Happy Dippy Drinking Bobby Sippy Tippy Peace Birds

Just an all-time Junk Store classic: the "Drinking Bird" has been donated a few times in my tenure, and this time we are fortunate enough to have gotten two different styles within a few days of each other. A vintage, orange "Peace Bird" on the left and the classic top-hat, red-liquid "Drinking Happy Bird" on the right.

These things go by many, many names, but they all look pretty similar and operate on the same principles of heat escaping through evaporation on the wetted felt head, or something like that. You can read all about the thrilling physics behinds this novelty here. 

The drinking bird was invented by Miles V. Sullivan in 1945 and patented in 1946. He was a Ph.D. inventor-scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ. 

My favorite part of is definitely the packaging on the Peace Bird. "Absolutely Incombustible".

I'll leave you all with this video I found:

Barbed from Back in the Day

Vintage barbed wire? Shabby chic? Why not?

D Y M O

A collection that seems to come around time and again, but can never really get beyond half a white box or so before they get sold off, is that of the labelmaker. Specifically, that of the Dymo brand labelmaker, although I'm not adverse to throwing a generic one in there should the opportunity arise.

I'm not talking about some fancy-ass Brother P-Touch with a keyboard and all that; I'm talking about the kind with the twisty letter wheel that embosses the words upwards on adhesive tape. Yeah, dog! I'll label the shit out of everything in the room with one of these. 

Look at this monster. Having this heavy duty steel labelmaker in my hand gives me the confidence to label things that have no business being labeled, like the telephone or water cooler.

You wanna kick it up to the next level? Well feast on this: somebody completes the ultimate circle of labelmaking by donated a labelmaker that has been labeled as a labelmaker! Brilliant! The above photo is one of my Junk Pirate favorites of the last few months.  
Holy crap, is the final "R" on that label backwards?!? Amazing

More Balls

Back (in a jar) by popular demand, the ever-growing ever-bouncing rubber ball collection. Keep 'em coming...

More balls from a previous post here.

Bring Home the Bacon

A "Boys and Girls Love Jewels" brand bacon keychain. From the "Love Collection". 

27 different cell phones

What I really want is some of those giant old cell phones from back in the day.

Now take it easy, Riggs!

make money-money make money-money-money

A rare find indeed. No less than 14 bucks in silver dollars.

With all this donated loot, we could buy about 8 cups of coffee or 2 bowls of pho or almost 2 chicken sandwiches or 3 pound of salad or, like, 14 different chinese food servings. We're rich!

the Most Donated Book

While Apollo 13, My Best Friends Wedding, and Titanic battle it out to be "the most donated copies of a VHS video in the store at one time" champion, there is no contest as to which is the most commonly donated book...

Love It or Leave It

You have got to love all this over-the-top post 9-11 "patriotic" crap that's floating around these days. We're still getting lots of those flags that clip onto your car's windows. Now here's another patriot classic:

This T-shirt is extra awesome because of the "2008" date on it. This ain't some non-free freedom from back in 1997! This is 2008's freedom that isn't free here.

The "Freedom is Not Free" merch usually emphasizes the "Not" part somehow, as well. 

DVNF is the Disabled Veterans National Foundation. I want to be clear that my ridicule of these "Freedom is Not Free" products is in no way intended to disrespect veterans in any way. But, c'mon, there has got to be a more dignified way to show support for the men and women defending our country than "Freedom is NOT Free 2008". 

Leave a Message

The Jammer has done it again. Instead of just throwing a big bag of dusty old audio cassettes into the already overcrowded cassette drawers, or maybe the dumper, he checks them all out to see if we are lucky enough to come across any of these:

An old school answering machine message cassette. It is pretty rare to find one so clearly labeled (and this one was full on both sides!), and it is really, really rare to actually get a juicy message, but when it happens it makes this whole shit job worth while.

We have also gotten in the habit of plugging in an listening to any phones with a built-in digital answering machines. 9 out of 10 of these usually have messages still on them as well.

Burnt

Some crazy person out there is saving all of their used match sticks, cramming them into snack size ziplock bags, donating it to the junk store, and deducting it from their taxes.

Junk Pirate zine #17

Junk Pirate #17 is available right now. 22 pages in thrilling black and white. Heavy duty cover stock. Made entirely with and from items donated to the junk store. Featuring the already infamous "Sack O' Sauce in a Can O' Meat"! Available now at better zine shops for $3, or get your direct from our allies at Rowan Morrison Publishing and save a buck. ORDER IT NOW! 

If you don't want to pay for priority mail shipping for just one zine, throw in the Junk Pirate Volume One book. Featuring the best of issues 1-12 plus other stuff that will please you greatly. 

You've been Lumberjacked!

A top candidate for Junk Pirate toy of the month goes to this mini Bosch kiddie chainsaw.

Fire this bad boy up and it makes realistic chain saw sounds and has a real rotating chain. Perfect for re-enacting scenes from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Who will survive their AM break (recently reduced to 10 minutes), and what will be left of them. 

If you think this toy is harmless, just check out this report from UC Irvine that discusses the "lifelong harm" that the Bosch Replica Chainsaw will do to your child's hearing at a whopping 95 decibels! Yeeeeeeeaaaaaah!

Antlers N' Horns

A couple of antlers and a piece of the devil's skull. 

Mini Mint

Some tiny coins from the Mini Mint.

While this set of 6 little coin replicas is cute and pretty unique to the junk store, I think it is the little touches that make it blog worthy. 

First off, I'm all for things labeling themselves as "collectors item". Anybody could just spray about the phrase "collectors item" in promotional materials (I do it myself all the time), but it takes a special kind of marketing wizard to actually print "collectors item" right on the item itself.

