Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles : Enter – The Rat King

All the way across the big pond I have come into passion of a Ninja Turtle gem. I got as a present from my mother, a copy in great shape of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles : Enter – The Rat King. This is a children’s book published in 1990 by Carnival and printed in Great Britain. The book is only 31 pages and for the most part re-tells a story from the cartoon series of the same name. In the United States the series is known as The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so finding something named other than that staple is a true blessing for me.

It appears there were at least 4 books in the series with the same style. It was hard to find much more information about this series as of this posting. The book had a retail price of 1.75 pounds as well. The story takes place when April’s boss gets attacked by a group of wild rats. April must investigate the story of the rats and find out why the rats in the city are overwhelming the people. In comes The Rat King, a clouded man who can control the rats with a magic flute. When The Rat King hears Aprils news report he kidnaps here and then it is up to the turtles to save her.

The writing style is a bid childish but at times they use some pretty big words. It is fun to see how the material has been translated for the European audience. Seeing the word tire spelled out as tyre is just plain fun. Other fun bits are calling dishes crockery, and they use sheepishly to describe how Donatello talks is just hilarious to read.

There are some illustrations in this book as well as text. They choose some weird scenes to depict in the drawings. As you can see April’s face does not look quite right, she looks so angry. In this shot it looks like they forgot to finish drawing Mike’s eye(the one in orange). The artwork is really some of the worst looking renderings of the turtles I have seen published professionally. If you overlook the art you get a simple story with some funny words to read and a nice collection to my growing Ninja Turtles items. Maybe I am just saying that because I got it for free but then again, TURTLE POWER!

Super Dash Rendar

Treasure Hunts 1 - Elvis rises from the grave to defeat Darth Vader!

I have decided to chronicle my adventures of buying and selling items through various means. At my disposal are a number of auction sites and the ever popular craigslist. I find objects and items really interesting for some reason. The bug of collecting is a powerful thing but curious on how moods change. Each item has a story and value finding out those is part of the fund of thrifty shopping.Please note i have a lot of things to do so my spelling and grammar might not be as it should

Let’s start out with a number of items that I have already sold. The first are these two Star Wars action figures both sealed in the package. I got these from a garage sale. When I drove by the sale it did not seem like much but I did see a bunch of VHS tapes that caught my eye so I stopped. The guy had 3 of these figures and I sold off these two. I don’t know where the other figure went and I am kind of glad it got misplaced because I know one day I will be happy to have it. At the garage sale I got each figure for a dollar, I thought it was a sweet deal. Unfortunately the value of these for collectors is pretty low. I actually sold both of these figures at auction for $4. I did make a profit but not as much as I had hoped for. I hope whoever bought them enjoys them.

These came out around the time of Star Wars Episode 1 and were a somewhat big hit. Today however they are not worth that much. Compared to other Star Wars action figures they are some of the poorest in quality. The Comm Chip was actually a cool device. What you did was take it and place it over a reader and then it would play back lines from that character from the movie. I have included a picture of the comm reader so you can see what it looked like as well. I am not really missing the figures that much because I can easily get my hands on others and frankly Anakin is not the best figure to collect.

Is Elvis really still alive? We may never really know the answers will we? This strange book came into my possession because of my girlfriend’s mother. She was getting rid of a bunch of things that we then in turn sold at a garage sale. This was something that did not sell so off to the auction sites. It actually sold on its first time being listed, go figure! It turns out that this book goes for around 5-10. The item sold to an Elvis collector. Having gotten the item for free I made $3.50 on this item. I almost wanted to keep it because of how silly it really is but I want to focus on things I will actually use.

The last item I am going to talk about in this update is this Wii game called Offshore Tycoon. I picked this game up at Toy’s R Us for $10 on sale. It is a budget title meaning that at new it only cost $20. The game is kind of like Diner Dash if any of you have played that or Cooking Mama. It was a pretty bad game I do have to say. I bought the game to do a review on it and try to make my money back on it. I did well I sold it for $5 and played the game for a few hours. If you are interested in the game I would just say skip it.

See you next time!

Superdashrendar

Retro Advertisements - Green Arrow 75th Issue Special Comic - Part 2 / 2

Please click on a image to view a larger version.

Here are some various advertisements in the 75th issue special of the Green Arrow. I got this comic book at a garage sale for 10 cents. This comic book came out in 1993 and originally cost $2.50. This is a DC comic book issue number 75. The Atari Lynx ad is on the back of the comic in case you were wondering. I never played a Lynx before and I don't think it had very many games for it. I love how there catch for the Lynx is great sports titles. Now sports games drop in price so much a year after they are released and considered the least valuable game type on the market.


