It's well past New Year's Day, and I've still got all these Christmas decorations up in my study. To be fair, I had something come up, but I don't have that excuse anymore. It's time to clean them up and put them away.
Sadly, just the thought of it makes me want to never decorate for Christmas or any other holiday again.
How much do you think I could get for this stuff if I sold it on eBay?
One of my presents this Christmas was something that I needed for Halloween.
This past October, I found the figures of Frankenberry and Count Chocula at Ross, but Boo-Berry never joined them. I was kind of sad, but I figured I could deal with it. My daughter decided that I didn't need to deal with it. She bought Boo-Berry for me and gave it to me for Christmas.
He's great. I can't wait to set him up along with Frank and the Count this upcoming Halloween. The one weird thing is that the box that he came in is much smaller than the box of the other two. When I set them up for Halloween, I put their boxes behind them, because they look like the cereal boxes.
Boo-Berry's box is about half the size of those two. That'll be weird...then again, maybe it'll be good. I could put it in the middle in front of the other two boxes, and I could fit all three boxes without needing to expand the footprint required to fit them all. I guess we'll see come next October.
Last year, I talked about wanting to get Santa hats to put on the action figures on my shelf that don't get removed during Christmas decorating. I saw a listing on Amazon where you could get sixty of these hats for $15. That seemed like a really good deal, but I was afraid that the hats would be too big, and would be a waste of money. Then, just the other day, I saw that those hats got marked down to $10. Well, I decided it was time to pull the trigger and buy them.
They came Thursday, and this is what size they are.
They are, sadly, bigger than I hoped they would be. But they still kind of work. When I got home from work Thursday night, I spent several minutes trying to put them onto figures that I thought they'd look good on.
I started with the Incredibles. It was harder than I thought.
Dash has a pretty big head, so it looks pretty good. Others have smaller heads. Bumble Chewbacca has a goodly sized head, so he looks good.
Darth Vader has a big helmet, so it's not bad, but Obi-Wan doesn't...not as good.
I couldn't get it to fit on Russel's head, but it did good on Dug.
Not as good on K-2SO. I tried to squash it down so that the long side hangs out the back where you can't see it, but it's still not great.
Threepio's head is too small for this, but it doesn't look too bad anyway.
I figure I'll see if I can't put hats on Luke, Leia, Han, Lando, Chewie, and probably even Artoo. I'll get them onto all the others as well. It's sadly, not as easy as it seems. The hats constantly fall off, and the figures fall over all the time too. I'll get there, though. After all, I have a lot of those hats.
I haven't done any posts like this yet this year, so I thought I ought to publish a couple of pictures of my Christmas decorations from my toy shelves. To start with this year, I figured I'd do a post of any of the things that are new for this year. First of all, my favorite new addition, the zombie Santa Claus and his little zombie elf friend.
This figure actually inspired the short story that I am writing right now as my final Christmas tale for 2024. I'm calling it "Eve of the Living Dead."
The elf probably needs something of a weathering, because he looks too clean next to Santa, but they look good, don't they? Fun stuff. I'm sad, because this same line had a Terminator Santa Claus too, but it sold out just before I decided to buy it...boo!
I also got several new elves from the Naughty or Nice collection to put with my standard Santa Claus.
I think I only had two last year, and now I have six. That might be a bit of an overkill, but I just like them. I only wish they were more poseable. The Santa is super poseable, but the smaller figures they articulated like classic Star Wars figures. 5POA only. Boo!
Since I got all these new elves, I got a bunch more accessories to go with them. Last year, I had stacks of presents all around Santa, but they wouldn't fit there this year since I had all the new elves, so I distributed the presents around to the other displays on the shelves. For example, I took all those Star Wars holiday figures I got last year, put them into their own little cubby holes, and gave them presents to give. Like the Bumble Chewbacca:
His present even matches his coloring. Pretty cool, eh?
Then there's the snowman snowtrooper:
There's the Santa Jawa and his collection of droids that he's selling for Christmas...nope, not giving away. This is a Jawa, he ain't giving away anything, no matter how much he looks like Santa.
Then there's the festive K-2S0. He came with a present too.
