BEST VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT I EVER GOT

A commercial grade popcorn machine! It can make 2 gallons of popcorn at a time! I think it's about 5 feet tall.

Watch it go!

LITTLE DOCTOR FRANKENSTEIN CORPSE REVITALIZING KIT

This is a pretty old drawing but I don't think I've ever posted it here on this blog. Obviously kids shouldn't really play with actual body parts, but I think this would be a solid and worthy toy idea in plastic form. If I were a kid I'd love connecting parts together to create my own full-sized 7 foot tall monster. Maybe size would be an issue. It wouldn't fit in the toy box.
I could see a toy like this having lots of expansion packs, like veins with blood-pumping action and nervous systems to be added to the monster. Light-up eyes. A voice box with a wailing scream which could be set to go off at certain times like an alarm clock.

Once kids constructed their creatures they could stand them upright beside their bedroom doorways, and feel safe and protected. Or maybe kids would be mortified to see that thing standing there when they woke up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water. I know I can't speak for all kids, but I personally would have loved it.

FREAKY GEEKS GUMBALL MACHINE JUNK

These are pretty nifty. They're called Freaky Geeks and you can get this full set for a 3 or 4 bucks right now on Ebay. They're about 1 inch tall so they meet my fit-unnoticeably-into-a-drawer requirement.

This is just the kind of thing to get me into a drawing mood. They all have names but I don't know them. I could google them to find out their names, but the google tab is ALLLLLLL the way over there on the other side of the screen, so forget that!

You can probably attain an entire set the old fashioned way, from a real gumball machine, but I bet you'd spend tens of dollars before getting the last one needed to complete a set.

I FOUND SOME FINGER PUPPETS

At the Hot Topic store in the mall they're selling weird little monster finger puppets. I found two different sets.

There's a zombie set, and a set of strange guys I can't quite figure out. They aren't exactly monsters but they aren't people either. Both sets oddly have six characters each, which is like selling a set of three shoes.
I really like finding little goofy things like this. They put me in the mood to doodle. Lately my home is getting pretty full of junk so I'm not able to get large items anymore. These things are so tiny they blend fairly unnoticeably into a drawer. Also since they aren't famous character products they're really cheap.

WHAT IS THIS FRANKENSTEIN TOY?

I need help. Does anyone know the name of this toy, or where it came from? He's just under 2" tall. My friend gave it to me and he couldn't remember the name, but he said it was a part of a set of figures.

He said it was designed to pull apart so you could mix and match heads and limbs.

The back of the toy says:

(C) 2007
WILD PLANET
ENT., INC.
MADE IN CHINA

I googled that and came up with nothing. I really like this weird little guy, so I'm curious what the other monsters looked like.

JOHNNY WEST'S HORSE

One piece at a time I'm re-accumulating the contents of my childhood toy box. Johnny West, Evel Knievel, and The Six Million Dollar Man were my favorites. Recently my friend gave me a Johnny West figure with most of the little gizmos came with. It's tough to get them all since they're 40 years old, and tiny, and kids would tend to break or lose them.

My cousin and his wife found Johnny West's horse and gave it to me a couple weeks ago. He's in pretty good shape for as much as he's probably been played with. I think his name is Thunderbolt but I'm not positive. There were a few different horses. I realize I could find out by googling it, but I'm old and lazy.

The silhouette of Johnny on his horse is pretty realistic. Woah, horse.

Horse, I thought I said "Woah."

BANG! I know what I'll do now. I'll beat you with a stick.

What's this?.. Wheels?.. He was a ...a robot?
I need to locate the saddle now. He came with some other horse-type items too. I figured the prices would be outrageous on Johnny West merchandise on eBay but they're surprisingly cheap. I have my eye on the wagon, but I suspect it'll be a long time before I win one of those for a price I'm happy about.

ELECTRIC GUITAR PROJECT part 16

Presenting Part 16 of my ongoing guitar-building saga. In the last episode we saw things actually happening again after a long hiatus. Here's a pickup wiring diagram I found on the Seymour Duncan website. I really like his easy diagrams. As you can see from this picture, most of the work is going to be soldering all the wires to the the Volume knob.

It's easiest for me to think of this as 3 separate components rather than a whole chunk of spiderwebby wires going everywhere.

