This is either going to
make sense or sound prickish, let’s see: it was really quite difficult to do
this Things I Waste Other People’s Money On Christmas post this year, not
because all my family and friends decided to stop giving me gifts or because
everyone gave me crap presents but because of the complete opposite. The way I
do these posts - which I respect are just filler posts but I enjoy them – is
that I don’t choose ‘the best’ items but instead I choose between five and ten
that I can think of a paragraph or so of text for, I joke about this but this
is genuinely how I decide what purchases or gifts end up being spotlighted –
the problem this year is that everything
was on roughly the same level and that means that just about everything
qualified, even the random complimentary Fidgit Spinner.
I’m still not satisfied
with this, perhaps when I tell you that this article still doesn’t include
a three foot light up man nor anything Kinder Egg related nor James May nor a
pop-out cartoon Wampa nor a wind-up Chewbacca robot nor a near-life size Ghost
Type Pokémon nor a unicorn candle that
cries rainbow tears you’ll understand my (first world) issue. But anyway, are
you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin:
So I Quite Like Sting…
That’s Sting the wrestler
not Sting the tantric-sex-having-rainforest-saving-message-in-a-bottle-sending-reggae-ruining-Quadrophenia-and-Alanis-Morissette’s-cover-of-King-of-Pain-are-the-only-good-things-about-him
singer Sting (BELL BOY!). I do like Sting, he’s one of my favourite wrestlers,
I’ve been a fan since I was a kid (Pre-Hogan WCW used to be shown on
terrestrial telly in the UK) but this is actually a complete accident, the only
Sting I planned on unwrapping this December 25th was the Hasbro WWF
style one in the middle. Then I finally found a Raphael as Sting (who’s been a
bitch to find here) in (of all places) Tesco while I was getting the Christmas
Day/Boxing Day shopping with my family so my mum bought it for me as a last
minute gift THEN I found Defining Moments Sting in Home Bargains while doing
last-minute present shopping (I was desperate) and the till went down and would
only accept cash and I didn’t want to line up for an ungodly amount of time
AGAIN (because everyone else was desperate and in Home Bargains) and the only
cash I had was some my grandmother had given me to get some presents for myself
earlier in the month that I still had so he became a Christmas Present ‘by
necessity’ and as I’d used that money I gave it to nan to wrap up and that’s
how I ended up with three Steve Bordens. God I’m boring.
Unicorn Fruit Loops!
Just…just…look at that! That
is fucking art. Limited edition rainbow Fruit Loops with unicorns on them, that
combines special junk food with unicorns, that is so relevant to my interests
it may as well come with a starburst printed on it that reads ‘made just for
dwitefry’. A friend of mine bought me this (thanks!) because unicorns are one
of ‘our things’ if you will but I am genuinely a unicorn fan independent of
that, and not just recently because they’ve become a fad – unicorns are Fabulous
Attack My Little Ponies and I’ve loved them since I was small. I have long
since come to terms to with the fact that I am the gayest heterosexual man in
England.
Speaking of which:
Beautiful Princess!
I’m on a bit of a knock-off
and bootleg toy kick at the moment but the ‘vintage’ knock-offs of the 80’s and
early 90’s are expensive and rare and it’s really hard to find modern bootlegs that
have the same ‘feel’ as them, it’s understandable, fads change, art styles change,
technology evolves. That’s why Beautiful Princess was the first thing I bought
on Boxing Day, I bought it from a fly-by-night stall that's probably gone by now (though the regular battery-operated toy stall in Liberty 1 has this for £2
dearer) because this has that feel to it, the box art, the logo, the colours,
the sculpt, if you didn’t know what Frozen was (let’s assume you’re a blind,
deaf Martian) I could tell you this came out when I was 6 and I think you’d believe
me. I particularly like the logo; it looks like a sports centre from 1998. What
does Beautiful Princess do? She lights up everywhere, twirls and sings the same
three lines from Let it Go over and over, you better believe I made a gif of
it:
This is every fairground in Britain. I could watch that for
days, though I assume it would drive everyone I love from my life in about 80
seconds.
So I Quite Like Five Nights At Freddy’s…
It has its own tag on this
blog, this shouldn’t be surprising, the reason I include this here is not because
of a series of holiday slide-show level boring ‘amusing’ tales about buying
wrestling toys but because my granny bought me all of these things. There’s
just something delightful about sweet old pensioners gifting you items that
revolve around multiple child murders including a toy of character that I’m
pretty sure has a dead child inside her or at least has had one at some point
and saying things like “the man said that’s the main character” like it’s
fucking He-man or someone.