Even better, is the use of the phrase "presidential", which I image is referencing the fact that US currency (and thus tiny replicas of US currency) has images of a president on it. In fact, I think I'm going to start referring to all my money as "presidential". Except, of course, the ten and one hundred dollar bills, which don't feature presidents. 

Come to think of it, I believe the Susan B Anthony silver dollar is part of this here Mini Mint Collectors Item, and she wasn't a president. What the hell?!?

And speaking of studpidly marketed Presidential Collectors Item coin sets, when is someone going to donate one of those cheap-ass Obama commemorative coin sets that Montel Williams endorsed?

Smokey Sue Smokes For Two

So, so, so awesome. An educational aid that is intended to show the damage smoking can do to your unborn child. It's basically a jar with a little girl doll head that has a squeezy suction bulb pump that can suck smoke from a lit cigarette into a submerged fetus in the jar. The smoke gets exhaled by the fetus.  It doesn't really show anything but the how cool even a pregnant cabbage patch kid can look while smoking. I suppose that, if enough cigarettes are smoked through this device, the water gets a little yellow.

Seriously, I could spend all day feeding cigarettes into this doll's jar-body fetus. It is just hypnotic. 

You can buy yours here for over 200 dollars! Cigarettes not included.

The Pharm System

 

One of the best and brightest Junk Store collections is the Jammer's hoard of Pharmaceutical Company Drug Pens. He just loves to roll up his sleeves and dig deep into the pen drawer in search for Pharm Pen treasure. It seems like he can dig up a pharm pen or three every try. And that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the other wonderful Promotional Drug products we have flowing in all the time. These doctors have it made. 

Zmax tape dispensers.

Tagamet Safe lock box

Chrolomycetin (distinguished for its versatility) ruler, Evoxac paper, and a vintage Septra memo pad. We got it all.

This one is good: a Fortaz ruler with stencils of very stylized breast and penis. How did the medical profession get by before something like this was given to them.

Welp, it looks like it is all about to change. According to a recent article in the NY Times, all free doctor gifts from the Pharmaceutical industry have been banned. Yup, the party is over. This shocking blow was eased a little bit by this awesome picture that was linked from the article...

Now, that is a Pharm Pen collection.  Or at least it was until it got taken off the internet. Damn. Here, I found another picture:

Game On: Guitar Hero, GameGear, & Atari

I'm never not excited to get some video game gear here at the Junk Store. Whatever you got; vintage Atari, handheld games, Nintendo cereal, or perhaps some fresh Xbox games... I'll eat 'em all up. Let us now take a look at some recent gaming donations.

Guitar Hero 1 for the Playstation 2. Complete with guitar, guitar strap, and game disc. Used, but still in the box. Guitar Hero is such an awesome game, except when you get stuck on some song that you've never heard of form one of these newfangled hipster emo "metal" bands and you just have to listen to that garbage over and over while you try to beat it. Still, when you finally get that song, man, it feels good.

Check it out. It's a generic Atari 2600 controller in the box. This goes next to this on the Junk Pirate shelf.

Sega Game Gear. This was a full color, cartridge based portable video game system that was completely obliterated in popularity by Gameboy. It's pretty beefy.

The motherload. A fat box of vintage Atari VCS (aka 2600) games. In the mix we also have some racing controllers, a bunch of manuals, a few Sega Genesis games, and a rare Atari 5200 controller! There was even an ultra rare Atari 7800 game cartridge. Not a bad haul.

a Jedi craves not these things

Star Wars talking Yoda doll. 

One vintage Star Wars item is worth about 100 new trilogy items (or "jar-jars" as I like to call them). Therefore, this talking Yoda, with Star Wars trivia and rambling stories of the Clone Wars at the press of a hand, will have to do for now.

Twelve Inch Double Faced: The Flexi-Vinyls

Another great collection...

A fistfull of Flexi records. You know, those flexible plastic record sheets often with advertising promotion songs or Nat Geo recordings. They are often on clear sheets. Anybody know if there is anybody who still manufactures these?

Ghostbusters II back there.

Free demonstration recording and invitation.

SpaceSounds. Say no more.

link: the Internet Museum of Flexi-Cardboard-Oddity Records.

Damn you, Sausage Fingers!

Anybody who is anybody collects things in jars. Probably the most classic jarred collection would be the old dice jar. Started way back at the "old" Junk Store, we have kept a dice jar going in some capacity or another for years now. Regular white six sided, D&D, red casino dice, dice with letters on them, novelty sex dice, those backgammon dice that go 2-4-8-16-32-64... whatever you got, we'll take it from you and put it in a jar.

Then, one terrible day, old Sausage Fingers got an inkling to shit in my cereal and she up and dumped the dice jar into a white box (probably couldn't fit her fat sausage fingers in the jar) and tried to sell 'em. She also dissed the collection of Rubik's Cubes, Magic 8-balls, and some other good bits.

Luckily, Top Cat spotted my dice and salvaged what he could. So I just packed-up all my hoarded treasure and brought it home. I'm happy to say the dice jar lives on back at Junk Pirate headquarters.

The Dice Jar stays... you go!

and here is a bonus look at some vintage dice jar action:

Balls

A portion of the ever growing (and lately forced into hiding) rubber ball collection:

I remember a time when they sold rubber balls in vending machines. It seems like they have lost popularity in the modern era. Maybe it is the 95% likely hood that a child will put it in their mouth and probably choke. Maybe it is these newfangled "video" games. Whatever the cause, the Jammer and I are bringing them back. Big time.

Preserves

Here is something pleasant:

You guessed it. A mouse. In a loosely sealed jar. Preserved in what I hope is formaldehyde or maybe 100% alcohol.  You would not believe the fight that took place over who got to keep this hideous thing. Of course, this isn't the first preserved-animal-in-a-jar we have gotten, just the first I got a picture of.