First I soldered 22 gage wires to the Volume knob exactly like the diagram showed me. It's messy but.... well, it's messy. The key to soldering is to heat the component rather than the solder. Once the component is hot enough the solder will flow onto it. That makes a better bond.

It's dangerous when soldering electronics because you don't want to fry the component with too much heat. Some guys use a heat-sink, like an alligator clip attached to the wire to suck off some of the heat. In this case, I had to solder directly to the Volume knob's metal housing and there was no way around heating it up. I just had to hope I didn't cook it too much at this point.

Then I soldered wires to the 2 leads on the jack, and since the pickup wires were too short I lengthened those. All of these wires are extra long for now because I really don't know how long they need to be yet. I skinned to opposite tips of all these wires so I could temporarily hand-twist them together and test everything. Later they'll have to come back apart since I need to thread all the individual pieces through the body of the guitar, into their respective places. I'll be able to shorten the wires as well at that point.

Here I've hand-twisted everything together the way it showed in the above diagram, and I plugged it into the amp.

Here's what no signal looks like in the Audacity recording software.

Then when I turned the volume knob and tapped on the Pickup with a metal object I got a good strong signal. It worked! I didn't fry anything internally with that soldering iron! Yay!

The next step will be routing slots in the body to hold these components. That's gonna have to wait a few more weeks until I can go back to work, since I don't have the right tools here at home. I guess I could drill and chisel out the slots. Maybe I'll do that. I'm thinking out loud.

Here's a picture of my dog Lucy standing next to my house for size comparison. Next year I'm gonna have to do something about that porch carpeting. I don't think it's gonna be very fun.

This is a picture Bob took from back when he babysat her for a while. She doesn't look pleased.

Here's Lucy looking at the mail man.

JOHNNY WEST

This is another Get-Well gift from my good friend Mike. He said he's been trying to build a complete Johnny West figure from auctions on Ebay, and in the process he had enough extra pieces to build a second one for me. It's missing 1 of the 3 bags of gold, but other than that it's a complete set, and in mighty fine condition.
He came with a rifle, a derringer (I think it's a derringer), a knife, a canteen, a chest with a lid that opens, 3 bags of gold to put in it (I'm missing one), a skillet and coffee pot, a coffee mug, 2 branding irons, spurs, chaps, a gun belt and a pistol, a vest, handkerchief and a hat.

Mike made this box for me to keep all the pieces inside.

I had a Johnny West as a kid and it was one of my favorite toys. I think The boot spurs are pretty cool.

Check out that cold stony stare.

The first thing I noticed when I picked him up was how heavy he was. They really made some solid stuff back then.

With all the tiny little accessory pieces it provided a kid with tons of fun.

Check out Johnny on his bold steed. In Lucy's old age she's given up on her resistance to humiliation.

After the evil Sam Cobra shoots at Johnny and he tumbles to the ground, his loyal horse Lucille never leaves his side. She licks his face to revive him and it works. Fortunately the bullet only grazed him. Johnny will ride again.

SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN LUNCH BOX

Here's a new prized possession. I remember being a 2nd grader in the school cafeteria, and all my friends had colorful and exciting lunch boxes like Six Million Dollar Man, Planet of the Apes, Korg 70,000 BC and Scooby Doo, and I only had a dumb ol' blank one with a plaid pattern on the thermos. I hated that thing and was kind of ashamed of it. But now look at me! I'm as cool as all those other 2nd graders now. Ha! I bet they don't even have theirs anymore!

Why is Oscar Goldman running alongside Steve? He's not supposed to be on these missions! He's the brains of the operation! Maybe he just thought it would be cool to watch Steve bat some dudes with a tree. Maybe Steve told Oscar ahead of time he'd be doing that.

Since that one guy is already on the ground and the tree's on the other side of the standing guy, it means this is the second swing. That means the standing guy watched Steve bat that other guy with a tree, and it didn't scare him off. Man is he dumb! And the one on the ground, is that Davey Jones? Does Oscar hate the Monkees?

I figure this is where the meeting took place before the previous incident. It probably went something like this:

OSCAR: You know Steve, these two guys you're going up against, they're a little crazy.

STEVE: I've been thinking about that, Oscar. I figure I'll lure them into the woods where all the trees are, and pull up a tree and bat them with it. It's a pretty good plan because they aren't bionic, and would be unable to pull up trees to bat me.

