Surprise stuffs

The Surprise Bag That Time Forgot

Surprise bags have been a part of Torrential Equilibrium ever since its inception, and they will likely keep coming back again and again as long the site exists and as long I keep visiting dollar stores in other towns. They’re just so easy to review, they cost like $1.50 at most, and there’s always something interesting inside. Of course, I use the word “interesting” in its most literal sense, because the objects are curious and draw your attention. They are never in any way good, useful, or tasty. With the Nintendo Surprise goodies being the only exception to this rule.

The other great thing about surprise bags is that it’s always fun to try to find the oldest one. Now, I was pretty excited about the Nintendo Surprise, and as far as I can remember, they were about a year and a half old when I found them. Since then, finding old surprise bags has been my raison d’être, and you can imagine how happy I was when I came across Dick Turtle. I never found a year on those things, but forensic evidence, carbon dating, and some other impressive-sounding things have proven that eating the candy they contained was probably a bad idea. The last type of surprise bag I reviewed was wasn’t too old. Hell, it probably hadn’t even reached the year-old mark. But I had a whole bunch of them, and you know how it is here – quantity over quality.

So anyway, if the opening spiel, the link you clicked to get here, and that totally fancy title graphic that I spent way to much time on didn’t tip you off, I’m reviewing yet another new species of surprise bag. I’ll tell you now that based on age and disgusted reactions, this is by far the best surprise bag yet. It’s going to be hard to top, because it’s provided me with tons of material and I’ve got myself so hyped up about how great it’ll be that I worked extra hard on the title banner and put a huge amount of effort (in comparison to how much effort I usually put into an article) into the bonus that will be featured at the end.

I think I’ve prattled on for long enough. So now I present to you the oldest, most generic surprise bag I’ve seen in my life:

Oh yeah. Paydirt. It’s no more than some white paper folded up and stamped with clipart and some vague words. I would have loved to be the guy who designed this bag, simply because he got paid for literally doing something a three-year-old could do better. Or at least that’s how I imagine it went down. For all I know, it could have been made by a whole pack of slaves who tried their damnedest to prove that they should be paid for their work. The one thing I am sure about is that we’ll never know anything more about this surprise bag, because it doesn’t bear a single mark that could help distinguish where it came from. No company name, no date, no trademark or anything. For all we know, this could have been put together by some meth chefs during the off-season. Though now that I think of it, is there a meth off-season? I mean, it’s not like when dope farmers have to close up for the winter. Unless they have a greenhouse, I guess. But that’s all besides the point. I think. I’ve kind of forgotten what my point was.

Considering the cheapness of it all, I’m pretty impressed at how different those question marks are. They’re different colours, slightly different fonts, and they’re filled in differently. To tell the truth though, I can’t remember at all why I took this picture. It doesn’t show anything different than the big picture did, and there’s nothing to really read there either, so it’s a mystery to me.

I do find it a little sketchy that it says “candy or toy” on the bag. The interesting part being the “or.” Dick Turtle and the more colourful generic clown bag suggested that you’d be getting some of both in every bag, but this one is all about getting one or the other. Is it an accurate statement, or will we be surprised to find both toys as well as candy in the bag? Only time will tell, and if it proves wrong, I’ll have one more reason to hunt down the people who made these. Bad grammar cannot go unpunished! Unless it’s a typo in one of my articles. We can let those slip.

Do you think they just printed out every ingredient that’s ever been in anything, just so they could throw anything in there and their asses would be covered? That’s my theory. I’m pretty sure the only other place I’ve seen some of these ingredients is on shampoo bottles, so I’m kinda hoping that it’s gonna be just the toys this time around.

Also note that back of the bag features just as few noteworthy marks as the front. Unless you can trace objects by their barcodes, it’s like they wanted to make sure that we’d never be able to find them. And there would be good reason for that too. You’ll understand once we get in a little further.

Now do you see? It’s all candy! There are some cards too, but they don’t really count as toys or candy, so we’ll just write them off for now. After considering how ratty and uninspired the bag it, I wasn’t overly thrilled at the thought of how old the contents could be. I’ve never heard of any of these candies, but I guess that’s not so different from the situation presented by the other surprise bags. Well, that one other clown one did have a Chupa Chups lollipop in it, and that’s a brand that’s pretty easy to recognize. This one is all stuff that even the most prolific candy know-it-alls would likely be hard-pressed to identify. Hell, some of it doesn’t even have proper packaging. I was truly frightened by the prospect of putting some of these things in my mouth, and I’m still a little shaken by the whole experience. Fortunately, I didn’t have to suffer through it all on my own, but more on that later. Let’s have a look-see at what’s here.

You know, these little guys look oddly familiar. I just can’t put my finger on it… Well, I guess maybe they’re not ripping off Tic Tacs entirely. After all, the sticker indicated that they came from Barcelona. Yeah. What? That doesn’t sound so bad? Do you even know where Barcelona is? It’s in Spain! Spain is a long way away. I’ve never been, but one day maybe… Anyhow, it also shows that Hit is produced by a company called Nutrexpa, so I took a look to see what the ol’ internet had to say about Nutrexpa. This is their site. But don’t expect to learn anything unless you’re fluent in their language, as you can click the English option a many times as you like, but the site will still be mainly in this “castellano” they talk about so much. I, in my infinite wisdom, was able to surf the site without any trouble, but didn’t uncover anything. It’s a nice-looking site, but there’s almost nothing there. (Actually, the site just doesn’t get along well with FireFox. If you browse it in IE or whatnot, it’s all English and there are plenty of informaciónes.)

