, sweet time looking for Tickle Me Elmo, Power Rangers and Holiday Barbie.  I remember seeing him once sitting on boxes resting when he knew that they didn't have an item, pretending to look for it.  He gave me a smirk as I frantically was trying to take cash from and give correct change to the never-ending line of shopping parents.  How unfair.

For some reason we didn't have many shifts together, maybe Toys R Us had some type of Saving Private Ryan policy that prevented relatives from working together.  Or maybe they just knew we'd mess around on our joint shifts, which actually did occur the next two summers while Brandon and I worked together in the shipping department at Motorola.

Back to the Legos, the Aquazone line somewhat paid homage to Disney's Horizon's attraction whereby humanity had a colony of undersea explorers.  The undersea explorers called Aquanauts mined for little silver Lego crystals.  Unlike the Disney attraction, however, there were these bad guys called the Seasharks trying to steal the little silver pieces from the Aquanauts.  More about the line can be found here. 

I think I bought an Aquazone set after my shift every week I worked at Toys R Us, which was only a little over a month and which only paid $4.75 an hour.  Silly me.  For some reason, a few years later I ended up acquiring an Aquazone display, as shown in the pictures above and below, at a toy show.  Looking back, I'm not sure why I bought the display.  I think it was one of those things my Dad thought was cool and I was somewhat pressured into buying once I showed a little interest into it.  He loved bargaining with those dealers at the toy shows and I can imagine that once the game started, we couldn't back out until we had the entire glory of the 20-pound wooden Lego store display.

The display lights up when you press one of the buttons and you can see two Lego sets within the bubble.

Here's a better look of the goodies inside of the bubble.

And if you press the top button, it plays a recorded Aquazone message.  Like this:

If you are wondering why the display is in the box, it's because I just sold it earlier this week.  If we backtrack, I had forgotten about the Lego display for some 20 years or more until we moved back to the U.S. from Japan.  When we moved back, Mom gave us over 30 boxes of my stuff, mostly action figures and other toys.  This bad boy was in one of the boxes.

Of course the batteries were dead when I first unearthed it, but a little dusting off and eight shiny new D batteries got it running again like we were back in 1994.

Selling it was somewhat of a fiasco.  I didn't want to ship the display across the country due to the set possibly being damaged in transit and the incredible pain of packing a tube-T.V. sized 20-pound wooden box of Legos.  As a result, I listed it on eBay and marked "Local Pick-Up Only"  for the shipping.

Sure enough, within 10 hours of listing it, some dude from Los Angeles selects "Buy-It Now" and becomes the new owner of my Lego store display.

Oh well.  We worked out the shipping details and it ended up taking me over an hour to pack the display.  Mind you even though I unearthed it only a few months ago, Mom had packed it to be stored in the attic, which is completely different than being packed to be sent on truck/plane across the country.  Luckily wifey helped me by driving me to the Post Office and we jointly carried the giant box into the lobby and onto the counter.  The clerk couldn't find a ruler to measure the box, and we ended up paying 20 bucks less than he told us the shipping amount would be.  I bought insurance just to be sure it didn't get too damaged.  We'll see how and if it gets to Los Angeles in about a week.  I'll update this once it arrives there.  Thanks for the read and have a good one today.

Super Mario Happy Meals!!!

As I reach closer and closer to 40, it's extremely rare that a Happy Meal will get me excited.  I mean, there's about zero chance that Deadpool will get a toy assortment that includes a hooker/stripper girlfriend figure, chest-exposed Angel Dust, puking Colossus and a Wade Wilson with a baby arm.

Well, here's one that might have me at McDonald's once, maybe twice a week.  To promote the impossible-to-find-Switch, McDonald's has eight different Super Mario Brothers premiums that may be picked up until May 22nd.  Part of the reason I'm nuts about the figures is my seven-year old is the world's biggest Mario Kart fan.  She can turn any conversion into one about Peach, Luigi and Yoshi.  In fact, she once told me that she never gets sad at school because she can always just think about Mario.  The other part of the reason is the figures are just cool.  There's a Luigi that shoots out of a pipe, a Mario that lights up like he's in invincible mode and a red Koopa shell that zig-zags around once pulled back, amongst other cool figures.  Check out the picture below for the different prizes available.

The little one's favorite character in the Mario world is Baby Peach, a baby version of Princess Peach.  That said, she loves the Princess in all shapes and forms.  Looking at the above assortment, there was a one-in-eight chance of my little princess getting the princess.  Already preparing for the almost inevitable of not getting her first choice, while in line, my daughter told me that she would be happy even if she got the evil Bowser.  Her reasoning was that she needed a villain for the rest of her Mario figures to square off against.  While waiting, the cashier gave my daughter her drink for the meal, chocolate milk.  Even the milk containers are Mario themed.  Nintendo and McDonald's went all out for this promotion.

The food took longer than expected and my family retreated to the table.  When I finally got our food, I walked back with the treasure.  We went without soft drinks and the whole meal was only $13.79.  Not bad at all for a family of four.  I nervously looked at the Happy Meal box and prayed to the Mario gods for a Princess Peach.

I sat down and distributed the meal items.  My youngest one was handed her Happy Meal box last.  We all stopped what we were doing and watched the little one open the box.  Time seemed to stop as she reached her hand into the McDonald's treasure chest.  In slow motion she pulled out...

Princess Peach!!!  We all shouted in joy.  It seriously was my happiest moment in two months with the job situation and the Blackhawks being eliminated in the first round.  We hugged each other and enjoyed the precious moment.  The relief of getting Peach on the first try is enormous.  This bit of luck definitely saved us multiple trips back to McDonald's.  However, even though we got Peach, we plan on returning as the toys are pretty darn cool. 

Thanks for the read and go get yourself some Mario Happy Meals.