Finally, finally, after a semi-long hiatus, some finds that warrant a special post, on the same night I found them, no less. A trip to the State Road Goodwill tonight resulted in one “great” find and one “YES” find.
Read the last paragraph of this post, and perhaps you’ll understand why I was so jazzed to come across this first item. Please ignore the fact I chose to photograph it in the messiest spot in the universe.
A 60th anniversary roaring box edition of King Kong! Only cost $1! I’ve been hoping to come across one of these “in the wild” for years! And even better, it’s the more-scarce colorized edition! I came close, several times, to pulling the trigger on Ebay for regular black & white editions, but for whatever reason, didn’t. Fears of the now-ancient battery that powers the chest leaking certainly played a part in that. Anyway, I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to find a roaring box King Kong in person, they’re apparently not particularly rare, but no joke, this is the first one I’ve ever come across while out and about. Anyone watching me as I snapped it off the shelf was probably like “really?” but I don’t care.
Yep, colorized, from when that dubious enhancement was seen as a necessary alternative to the ‘real’ black & white version. Unless they just announced something I wasn’t paying attention to, outside of pirated versions made from old Laserdiscs or what have you, this edition of King Kong isn’t available on DVD in the U.S. It goes without saying I prefer seeing the film in black & white as intended, but I will say as far as the colorization of King Kong goes, well, I’ve seen worse.
Now over 20 years old and against all odds, the roaring feature actually still works! Maybe not all that well; it seems fairly quiet, but it’s more than I would have expected. I would have bought this tape even if it didn’t roar, but it still functioning is a nice bonus.
As much as a I love my King Kong thing, the real winner of Goodwill tonight is what’s coming up next. It seems that someone donated a whole lot of mid-1970’s to early-1980’s toys, and believe me when I say these are the kinds of things you just don’t see at Goodwill on a regular basis. Certainly not at the ones around me. Nearly as soon as I walked in, I was seeing all kinds of ancient stuff: kiddie pinball machines, any number of race car toys/tracks, board games, even some kind of space station thing. And just when I thought I had seen it all, I’d come across something else I’d missed.
It’s the kind of thing that can lead to massive impulse buying, and you’d better believe I was scooping up so many items that my cart was overflowing. I never intended on buying every single one of them, but no one would dare violate the unspoken rule of taken something out of someone’s cart. (Would they?) I just had to safeguard them until I had a chance to go through the lot and see what was worth buying and what wasn’t.
Unfortunately, pretty much everything was incomplete, sometimes seriously so. The ones that used batteries and whatnot may or may not have worked. In the end, I ended up buying only one thing, something I knew I was going home with the second my eyes fell on it. You know how I sometimes state that I’d fight someone for ____________ should I come across ____________ at a yard sale/thrift store/etc.? This is one of those items:
The Mini Monster Play Case from Remco’s 1980 line of Universal Monster figures?! Oh I’m buying it and you can’t stop me. I may have snapped King Kong up fast, but my grabbing of this was something more akin to Bruce Lee. We’re talking lightnin’ quick moves here. Keep going lady, this one’s mines. I’m not sure if everyone (anyone?) can relate to this, but this was one of those times where you’re so excited about finding something, that immediately you get insanely protective of it, as if someone will try to take it away from you. I’m not kidding, I think the last time I got like that in this Goodwill was when I found an incomplete M*A*S*H Vodka dispenser a couple summers ago.
I knew when I looked inside that it wasn’t remotely complete. Honestly, I didn’t care. Even if this was the case alone, nothing inside, no accessories whatsoever, I was buying it, because I love the Universal Monsters just that much. The case may not have been complete, but there was something even better inside…
Four of the six Universal Monster figures from this line! There’s The Gill Man, Dracula, The Mummy, and The Phantom Of The Opera, all in really nice shape. Only Frankenstein and The Wolf Man are missing.
Actually, when I found all this, The Phantom was laying outside of the case and with his cape off. Since the chances of him being in this Goodwill and not coming with this set are less than zilch, I returned him to his rightful place with the other three, but it’s clear someone must have been looking at this before I got there. I wonder if there were Frankenstein and Wolf Man figs that someone bought separately? Keep in mind, the case originally didn’t come with any figures back in 1980, so the original owner may have had only the ones seen above. I certainly looked all over for any further displaced figures, but no luck. Not that I’m complaining, because I didn’t have any of them, and I totally would have been happy with just The Gill Man and/or Dracula. As far as I’m concerned, The Phantom and The Mummy are just nice bonuses.
Just like King Kong, there were times in the past where I came close to buying some of these figures on Ebay, but backed off because the price was just a bit too high for my tastes. I sure can’t complain about the price here, because the entire set cost me three big dollars! The figures alone, especially in this nice of shape, are worth waaay more than $3 apiece, never mind four of them together in a very good condition (albeit incomplete) Monster case.
Yep, miracles can still happen at Goodwill, you just gotta be in the right place at the right time. I don’t know when all this stuff went out on the floor or what was bought before I walked in the door, but damn dude, I couldn’t be happier with what I did get.
All that and Son of Ghoul was brand new tonight. Today has been a good day.
THE NORTHEAST OHIO VIDEO HUNTER 