With all that red tape cleared up and out of the way, there was only one thing left to do: eat one of them. The bag was old and shitty, but the Hit container and the Nutrexpa website seemed pretty up-to-date, so I figured it wouldn’t be all that bad. Then I noticed the little black numbers on the front of the plastic container. 30.07.02 Now, there’s no proof that it’s the expiration date. It may be the “packaged” date for all we know, but history has proven that when there’s only one set of numbers that they signify when the shit inside will go bad. And this stuff passed its prime three and a half years ago. Ouch.

With my confidence shaken, I decided that I’d bite the bullet anyway. What kind of entertainer would I be if I didn’t put my physical wellness on the line for a laugh? After convincing myself that there’s no way tiny little mints like these could go bad, I took it like a man and popped one in my mouth. At first, it wasn’t so bad. Then I started to bite down, and a horrifying chill went down my spine. I quickly spit the thing out and looked at it. These babies my look like Tic Tacs, but they’re made more like regular hard candies. Regaining my courage, I put it back in and chewed it up. It wasn’t so bad. A little more brittle (for lack of a better word) than I’m normally comfortable with, but there wasn’t anything overly wrong with it. The issue was all in my head, and now that I had a little confidence under my belt, I was ready to take on whatever else this bag threw at me.

Okay, maybe I’m not that ready. You know, I’m not sure if the fact that there are no indications whatsoever of what these are, where they came from, and how old they are should comfort or frighten me. They could date back to the American Civil War for all I know, or on the other hand, they might have been produced a week ago. Based on what we’ve seen so far, I’m not exactly overflowing with confidence. There’s nothing to really make preamble out of here, so I’ll just cut right to the chase.

As you may have guessed, they were hollow gumballs. Okay. That’s not so bad. I’m pretty sure that gumballs are like cartoon characters and never really age no matter how long they’re around for. They were almost as hard as jawbreakers on the first bite, but they ended up being just as chewy as normal gum, so I can’t say it was a bad experience eating these things. Chalk up another victory for me. This surprise bag may be outdated, but it can’t possibly defeat me. Nope. No way in hell.

At least that’s what I thought at the time. But just how dead wrong I was, even I wasn’t prepared to find out.

Enter Dubu gum. It looks pretty normal, right? Nothing overly suspicious about it. Well, that’s how it seems at a first glance anyway. Further investigation of the package reveals that this stuff also hails from Spain. No year on it, but our adventures in Spanish candy haven’t been too thrilling so far. The other notable thing is that it’s peppermint-flavoured gum. Well, it’s not really notable, but now we know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like. Peppermint gum isn’t exactly hard to come across. Sadly, this shit was anything but peppermint.

This gunk was grody. And I mean “roadkill covered in diarrhoea” grody. If there’s one thing you should know about me, it’s that if I have to suffer, I do my best to make sure someone else suffers with me. So since I was “blessed” with so much of this dubious Dubu, I decided the only logical thing to do was to have my family eat some too. Below are some of their comments.

-Eric: “Tastes like wax and toothpaste. Smells… Horrible.”

-Mom: “It smells like pee!”

-Dad: “Smells like somebody peed on a mint. I’m not putting that in my mouth.”

-Patrick: “I like it. Tastes good.”

I kid you not. Those quotes are verbatim. Down to the punctuation. As for what I thought? Well, have you ever had one of those Christmas tree ornaments that are supposed to smell like candy canes? I do, and if you haven’t ever seen/smelled one, I’d be glad to show you sometime. Anyway, the gum smelled almost exactly like that, except slightly more rancid. I can’t believe that after smelling that thing that I actually put it in my mouth, but I did. Almost without thinking. As soon as I bit down, I spit it out all over and almost vomited. But, you know, that would have been alright. Vomit tastes way better than old Dubu gum. It was probably the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. Ever. And I’ve eaten oysters (By accident. I’ll tell you the story some other time). The consistency was… well, since one of my brothers actually liked the stuff I guess it was like that of normal gum, But I didn’t have it in my mouth anywhere long enough to know for sure.

On the upside, that’s one more lesson learned for me. If I ever see Dubu gum again, I will hold onto it and offer some to anyone who angers me even in the slightest. It would be a great – and relatively harmless – form of revenge. And maybe torture too…

Sensor chewy candy. Oh, hey! It’s strawberry-flavoured! How could this go wrong? This is how. It’s got approximately a year on the Hit candy. I’m not gonna be putting a very large bet on this horse. If there’s anything I’ve learned from this experience so far, it’s that candy has an expiration date for a reason. It may seem timeless, but the shit does worsen with age. Maybe not as fast as say, milk, but it happens.

Being me, I was enticed by the claims of “chewy” and “strawberry” all over the package, so I popped one in. You’d think I would have learned by now.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but I can’t remember the last candy I ate that was advertised as “chewy” that was not dissimilar to chewing on a rock. You see that image above? It’s a little blurry, but you should be able to tell quite well that it’s split very finely in two. Why do I point this out? Chewy candy does not split in two! I hurt my teeth when I clamped my jaw down on that little sucker! You could probably take a hammer and chisel to one of these things and find fossils inside. Needless to say, there wasn’t a whole lot of strawberry present either.

I’m kind of a slob, so when I was done with the stuff I just left it sitting on my floor (I got the bag and took the pics about a good week before I started writing this article). A couple days later, my dogs wandered in. Poor little guys didn’t seem to like the stuff either, as one of them came out with a piece in his mouth, gnawing desperately at it in hopes of putting a dent in it. The other one ate the leftover red gumball. It was funny at the time, but then I realized that since I’m the one that stays home with them all day that I’d likely be cleaning up the resulting doggy vomit. As luck would have it, that’s just what happened.