Most of these figures aren't made to hold anything other than a gun, so let me tell you, it was pretty hard to get them to grab a big square box like this.
That was it for the Star Wars Holiday figures, but I did have the new Mandalorian figure that Rish custom painted for me last year. I set him up with a present, too.
That other Mandalorian in the back is just a regular old figure, but I thought he would go so well with Rish's custom guy that I had to grab him when I saw him for cheap at Ross. This is the way...to the Christmas party, right?
I still had more Christmas presents, so I decided to start giving them to my non-Christmas figures. He-man brought a present.
So did Snake Eyes.
And even Cobra Commander is getting into the spirit.
Oh, I almost forgot about these Star Wars guys. I found them at Ross just after Christmas passed us by last year. I was amazed to find three of them.
I love the gingerbread look. I have big plans for these guys in a future year, I'm going to make a gingerbread version of the Endor bunker as their gingerbread house, and have them there guarding it. I know it's not quite right, because they're clone troopers, but it's close enough.
I only have a couple more new things. This here is a Starlord Funko Pop that I found at Marshall's, and I decided I couldn't pass it by. I don't even know if it was a good deal, because I don't buy Pops, usually. But I liked this one.
The one problem with Pops is that they could be anyone. Does this figure really say, "Starlord," to you? Me neither, but at least it has a big Santa hat on, so it definitely says, "Christmas!"
Lastly is this goofy Fortnite guy:
This is their character called Doggo. They made a Christmas version of him. I gave him some Fortnite gingerbread cookies to hold, but in general, I think he's kind of lame. I wish they made some of the more standard figures in Christmas skins instead. The hot chicks in Christmas sweaters and pajamas would work for me.
They did do the gingerbread girl, and I got that one. Hopefully, I can show you what I did with it soon. Gotta finish that, and I just never put the time in, but if I get around to it before Chriastmas, I'll definitely post about it here.
Well, that's all the new stuff, I think. I'll surely have another post later with more of my decorations. I really love them, so I love to show them off. I'll definitely be back.
It never looks anything like this in Houston, because it hardly ever snows, but that's no reason not to have a nice view onto something soothing and wintry. We've got our TV mounted up there, why not turn it into a window into some other place in the world?
I kind of feel like we should make all the TVs in the house show videos like this. I wish that could be the screensaver, but getting a video one is not possible as far as I can tell...without paying some kind of a fee, anyway.
I love these little Christmas decorations we have.
They were just cans full of...I don't remember...popcorn, candy, nuts, something like that...but we liked them and saved them. The funny thing is that they are identical cans. One just has the lid pushed down harder than the other. I think it's amazing the difference this makes. It turns one of them into the short, fat soldier and the other into the tall, skinny soldier. That's all it takes is pushing the hat lower, and bam! The same can assumes two separate characteristics. Cool, huh?
I worked on it pretty diligently for the last few weeks, and all of my Christmas stuff is up now.
I finished up the last of it yesterday. I'll have to start wowing you with individual posts that show the close-ups, but that's for another day.
Back in April, I did a post about how shirts with Sasquatches on them had become my thing. I particularly like this shirt that had the inspiring message double entendre included. (Is it a double entendre if it's not sexual? Or is it just a double meaning in that case?)
Well, I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that, while we were at the store the other day and the kids stopped to look at Christmas ornaments, they pointed this one out to me.
It's got the similarly fun double meaning as well. Every stupid Christmas movie is all about belief in Santa Claus, but what about Bigfoot. He needs belief a lot more than Santa does. Maybe I need to get this ornament for my tree. After all, it's my thing...
It's one of my least favorite things, but it leads to one of my favorite things, so I guess you have to take the good and take the bad. You take them both and then you have the facts of life.
Yup, that's what I was doing this weekend. That is my study, half-denuded. You can see that there are plenty of holes in the shelves, because I took the Halloween decorations down. Once I can get them packed away safely and stuffed into the closet again, I'll open up the other one of those plastic totes and start unloading my Christmas decorations.
I know, you're not supposed to decorate for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving, but if I wait that long, I'll only get a week or so with the stuff, because it takes me forever to get it all up. I've got to get started now, or else I will just get despondent and say it isn't worth the effort and never have any decorations at all.
