Started as basically a giant advert for their Crepe Paper and what you could create with it, Dennison's started printing yearly Bogie Books in 1909. Being from the UK, and also not being born until 1977, I never got to experience these wonderful books that give you lots of ideas for parties, decorations, costumes and games to liven up your Halloween experience!
Thankfully, the Internet Archive let me know some of these books were in the public domain, and so presented here is one in its entirity for your reading pleasure! For more information on these, there is a wonderful blog post over at the Food Historian's blog that does a far more impressive job of explaining them than I ever could, so go check that out and then go try out some of these ideas.....just be sure to buy a ton of crepe paper first though!
(Click To Go Big!)
Look at those costumes! Also, I think "Old Man Autumn" needs to make some sort of comeback as a thing for Halloween..his leafy face is just amazing!
Do we really only have two days left before Halloween!? Where the heck does the time go?
Best get over to the Countdown hub and check out as much stuff as possible over the next couple of days! Just click the badge below....
Bit of a headache again today, and feel I've been looking at screens too long....so here's a quick look at another recent pick-up to keep things quick and relatively easy!
I picked up this book that a charity shop had obviously put out as we're nearing Hallowe'en.... and it's one that I've been meaning to get for a while! It normally goes for about £13/$17, but as it clearly has a slight mold problem, I got it for £2/$2.61!
It's written by Denis Gifford, who you might have heard of if you're into comics, as he was well known for having the biggest collection of British comics in the world! But he also wrote and drew comics, and wrote many books on the history of comics and cartoons.
He was also a historian of film, television and radio, having written various books on the subjects....and along with his good friend, comedian and TV presenter, Bob Monkhouse, amassed a huge collection of various forms of media....and among his faourite movies were of course horror and B-movies!
And so we get this great little A-Z of Movie Monsters, which I've wanted because it mentions a few that are rarely covered in such collections....here are a few pages to show you what I mean!
I'm definitely going to use it a a reference to help me catch up on some horror films I haven't seen yet! It's worth picking up, especially if you can find a copy a little cheaper like I did. I just hope any mold spores from it's slightly discoloured pages don't cause any odd moldy mutations upon my person!
(Oh, and if you haven't already, please do click on the links in the names of Denis and Bob Monkhouse that'll take you to their wiki pages...they are both very interesting characters worth reading about, especially if you know nothing about them!)
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Be sure to go checkout what everybody else has been up to over at the Countdown hub by clicking the badge below....or you could head straight over to Spooky Moon who's crafting some creepy but cool creations!
So, I'm still on Jury Duty...and although we've got the weekend off, I managed to pick up some horrendous cold from one of the other jurors which has caused my sinusitis to flare up as well, so I'm feeling rather crappy and trying to get better before I have to return to the jury tomorrow!
It's looking like Wednesday at least until we're done with the case, so it'll be after that before I can hopefully get going with the Gruesome Games and some more newspaper excerpts. In the meantime, here's a few pages from a book I've picked up since last Halloween that's filled with lots of tips for costumes, recipes and decorations to make Halloween even more awesome! Remember to click the pages to make them bigger..
It's a great book, and highly recommended if you're looking for some inspiration!
Anyway, my head is filling up again, so I'm off to down some more paracetamol-infused lemon drink and cross my fingers for a speedy recovery! Laters stuffers!
(Oh, and don't forget to check out everyone else's Halloween-type stuffs over at Countdown To Halloween!)
Still got loads of stuff I haven't mentioned to get through, so lets just crack right on with it!
As you can see from the pic above, I got some Ren & Stimpy POP! figures from my mum for Christmas!
They'll look nice on my shelves when I work out where I'm going to put stuff if I ever manage to get a new flat...still boxing stuff up and trying to sell some stuff so I can actually move out of my old one!
Next up, some Beano & Dandy Comic Libraries that I picked up for about 75p each in Oxfam.....
Can't remember having heard of Ruff and Freddy before? Does anybody know if they were just created for this comic library or were they actually in the Beano at any point?
I might take a closer look at Tricky Dicky's Hallowe'en Horrors for the Countdown this year.....
Some game pick-ups next, and here's a few I found for my Xbox 360.......
Ride to Hell Retribution is a badly made tale of a biker out for revenge against other bikers, but seems like it might be so bad its amazing....We'll see how I get on with it.....
Fairytale Fights is an odd hack-n-slasher that sees you controlling one of four heroes from your favourite fairy tales as they try to remain famous by battling a newcomer that threatens their very existence! Surprisingly gory, but seems like it'll be fun, so perhaps a revisit on the blog at a later date will happen once I've played through it a bit.....
Guitar Hero 5 is exactly what you'd expect...more groovy tunes that you can pretend to be amazing at playing along with, using your ones-step-up-from-air-guitar controller!