Well lookie here! These not only look contemporary, but they also seem to be North American-made. Things are finally starting to look up! Upon closer inspection, it turns out they’re actually produced in Hamilton, Ontario. That’s the best news I’ve gotten all day! They even advertise their website on the package. In an unlucky twist of fate, said website is currently broken. Or something like that. Maybe they’re just doing maintenance right now and by the time you read this it’ll be back up and working. God knows that I’m not going to be trying to get there anymore.

Sadly, that wasn’t all the information listed on the package. They also included a “best before” date. That date reads 30.01.03. Yeah, just over three years. But, at least it says “best before” and not “expires.” There is a difference between the two.

There’s actually an interesting note about the gum here. While most gumballs are round or oval, these ones are shaped more like fat barrels. And by that I mean they’ve got two parallel flat spots, rather than being entirely round. I’m not sure if they were meant to be this way, but considering that all three gumballs in the package are shaped the same way, I’m willing to bet that it was intentional. But now I’m just trying to drag it on. Let’s see how they’ve stood up against the test of time.

To start, they smelled like dust. A bad omen if I’ve ever smelled one. But I put the Dubu gum in my mouth after smelling it, so I have no excuse to chicken out on these things. It came as a bit of a surprise that the one I “ate” actually tasted like dust as well. Dust with a hint of lemon. The sourness was definitely gone many a year ago, and they actually managed to taste like old. Keeping in mind, of course, that I don’t know exactly what old tastes like. I’ve never licked anyone’s grandma. Not surprisingly, the gum was pretty damned hard. Not as hard as rocks like those red gumballs, but hard enough to deter me from continuing to try to eat one. If these guys were best before January in 2003, they likely expired two months or so after.

You can’t really tell by the picture, but these suckers appeared a bit paler that usual. There’s not really anything to go on from here, unfortunately. It’s a good thing I’m close to the end. I don’t know how much more of this crap I can take.

While there was a slight hint of something I didn’t recognize, the suckers actually tasted pretty normal. Not great, but they didn’t activate my gag reflex, and that’s always a plus. I still wouldn’t recommend ingesting one, because only God knows what that little mystery taste is. It might just be old, but it could be something far more frightful. The thing about surprise bags like this is that the mysteries don’t end one you see what’s inside. The products I’ve seen so far prompt more questions than they answer, and my overactive imagination isn’t a great trait when I think about why these things taste as horrible as they do.

Wow. Just wow.

I didn’t realize the “Otoban” was popular enough to have it’s own gum. And they even come with stickers! Check it out. But why bikes? Oh well.

Upon opening the Otoban gum, I was surprised to discover that it looked exactly like Dubble Bubble gum. Except gray. Well, that’s not good. As with the Dubu gum, I had given it a try prior to writing this article, and I have some comments on this stuff too.

-Eric: “Still tastes like gum, but it’s freakin’ hard.”

-Mom: “Disgusting, vile. It’s like eating chalk.”

I didn’t get enough of this stuff to go all the way around, but three impressions are better than one. As for me, I again popped it in my mouth without really thinking of the consequences. There was no initial taste, but when I bit down I got the worst surprise. The damn thing splintered into a billion tiny fragments and I immediately spit out as much as I could. It had about the same texture as glass. It was like there were a billion shards of sadness in my mouth. It did not taste like gum, and I have no idea how my brother managed to get any flavour out of it. All I was left with was the feeling of having a thick layer of dust caked on my tongue. It was similar to eating dried-out Play-Doh, except without the unique Play-Doh taste.

The final group of items in the bag were, thankfully, not edible. The cards were a huge flashback for me, because back when I was between four and 11 years old, I collected all sorts of cards. Sports, movies, dinosaurs, video games – anything that came in card form, I would collect. But there were a couple things about these cards that stood out.

First off, I’d never even heard of the movie “Baby.” From what I can glean from the cards, it seems like something that may have influenced Jurassic Park, but of course, I only know small bits of the story. In any case, there’s a pretty good indication of why I’ve never heard of this movie on each card: it was released in 1985. That’s a year before I was even born. Before I was conceived, even. That also makes these cards the oldest dated items found in the bag. Probably the oldest items I own, too. The other thing is just a personal annoyance. On the back of every card, the assumed tagline for the movie reads “Great New Adventure Movie.” Does that sound overly Engrish to anyone else? It’s also a shitty tagline.

I did a quick IMDb search for “Baby,” but the only movie with that title that was produced in 1985 is this. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for. I don’t care enough to do any more searching either, so Baby will remain a mystery to me until the end of time. I don’t rightly care though.

As happy as I was to find a perfect Surprise Bag to write a review of, I can’t say I was overly thrilled to have even put some of that stuff in my mouth. It was really bad. Like, the Nintendo gum at least just tasted bad, it wasn’t vile. I had to go to some rather extreme measures to wash some of those horrible tastes and residues out of my mouth. But hey, on the upside, it got easier as time went by.

Rest assured though, that a bad experience will not deter me in my quest to find and review as many surprise bags as humanly possible. Of course, if you hate the surprise bag articles, that’s not a good thing, but you’re going to have to deal with them. I’ve got a good thing going here, and if you think I’m going to give it up, you’re dead wrong. I don’t know really how to go out here, so I’ve attatched a sweet little gallery to the end of the article. Enjoy!

