Mainlining Christmas

God, Hallmark is producing the hell out of this stuff. I reviewed the Northpole Communicator last year. If you're too lazy to click on that link, it's a toy old-fashioned radio communicator that supposedly connects you to Santa's operation for a quick daily chat. The toy is kind of ridiculous, but in a good way: I thought they did a decent job with it. The Good Deed Sender is a similar concept, only it's pared back to a handheld device. Also, I was much less impressed with the content of the messages. Obviously, the selling point is the price. This is substantially cheaper than the larger, superior communicator. How much cheaper? Honestly, I don't know. I can't even tell you what we paid for it, and I can promise you it was less than retail. The instructions on the back are all this comes with - there's no "secret instructions" for parents this time. You just tear it off, pull out the plastic tab that limits its function to the ge

Today, I'm looking at a pair of bargain light-up miniature buildings I found in drug stores last year. The larger is actually lights up AND plays music, while the smaller, cheaper one just lights up. Let's start with the large, red thing labeled "Holiday Town." This was a fairly good looking piece (the snow, characters, building, and assorted decorations were all fused together), though it was quite a bit more pricey than the other. If memory serves, I found this at a Bartel, where it had at one point been $20. I'm sure I paid no more than $5 (probably less). Also, if memory serves, this had a fairly interesting light/music set-up. Note how everything in the last paragraph is written in the past tense. Every year, I buy crap like this and tell myself I'll take it right home, unbox it, and get my pictures. And every year I wind up shoving it into a box. Hell, I'm not 100% sure I picked this up last February and not the year before. Did I mention

We found this at Toys R Us last weekend marked down 50%. Retail price would have been $17, and I'm not stupid enough to pay that much for a stupid musical "snow globe". But $8.50? Now that's just about precisely how stupid I am. You'll not the quotes above around the word, "snow globe." That's because, as far as I'm concerned, this isn't a snow globe. I'd contend that, to qualify for the term, a clear globe must be filled with water and flecks, and that's not what this is. Instead, they've scattered tiny styrofoam pellets that are blown around by a loud fan when this is activated. To accompany the fan, the globe loudly (extremely loudly) plays midi versions of Christmas songs. This comes with ten clips, listed on the back of the package. Unfortunately, that's all it's got - there's no Star Wars music on this thing. That seems like a missed opportunity: my guess is they didn't want to pay John Willia

Meet "Holiday Surprise" Barbie, who is apparently a Target Exclusive. This is essentially a cheaper spin on the annual collector Holiday Barbies that go for around $30. This mass produced low-end version, packaged with a simpler costume and some accessories, only costs about half as much. The first thing you'll notice is that the figure is displayed extremely well in her packaging. If you think that's a good thing, you probably don't open that many toys: it takes numerous elastics and binders to hold her into place, and freeing her is an exercise in madness. If you're familiar with Barbie, the doll won't be too surprising. This is of course one of the simpler models - no wrist, ankle, or elbow articulation. She does have soft, rubbery legs which allow the knees to lock into three slightly different poses. Other than that, her shoulders, legs, and hear all contain ball joints. The doll isn't all that nice, but - to be fair - she's more

Yeah, we know you don't care about the holidays today, but we still have to stay focused. If you're interested, I saw The Force Awakens last night and reviewed it on The Middle Room . Be aware, there are a few spoilers.

Eaglemoss Collections has been producing a line of die-cast Batman vehicles for a while now. I own a handful I've picked up over the past two years to supplement my collection of Batmobiles. This one's getting special attention, however, because the design is lifted from the story, Batman: Noel, a re-imagined version of the Christmas Carol which wedges the Dark Knight into the Scrooge role. I'll get back to the car in a moment. First, it comes with a very short magazine. It's only ten pages long, counting the four-page fold-out in the middle, but it's heavy stock. The content is intended to provide both information about the car itself and the context of the character at the time. I like the blueprints, though some of the text in here is a bit absurd. Passages like, "This was a Batmobile designed to handle the snow and ice of a seemingly endless winter." Likewise, there's a complete breakdown of all the crime-fighting gizmos built into the