UFC Undisputed 2010 is a game I picked up purely because I rarely pick up sports games, but I played a demo of this years ago and found it to be quite fun, so when i saw it for a couple of quid I thought I might as well get it!
For this batch of stuffs, I'm going to finish with a few pages from a couple of old Eagle annuals I found for £4 each in a charity shop....
Annual 3 is from 1954, which obviously means that Annual 5 is from 1956! Anyway, here's a few select pages so you can see the sort of stuff that fills the books....
I love these type of things in old annuals that show you how to build models and the like...pretty sure there was one that told you how to build a hovercraft at some point! And in case you're not sure about how to power some of these wonderful things you might build, here's a lesson in some sort of wizardry called 'electricity'....
Okay, that's enough for now I think....Like I said, I still have loads of things to cover, so keep an eye out for even more pick-ups very soon! And maybe some other posts about other stuff too...have been neglecting the blog a bit of late! But yeah....Laters, stuffers! :)
Happy New Year, Stuffers! Hope you've all had a good festive season! Now that I've munched my way through the chocolate and drunk all the wine, it seems a good time to get back to the blog and get writing again....
The first thing I need to do though is get through a few post showing off my random pick-ups and Christmas gifts and things that I've accumulated since the last pick-ups post! And there are a lot. A big lot......
So let's not waste any more time and get on with showing you guys the things wot I have got!
First up is this weird Super Mario comic I picked up in a charity shop for a pound!
It's a bit tonally weird, with some nasty guy who thinks all beggars should be shot and delights in killing Mario off in Gameboy Super Mario Land acting as a conduit for the evil baddie Tatanga (again from Super Mario Land) to travel to our dimension and take over the world.....
Luckily two kids manage to summon Mario to our world too, and they help defeat Tatanga and save our dimension! Then there's another story where the same weak-willed numpty from the first story again brings Tatanga back, and a little girl manages to get Mario's help again and once more put a stop to Tatanga's evil plans!
It's definitely all a bit odd, but is quite a cool thing to add to my collection! There's at least another 3 books in the series from Valiant too, so I might see if I can track them down at some point....
Next, I found this Droopy book for 50p.......
It tells of Droopy's unfortunate toothache and an odd ballooning adventure that results after he tries to get rid of the offending tooth....Clearly for tiny kids, I picked it up just because I don't really have many things involving Droopy, who is one of my favourite cartoon characters.....
Some video games now, and here's one for original Xbox and one for the 360! Both cost me about £2 each....
Batman Arkham Origins is the third of the Arkham series on 360, and looks to be a lot of fun, but I'm waiting until I get through Arkham City, the 2nd game, as I still have that to finish....
Blood Wake is a boat combat game and again seems like it'll be pretty groovy, but I have so many other games to finish, it's going straight into the backlog......
Playstation type stuff next, and these four were also charity shop finds for between £2 to 50p each...
Shadow The Hedghog is a game that I would like to like, as I think he's quite a good character and the cutscenes are nice, but the game itself is just far too annoying...I can't seem to get the hang of any of the 3D Sonic games, and constantly just run into things and die...In fact, I've never really been a huge an of any of the Sonic games for similar reasons! I mean they're alright, but I've always been more of a Mario fan! I do like Sonic Spinball and the Arcade Sonic though...Oh, and Mean Bean Machine!!
Project Eden is a game I keep buying, somehow selling and then buying back again.....think I must have had it about 3 or 4 times now! It's actually really good and has a nice character swapping mechanic that allows for a lot of variety in the way you approach puzzle and play through the game! Well worth a look....
Gungriffon Blaze also on PS2 is a big stompy Mech game where you stomp around in big Mechs, but seems to be a bit speedier and action packed than a lot of other stompy big Mech games! haven't played it much yet, but it seems decent and I needed a big stompy Mech game to add to my PS2 collection......
And finally, Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX for PS1 is a game I remember playing the demo of and loving when it was released. It's essentially the same as the Tony Hawks Pro Skater games, but with BMXs instead of skateboards...and it's a load of fun!
Back to comics again, and I picked up these two Commando comics in yet another charity shop purely for the reason that they involved spooks! 75p each!
More book finds, and these two Buster Books were a pound each....here's a few choice pages to read.....
And lastly for this first part of pick-ups, is a weird gnome/wizard/green man head that my brother noticed and I picked up from yet another charity shop for about 50p.....
It has really weird looking eyes and you can stick a candle in the back for even freakier night time shenanigans! Anyway it was so weird, I had to pick it up!
So there you are, the first of probably quite a few posts....I've barely scratched the surface! The next one should be up tomorrow sometime, so I'll see you then-ish! Later Stuffers! :)