Bonus! – The Baby Card Mini-Gallery

Between my surprise bag and the two my brother got, we claimed quite a few of these “Baby” collector’s cards. Seeing as they’re moderately interesting, I’ve scanned both sides of every card at a respectable resolution and put them all up in this spanktastic gallery for you to gawk at. Just look at how much effort I put into making the thumbnails! What a waste of time!

Baby Stickers
What could the big picture be?

The Super Article – Triple Surprise Bags!

It’s here, everyone! The “Super-Article” I’ve been teasing you about is finally upon us! And it’s not so super after all! Ha ha! You’ve all been duped and I am a genius. Hey, why don’t we just forget about all my attempted hype and get to the article. Yeah, it’s about surprise bags. You all love them, so here’s a really big article about them with big pictures, some package scans, and even a video. This is gonna be the best article ever!

The surprise bags are getting to be sort of a mainstay on the ol’ site, and I’m thinking that they’re gonna be sticking around for quite some time to come. I mean, they’re easy to review, and there’s always a cornucopia of interesting stuff inside ’em. Movies are tougher to review (at least for me) and video games usually end up being way too similar to one another, so surprise bags are a good alternative.

The only problem is reviewing the same kind of surprise bag. See, the first time you do one, you’ve got the bag and stuff to review as well as the contents, but the second time, you’ve gotta skip the bag or paraphrase what you said last time. Course, you could always think up new stuff to say, but that’s aside from my point. It’s time to bust out a new type of surprise bag. We’ve seen the legendary Nintendo Surprise and Dick Turtle has spawned two articles, now you will tremble in fear as I introduce the Surprise Sac Bag!!

Yeah, I know. It’s really just Surprise Bag. But some fools out there who don’t know French might be confused into thinking that it’s actually called a Sac Bag. Though really, “sac” should have a “k” at the end, but I’m just reaching now. And it’s only been three and a half paragraphs so far. So now that I’m off to a terrible start, let’s take a look at some package scans! The most logical place to start would be the front of the bag. So there it is. Time to do some reviewin’.

Well, this one’s got a clown on it. Not quite as cool as Nintendo characters, and not nearly as inconsistent as Dick Turtle, but he certainly fits the bill. I think. I mean, clowns are known for entertaining kids, and the bag is for kids and stuff. So it works out. It also makes sure we know that the bag contains toys and candy by having it printed on the bag a thousand times. There are even a several spinning tops pictured on the bag, so I’m hoping that I get me a spinnin’ top. I love them tops. But I don’t love TopMan. Particularly TopMan.EXE. Stupid old geezer.

The back of the bag is just as eventless as the front, and maybe even a bit less entertaining. Among the few bits of information we can glean from the back, we noticed that this particular line of surprise bags is produced in Quebec. Later on, you’ll find that the origin of the contents of the bag might be a little more… overseas. Anywho, the back also sports ingredient lists (which would help show that the edible contents are standardized) and a Nutrition Facts box. There is no nutrition in candy, so it’s really just showing how much sugar is in the stuff. Yeah. Asinine, I know. But it’s standard protocol, I guess.

But enough of that crap. There’s nothing on the back to talk about. So let’s see what’s inside this baby.

Notice immediately the lack of spinning top. I am both disappointed and filled with rage. But there is quite a bit of interesting looking crap there, so we’ll take a closer look and find out just what’s going down. That big red bubble thing is just calling out to me.

First up we’ve got a buncha candies. The package says that they’re called “Chik”. Stange name for a candy. A little too strange if you ask me. They seem to be produced by a company called Gomy, but this Gomy is an elusive fellow. I searched and searched, but the best I could come up with is this. Elusive indeed. Perhaps they should rather be called… um… I don’t know. But to get back to the candy, the Chiks are actually gum rather than candy. They’re not too bad, and have a surprising longevity as far as retaining flavour goes. The downside being that not only do they resemble cinderblocks in shape, but also in toughness. My teeth would have probably been better off if I were chewing on a brick.

Wow. Just looking at it makes me think of the good times. I don’t know why, though, because this round lump of plastic is like the biggest mystery I’ve never solved. It’s got a ring stuck into one end, so I’m guessing that it’s supposed to go on your finger or something. But that’s about as far as I get. It might be some kind of very low-budget water squirting device, but it doesn’t lend itself very well to being squashed. Hell, it could even be part of some group of objects that were split up and placed in random surprise bags to be spread around the world and then collected and assembled to grant you a wish or something. No, wait. That’s a Dragon Ball. Damn. So much for my lead.

If you have any idea whatsoever of what this doodad might be, I urge you to send me any information you might have. Not knowing what this thing is will plague me until the end of time! I request your aid for the greater good! Or something like that. Until then, I’ll just go around sporting a bulbous hunk of plastic on my finger in hopes that some passerby will be able to identify it for me.

These, my friends, are Gestitos. While it sounds similar, they are not in fact tiny burritos. Rest assured, the world weeps right along with you. What they are is… well, foreign hard candy. While I can’t find anything at all about the candy, according to a Google search, “Gestito” seems to be some sort of Spanish slang. And Urban Dictionary didn’t help much either (not that I truly believed it would), but I do love to get in a good man nap every once in a while.

To summarize, the Gestitos are pretty good. I ate an orange one. I didn’t even open the others to see if there are different flavours. Why? Well, there’s a chance that these are infected with many different diseases, what with coming from a Spanish country and all (Would you consider that racist?), and I’m only taking as much for the team as I have to so that I can file a decent report, not even a tiny bit more. That means I’m only going to ingest one piece of any types of candy that are contained within the confines of a surprise bag. Except Nintendo surprise. Nintendo doesn’t have a reputation for spreading foodborne illnesses. Yet.