OSCAR: Man! That plan sounds REALLY good. You know, Steve . . . I'd kind of like to see that, if you don't mind.

STEVE: Sure, you can tag along. Just don't get in my way. I'll be swinging that tree after all.

As you can see in the picture above, on the way to the woods Oscar nearly drove over Steve. It's a good thing Steve has those bionic legs.

But even with the bionics, thanks to Oscar's bungling, Rudy still had to tweak Steve's legs a bit back at OSI.

Oh no! Steve! Get outta space! That's dangerous! Didn't you learn the first time?! This is another fine mess Oscar's gotten Steve into! It sort of makes you wonder who's side Oscar is REALLY on.

The insides have a few specks of rust here and there. I blame the previous 2nd grader who owned it. If I knew who he was I'd give him the shame routine. Then I'd tell him If he isn't old enough to take care of this precious piece of metallic joy then it'll be taken away, and he'll be eating out of a dumb ol' blank lunch box with a plaid pattern on the thermos!

This is not the thermos that grubby little 2nd grader brat was eating Campbell's soup from. The horrible little ingrate lost his thermos. I had to get this one separately off Ebay. Or maybe it WAS the same long lost thermos and I just reunited it with its metallic mama.

MOST USELESS MACHINE EVER

There are a ton of these on Youtube, so I'm not sure if I've found the most useless one or not. I guess if you look around online you could probably find instructions to make them. I'd kind of like to have one for myself.

CAP'N CRUNCH COLORING BOOK

Of all the cereals I think I enjoyed Cap'n Crunch the best, with the monster cereals at a close second. Cap'n Crunch had the best prizes and I liked the way they drew him back then, with the eye bags.

Here's a coloring book I found on Ebay. It's a strange image on the cover. Jean LaFoote is twisting the Cap'n's mustache. Is that a torture? It doesn't look like it hurts. Is it humiliating? Lots of times people will twist their own mustache when they are bored, or when they're thinking up an evil plot. This torture is a failure in my opinion. Much like if he were to twiddle the Cap'n's thumbs for him.

Some of the pages inside were colored. Look at it! It's obvious this kid has no understanding of human sclera! Now that I think about it this is a pretty violent picture for a kid to be coloring anyway. What's going on in the head of THIS kid? Why'd he pick THIS page?

For fun I removed the color. I POSTERIZED the drawing down to 8 colors so there wasn't a whole lot to have to deal with, and then I used the REPLACE COLOR feature, and changed everything (other than the blacks) to white. It only took a few minutes, and TADA!

It seemed too white so I replaced that tan background.

Upon viewing the bad stuff in the book I think, "Wow! That kid needs to do a better job!"

Some of the pages are colored by a kid with more expert abilities. He even did Jean LaFootes' whiskers. When I see this good stuff I think, "Wow! This kid is too old to be doing a coloring book!"
So sayeth a 41 year old guy who bought a Cap'n Crunch coloring book.

OLD ALFRED E. NEWMAN RING

Here's an old ring with the MAD Magazine mascot on it. I'm not sure of the year. I like it because at a glance, and without very close inspection, it passes as a nice dress-up ring. You could wear it to a wedding or a funeral.

It's adjustable!

CAP'N CRUNCH PADDLE BOAT PREMIUM

This is a send-away premium from Cap'n Crunch cereal. It's the most elaborate cereal prize I've ever seen.

Some guy on Ebay is selling a bunch of them. He must have looted some abandoned warehouse. You get them in the original box they were mailed in back in the day.

I got this for $6 plus shipping which is a really good price. I saw some people selling this same thing for $35 and even $60. If you want one you should hurry up. He had a limited supply.

The instructions seem kind of complicated for a kid.

Yikes! Look at all the little finicky pieces! This is probably one of those projects the dad had to do while the kid sat and watched.


It came with 3 rubber bands and they are still in a worthy rubbery state.


Stickers for extra realness!

These paddle boats come in the original boxes and I don't think the parts inside have seen the light of day for decades.
I guess I'll eventually put it together. In the meantime if you want to see what it looks like assembled...

A guy named Jeff Pidgeon got one and put his together. Here's a picture I totally ripped off his blog. I hope he doesn't mind. He has bunches of cool toys and drawings. You ought to check him out by clicking HERE.