Rube

I left early yesterday for work so that I could go to the mall on the way there. I wanted to go to the Disney Store, and the mall close to my house doesn't have one. The one by work does, unfortunately for me, it's one of the largest malls in America. I wandered around for a while, and no where could I find one of those maps with the "you are here" mark on it directing me to where all the stores are.

Eventually, I found a kiosk that had little maps of the place in folded up pamphlets like the map at Disneyland or something. It didn't help much, truthfully. I found the Disney Store on the list in the D's, but the number they had next to it didn't seem to correspond to anything that I could find on the map.

Apparently, I looked like the world's biggest fucking rube ever, standing there with a map to a mall, scratching my head and saying, "This mall is sure big and perty. What's a Dolce and Gabbana?" Because a Paul Blart-style mall cop rolled up in his Segway--I kid you not, apparently that joke was based on reality--and asked if I needed any help.

I told him I just wanted to go to the Disney Store, and he directed me to where I could find it. Thanks, I said, and tried to fold the comically oversized mall map back up to put it back on the kiosk now that I didn't need it. It was so big that I felt like it might as well be a map of North America or at least the whole state of Texas. Just like a real map, it didn't want to fold up right.

"This thing is bigger than I expected," I said as I struggled with the dumb map.

"Yeah, it is big. The mall covers three entire city blocks," said Mr. Blart to me, misunderstanding what I was referring too. I'd been to the mall before, and I knew how big it was. I looked like even more of a rube than ever, but instead of saying, "I meant the map," I just shut up and moved along. I was glad to have his help, no matter how much of a rube it made me look like, and besides, it probably would have only made it worse somehow.

I did find the Disney Store way the hell up on the third floor. No wonder I didn't see it. I was surrounded instead by bullshit stores like Prada, and A'GACI, and BCBGMAXAZRIA, and Bottega Veneta everywhere to find anything I might actually have a small interest in. They put the shit the rubes would like up on the top floor so that the beautiful people don't have to rub elbows with them.

I looked around, but was very disappointed. It felt like they must have been in the middle of a reset. There were several shelves that were completely empty. Every other time I've been to a Disney Store, there's been tons of Marvel and Star Wars stuff, but this time there was relatively little.

I did really like their Toybox line of toys, which I believe have actually been around for a long time, but I just haven't been to a Disney Store in quite a while. Since I've got a bit of a Halloween obsession going on right now, I was particularly drawn to their Toybox figure of Jack Skellington with Zero. It was sitting on a table with a giant sign that said %40 off. Next to it was a bunch of other Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise--costumes and the like.

This seemed like quite a deal. The Toybox toys weren't too expensive, running around $13, but getting 40% off was much better. So, I went up to the register to pay for one. When they rang it up, it was full price.

"That was on a table with a big sign that said 40% off," I said.

"Oh," the woman behind the register said, "That is just for the costumes and stuff."

In my head I was screaming, "You fucking liars! If it was just for the costumes, then why did you pile up all the Jack Skellington toys right there next to the sign? The sign was on the same goddamn table! You're fucking crooks! Crooks, I tell you!"

But all I said was, "Oh." And then I paid full price for it.

I did manage to say, "That's very tricky of you guys. You fooled me." I did kind of feel like a fool as I walked out of the place. I wanted to go back and take a picture of the table where the figures and the sign was. Then I could...I don't know, tweet it at Disney or something and complain about their unfair practices. I'm sure they would make things right immediately, and it would be nothing like shouting in a hurricane.

Instead, I took this picture of the toy that I bought:

Was it worth full price? I don't know. I sure don't feel like it, because IT WAS ON THE 40% OFF TABLE! But I do really like the figure all the same. It looks good on my shelf with some of the other Halloween toys I've got:

Hulkbuster is very scary. Yeah, they're not all Halloween toys, but most of them are. For now. A few weeks and it'll be time to put up Christmas stuff. Then a few weeks later, I'll be old. Then a few weeks after that I'll be dead. Yay!