Hepcat

My entries:

I've been posting here for a few years now so I guess it's high time I told you other fellows a little about myself. I'm a baby boomer born in 1952 and raised in London, Ontario. There were a number of defining moments in my younger days that turned me into the monster related toy enthusiast I am today: 1. The first was perhaps the You'll Die Laughing card set that Topps issued in 1959. These featured artwork by the legendary Jack Davis and are perhaps my favourite card set of all time. My association with these at the time didn't go beyond admiring the older kids' cards as I didn't yet have the disposable income to buy cards priced at five cents a pack. 2. My mother used to haunt the Kresge, Woolworths, Zellers and Metropolitan stores in downtown London looking for bargains I suppose. As a youngster I was invariably in tow. I didn't mind of course as there was always the chance I could score a dish of ice cream at the restaurant counter these stores typically featured. And of course there was never a shortage of other items to occupy a young boy's interest, goldfish, little turtles, budgies and all those toys! It was on one of those trips to Kresge that I came face to face with a Great Garloo, which I immediately brought to my mother's attention. With a sticker price in the twenty dollar area, there was just no chance I'd be given one though. 3. It was some time in 1961(?) that my buddy and I took in a double bill featuring the "Curse of Frankenstein" and the "Horror of Dracula" at the Capitol Theatre in downtown London. My buddy was so frightened by the events on the screen that he actually closed his eyes during the graveyard scene in the Dracula movie. I was made of sterner stuff but these movies were like none I'd seen before and left a profound mark on my impressionable young mind. 4. I energetically collected the Spook Stories card set that Leaf issued in late 1961/early 1962. 5. Around that time in perhaps the summer of 1962 I also succeeded in getting my mother to buy me a Hasbro Marble Maze at Woolworths. It featured pitfalls such as the Haunted Mountains, Devil's Pass, and Man Eating Plants and was the best toy I'd ever gotten to that point. 6. On another trip to Kresge within a few months I came upon the Aurora monster models. Up to that point I'd just dabbled on the fringes of monster culture but those Aurora kits were so awesome that they sent me right off the deep end. Although I was most attracted to the Creature at first, it was the Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Flivver I ended up building. 7. At some point I also became aware of the Revell line of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Fink model kits. Rat Fink and Angel Fink would be the two I'd build. I also bought a T-shirt Iron-On Transfer of Brother Rat Fink which I successfully applied to one of my shirts which my disgusted father promptly used as a rag in the garage. I never built any of the Hawk Weird-Ohs but a buddy down the street had an assembled Francis the Foul. 8. By selling fifteen newspapers on a Saturday morning in the spring of 1963, I earned a prize beyond my wildest dreams - that being a Standard Plastics monster wallet featuring Wolf Man and the Creature, albeit it was the one with the Mummy that seemed to be the most popular with the other fellows. 9. It was in September of 1963(?) that I took in the "King Kong versus Godzilla" movie at the Odeon Theatre in downtown London. I was left awestruck. 10. I then made the biggest score of my young life on a family trip to Detroit to visit relatives in the summer of 1964. I got my father to buy me a Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory! My two best buddies were more than eager to be my demented half-brained lab assistants and enthusiastically fetched tapwater for me while I mixed the concoctions. 11. Trick or treating on Halloween with my two best buddies in 1964 I was given one card in a generic wrapper. Opening it up we discovered the "Hairy Fiend" card from the Topps Mars Attacks set. We were awestruck since Mars Attacks cards had not been distributed in London and we had therefore never seen any. Without the wrapper, we failed to even figure out the name of the set. 12. A few months later I discovered Big Daddy Roth magazine on the newsstand and ended up getting all four issues. I dutifully did as the ad suggested and sent away to Roth Studios in California for a Rat Fink sweatshirt, which my father just as dutifully turned into yet another rag. 13. I'd also discovered the first issue of Creepy magazine on the newstand while checking to see if the new Green Lantern or Flash comic books had come in and was immediately taken by the Jack Davis artwork on the cover and the stories inside. I ended up becoming a big Warren Publications fan and remember haunting neighbourhood stores waiting for the first issue of Eerie to hit the newstands. Curiously though I never bought Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine because I thought it was for bigger kids! The model kits I'd built as a kid had a lifelong influence on me. So did the comics and bubble gum cards I'd collected. Therefore despite the fact that my boyhood treasures all went by the wayside at some point in time, I never completely lost interest in these things. Throughout high school and university I always wished I still had my models, comics, cards and sundry toys. My first job after university was in 1977 and by 1979 I was back to collecting. Big time! The comics and cards came first because of their availability in several shops here in Toronto. By 1981 or 1982 though I discovered that unbuilt Aurora monster and other kits could be bought. I've been collecting them ever since - the Aurora monster and other figure models, Hawk Weird-Ohs, Revell "Big Daddy" Roth Finks, AMT Star Trek vessels etc. I have well over 100 of these including most of the ones I want. For example, the only Roth kits I need are Surfite, Scuz-Fink, Boss Fink and Robbin' Hood Fink and the only Aurora monsters I need are the King Kongs, Godzillas and Mummy's Chariot. These are very tough to find. I have all the Hawk Weird-Ohs and Silly Surfers though and need only one Frantic kit. I also collect unbuilt Aurora and Hawk plane and ship models from the sixties and some drag and stock car model kits from the seventies. I have a very impressive collection of unbuilt slot car kits from the sixties, primarily Monogram and AMT. As you might imagine, these are particularly difficult to find. I have over forty Mint in Box slot cars. I currently have seventeen Mint in Box board games from