Oh, here's something that I think I forgot to ever include in any of my Halloween decorations posts. I forgot to take a picture of this Halloween decoration and show it off.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I certainly do. I love Legos. Fake or not.
Okay, folks. This is it! It's Halloween today, so this is the last one. In today's post, I'm sharing the Halloween decorations I have that don't readily fit into a category.
We'll start with Pez. I have this group:
They're up there with another one of those foam pumpkins. So cute, amiright?
Every year or so, they add more dispensers to their holiday choices while dropping the older ones off. Here's another set of them:
I'm always adding a few every year or so. I even have one bat dispenser that I had to leave off the shelves this year, because I had nowhere for it to go. Maybe next year I'll have a friend to go along with it, and it'll work better.
The last group of Pez is this one:
What better group to put up at Halloween could there be than the Mystery Gang. Next to them is a werewolf figure that I picked up this year. It's from a video game that I don't think I ever played called Altered Beast. I bought it just because it's a werewolf, not because of any appreciation of the game it comes from. I considered getting a few of them, and giving them custom paint jobs so that there could be a whole pack, but I didn't go that far.
Okay, now, we move on.
About ten years ago, my friend gave me this zombie viking statue for my birthday. He got himself the Green Bay Packers version of it and liked it enough to get another for me. It stays up all year round, though it may get supplanted soon. I'm full up on the space, so soon, whenever I get new stuff, I'll have to take old stuff off. Then this guy will go in the box and only come out for Halloween. I gotta be careful, though. He's kind of fragile.
Next is my Knight of Asperity.
That skeleton faced guy is a Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. figure. I was really into these guys for a while, and considered buying tons of them. However, I only ever picked up this single one. It's really cool, and I love it. Also, the bad guy from my book The Gauntlet is based off the look of this guy. Fun, right? Hopefully, this year, I'll get that published so that you can read it if you'd like (he says, knowing that no one will).
Next is Carrot Chomper.
This is an Imaginext guy. They had these Imaginext blind bag figures for sale at the local grocery store by my house, and for a while, Little and I had a good time collecting them. Little was the one who gave him the name Carrot Chomper. I guess seeing all the teeth on the skull face made him think of chomping down on carrots, hence the name.
But wait, there's more. Here's another Imaginext guy names Pumpkin Stealer.
He's a ghost pirate with a pumpkin on his head. You can take the pumpkin off, and he has a translucent green face underneath. Altogether a pretty fun character. Not sure if Pumpkin Stealer is the best name for him, but it's hard to convince a three-year-old to pick something different, so I just let it stand.
Pumpking Stealer has another one of the plastic jack o'lanterns there beside him. It has a light in it, but I don't think the thing has worked for years.
Now, the final Imaginext guy...who doesn't have a name.
This grim reaper came out years later than the other two, and by that time, Little was old enough that he didn't care to bother giving it a name. He does have the cool feature like the old jawa figures from Star Wars back in the nineties. He has that spot on top of his head, and if light shines into it, it makes his eyes glow.
After that, we have the bone spider.
Yes, spiders don't have bones. They're arachnids, and have exoskeletons. That didn't stop people from making creepy Halloween decorations depicting bone spiders. I complained about this once on a blog post many years ago, and Rish thought it would be fun to mess with me, get one of those spiders, and even give it a custom paint job for me before sending it out.
Ever since then, I hang it on my books every Halloween. It's silly, but fun too, I guess.
Now, to the pièce de résistance. Years ago, not long after getting into the Vitruvian H.A.C.K.S. figures mentioned above, I discovered Mythic Legions. They were these really well-made, detailed and beautiful figures set in their own little fantasy realm. They were super expensive to buy second-hand on eBay, but if you paid attention and waited for one of their waves to launch, you could buy the figures for a normal price.
Well, one day, they had a special sale of their All-Star figures, the most popular ones, and I was paying attention, so I grabbed some. Particularly, I grabbed skeletons, a demon, and a vampire knight. I made a graveyard for the skeletons to be rising out of, and some spooky trees to be in that graveyard.