These black and white advertisements seem a bit out of place in 1993 especially with how colorful the other advertisements and the comic book is. These were featured on the inside covers. I never heard of these comic franchises however I am not that big into comics. I hope you enjoyed these old ads and please comment below. Be on the lookout for some more cool old ads coming soon. If you have any old comics you are giving away please let me know as well.


Super Dash Rendar

Retro Advertisements - Green Arrow 75th Issue Special Comic

Please click on a image to view a larger version.

Here are some various advertisements from the 75th issue special of The Green Arrow. I got this comic book at a garage sale for 10 cents. I really like these ads from this comic book especially the Batman one. This comic book came out in 1993 and originally cost $2.50. This is a DC comic book issue number 75. I hope you enjoy taking a look at these classic ads.

Batman Knight Fall #9 - This has a really nice graphic element to it. Batman looks like he is either sweating really bad or is infected with something. There is Robin in the background which looks really washed out, I wonder how that happened. I really enjoy looking at this retro advertisement it's just so colorful and stylized. It looks like the comic would be interesting to check out as well.

Batman Bloodlines - This is an interesting action shot of Batman fighting this huge red dragon. I am not sure who the character on the lower left is however.

The Spectre - I really like the layout of this poster but I don't care for the art style. I don't know anything about the Spectre so this layout really tells me nothing about the story or the character.  

Super Dash Rendar

What Is It? - Episode 2 - Web Head

Welcome back to my 2nd episode of What is it?. On this episode I take a look at this Spiderman figure I got in a grab bag. The grab bag cost me around six dollars and I got something like 20 figures. All the figures were mainly missing there accessories however.

This Spiderman figure does not have any movement but looks like it fires some kind of missile or web. The figure says on the foot copyright 2009 made for McDonalds if that is any help to the readers out there. If you know anything about this figure or the line from which it came please post. The winner will get plugged about their website or youtube page.

I really like the old Spiderman cartoon show from the 60’s and 80’s. I am not a huge fan of the new movies starring Tobey Maguire. I think he plays a different Spiderman and I like the wise cracking Spiderman better.

Please take a look at the video I made about this figure and listed below the video are the pictures I took for the video. If you click on a picture you can see a larger version.

What Is It? - Episode 1

What do you do when you get a big huge bag of action figures you know nothing about? Well in my case I started a youtube series about them. The objective of this series is to correctly identify these items and to show how hardcore some people are about collecting.

I really enjoy photographing toys and action figures so getting background information on the characters would be a major plus for me. So please check out the first episode and let me know what you think. Sometimes I might not have much to say but I hope somebody out there gets a kick out of it and it’s a really hard scavenger hunt.

On this first episode I outline what I am trying to do for the series along with taking a look at this ant creature I got in a grab bag. Below the video are the still photos from the video.

Garbage Pail Kids – Flashback – 2010

Pack Cost – $2.00
I wanted to share with everybody my review of the Garbage Pail Kids Flashback cards from Topps from 2010. The pack cost two dollars so it was not that big of an investment and I have fond memories of the cards from my youth so let’s see how they stack up.

Well for your hard earned two dollars you get 10 cards, each card is also a sticker. There is also a chance to get sketch cards, loco motion cards, printing plates, and rare parallels. Now I really don’t have a shot at getting any of those unless I buy a big box of them but I was just hoping for a funny card. I checked  the internet and for about thirty dollars you can get the hobby box which includes 24 packs per box.

The package for the Garbage Pail Kids Flashback cards features a heavy duty plastic wrapper with some bright colorful artwork. I am not really a fan of the cover art for this card set, I think there is too much going on in the package and the bright green stands out too much. Once you break the pack and get inside you have ten cards randomly inserted. There are a few different types of cards you can get such as common cards, rare parallels, sketch cards, printing plates, loco motion cards, “Lost GBKs” cards & “Where are they now?” variations included A & B versions as well as the standard cards.

What is great about the garbage pail kids cards is that each card features a different character and a story. On the back of the cards you will get your choice of GBKs advertisements, comics, puzzle pieces and original card pictures. This adds a great deal to the value of these cards as even if you don’t like the front of the card you might get something on the back that you enjoy.


I enjoyed opening up the cards and getting 10 cards for the price is a good deal. I don’t care for the bright pink flashback text on the stickers however. The cards I got in my pack were not the best ones in the GBKs line but I still enjoy them. Please look forward to a card by card review of each one.