the sixties including Casper, Terrytoons Hide n' Seek, Outer Limits, Shindig, Howdy Doody Adventure, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Deputy, Mighty Crusaders, Johnny Ringo, Hasbro Dracula Mystery, Superman, Spider-Man and Lost in Space. I also have a modest collection of other toys including eight Kenner Presto or Sparkle Paint Sets, three different Hasbro Marble Mazes, some Hamilton's Invader items, a couple of dozen Mint on Card Duncan Spin Tops and a Marx Three Keys to Treasure Bagatelle: The "toy" I most covet though is a Mint in Box Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory chemistry set which I had as a kid. I've also taken up collecting NM unused kids' lunch boxes with their thermoses. I now have 22 thermoses and nineteen lunch boxes. The Steve Canyon lunchbox and thermos is the oldest of these but others include Shari Lewis, Casper, Atom Ant & Secret Squirrel, Woody Woodpecker, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Yogi Bear. I have a small collection of Lionel HO trains. Eventually I'd like to have a 1/29 scale garden railroad outside with Aristocraft and USA Trains equipment. I'll model a 1950s scene and mix 4-8-4 Northern steam engines with GP7 and GP9 diesels in my layout. I haven't really gotten into Pez dispensers, Corgi or Matchbox cars, Marx Playsets, or Collegeville and Ben Cooper Halloween costumes - yet. Maybe in another ten years. I collect comics from 1945 to 1980. My concentration is Silver Age DC such as Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Atom, Hawkman, Mystery in Space, Sea Devils, Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected, Teen Titans, Fox and the Crow etc. I'm just about solid in my main titles going back to 1962. For example, I have all the Justice Leagues going back to 1960 with the exception of issues 5, 6 and 47. I also collect other titles such as the Fly, Jaguar, Black Cat, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Space Adventures, Gorgo, Herbie, Turok, Doctor Solar, Lone Ranger, Gold Key Phantom and many Atom Age Jungle and Adventure titles including Sheena, Jumbo, Space Western and Commander Battle & the Atomic Sub. I have a few Harveys such as Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Little Audrey and Hot Stuff and quite a few Dell Funny Animal comics. I also have a very good collection of the car humour mags such as Drag Cartoons, Hot Rod Cartoons and CARtoons. I also collect the Warren horror mags such as Creepy and Eerie and the Skywalds. I have a collection of several dozen Mad magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well. My collection of CFL cards and such from the fifties to 1972 is among the best in the world. I also have a very nice collection of hockey cards from 1957 to 1973. I also have hundreds of baseball cards although these I've not pursued aggressively. I have over thirty binders of sports cards, over three quarters of them from before 1973. I also collect non-sport cards primarily from 1948 to 1972. These I find even more interesting than sport cards. Favourite sets in my collection include You'll Die Laughing, Funny Valentines, Mr. Foney's Foney Ads, Zorro, Robin Hood, Sports Cars, Civil War News, Casper, TV Westerns, Goofy Series Postcards, Wacky Plaks, Fight the Red Menace, Batman, Space/Target Moon, Crazy Cards, Round-Up, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Monkees and Spook Stories. I haven't yet found Mars Attacks and Battle sets in sufficiently high grade. These two sets would be excruciatingly expensive. All in all, I have over 35 binders of non-sport cards of which over 85% are pre-1980. I've also accumulated the original wrappers for dozens of these sets. As you can imagine, the wrappers can be particularly tough to find. I've not been collecting the boxes to this point. My collection of premium coins - Shirriff hockey, football, baseball, cars, warships, space etc. - from potato chips and jelly desserts is among the best in the world. I also collect refillable soda pop bottles, 16 ounces and smaller, and 1/4 pint and 1/2 pint round painted label milk bottles from the 1920s to the 1950s. I specialize in Ontario dairies. I now have close to two hundred bottles plus several dozen Pepsi and other collectible milk glasses in a custom built kitchen pantry with glass doors to store and display the bottles. I have a couple very nicely restored Beaver gumball machines from the sixties. As soon as I create the space in my kitchen, I intend to acquire one of the pop machines from the sixties where you pulled the bottle out toward you horizontally. I also really want one of the small metal Wishing Well thermometers which hung in many variety stores when I was a young boy. I love music and am constantly adding to my record accumulation of over 500 LPs and 200 CDs. My favourite artists include the Rolling Stones, Doors, Animals, Who, Cream, Beatles, Jethro Tull, Kinks, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Spirit, Ten Years After, Yardbirds, Zombies, Troggs, Box Tops, ? & the Mysterians, Butterfield Blues Band, Jeff Beck Group, Buddy Guy, Slim Harpo, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Vanilla Fudge, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Junior Walker & the All Stars, David Bowie, Blondie, B-52's, T-Rex, Prince, Meatloaf, etc. I have a small collection of Rolling Stones 45 sleeves and concert programs. I play my music on a Thorens TD 240 turntable with a state of the art Ortofon 2M Black moving magnet cartridge which incorporates a Shibata line stylus, a Marantz CC4001 CD player, a Marantz PM7001 70 watt per channel amplifier and a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS8 speakers. I'm also getting a custom hardwood base with interlocking layers of sound deadening baltic birch built for a new old store stock Garrard GT-55 turntable I picked up on Ebay! It will anchor a second system in my bedroom which includes a pair of BIC Venturi 5312 speakers. I have a small collection of silver coins These are primarily Canadian but I have some U.S. ones as well. I also adore classic and muscle cars. I had a 1987 Buick Grand National but that was stolen in 1992 out of the parking lot of a banquet hall when I was attending a friend's wedding and then trashed. A project I've not been able to get around to doing due to financial limitations is restoring my candle apple red 340 powered 1973 Dodge Charger which needs an engine rebuild. I had Jesse at the Hemi Shop in London, Ontario install the engine back in 1981. Overall though I'd characterize myself as a kid's stuff from the baby boom years collector.

