August 2, 2012
Thrift Store Thursday #1 (Part 1)

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that I’ve been buying a lot of junk from thrift stores this year. It’s a really cheap way to acquire fodder for customs (even though I haven’t found uses for the bulk of it yet), and in any case I come across a lot of wild stuff I’ve never seen before. For instance, who knew that — way back in 1997, no less — Disney released a Hercules figure with a highly detailed sculpt and respectable articulation even by today’s standards?

Hero Hercules (from 1997!) and Hasbro's 6-inch movie Thor

I’m sure somebody knew about it, mind you, but I certainly wouldn’t have had I not stumbled across the figure in a plastic bag with a colored tag stapled to the top of it. 😛

So yeah, I find lots of stuff at thrift stores — and I’m going to start documenting those finds here on the Scary-Crayon blog in a new feature called Thrift Store Thursday! I probably won’t post it every Thursday, and I might not even post it only on Thursdays — but I’m still going to call it “Thrift Store Thursday,” because this is Scary-Crayon and I can do stuff like that. (Also, I kinda miss writing Bootleg Tuesday over on Articulated Discussion, so the name is sort of in tribute to the old feature and site.)

Three bags full... of thrift store toys.

Here’s the haul for installment numero uno! Like the baa-baa black sheep and its wool, today we’ve got one — two — three bags full. Of thrift store toys, not wool! (And okay, that one bag isn’t really very “full,” but you get the idea.) These bags were $0.90, $0.30, and $1.90 for a total of $3.10 before tax, and you’ll note that my calculation doesn’t quite match the prices on the bags. That’s because, on Sundays and Mondays, the local thrift stores offer 50% off on select tag colors — pretty much all of them except one. It almost always works out that the stuff I want is in the bags that aren’t on sale (they do that shit on purpose just to spite me), but I still end up popping in on one of those two days to try my luck at the thrift store color lottery. Sometimes I get lucky and save a whole 30 cents.

The contents of the $1.90 bag.

So I’d normally start with the cheapest bag and work up, but today we’ll do the reverse and kick things off with the contents of the $1.90 bag. Most of the time, while I sometimes find several desirable figures in a thrift store bag o’ toys, I mainly get the thing for one figure in particular. If you had to guess, which figure would you think that I bought this bag for? Smart money would be on the ginormous faceless Rodney Copperbottom figure (who’s apparently from Robots, a movie I haven’t seen), but smart money would be dead wrong — I didn’t even initially realize that thing was in the bag! Maybe the two Snake Eyes figures? Not so much, though they might come in handy in 4″ figure customizing projects. And nobody would guess that I bought the bag for the jailbird, perplexed professor, or random stunt bike dude.

Yep, I bought the bag for this oddly proportioned figure.

Yeah, I bought the bag for this gal right here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: What the hell is wrong with her proportions? And she is very oddly proportioned. It works for those Rescue Heroes figures or whatever they’re called, but, whereas those have really oversized heads and chunky builds all around, Lieutenant “Gears” Mecaniks of the Major Powers & the Star Squad line (don’t ask how long I spent trying to ID that figure via Google guesswork) sports a more/less normal head/torso size (as far as action figures and cartoon characters go, anyway) but overlong sinewy monkey arms and ridiculously oversized hands and feet. So her build is freakish as hell, and I’m sure the guys were equally intimidated by the gigantic magna-gauntlet on her right hand. Why the heck did I need this figure?

Seriously, that looks really familiar...!

It was the face. Seriously, I came across this bag pretty early on during this visit to the thrift store, and I initially left it on the peg ($1.90 is more than I like to pay for anything at the thrift store unless I know it’s going to be useful for a particular project). But I kept thinking about the Lieutenant’s face, and how it looked like someone — and how I couldn’t quite place the likeness despite my strong feelings of recognition regarding it. So after I found the other bags elsewhere in the store, I came back to this bag one last time… and then it hit me. BY GOD DID IT HIT ME.

And since I really need to leave for work, that’s where we’re going to end this entry. Leave any comments and/or guesses you’ve got, and I’ll reveal the secret — and discuss the remainder of the bootleg toys — when I get back this evening. Until then!

-posted by Wes | 7:59 am | Comments (9)
9 Comments »
  • Hero says:

    I hear some quality tat from England has made its way to you 🙂

  • Ewan says:

    I love it! from the ashes of Bootleg Tuesday comes Thrift Store Thursday! We’re really movin’ on up in the world here! ;P

    And I know who she looks like! It’s that chearacter…what’s her name…YES! It’s Lieutenant “Gears” Mecaniks of the Major Powers & the Star Squad line!

    • Wes says:

      Ha ha! Had you actually heard of the line in your neck of the woods? I knew absolutely nothing about it until a day ago, and most of the few sites that do have info about it don’t even mention the existence of the Lieutenant Gears figure. Weird.

      • Ewan says:

        No, I haven’t heard of this line here before. Never seen the toys either.

        And I wish we had thrift stores that are actually this cheap!

        • Wes says:

          Trust me, you don’t! I’d gladly pay (a little) more if it meant they actually inspected and cleaned the toys before putting them out.

  • BubbaShelby says:

    Thrift store bags of goodies are always fun!

    And I’m gonna have to guess ‘Starbuck.’

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