Daniel85

… and a bucket of hot chips (in one of those newsprint pattern buckets) at Waverley Stadium was to stave off frostbite more than hunger. When you went to that underground McDonald’s in Moorabool St after a Cats game. When dad going to the toilet at quarter-time meant you could sneak a sip or two of his beer. (Why do all my memories of going to the footy revolve around food?)

I was on Youtube earlier looking for that new Smith Chips commercial which features the return of the Gobbledok. The freakin’ Gobbledok, man, have you guys seen it?! Anyway, it’s not up, but I found this hilarious clip from Seven’s World Of Sport after the famous Round 12, 1985 incident in which Leigh Matthews broke Neville Bruns’ jaw. And it all started cos Mark Jackson goes totally off his nut if someone slightly touches him.

Have a good look at Tom Hafey at about 2:04. It takes him a while to work out if he’s been insulted or not, and he’s seriously considering twisting McKenna’s mulleted head off with those awe-inspiring guns of his. Now that’s a coach!

“WHO ATE THE LAST SCOTCH FINGER?!”

It tears families apart. I’ve seen it.

Everyone has their favourite, and god help the family in which two or more members have the same favourite biscuit when mum brings home a pack of Arnott’s Assorted.

In my house, the Shortbread Creams are always the first to go. Then the Scotch Fingers. The Monte Carlos slowly dwindle, because they’re everyone’s secret, guilty pleasure. No-one will admit to liking them, but they’ll always sneak one if they can. They’re so indulgent, so decadent. Even the name makes you feel like Gatsby.

I don’t know why Arnott’s added choc chip cookies to the Classic Assorted line-up, cos really- who the fuck knew that Arnott’s even made choc chip cookies? And to make matters worse, their official name is ‘Farmbake Chocolate Chip Cookies’, just to give them that sheep station, Banjo Patterson, cup-of-tea-with-grandma flavour.

I also hate that they gave Teddy Bear biscuits the arse from the Classic team. The Teddy Bears were like the team mascots. It’s a travesty, and I’m seriously thinking of calling Today Tonight about it. Who’s with me?!

Assorted Cream has a good lineup, apart from those goddamn Delta Creams and Kingstons. There’s no sadder sight than a tray of Assorted Cream emptied of everything but the Kingstons and Delta Creams. Don’t any of you dare tell me you actually like those things. The only good thing about them is that when you’re a kid the adults generally leave them untouched, so you get them all to yourself. Even if they suck; doesn’t really matter to a greedy kid’s undiscriminating palate.

There’s not really any big difference between the Cream and Classic rosters. I mean you might as well just get the Classic, cos you get the two best Creams anyway (Monte Carlo and Shortbread). You do have to take into account the Orange Slice, though. Everyone loves an Orange Slice. They’re just so tiny and cute and orange. Like a Nickelodeon Oreo.

So… what’s the Arnott’s Assorted situation like at your house? Forget it, let’s just talk about James Sherry and What’s Up Doc and K-Mart shoes and Peter Combe.

Remember these little suckers (hah!)? 

I honestly didn’t think they made ‘em anymore, but no, I saw a box of them in K-Mart this morning.

I remember the freak on the wrapper being distinctly less creepy when I was a kid, though. I guess they’ve changed since then.

What kid didn’t enjoy annoying the fuck out of their parents trying to play ‘Old MacDonald’ on a Melody Pop? 

I always thought the concept of a lollipop you could bust out a tune on was pretty cool. Too bad I never had any musical talent, though. I could never make the axe sing. Oh well, at least they tasted good. Strawberry!

The stick was kind of useless after you’d eaten the whistle-shaped candy part, but I used to keep them anyway. They made good extendable weapons for action figures. “Oh, what’s that Skeletor? You think my staff is a little short? Well check THIS OUT!”

‘Heads Down, Thumbs Up’ or ‘Dead Fish’?

I prefer HDTU, because it’s easier to cheat.

Tommy over at Saturday Morning Central has declared this third month in the year of our Lord twenty-oh-seven to be ‘TMNT Month’ in celebration of the return of green to the silver screen. (I like how the colour green is permanently associated with the TMNT to we early-20somethings. That and the word ’shell’. Not to mention pizza and sewers.)

Anyway, Tommy suggested that some other bloggers get on the TMNT Month bandwagon (or should that be Party Wagon?), and seeing as I’m not doing much else around here I figured why the hell not.

Tommy wrote up an article on TMNT toys he sadly lost to that bane of any nostalgic soul, the garage sale. It’s a tale we all know, pawning off your future memories for the instant gratification of a few bucks. Ohhh, Voltron… why did I let you go?

The only TMNT thing I still have from my childhood is this framed print:

(Photographed on the mantlepiece of my old apartment along with fellow cartoon luminaries Lion-O, Gumby, Widget the World Watcher, and Ickis.)

I love that print. It was on my bedroom(s) wall(s) for years, eventually being taken down, but thankfully not sold off like all my other TMNT stuff. I found it in the garage a couple of years ago when I started getting nostalgic for the Turtles.

To me that picture is the Turtles at their finest, just chilling. My favourite moments in the original Turtles cartoon were when the bros were just hanging out in their cool sewer lair, chowing down on a clandestinely ordered pizza. Maybe it’s cos the sight of four anthropomorphic turtles seated at a table with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth was so incongruous and bizarre that it appealed to me. Maybe it’s just cos I liked pizza too, I dunno.

I’ve always liked that ‘downtime’ aspect in superhero stories, though. If I ever wrote a comic series it’d just be Cheers, but set in Manhattan with superheroes. Cos, you know, sometimes you’ve gotta go where everybody knows your secret identity.

1) Why the hell were these made?

No really, I mean, what kind of fucked up world are we living in where stuff like this gets produced?

2) Why… did I… *wince* buy them?

I guess I can answer #2 with the fact that I was sort of in a Star Wars collecting frenzy in the wake of Revenge of the Sith when these abominations came out. The last marketing push behind the last Star Wars movie; I just got kinda caught up. Understandable, right?

Anyway, I just found them in a box in the garage, and believe me– they’re on eBay as we speak. I want them out of my house.

Still leaves the question of the very existence of these figures unanswered, though. They’re clearly just for loser collectors (like me), but they were still sold in the toy section at a department store. No kid would want them! Maybe that’s not true, but I just don’t want to imagine a kid who’d want figures of baby Luke and Leia. I dunno, I guess you could have a bunch of stormtroopers or bounty hunters capture the babies, and then have your heroes chase them across the galaxy (your backyard) to retrieve them. Okay, that’d actually be kinda cool.