Explore the Concrete Beach

So how was your Christmas?

I hope it was good. I got my Keurig Mini-coffee maker from my sister and was thrilled. Though I don’t drink coffee, I do drink teas and hot chocolate and I have had about 20 cups since Christmas Eve when I got my gift.

Why Christmas Eve?

Well when my sister (Becky) and I were younger we use to have those in school “Santa’s Workshop” days where your parents gave you like $20 and you bought a bunch of crap for your family. Becky and I would then pass them out to our family, my dad’s side, on Christmas Eve that why they would get presents from use the day before and Christmas morning was spent opening up everything my parents, grandparents and aunt and uncle bought us. Christmas Eve was the time Becky and I exchanged presents with each other.

It became a tradition, even though my dad just wants to open everything on Christmas Eve because he says he wants to sleep in on Christmas, though the man can’t sleep past 7AM when we do presents at 9.

As we aged we’ve up graded the presents from random mugs and picture frames to clothes, golf clubs, and even a computer. Yes, a computer. We bought it for my parents a few years ago.  Don’t know if it was the wisest thing in the world, but we did it.

On Christmas I opened up a Wii. I was excited, but I find it funny when my parents said they didn’t know what to get me so they got me a Wii. If I was younger still and asked for a Wii, my parent’s would probably have looked at each other and rolled their eyes, but when you’re 28 and they have no clue on what to get you apparently video games systems are the way to go. I was excited for the Wii and have been playing it since Christmas Day, it’s like I’m 14 again playing on my N64.

Best. System. Ever!

So those were my main gifts on Christmas I did get a nice Penguins hoodie too! Can’t go wrong with a Pens hoodie.

So how was your Christmas and can you believe it’s almost 2010?

Where has the decade gone?

Which also means I graduated high school 10 years ago. Wow.

:blink:

That’s still odd to me, but I know we will not have a reunion as my senior class did not like each other that well and the people in charge did nothing with our class, except design the crappiest senior t-shirts ever and they wonder why no one bought them. Shooting stars are not something everyone would want to wear on a t-shirt.

Later this week my top memories from the last decade.

Mark

With yesterday’s flash back to old Nickelodeon days I’ve been feeling nostalgic. So when I thought about what I wanted to wrote about today I had a few options like “How The Penguins Ruined Grey’s Anatomy,” “Pittsburgh’s Own Billy Mays Is Getting His Own Reality Show” or “Carrots…We’re Not Russian For Them.”  

The first one was funny to me because I co-worker mentioned this this morning and I laughed about it. The second option is also funny, and the third has been covered in length at The Pens Blog.

Yesterday, though something else happened that caught my eye and since I am feeling nostalgic I’ll share this with you.

I stopped at The Waterfront yesterday in Homestead. I was looking for something in Bed, Bath and Beyond, but when I walked through the sliding doors I was confronted was a blast from the past…Madballs!

What you don’t remember Madballs from your youth and when I say youth I mean from like the mid-1980s because I was like 5 or 6 around that time and I owned a few Madballs.

What, what, WHAT! You don’t remember? Ok first let’s take a look at a picture.

Is it all coming back to you now?

Good, because I was going to wail on in you direction, but they are only foam rubber so they don’t hurt no matter what people claimed when they got hit with one.

So, some of you still don’t remember still. Oh, well: WOOSH! What? That wasn’t me throwing it.

History time kids.

Madballs had strange and disgusting faces created by AmToy, a subsidiary company of American Greetings in the mid-1980s.

The toys incorporated gross-out humor in the vein of Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. Each ball had a character synopsis and a strange name.

The toy line was later turned into a short-lived animated television series, a series of comics and a video game for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64.

Wow that is going way back isn’t it?

Oh, and when I say short-lived I mean 2 episodes.

So, now some toy company brought them back and launched a new website for them, which you can find by clicking HERE!

On the site you can watch some ads and play some games and there is a shop also.

I remember the “Screaming Meemie” one that looked like a baseball and the stitched up Frankenstein looking one and the one with the open skull which I found out was originally called…get ready for this…CRACK HEAD! Ha! It was later renamed Bash Brain.

They now have a “Classic Series” and a “Sick Series.” The you squeeze one of the “Sick Series” Madballs and a eye will pop out, a spider, brains or other random things will come out of the inside of the ball.

Yeah kind of gross, but that’s what we use to play with when I was 6.

Does anyone else remember theses, Wacky Packages or Garbage Pail Kids?

: : : : : : : : : : :