OOH! A lion! And it’s one of those rare white lions to boot! Look at that display of majesty and his king-of-the-jungleness as he stalks his prey of stray hairs and Dorito crumbs. I should probably vacuum my floor every once in a decade. Well then. Maybe the white lion isn’t as impressive as I thought it to be. Or as rare.

Chupa Chups. Nummy nummy. Chupa Chups. Some people are freaks.

I was a little disappointed at the false rarity of the white lion, but here’s a rare beast for the aaaages. Entei! King of Fire! But alas, Entei is most certainly not Pokémon number 93. This I know because I am a loo-hoo-hooser. Also known as “grown man who likes Pokémon”. Meh. I’m not the only one.

The Entei disc-thing is a little curious not only in it’s numerical error, but also because while it touts that it was made in the U.S.A. I have a really hard time believing that claim. Do you want to know why? Well, I’ll tell you a bit later once we get some more evidence rounded up. As they say, “gotta catch ’em all”. It makes sense in my head.

And so concludes this surprise bag. Ah, but wait, I promised a Super Article with bigger pictures, scans, and a video? Well I most certainly delivered on the bigger pictures bit, and did a half-assed job of scanning stuff, but I guess you caught me on the video bit. You could have also gotten me by noting that the length is hardly even fit for a sidekick, nevermind a full-fledged Super Article. Well, if you think it’s really over, I’ve got a surprise for you. That is, if you didn’t already just scroll through the whole page looking at the pictures. You cheater. I oughta have you banned. But nay, you shall get what I deserve, and have to read about…

Two more Surprise Sac Bags! Bwa ha ha ha ha ha! The look on your face is most delicious! Soon you will be consumed by the monstrous monstrosity that is the rest of this article! Prepare for DOOM, infidels! DOOOOOOOM! Hey, I warned you in the title. You signed the proverbial waiver.

So I noticed something interesting on the back of the packages. Check this out.

A HAH! I knew it. Those dirty Mexicans (literally, I have nothing against them except for the filth, really) are behind this, and only using Quebec as a front! And I bet those damn separatists are happy to help the Mexicans peddle this shit (n. Things; items.). This also further proves that the Entei disc was not made in the U.S.A. as it would like to have us believe. And there will be more, my friends. More and more and more and more. And then maybe even some more. But that would be the end of it there.

The second Sac Bag didn’t yield any more spinning top than the first, so I’m putting all my chips on lucky number three. Or third time’s a charm. What?

Yeah, not too much new in this bag, so it’s gonna seem like familiar territory for at least a while. Just keep your limbs and head in the vehicle at all times and try not to vomit on your seating partner.

What a surprise. More Gomy Chiks. but it seems that these ones are of a different race. The last ones were red, and these yellow. But what’s that in the background by that mostly empty CD rack? A purple Chik? This is astonishing, and a very interesting development in what we know about the social lives of Gomy Chiks. It would appear that Chiks will only hang out with those of their own colour. This closely resembles the social habits of the marshmallow Peep, which will only very seldom, almost never even, be seen with Peeps of a different colour. Too many links makes Ryan’s article look boring and too full of links.

Chupa chupa chupa chupa. Chu chu chu? Chupa chupa Chup! Chupaaa… >:(

Cuadri Gum. Of all the things I’ve seen and am going to see, I’m pretty sure this one is going to be the one that is the most essential to Google. And after said Googling, I found one single result. And I’m pretty sure that page wasn’t written with sanity in mind. However, this was using quotations, so I probably could have found more, but we’ll say that the internet doesn’t recognize the existence of Cuadri Gum. Honestly, I got results for gum, and Cuadri, but none for both. I don’t want to eat the Cuadri. Don’t make me eat the Cuadri. Please?

For the sake of good fake journalism, I’m gonna bite the bullet here. After five minutes of trying to separate the wrapper from the gum, I was horrified to find that it was already well moistened. Light was literally gleaning off the wet bits, and I was totally not prepared to put it into my mouth. Hell, touching it scared me enough. But every good captain goes down with his ship, and while that has no relevance to this situation, it’s an honourable gesture. So the gum was gross. At first it tasted like normal, but then it grew more and more vomit-inducing. Here’s a tip. If you ever come across Cuadri Gum, take it to the nearest church, have it exorcised, and then shoot it repeatedly with a bazooka. I swear that this stuff was not made in Mexico, but in Hell itself.

Oh come on! Screw you guys, I’m no eating this one. Though the word “caramelo” did at first trick me into thinking that it may have originated from Italy, I quickly reaffirmed that “caramelo” is Spanish for caramel. I’m not a big fan of caramels anyway. Especially not the suave ones. That’s just what I need, freaking caramels that are better with the ladies than me. Wait… Forget that last one. I’m excellent with the ladies. In fact I have plenty of ladies right here right now. They’re all fighting over me and other things that ladies do. You know. Things.

Oh ho ho. Here’s an interesting one. Since my ability to take pictures ranks up there with my ability to create matter, I scanned the package for all to see. A Google search for Sobre Sorpresa didn’t bring up much, but I did find some Indian graficas. You know. Like tomahawks and teepees and shit. But that’s not important. the tatuajes are where it’s at!

