Random Hoo Haasthe blog with the guff

Tales from storage: The Squinkies squad

Monday, May 5, 2025 at 2:01 pm Comments (3)

If I hadn’t sold or gifted away most of them you could probably expect this column to be nothing but dodgy toys and action figures picked up from resale outlets like TK Maxx, Pound Stretcher, and wherever else used to be in the vicinity of Abbeycentre. I was certain I’d chucked these things years ago!

ah, Pound Stretcher, we hardly knew ye
actually we knew you extremely well, like your glut of merch for Spider Riders and The Golden Compass, but those foibles seem charming in hindsight
absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that
especially when this entire strip is just a dirty big void now

So, Squinkies. I haven’t a ballsy what they are. They’re soft, slightly malleable inch-tall figurines that exist to be stored in little ball capsules, it seems? And then you can stow them inside a stubby plastic vehicle? At least, that’s what I’ve picked up from the two sets I had in my possession.
I was fully expecting these things to be extremely short-lived and long gone by now, and although their website is still in business (albeit extremely downsized from its previous iterations), I’m having a hard time finding evidence new ones are being sold, or that Blip Toys is still in operation. Their YouTube channel hasn’t updated since before the pandemic, which isn’t a good sign.
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Tales from storage: comics upon comics

Monday, April 21, 2025 at 9:54 pm Comments (1)

I feel like I owe people an apology on behalf of my Turok column…! Firstly, for leaving it dormant for so long; COVID kind of threw the world for a loop, plus my own iffy health, other responsibilities, procrastination, any number of excuses. You know how it is.

Secondly, I feel like it led people to believe I’m a comics person. I’m really not! I respect comics in so many ways, and I do hope that comes across in my write-ups, but the total number of comic series I’ve read can probably be counted on my fingers and my toes.

It’s been so long I sincerely can’t recall what my local newsagents carried…! I collected Sonic the Comic for its entire run from around issue #50 onwards, and I did read The Beano for longer than was healthy; whatever I owned was donated to the children of parent friends years ago, and I’ve nothing to show for them in my collection. Aside from those, I’m drawing a blank! Obviously kiddies football magazines were on shelves, but I don’t believe newsagents dealt in traditional American comics, not unless they were published in a different format.
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Tales from storage: Gravis gamepad grumbling

Friday, February 7, 2025 at 1:53 pm Comments Off on Tales from storage: Gravis gamepad grumbling

Back before it got revamped (however many revamps ago that was…!), the Games I Own section really was about having something to say about every possession I owned, from DVDs to action figures to video game controllers. Gamepads are fascinating to me, if having a blog tag dedicated to the things weren’t already a clue.
If I ever need a bit of frivolous and unwarranted retail therapy, I often think: why don’t I treat myself to a nice new controller? Having a different doohickey to wrap my paws around is a neat way of experiencing the same games in a new light, whether it’s trying to play Metal Slug on a flight stick, or running through Sonic Adventure on a d-pad. Look, I didn’t say it was a good use of my time, but sometimes you just want to scratch a silly itch.

At one point picking up controllers for the express purpose of reviewing them was something I wanted to do, and I can only imagine that’s why I came into possession of the Gravis Eliminator Gamepad Pro (it’s easier to accept that than remember how dour the USB gamepad market was at the turn of the millennium).
I, uh, don’t know what this controller is trying to accomplish though. Gravis were seemingly a big name in the early days of PC gamepads, at least when it came to wares that were inspired by console controllers, designed with platformers and arcade games in mind… however many of these there were at the time. So why on earth is this secretly an analogue joystick?!
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Tales from storage: card collecting and counterfeiting

Saturday, November 23, 2024 at 8:33 pm Comments (1)

I’ve exposited plenty of times on this blog about how I was very much swept up in Pokemon fever — my brother and I bought the games, watched the cartoon, collected the figurines, amassed whatever other dumb trinkets and doodads that were available, so it’s only natural we also picked up the Trading Card Game as well.
I… don’t think we ever actually played it. I don’t know anyone who did back in the day…! As much as the franchise invited discussion and shared activities among kids, I get the impression we feared being robbed more than daring to share activities among our peers. I feel like there’s an allegory in there, but I’m too tired to pursue it.

What I’d almost forgotten about were these print-outs my brother and I must have made of the then-recently announced Generation 2 starters, presumably pasted on top of energy cards. They were already woefully unconvincing back in the day, and look even more diabolical after a couple decades worth of water damage. Can’t say it isn’t Aesthetic™ though, especially on the Croconaw card.

Looking at these card kind of feels like a childhood captured in amber: all the idle whims and silly notions, the short-sightedness and lack of thinking behind the activities you get up to, because you’re young and have no responsibilities. I might’ve been bitter thinking how much was spent on things I never used, only to be chucked in a shed and left to rot.
How did we get some stinkin’ many? Were they sold at the local newsagents? Were we picking up packs every time we went to Toys R Us? There were close to two hundred or more of these bloody things, and yet I simply have no memory of how they fit into our hobbies and habits back in the day. We sure as hell didn’t play or trade them! That would’ve required a social life!
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Tales From Storage: The VCR Fandango

Thursday, August 15, 2024 at 11:03 am Comments Off on Tales From Storage: The VCR Fandango

I finally dragged myself across the finish line for Some Games I Played In 2022, and the one for last year is close to being done too. Did I ever mention that was published? It still needs some editing but you can read what’s done, if doing such a thing is something you would do.

The sprites section got updated, featuring stuff for Black Tiger, Block Legend DX, Brutal: Paws of Fury, Dino Quake, Escape Goat, HeroQuest, Looney Tunes Collector, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, Neutopia 1 & 2, Rampage, Saint Seiya on PSP, Snow Bros., Trog, Wizorb, and a bunch of Bomberman games.
I think I might’ve made some minor tweaks to the sprite tutorial too? It’s due some updates to better explain some of my processes (and probably repair some links knowing ROMhacking.net is going offline shortly, oh no), but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

In between fatigue and crises and other fun surprises, I’ve been trying to do some spring cleaning this year! Ostensibly in the hopes of making a push on all the guff I need to scan and get it out of the house (with the unspoken intent to probably sunset my scanning ambitions, because I’m too exhausted to keep up this line of work!), but just having less crap in the house doesn’t hurt either.

One of the things I uncovered was an NTSC VCR I’d imported from the States, and you better believe I wrote several thousand words tangentially related to that subject.
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