This year, I added a couple more skeletons to the group, but I think I've probably taken it as far as I can. I don't think any more figures can fit on this shelf without making it look bad. Here it is, this year's Mythic Legions graveyard scene:
So, there it is, the 2024 decorations. I hope you enjoyed it. I'll see you next month with a whole new exhaustive set of posts detailing my Christmas decorations. They may well be more extensive than the Halloween ones. Sorry.
Okay, let's see if I can come up with a theme for another Halloween decorations post. Oh, that should have been obvious. Let's look at my decorations that come from comic books.
First of all, DC comics. A while back, Rish Outfield sent me this Solomon Grundy figure. I think it's the Imaginext version of the guy. Since he's basically a zombie, I had to throw him up.
Next up is this huge Titan Heroes-scale Man-Bat. I gussied him up with a nice black wash, and put him on the shelf. I figure a guy that's half man and half bat is perfect for a Halloween decoration.
That's all I got from DC, though. I'm not really a DC guy, so I don't get very into their lower tier characters, but with Marvel, I go much deeper. Let's start with a higher echelon guy.
Iron Pumpkin. I got him a few years ago. It was a War Machine figure, but I thought I could paint the silver parts orange, and Bob's your uncle, he'd be a Halloween decoration. He probably could use a second coat of orange, though, and probably a black wash over the orange after that. I haven't done what you might call a stellar job of customizing this guy yet. Also, I really want to draw a little jack o'lantern face on the arc reactor on his chest. That would look really rad. Maybe I'll get to it someday.
Next, it's another big deal guy in Marvel who is perfect for Halloween.
That's my Ghost Rider. I got him around Christmastime one year, because they'd put things onto massive discount right around Black Friday on Amazon. I was keeping a close eye on the stuff that I wanted, and Ghost Rider went down to something like 75% off. I jumped on that so fast, even though I was basically buying myself a Christmas present. I went ahead with it anyway.
Ghost Rider is in a bevy of Halloween stuff. Right next to him is a ghost room alarm that I got from the dollar store a few years back. Luckily, the battery has run out on that thing. It could get pretty annoying back when it still worked. There's a foam pumpkin on the shelf just below Ghost Rider and a plastic jack o'lantern that lights up just above him.
Lastly, there's a set of three Little People figures that I got at Marshall's once. They were all dressed up to be Dia de los Muertos toys. I couldn't resist them. Aren't they so cute? Just darling!
Okay, next is a character much further down the list of Marvel's roster. This woman is called Hallow's Eve.
She's got that great orange and black color scheme, and came with Halloween masks. I looked her up, because I'd never heard of her before, and apparently, she has magic masks, and when she puts them on, she gets the powers of those things. Kind of a cool idea, I think. If she weren't a villain, I would say they should start making annual holiday specials a la Werewolf by Night, where each year she has to use a different mask to achieve her aim. Doesn't work as well if she's a bad guy though. Maybe she could be the werewolf's enemy in a holiday special.
Here we go, back to more heavy hitter characters. Here's the zombie versions of Iron Man, Captain America, and the Scarlet Witch.
These are from the What If... cartoon. It was okay, but I wasn't a huge fan of it. I am, however, a huge fan of these figures. I love them. I never expected that we'd get the Iron Man and Scarlet Witch figures years later, but I sure am glad we did. I'd love to see zombie versions of all the Avengers. I'd love to assemble that.
I did show you the Pennywise and Stay-Puft guys I had, but in this wider picture, you can also see the werewolf Captain America that I have. I love that there was actually a time where Captain America was having a problem with turning into a werewolf in the actual comics...and it wasn't even back in the fifties or something either, but in the nineties!
On the other side of the picture is the new Jack O'Lantern figure that I got this year. This guy is pretty good. He's the first appearance Jack O'Lantern, and it's a nice figure. I did a post about him back when I got it. I have a second Jack O'Lantern that's up as well, but I already talked about that one in an earlier post, so I'll spare you the replay. If you want to see it, you can click the link and look there.
And that's that. Okay, folks. There's probably only one or two more of these posts, and then you've seen it all. Of course, by then, it'll be Christmastime, and I'll have a whole new series of posts to share with you. I've really overdone it with all of this crap, so I've got fodder for dozens of posts on here.