According to the package there, you can look for 60 designs! ¡Colecciònalos! It also describes that it should contain one normal tatuaje, one holographic tatuaje, and a dulce. Whatever a dulce is. Sorry, my Spanish is a bit rusty. Upon closer translation, a dulce is a candy. Unfortunately, this package of things did not contain a candy. I’m thinking there are two possibilities. Firstly, the candy could have fallen out and gotten mixed with the rest of the Surprise Sac Bag stuff (I’m thinking the caramelo). That’s not likely at all though, so I came up with the second possibility: it never contained a dulce at all! Bastardos! Hey… Upon closer inspection, the Sac Bag package itself shows that dulce is Spanish for candy. Damn, missed that easy one.

I bet you wanna see the tattoos, don’t you? No, you really don’t. Trust me.

OK, Entei was only off by the number, but why do they call Togetic “Togechikku”? Because it’s his Japanese name, that’s why! < /obvious > So the Togetic disc’s got two strikes against it. Not only is the number wrong, but they used his Japanese name, and no Mexicans would bother doing that. No normal Americans would either. There’s only one breed of freaks who would. Anime purists. Those fetid scum who refuse to use any American names or stuff when it comes to anime. Sure, a lot of the American versions of stuff gets butchered pretty badly so I can let most of it slip by, but if you’re using the Japanese names for Pokémon and you don’t live in Japan or speak Japanese exclusively, you’ve likely got some issues and are probably gross and addicted to Pocky.

Yo, …yo. Like a Transformer, there’s more than meets the eye here.

Aww, isn’t that cute, a Marril that’s missing an “R” and a grossly deformed Pikachu. Yeah. I thought the Pokémon discs would end too, but now we’ve got a whole litter of the things. But since you can’t see how terribly fudged up the Pikachu disc it, I had to extract it from the craptastic Yo-yo. Here’s the scan. Notice how this one is spelled oddly as well? Yeah, something’s up. These discs must be horrible bootlegs, or made in Japan and then just stamped with “Made in U.S.A.” to make people who buy them feel more patriotic or some bull like that. Either way, I’m disappointed in Pikachu for scaring the crap out of poor little Togepi like that. All he can do to retaliate is Metronome. Goddamned almost always useless Metronome.

Finally we reach the final bag. It’s got a lot more interesting stuff than the previous bag, but I’m pretty sure I’ll end up typing a couple one-sentencers in for this one too. I guess we’ll see. Yup. Almost done. I’m actually as relieved as I imagine you must be. I foolishly rushed this article, and now it’s making me want to half-ass all the way from here to the end. But I’ll give it a shot, see how far I get, you know the drill. But at the moment, it’s dinnertime, so maybe you should go get a snack to see you down the home stretch.

Lookit that, it’s a hodgepodge of candy we’ve found in the other bags. It seems that while the Chiks don’t associate with other colours of their own kind, they get along quite well with other candies. Or some bullshit like that. I’m sorry, I’m bored. I can’t write about the same kinds of candies over and over.

What’s this? What’s this? A Toy Pop sits right there. What’s this? What’s this? It gives me a right good scare. I see the word “caramelo” on the package and I decide against opening it. Plus, it promises no actual toy, it’s just called a Toy Pop. Mostly, though, I don’t savour the idea of a caramel-flavoured lollipop. Then again, the package also mentions that it’s raspberry flavoured. Raspberry caramel. Yum yum. I’m-a gonna pass this one up, if you don’t mind. You can have it if you send me any amount of money (at least 6 cents) via Paypal. (Local only. I’m not shipping this thing should I have some unknown foreigner reading my site.) My E-Mail’s at the bottom if you need it.

It’s a tiny plastic comb. What do you expect?

The final Pokémon disc is upon us. Look upon it, with all its majesty and roundness, and fall to your knees in awe. Or fall off your chair in awe, whichever is more applicable for your current situation. So Mew looks like he just pulled a pretty good prank. All sneaky-like, trying to hide his laughter. I still won’t believe that these things are made in U.S.A. until someone flies me down to the plant.

Lastly, but oddly enough, not leastly, we have the Magi-Ojitos. Or if you prefer, the Magic Eyes. On the upside, these are not in fact strange pictures that hide a secret that only witches can see, but rather some googly eyes that you can put on your fingers to… stuff with… and things. Ah, the back of the package has some ideas for things to do with the googly eyes. This bag promises candy as well, but again, does not deliver. It was open, so maybe it just fell out, but I’ll assume the worst.

Well that was a surprise. I didn’t think I’d have to put the Magi-Ojitos together. Oh well, there could be worse things that it could make me do… Woah! Take a look at this! It’s the uncommonly seen North American Elephand! Such a majestic creature, it’s just too bad he spotted us. I’d have liked to get a closer look at the beast. Possibly stick my thumb up his bumhole. Someday I’ll find another of these beautiful animals, but at least for now I’ve got video evidence! And you’re pissed off about how much I hyped up that video, and how much of a cop-out it was. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I win!

Yep. that’s the end of it all. You’ve seen all of the crap I promised, my friends. I gave you bigger pictures, package scans, and a video, even if it was the worst video ever recorded. Plus it’s a decently long article to boot, so as long as you weren’t expecting entertainment, you don’t have anything to complain about. It wasn’t very super, no, but that was all part of my plan to piss you off. Now if only I really had hyped it up. I mean, a single graphic isn’t quite enough to build up a good hype for something. Especially when it’s likely to be a video game review.

That actually wasn’t so bad. I was thinking that maybe I would explode before I was finished with this one. Which is too bad… I wanted to explode… There’s nothing more to say really. Nothing more than to tell you to go out and buy surprise bags! If nothing else, you can throw the things you find inside at people or just make fun of Mexicans for producing such shoddy products. I mean geez, those tatuajes could be a lot higher quality than they are. And the Magi-Ojitos are kinda crap too. But whatever. I like the lion, he’s got a place on my dresser. I’ve got nothing else. End.