This is the Northpole Magic Snowball, produced by Hallmark and intended to tie to their TV movie of the same name. I think they missed an opportunity when they failed to market it as a Snow Tribble. I picked this up at Wallgreens last year. I was actually more interested in getting something else from this line, but I had a coupon that would knock five bucks or so off the price if I spent above a certain amount on Northpole branded crap. If memory serves, this was going for $5, anyway, so it basically negated the price. By the way, what's pictured above is all the packaging this came with. The tag insists it's for decorative use only, but there are no other warnings about throwing it at others. It does mention that nonreplaceable batteries are included. That's right - you're not just getting a wad of white fluff: this has a feature. Throw it against a hard surface such as a wall, floor, or human face, and it starts blinking green and blue. Why green and blue in

Something about the old-fashioned radio design on this thing appeals to me. I haven't seen the made-for-TV movie it's tied to yet - and the trailers look awful - but the idea of a role-play radio to the Northpole intrigued me. I found this at a Walgreens on sale a day or two before last Christmas and picked it up. Here's the try-it feature as it's set up in the store: The intention here is for kids to plausibly believe the communicator is connecting them with the North Pole. It's hard to say whether or not it'll accomplish that, but they put some effort into selling the effect. This comes with instructions in a sealed envelope intended for adults. Naturally, the contents provide some info on the man behind the curtain. Or in this case, the simplistic recordings. The communicator is pretty simple in execution. It contains 25 separate recordings, one each for December 1st through 25th. Once it's set up, you start it by turning the knob, as if

A large proportion of the Christmas merchandise we'll be looking at this year is branded "Northpole", thanks to the Hallmark TV-movie of the same name. For whatever reason, we found piles of this stuff on clearance last year. They're making a sequel and pushing out new merchandise to stores this year, so I guess it couldn't have done that badly. We found this thing at Marshalls in early November going for $5.99. His price tag advertises that he's marked down from $12 and up. I have no idea where they got that number: looking online, I'm seeing $20 in most places. Regardless, given the bear's size and action feature, six bucks seemed cheap enough to pick up. I have no idea whether this character appeared in the movie or not. Apparently, he's a bear who gets cold in the arctic winter. He comes with a short book in which a Christmas elf gives him her hat to keep him warm. So... not exactly Shakespearean drama. The main selling point is that t

He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly. - A Visit from St.Nicholas, Clement Clarke Moore Before you ask, the answer is yes - that is a plasma ball built into Santa's stomach. We found this in early November at Fred Meyer on sale for 50% of its suggested retail price. If I even have to explain why we bought it, you're reading the wrong blog. The tag on this calls it an "LED Touch Globe With Icon". The "Icon" part is to keep things ambiguous, since they also had ones with a snowman motif. Between the two, I can't imagine anyone picking up the snowman. Other than a tag connected to a "try me" button and a bagged set of warnings and instructions, there was no packaging. The tag was branded, "Holiday Home," which is about as generic as you can get. The back says it was distributed by "Inter-American Products," which sounds nothing like a soulless multi-national con

There are numerous holiday train sets on the market. This is one of the absolute cheapest, retailing for $65. If you can't find it on sale for half the retail price or less, don't waste your money. I may have gotten a slightly better deal than that. Was in a Toys R Us last January buying some clearanced stuff, including a cheap Christmas game comically marked down to $0.03 in their system . When I got the front of the store, this train set was behind the register. Someone had returned it, and they'd yet to move it back to the floor. Since all their holiday stuff was marked way down, the associate ringing me up asked if I'd be curious what the train set was going for. Of course I was, so he scanned it: $0.03. I love automated discount systems. In case anyone's wondering, I'm fairly certain that the 99.95% discount I received (before tax) sets a record for the best deal I've gotten in more than a decade of toy collecting. Unless you count rebates, in

Don't you love the holidays? The way Christmas can bring us altogether? That's the thought that inspired this photo. Well, that and a piece of fruitcake that feels like it's gnawing its way through my rib cage, about to burst out with my intestines dangling off like... like... Like tinsel on a freshly decorated Christmas tree. God, I love this time of year. This picture, like those Nerdtivities we did last year, hasn't been adjusted beyond a little cropping. All props were present, and a blacklight was used to create the effect. Of course, I had to take about a hundred different versions to get the one I wanted. Which actually has a few advantages - here's a little bonus Google generated automatically. "Look, Ma! I found an ornament!" Happy holidays, from your friends at Mainlining Christmas.