I'm sure that everyone has seen a surprise bag sometime in their life. They were a very common item in the candy section at dollar stores, and I'm sure that they've been other places during their lifespan as well. I know that lately the surprise bag population is starting to dwindle, as I'm seeing less and less of the things every time I visit a buck store. In fact, I haven't seen any in town for the longest time, and the only place I've seen them in the last 5 or so years is at the Bargain Shop out in Lac du Bonnet. And even there they don't restock the things.
So while we were out there this past weekend, I made it a point to go find one. Sadly, the Nintendo Surprises are totally extinct, and even the Nintendo gum packs are gone without a trace. So I had to settle with one of the lesser brands of surprise bags. I had two choices at hand, one was a pack of random "fun size" candy packs, but the bag displayed what would be in the pack, and that just totally kills the surprise. So, I went with my second, less sanitary-looking choice.
Holy crap, does that look like a poor-ass grab bag or what? Here are a few close-ups, just so you can further absorb the crap that is Dick Turtle's Surprise Bag.
Firstly, what the hell kind of character is Dick Turtle? Aside from the obvious attempt to rip off the old Ninja Turtles (which raises further questions about how old this thing is), he doesn't look a thing like a turtle. Who names a turtle Dick? And why would any Richard want his name to be shortened to Dick. You have Rich and Rick, two perfectly good nicknames. But Dick? Come on. Thta thing on his back doesn't even look remotely like a shell, and instead looks more like air tanks or something of the sort.
And then we get to the bottom of the package, which has promises of cosmic candy, toys and novelty. For some reason, I think that I'm going to be disappointed with what's inside. I mean with a package like the one above, how good could the contents possibly be? And what are the chances that they'll be "cosmic"? Why does Dick Turtle have rockets for feet? Since when did turtles need or even want to go to space? At least that kind of supplies reasoning for saying that the stuff inside will be "cosmic". Turtles are nature's D student (according to Stewie, anyway), so there's no way that NASA would accept them. He must be working for those greasy Russians.
The back side isn't much better. It's just got Dick Turtle in his usual pose and a list of ingredients. The biggest problem with it is that it's supposed to contain various crap, and they've gone ahead and given a list of ingredients. I guess that most candy is pretty similar in composition, but I'm sure that not all of it is made with the exact same substances. Also on the back is a small note that says "Minimum: candy 20G - 1 toy". Well that just fills me with hope for what's going to be in here. I guess it's time to take a gander inside.
Is this a warning not to take anything that's inside this bag? I certainly don't know Dick Turtle, or who put this compilation of what is probably going to be crap together, so I should probably just toss it all out right now. I wonder if Dick Turtle thinks that accepting advice from strangers is okay? But... Wait a minute! Something is wrong right here! It seems that Dick Turtle may not be exactly who we once thought him to be!
A ha! I knew taking candy and toys from him would be a bad idea. Dick Turtle is actually a space pirate! That slick bastard thought he could sell his crap by taking off his shell and eyepatch and putting on a happy face, but now I've seen the real Dick Turtle, and I'm not going to fall for any more of his trickery! But seriously, who the hell made this? Their character has no continuity whatsoever except for that he remains the same species. And I never quite believed that he was really a turtle in the first place. Let's just hope the rest of this bag o' crap is as good for reviewing as the bag itself.
On the opposite side of Dick's advice card is a small maze that I definitely don't have the attention span to complete. In fact, I don't have the attention span to write a whole paragraph about it.
The first thing that I grabbed from the bag after that card was this little piece of candy. As you can read on the wrapper, it's a "Yolk um's" candy. I have never heard of this candy before, and therefore am surprised. There you go, Dick Turtle. Your bag was a complete success. You surprised me. It says that it's cream filled, and it doesn't look like the type of thing that should be cream filled, so I'm not going to eat it. I've eaten many a cream filled object, and I'm sure that this one will be a let-down, since I've only ever seen its kind in a Dick Turtle surprise bag. Of course, it could be a really popular candy that I've never heard of, but I'm better off safe than sorry.
Next up is... a shitty piece of plastic shaped vaguely like vampire fangs. I don't think any one could review this, so I'll just take a picture instead.
It was a good movie. I know my representation is a little inaccurate, but I wanted to make the reference. Anyhow, the teeth had a strange taste to them, and I now have a strange rash on the inside of my top lip. I guess this is one of those times where you have to suffer for your art. I should probably have dusted off the hat first, too.
You see, there was an alien head ring and a small toy hockey player, and there was no way I could review them both separately, so I forced the ring on to hockey guy's head. On the upside, the alien ring was certainly of a "cosmic" air, so the bag wasn't totally wrong. On the downside, I was feeling the bag before I opened it up to try to tell what was inside, and that hockey guy felt a lot like one of those awesome mini-ninjas. I was so disappointed when I learned the truth.
And the last thing in the bag is... A coffin? Could this be an omen of things that will happen should I eat the rattling stuff inside? Hmmm. Now that I examine the coffin more closely, I can see that there is something written on the top. Just gotta take off the sticker and...
Oh God! It says Mr. Bones! It's gonna be full of crappy pizza! Augh!
That's all I've got. Sorry.
Inside the coffin was a bunch of candy pieces. And they were some kind of old-looking. They were supposed to be coloured all rainbow-like, but they were also covered in a thick, white dust. I assume it was simply sugar, but you can never bee to careful when dealing with possibly-decades-old candy. There was one really cool thing about them though.
The pieces were all shaped like bones and such, and could be pieced together to form skeletons. I didn't have quite enough pieces, and they crumbled to dust at the touch, but I did arrange them as if they had been locked together into proper shapes. Well, as proper as you can get when putting small candy bones together. I wasn't going to eat these things either, because they didn't even bear the telltale smell of candy, and I wasn't about to put any other foreign objects in my mouth after the fangs.
That's all that came in the bag, and I can't say I'm impressed. Surprised, but not impressed. The candy was old looking and probably poisoned, and the "toys" were boring and common. I still wish I hadn't put those fangs in my mouth. I'm also pretty pissed at how they totally changed their mascot halfway through the bag. But I guess that it's not exactly made for people like myself. It really is more of a children's novelty. In the end though, it made some great review material. There really wasn't a lot to review though, so I thought I'd add in a little bonus material.
It's not much, but I was making a bunch of characters on my brother's "Smackdown: Shut Your mouth" game this weekend. It's not only a great way to while away the time, but it also satiates my need to create. I made a lot of them and decided that since I did pretty good jobs on the ones based on real characters, I wanted to show them off a little. So I took some screencaps and here they are. Make sure to click on the pics to see some more stuff.
You see? I'm good at making stuff. The only one I'm not totally happy with is Vivi, because I wasn't sure exactly how he looks, so I kind of had to make it up as I went. Overall, though, I'm very happy with how well I think they all turned out. The article here was a little shorter than I'd hoped, but I didn't have that much material to work with. I can't just ramble on forever about five pieces of crap and a plastic bag like I can with a game. Oh well, no biggie.
In the end, I'm just really happy that I've made it to 1000 hits. I thought 500 was pretty damn big. And the fact that the
site is almost two years old is jsut the icing on the cake. I never really figured that I'd care about the site longer than a couple
of months (just look at Quest for the Cube), but I've
made it a lot farther than most personal web sites do, and I've even had some people who don't know me e-mail me with compliments.
Hah, I guess this December, I'll have to throw some kind of celebration event. But that's something to think about another day.
~Ryan
E-Mail:
Tuominenator[at]gmail[dot]com