I am very grateful. The Freddy Files is really damn good,
no website, not even one as comprehensive as Wookiepedia or Bulbapedia is as
user-friendly as a guide book you can flick through, tabbed browsing can only
go so far. I haven’t read The Twisted Ones yet, I was going to read it straight
away but then my dad gave me the 25th anniversary edition of Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and
Punk Rock or Malcolm McClaren: The Blowjob and a) anything even tangentially related
to Joe Strummer trumps even killer animatronics and b) it’s so thick you could beat
a killer animatronic to death with it and do no damage to the book – so The
Twisted Ones is going to have to wait, I enjoyed The Silver Eyes though.
Snot!
Snot is me.
It’s that simple, Snot is a
limited edition £10 plush produced by and exclusive to Smyths Toys for Great
Ormond Street Hospital, he comes with a little book and the tagline of ‘the toy
nobody wants’. So it’s a toy (a thing I’m very interested in) for a hospital
that treated me for all my childhood (I have hearing and other sensory
problems) that’s a reject, is bald and a bit fat and trust me in a year when all my friends
have gotten into (and then sometimes out of) relationships while I have
remained single and VERY unhappy about this I am the toy nobody wants, the toy
everyone glances at, thinks ‘they’re ok, cute-ish but I’d rather have that’. So I relate to, no I identify
with Snot, he has joined Gudetama as co-mascots of my worthless existence,
Gudetama now represents how I feel about myself and Snot represents how I feel everyone else feels about me.
Pathetic and self-pitying
yes but it’s pathetic and self-pitying for charity so bite me. Also Snot’s
super cuddly and feels like the nicest sweatshirt, the one you never throw out even
though it’s ancient and disgusting and in my case still has some expandable
foam stuck to the arm (I can’t get it off! Though it didn’t help that the person
I asked for assistance actually gave me the method for getting chewing gum off
clothes, expandable foam is a lot sticker than Bubbleyum). The designers
deserve a toy award for Snot, he’s a concept executed perfectly, he even comes with
a little kids book to tell you his tale of woe and make you love him even more,
he’s like Paddington, only snot. On a quick tangent, here in Blighty Paddington
has become all the rage thanks to his two (awesome) films and it’s brilliant –
Marks & Sparks had a kind of all-purpose licence to make Paddington shit
this Christmas and it’s the first time I’ve enjoyed going into Marks &
Spencers since they got rid of those big security camera balls that made it
look the shop was being invaded by Daleks (Boots had the best ones, they were
black).
The Werebear Octopus!
*Gets all excited and runs around
the room flapping arms* Werebears are my favourite toy, so that’s THAT future countdown
list spoilt. This little SUPER CUTE cephalopod is the same concept with the
exact same method of transforming him. I’m very nostalgic sometimes and it
takes me a while to get used to changes - and I use this blog to express those
things fairly often so you may think I’m always like that but I’m not: I fully
respect that while some things were better when I was young or when you were
young a lot of things aren’t, no matter what the Daily Mail and half of YouTube
says there are areas where things are 1000 times better than when we were kids,
the fact that I can take a great quality video of Beautiful Princess on my
phone and turn it into a gif in 5 minutes and know I can expect to NOT be
judged for owning a princess toy while being a boy is proof of that. I warn
against falling into the trap of nostalgia even if it’s not blind nostalgia and
This is Yesterday is one of my favourite Manic Street Preachers songs buuuuut there
are some things, like Beautiful Princess or Aldi or TeeTurtle’s Minis here,
that I like solely because they remind of something from when I was younger,
remind of Werebears, Boglins or the Real Ghostbusters and I will love your product
on sight. This was bought for me by the same couple who bought me the Images
You Shouldn’t Masturbate Too book by the way.
Geeki Tikis Donatello!
Thanks Rich, thanks for
giving me this and costing me £25, that’s not how presents are supposed to work,
they’re not supposed to cost the receiver money! This is last not simply because
it’s hard to follow up Tiki Turtles but because it’s not really a Christmas gift
as such, my mate got it in a Loot Crate…crate
and has been meaning to give it to me
(oh yeah?) for months but only got ‘round to doing so (oh yeah?) at Christmas. But
it’s just too cool to not take a picture of
in front of Christmas lights - these are perfect items, they’re perfectly tiki-like
and they’re TMNT - I’d bought the other three brothers before he’d left. I put up
a new shelving unit last month and these are going on it, right at the front,
just like Elvis in Blue Hawaii.
I’m done – thanks to
everyone who bought me gifts (even if they haven't arrived yet), if you do stumble on this don’t be offended that
yours isn’t here, it doesn’t mean I liked them less. And thanks to everyone who
put up with me this year, especially the ones who aren’t related to me and thus
feel some kind of obligation to tolerate my miserable-ass shit, and thanks to anyone
who’s read this blog this year - you’re all amazing!
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