Bump and Go

I've no idea who made this, and I don't know exactly when it was made (my best guess is mid to late '70s), but this Japanese bump-and-go race car is fantastic... and really noisy.

Worlds Greatest Custom Figure

I found this years ago at a thrift store, and once I'd finished laughing at it, I came to realize that what I was holding was probably one of the best examples of childhood imagination and ingenuity that I've ever seen.


There's a few recognizable elements at play here, like the Iron Man head and Green Goblin's left leg, but it takes a bit of studying to see how the rest came together to create one of the most amusing thrift store finds that I've ever known.

His right arm is a Swiss Army Knife saw blade, and his body is a two-prong plug adaptor. There are plenty of nails and bicycle chain parts, as well as paper clips, various kinds of wire, some tube nozzle caps, and a few nuts and bolts.


I suppose this thing speaks to me because it reminds me of quite a few rainy afternoons that I'd spent inside as a child. Regardless of how many toys that my parents had actually bought me, it was always the ones that I'd built myself that were the most fun.

Mythological Bricks

I'll admit that there's a part of me that misses the old days when LEGOs were much simpler. But there's also a part of me that thinks minifigures of things like Cyclopes and Gorgons are very cool.

From LEGO minifigures series nine comes the Cyclops...


And from series ten comes what I think just might be my favorite minifigure to date... Medusa.

Florida

There's something particularly weird about an alligator with a snow globe for a stomach that's got two alligators on a seesaw inside it. I've never been to Florida, but if I do eventually visit, and I don't actually see an alligator, I'll be very disappointed.