The Countdown Begins Tomorrow!!!

To get geared up for my addition to the infamous Countdown to Halloween I bought a 500￥ ticket @ 7-11 to win a Stitch item expecting to get one of those cheap ass toys that you usually get. Lo and behold, but I won one of the top prizes, a slipper. (You read that right, a single slipper that you stuff both of your feet in to keep them warm. I'll be regifting this sucker asap!)

Giving a nod to my follower Erick, here are some links to the organizers of Countdown to Halloween:

John Rozum at johnrozum.com
Shawn Robare at Branded in the 80s
Jon K at Jon's Random Acts of Geekery

Be sure to surf on over to any of those guys or just click the little banner below or at the top right of my blog.




This little video will also enlighten you as to our collective Monster Madness:



I'm a little too impatient to wait for tomorrow, so here is a poster I'm working on for our Halloween party in 31 short days. (Gratitude to the Gratis Greatness of i-mockery for the Spooky Letter Generator!)

Ultra-Kubrick!

These came out in 2004, back when Kubricks were still relatively cheap and you actually got a cookie/candy with them!









As you can see, I'm missing the Ultraman himself and one of the bad guys. But I did get all of the creepy humans and the other not-so-creepy villains!

We're No Angels!

Today is Michaelmas or All Angels Day and it just so happens that it's also my pseudo-birthday! (For those of you too lazy to click on the above, my birthday is Christmas Day and when I was a wee lad, we celebrated it on St. Michael's Day.)

Without further ado (and a grand tip of the halo to the Grand Comics Database), here's my tribute to Angels:

It's PEPSIMAN!

One of the first things I collected here were PepsiMan Caps. I had never seen the commercials but I did see a big billboard of him above a game center in Shibuya when I went comic/toy shopping. Apparently, PepsiMan was so popular that they came out with a PlayStation game in '99. There's a Canadian connection as well for WILDCATS comic artist, Travis Charest first drew him!



The first series was out before I arrived to Japan and it was a fairly innocuous set of 100 Sports-affiliated poses. I have never felt the need to track these down.



The next year, they came out with PepsiMan with various types of fast food and PM posing in the Alphabetic letters in PEPSI (see above.) I managed to track down the junk food at Flea Markets over the years.






My first year here, they came out with the PM Accident Series. These were all very amusing but I've only retained 4 of them. I suspect I gave a few of them away as souvenirs.






















Hey, here's Korea's version of PepsiMan!




I'll discuss the next two series on Friday (my inaugural Halloween post) but the last one to come out was the Exercise series. I'm missing Diet Pepsi (and the purple-socked alternative!)















Here you can see several commercials in a row, there are a couple of amusing ones...

Puffy Stooges!

The 80s were memorable for several reasons, not the least of which was Puffy Stick-Ons! Here's a set that I dug up while tidying today that you might recognize...

Phoning It In.

Thanks to my latest win at UFO Catcher, I will never be caught without a fully charged phone again!





Unlike the poor folks in this video...



Now if I can only figure out how it works!

Got Peanuts In It?

Last night's Echophonyk was pretty good (slow start gradual improvement), but since I smacked the crystal of my camera last week, I have no photographic evidence. I had some of the hotties squealing with delight as they boogied with Santa but I've learned that the old bod is beginning to wear out. My lungs are not what they used to be! Afterwards, I popped into 3 other bars to promote our Halloween gig and bumped into an old acquaintance from my Soma days...it's wacky Wako!





Recently, the conbinis have been selling their candy and if you buy 2, you get an extra treat. This one gave us a mini-Peanuts bag.







Since I'm on a Dino-kick, here's a favourite strip from the early 70s. But since when does the knee bone connect to the wrist bone? That's one messed up T-Rex!








On the way to bridge today, (came 2nd, I gotta play hungover more often) I came across Hot Pepper with a Snooped up cover.











After bridge I discovered some intriguing little phone straps. I really wanted a Thinker on the Stinker, but all I got were several potties.