My haul contains items that could be labeled "boys' toys" and other items that could be labeled "girls' toys". I've talked about this issue before. For me, it's not about which aisle the toys originally came from. It's all about childhood nostalgia.
Let's start with merch from my favorite movie: Return of the Jedi. I found a small PVC figure of Princess Leia made by Applause in the 90s. She was mixed in with a bunch of loose vintage and newer Star Wars action figures which were marked $2 each. I already have the matching figures of Luke, R2 and the Emperor so I'm glad to add Leia to the ranks. From a different vendor I found this old ROTJ plastic cup in their "everything's a dollar" box. It features Leia and Lando in their disguises on one side and Han and Chewie on the reverse. I have a few other similar pieces including a plastic bowl with Jabba on the side so this fits right in.
I have a thing for Transformer Pretenders. They're weird and make little sense but I've loved them since I found my first at a thrift store years ago (the small Autobot Pretender Longtooth). Today, for $2, I picked up the shell for the small Autobot Pretender Doubleheader. The inner robot and all the bot's accessories are missing but he has his double helmet. One of the things I've never understood about the Pretenders is exactly how these outer shells work as disguises. Who isn't going to notice a two-headed guy in battle armor walk by? How is this a disguise? He'd be better off staying in jet mode (although a jet with twin cockpits isn't exactly inconspicuous either). Mr. "Pay no attention to the fact that I've got two heads, really I'm just a normal, human guy" may go on display with his brethren or he may end up in my big ol' box of incomplete Transformers to await the day I stumble upon his missing pieces.
I've never been a Pokemon fan, but thanks to my lack of cable during college, I did become a Digimon fan. Digimon stuff is harder and harder to come across in the wild so I nab anything I find assuming the price is reasonable. For 50 cents I picked up a little story book and paid $1 for a big bag of trading cards because I could see there were a few Digimon cards inside. The story book features the cast of the second season of the show. The cards were very different from anything I've seen before as each has a center that is transparent like an animation cel. They're also odd in that they're unnumbered and there's no text to read. (The bag also contained a ton of Highlander customizable card came cards, a bunch of Mighty Beanz, Bionicle and Monster Rancher cards and some other odds and ends which will all be making a trip to the donation bin at the thrift store now that the Digimon cards have been extracted).
I've not written about it yet but I am an AFOL, an Adult Fan Of LEGO. I bought this stack of 8 LEGO shop at home catalogs for $5. They date from 1993-1997. I entered my LEGO "dark ages" in the early 90s, just after the first Pirates sets came out, so I didn't have much of anything in these catalogs as a kid. Since rediscovering LEGO as an adult one of the lines I've become interested in is Aquazone. The line ran for a few years in the 90s and featured a number of different factions fighting over crystals under the sea using a variety of fantastical submarines. Most of these catalogs feature spreads on Aquazone sets (and the top one in the pic features Aquazone on the cover). All in all they're a nice glimpse of what LEGO was like in the 90s.
I paid a rather hefty $3 for my next find: a Dr. Blight figure from the old Captain Planet line. The toys were made by Tiger which was much more well known for making the endless number of handheld LCD video games that were everywhere in the late 80s and early 90s. Blight is (so far) my only figure from the line and one I've been on the lookout for. She's just a neat looking figure. Her hair rotates to reveal the horribly scarred left side of her face. She'd fit right into any comic book from the 90s. Seriously, she wouldn't look out of place at all in old issues of X-Force, the Marvel 2099 titles or anything else from that era. Great figure.
I've talked about Popples before and the flea market brought another couple of Popples items into my collection. The first is a big frame tray jigsaw puzzle for $1. It's big but it's also flat which means it's easy to store. The second item is the pink Puffling Popple ($5). The Pufflings are a bit like Popple pets and between my wife and I we now own the red, purple, blue and pink ones.
The vendor that had the Popples also had a bag of 6 C.U.T.I.E. figures for a buck. C.U.T.I.E. was Mattel's "girl aisle" equivalent to their M.U.S.C.L.E. line of small plastic wrestling figures. Being a fan of M.U.S.C.L.E. and plastic figures I was almost certainly going to buy cheap C.U.T.I.E. figures if and when I saw them but the singer figure definitely sealed the deal. She has a very Jem vibe to her (more on Jem in a moment). The figure with the guitar is cool, too. The bride is blah while the sitting figure and figure standing on one foot are OK. That last figure though, the one apparently doing aerobics, now that is something else. I don't even have adequate words. I'll just have to let more pics do the talking for me...
So, saving the best for last, my favorite find of the day was a Pizzazz doll from the Jem line by Hasbro. My childhood experience with Jem is nearly identical to that of my experience with Popples. I knew Jem mostly from the cartoon series that we watched a lot (like Popples, I think it was a part of the USA Network's "Cartoon Express" block of programming). My cousins had some of the dolls but in my house Jem (and her friends and rivals) were cartoon characters. The cartoon was done by the same studio that made the Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons and having watched some of the episodes again recently (when the Discovey Family channel was airing the in the early morning hours) it still held up nicely. It is VERY 80s in every way, but still watchable unlike some of the other shows from my childhood (Chip and Dale and your Rescue Ranger friends, I'm talking about you). And that theme song is a classic!
Since the Jem cartoon was a part of my childhood, I've been interested in getting some Jem stuff for my collection. I found a yellow Jem lunch box in fair shape a while back and had thought that a doll would be cool to find but I didn't expect to find one with most of the original outfit in place and for only $2.50. Credit to my wife for spotting the doll mixed in with a bunch of Barbies and what not.
So as fans of the show will remember, Pizzazz was the leader of a band called the Misfits who were Jem and the Hologram's big rival in the music world. Pizzazz (and her fellow Misfits) were always doing sneaky, underhanded things to try and steal the limelight and stage time away from Jem and the Holograms. The doll is incomplete. She's missing another bracelet, a yellow fabric belt, one long yellow sock (yes just one - asymmetrical, that's how Pizzazz rolled), both her shoes and her guitar. She would also have had a doll stand and a cassette tape with a few songs on it. While similar to Barbie, these dolls are bigger and quite Amazonian in comparison.
Even incomplete I'm happy to have Pizzazz (especially for the price I paid). She's just so 80s and yet also so Courtney Love. She was the perfect way to start the flea market season. Hopefully the rest of the season will be just as outrageous. Truly, truly, truly outrageous.
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