Here are scans of the non-DC comics in my collection cover dated January 1967: This was Black Hood's first appearance as the cover feature of a comic in over twenty years! Pity the cover was so Marvelesque though. Here the folks at Charlton unveiled Captain Atom's new duds. A very sad development since I much preferred his previous yellow and orange outfit. He just wasn't the Captain Atom I knew and loved from then on. 1 10

Do you remember any of which of your games may be pictured in his books?

I was cleaning up the floor as soon as I saw the pic!! Not surprising. GGA makes me do that too.

Anyone interested in board games might want to pick up these two books by Rick Polizzi: While not as comprehensive as some other books on board games, I found them more interesting because of their focus on the games of the baby boomer era. Polizzi was also the publisher of a short lived magazine on board games also entitled Spin Again which only ran for five issues in the early nineties. Here's a great picture of Rick Polizzi with his board game collection from his website: Rick Polizzi evidently started collecting board games after stumbling upon one in a thrift shop in the late eighties that he'd had as a kid. By late 1990 his collection had grown to over 400 and at last count he had approximately 1500! Have any of you California fellows met Rick at any of the toy shows in the Golden State? I've only spoken with him on the phone some fifteen years ago.

I'm adding Frisky Fables to my "look out for" titles If you like that check out Holiday, Ha Ha and Giggle for classic holiday covers The artwork on the Frisky Fables reminds me of the Animaniacs:

I'm adding Frisky Fables to my "look out for" titles

Well not that copy anyway.

I've looked through the last few pages of this thread and I still haven't seen any mention of where the show takes place.

Here are scans of the five DC comics in my collection cover dated January 1967 with the covers that I like the best:

So Lorna's not a heroine? It's pre-hero though. That means girls don't count.

Myself I think you should hold out for a 9.4.

Those are all fabulous! But you've made no reference to the drugstore here. Did you therefore acquire the non-DCs somewhere else, or later? I seem to recall that your drugstore was situated in a shopping plaza right around the corner from your house. In what city was this? Is the drugstore still there? Does it still sell comics? Finally, how is it that you didn't seem to have any interest in any but Superman and Batman family DC titles? Did your drugstore not carry any Justice League of America, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman , Hawkman or Atom comics?