The Return of Dick Turtle

It’s again the time of year when the snow has vanished, and it’s time for the revival of outside-type activities. Well, for normal people anyhow. Me, I still just sit inside and play video games or type up crap like this. But in the spring and summertime, I often get the chance to sit inside and play video games out at the cottage. And if there’s anything better about going to the cottage than getting to play with the air rifle, it’s getting to browse the dollar stores in the local town. Oh yeah, it’s time for round two.

This year, I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t just a “find anything at all that stands out” affair like it’s been in years past. I knew that the “surprise bag” articles were among some of the top ranked that I’ve written, so I had a mission: find me as many of the damn things as I could. Sadly, as I said in last year’s Dick Turtle review, the places don’t restock stuff like this. The most likely cause is that these things went out of production seven hunred years ago. So unfortunately, I was only able to grab two of the Dick Turtle bags. There were no others, and I decided to leave one behind to see if anyone else ever bought these things. I guess I’ll find out next time I go.

On the pro side, if I were able to buy these things en masse, they’re only fifty cents a bag, so it’s not like it’s a big drain on my funds. Those name brand bags (which are crap as far as surprises go) can go for anywhere up to two bucks, so a cheap reject from the stupid age is like a blessing filled with several little curses (should you try to consume the contents).

Ah, the memories come flooding back. In case you missed the first one (which I’d like to doubt) here’s a link to that one. If you don’t want to read through it, or just want a little refresher, basically, this “Dick Turtle Surprise Bag” is a very old-looking plastic bag containing several assorted things. These can range from candy to toys to fake jewlery to mini-ninjas. God knows when these things were actually made, but the bags themselves look to be about five thousand years older than most of their contents. But age is of no consequence. It’s time to move on.

Ripping open the first bag, I found that it contained a much wider variety of crap than last year’s bag did. No, wait. It’s just a bunch of useless junk and bad candy again. Nevermind what I said. It contained essentially the same spread of stuff as my last DT bag did. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?

Starting off on the same foot as last time, we see that ol’ Dick is as inconsistent as ever. But at least he’s consistently inconsistent. I think. Anyhow, I’ll point out for nostaligia’s sake that the Dick Turtle on the card shown above is clearly not the same Dick Turtle that graces the front of the surprise bag. How the producers of this product managed to think that they’d get away with this travesty is beyond me, but they managed to pull it off. I guess. … OK, onto the next paragraph.

This time around, Dick tells us to avoid skating on frozen lakes or ponds. I can tell you from experience that whilst ponds and lakes may be dangerous, it is perfectly okay to skate on a frozen river. Just don’t walk around on it. That’s when you fall through and end up a Ryansicle. Unless you’re just heading out to the ice fishing hut. Then you’ll be a-okay. The moral of this story: there was no story.

You know, after going over this puzzle less than once, I realized that clue #4 has absolutely no bearing on the result. Assuming that you’re crossing off pirates once they’re ruled out, and following the clues in order, you’ve already found the culprit by clue #3. I really wanted to make a joke about how one of these guys looks like some sort of pop culture icon, but none of them bear any resemblance to anything. It was pirate E. And he sucks, because he failed to steal the treasure.

How accurate. Kinda makes you wonder how widely these were distributed. Or maybe they were just thrown together by one of the locals in an attempt to make a quick buck (or $1.50, considering I’m probably the only one ever to buy these things). I mean, they have no sort of… Wait a tick! Upon closer inspection, they were produced by… a bunch of Newfies. Apparently they go by the name “The Surprise Bag Company”. After a little research, I discovered absouluely nothing other than this. Hover over the clown picture for a little briefing on the SBC, and click on him to be taken to a webpage that isn’t there. Other than that, there isn’t a lot that Google can tell me about them. I guess it’s a good thing I never noticed the mailing address on the back of the bag last time, or else I’d be out a paragraph of material here.

Woah. Stop the presses. Forget what I said about accurate. The Jets never won the Stanley Cup. As far as I know, they never even came close. Yes, the Winnipeg Victorias took it waaaaay back in 1896, and then again in 1901 and 02, but I hardly think anyone would fashion a toy ring for events so ancient and obscure.

Next up…. A fake tooth. Yow. That one was in deep. Either way, it’s neither interesting to look at, read about, or even write about, so how about I tell you about my day about? No? Fine. Aboot.

Ooh! Candy for all you technologically inclined types out there. They even spelled it ‘bytes’. I guess that about sums it up. Aside from the redundancy of putting both ‘mini’ and ‘micro’ in the name, the package hasn’t got anything to offer, aside from it’s sweet, sweet (here’s hoping) contents. Oh yeah, and remember that raindrop-headed guy. You’ll be seeing more of him before the day is done.

The candies certainly do look appealing. They’re all colourful and tiny. Mini they are. And micro as well. So I threw ’em back, and it turns out they’re pretty good. You know Sweet Tarts? Kinda like those, but not as chewy. Or at least not as chewy as Chewy Sweet Tarts. And just now I looked at the back of the bag, and the thing is dated 1998. Candy doesn’t really go bad, right? I survived the last bag of stuff, after all. But I can’t recall actually eating any of it. If I turn up dead in the next little while, I blame Newfoundland.

This one’s a bit of a toss-up. I really should have just put the two pics side-by-side, but screw that. I’m getting my extra paragraph. By the by, I pretty much destroyed that capsule trying to get it open. I’m not good with vending machine capsules. Never have been, never will be.

Did you see that coming? I didn’t. Why would anyone want a tiny decorative plate featuring a sleeping star who’s mouth is zippered shut? Moreover, why would anyone want a tiny decorative plate? Perhaps to compliment their tiny sports team logo’d mugs? So they have something to display in their tiny china cabinet? To throw in the air and shoot with their tiny clay shooting rifle? Life is full of mysteries, and this is certainly one that will never be solved. I hate that star.

When the casket fell out of the bag as I was shaking it furiously, a wave of pure dread washed over me. Not only because I had to try to review something a second time and make it seem like new, but also because I feared that the skeletons from last year were out for revenge on me. But this one could hold something different, right? There was no guarantee that even though it looked the exact same and had the same “Mr. Bones” engraved on the top, it held the same stuff as the last coffin.

Hopes were crushed, curses were placed, and untruths were typed. There was no curse, nevermind several of them. My hopes that something different would be inside were indeed crushed, however. It’s the same bone candy that I discovered in the last article, and this batch is just as brittle and crappy as the last, making it impossible to actually hook the bones together. So I’m a little sad that there’s a repeat item, but at least this a repeat of a somewhat cool item. We’ll be suffering much greater disappointment a little later on.

And that does it for the first bag. I’d say the Winnipeg ring is the best thing in there, simply because of the coincidence of finding a toy ring that is emblazoned with the name of my city in a bag of completely random junk. The biggest let-down was the tooth. Sure, it had blood on it, but nobody, and not even nobody’s uncle Leopold would for even a second believe it to be a real tooth, so it’s got no prank value for something that should be rich in the stuff.

Now we’re gonna kick it up a notch and delve into the mysteries of the second Dick Turtle Surprise Bag. If it were possible for me to write more about this junk, you’d be clicking a link to go to a second page, but even I can’t reach for that much filler with this crap as source material, so you get off easy this time.

Dick’s advice is a little less stupid this time. I mean, not every kid is going to be presented with the option to skate on a frozen lake or pond, but almost every child will, at some point in their life, have to cross a road. But really, we all know that Dick goesn’t give a flying rat’s ass about children. He’s just trying to better his image to give himself more leverage with the voters. Bastard is all about politics.

Do you want to colour a giant space turtle humping a rocket? I don’t, but if you do, today’s your lucky day! Save the pic, blow it up a little in Photoshop or something, and colour it in! Send it to me afterward, and I’ll make a Dick Turtle gallery and put all of your pretty pictures in it. That’s a promise. If I get even one submission, the gallery will be there. Eventually. So do it!

But seriously, where do they get off calling this a puzzle?

Well, well, well. Look what the cat dragged back in. At first glance, it’s just the Mini Micro Bytes again, but if you look real close, you’ll still think they’re the Mini Micro Bytes again. But these packages hold a terrifying secret! While the previous ones were more cylindrical in shape, these bytes are… circles! Okay. I’ll admit it. I’ve got nothing. But then again, do I ever really have something?

I don’t know what the hell this is. Some kind of cat toy of something. It’s just a smiley face in the middle of a plastic ball, with little balls boucing around inside. You can make it jingle a bit, but not much else. At least it should make good lighter fodder come stuff-burnin’ season. Which is now.

You can’t tell from the tiny pic, but that pink thing on the corner of the Mini Tarts packages is the same dude from the Mini Micro Bytes. Word on the street is that he calls himself the Goody Guy. Anyhow, further investigation reveals that not only are the Mini Tarts the exact same candy as their Mini Micro bretheren, but that they were produced a year earlier. I’m not sure what the deciding factor is, but these ones taste marginally worse than the others. Maybe the year made a difference after all? Or perhaps the Bytes were just an improvement on the Tart formula. We may never know. I hope you stay up all night pondering, cause I’ll feel bad if I’m the only one.

More bytes. Only this time they’ve got a block in a diaper representing them. Oh, and they’re made by an entirely different company. Hard as stone and more revolting than a bag of pig ears, these are certainly not good candy. Simply put: they’re shitty Chiclets. They won’t make you want to induce vomiting like those damned bones (a fact I may have omitted earlier), but they do border on nasty.

Two items left, and we’ve got another crappy ring. Only this one looks like a bad Dino wannabe. I’m not even sure if it’s supposed to be a dinosaur at all, nevermind a ripoff of an established character. It could very well be a very poorly drawn duck. I’ve seen worse.

And our final item of the day is this… notebook… thing. It’s tiny, and I doubt anyone without mad skillz similar to mine could have any change of writing legibly in it. Crap. I’m tired of writing about stuff. It’s time to wrap things up and hope I never find another Dick Turtle bag again.

I guess that maybe, maybe if the remaining Dick Turtle Surprise Bag is still sitting in that Bargain Shop next summer, I’ll pick it up and review it. I really don’t think so though, because it took two of them to fill an entire article, should you neglect that a lot of stuff that could have been said was written during the first DT bag review. And if there’s only one left, you’re probably only going to get a mini-review out of it at best, unless I just throw length to the wind and decide to do it just for the sake of getting to use the word ‘dick’ more.

So yes, that’s probably the last of Dick Turtle you’ll be seeing on this website. Unless of course, someone acutually takes up my offer of colouring the Dick Turtle picture. Of course, if you really need a Dick Turtle fix, you could drive out to Lac du Bonnet and search out that last bag for yourself… Me, I’m just gonna look up an antidote for all that candy that probably poisoned me.

The Dick Turtle Surprise Bag!

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 just 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.