My entry:

I picked up the River City but traded it a few years ago to MrBedrock. Were there a lot of really nice fifties comics in the River City collection?

Scans of two more of my pre-hero Marvels:

I've been asked about the extent of my non-sport card collection on occasion. I therefore took the trouble of totalling up my non-sport binders last week so I can now provide at least a partial answer which should give some indication as to the size of my vintage card collection at which I've been pecking away since 1980. My vintage(pre-1990) non-sports cards are sorted by subject/topic and then housed in alphabetical order within red binders to differentiate them from my sports cards. I have twenty 2 1/2" binders for vintage non-sport cards. Many of these topics require more than one of these large binders. Here are the topics: Cars/Racing Comics & Cartoons (2) Finks & Weird-Ohs Humour (2) Monsters/Horror (2) Rock & Movie Stars (2) Science Fiction (2) Secret Agents & Detectives Superheroes - DC Superheroes - Marvel & Other Television/Film (2) Wacky Packages War & Military Stuff Miscellaneous I have four 2" binders: Animals Cowboys & Indians Jack Davis Transportation (including Aircraft) Finally I have two 1 1/2" binders: Bazooka Red Rose Tea Where categories overlap, I file the cards in the narrower more specifically defined category. Jack Davis Monsters/Horror Science Fiction Superheroes - DC Superheroes - Marvel & Other War & Military Stuff

Since this post, one was released. An Omnibus actually: But that's even better!

No Amazing 50??? Hey Frankie ...sold the remaining above 20 to pay for my 2 and 3 in 9.0...such is life and collecting...the last of the ASM that were pried from my hands were about in the following order...75...21-30...31/32/33...39/40 and 50...I miss 'em but I'm happy with my decision...while the 28 and 50 were the most valuable, I miss the 31-33 most. I might add those back some day... Is/was there something special about Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 3? When did you start buying Amazing Spider-Man comics as a kid? I'm asking because it would seem strange to me to reduce the quantity of a run you've collected to concentrate your "collection" in just two issues.

Mmmmmmm! That's a nice one.

I wonder how the demographics of the Lois Lane buyers compared to those of the Superman and Action Comics buyers at the time?

Amazing that not only do you have all twelve of both the Action Comics and the Adventure Comics runs that you'd bought as a kid in 1967 from one specific outlet, but that they're all still in such fabulous shape! I really like how bright the whites of the checks on top have stayed all these years.

My father had taken out membership in the YMCA for me in 1964-65 and a couple of the comics I most highly treasure today remain strongly associated with the trips I took to the downtown YMCA on Saturday mornings as a kid. After getting off the bus, I would always stop off at the News Depot on Dundas Street which was right around the corner from the Y. On one of these occasions this comic immediately caught my eye: Solomon Grundy, Doctor Fate, Hourman, a head shot of the original Green Lantern, all on the night of a bright orange full moon against a striking purple sky, I mean how could it not draw my gaze? I must have bought it on the spot because our favourite comics became the topic of discussion in that day's Boys' Club meeting at the Y! Otherwise one of the other boys would have had to bring in a comic or two to the meeting that day because the older(twenty year old!) who functioned as our discussion leader raised the subject of our favourite comics upon spotting those one of us had brought into the room. For whatever reason I think it might even have been later that same day that I met another comic enthusiast of roughly my age at the News Depot. I agreed to visit him to trade comics. He turned out to be attending a rather upscale boarding school with semi-private rooms near the University of Western Ontario. He only had a few comics but among them was a copy of Brave and the Bold 43, one of those legendary early appearances of Hawkman that I'd read so much about in the Julius Schwartz letter columns! To that point I'd still not managed to secure a single one of those Brave and the Bold issues featuring the Winged Wonder. I tried to stay calm and not tip him off to my almost palpably eager craving for that comic, and I succeeded! He agreed to take a fairly recent 1965(?) issue of one of the Superman or Batman family titles I typically used as trade bait. What a prize! It was my best back issue score ever as a kid. Those two comics still resonate strongly with me to this very day because of the memories I have of the day I acquired each as a kid. They're both just loaded with nostalgia for me.

I can't understand why DC stuck with H.G. Peter's art for Wonder Woman that long. While his artwork might have been suitable for superheroes in 1941, it was already passé within five years. Wonder Woman 98 is therefore my stepping-on issue for the title. I won't buy a Wonder Woman comic before that issue.