Ooops we seem to have another collection, and this time it’s mine

You know all about my obsession with the Smurfs but I haven’t dared to own up about my fixation with My Little Ponies yet, so confession time….

As a child I had almost all the My Little Ponies. Some were gifts but most were bought with pocket money. In fact my pocket money mysteriously went up whenever the price of My Little Ponies went up – clever parents! I’ ll always remember being given the My Little Pony castle for Christmas one year from my Grandfather. My brother got Skeletor’s castle and he kept stealing my ponies to use them as bad guys. Evil little brother. Then there was the baby ponies which my mum loved most. I vaguely remember drowning them in the bath at some point.

Predictably when I was ten years old I outgrew them. Our school was holding a car boot sale and I sold all of my ponies. I can’t even blame my parents, it was my idea and I did the bargaining on the day. Of course now I, almost, wish I had kept them. Although to be honest they would only be up the attic with the collection of egg cups, rock labels (the bits of paper that come with sticks of holiday rock), school books and all the other jumble!

That was until Hasbro brought out a My Little Pony game for the iPad. They are so cute. They dance if you tap them, play catch with a ball and fly. I’ve become hooked on playing with my ponies and harvesting their crops of lemons and bath towels (trust me somethings really are not worth knowing the details about).

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I had been resisting buying any of the toys. I don’t need them. We don’t really have the space (it’s all filled with Batman). And I already collect Mr Potato Heads. I even resisted buying ‘vintage’ ponies (i.e. the ones I sold) at New York Comic Convention. Somehow all of this fled from my brain when I got dragged to the comic shop this weekend. Just as we walked in the door there was a whole stand of My Little Ponies, including some of the ponies that I ‘own’ on my iPad. Scifi hubby can spend hours in the comic shop so I had a long time to look at them and dither.

In the end I decided to take a leaf out of Scifi hubby’s book with his Hot Wheel cars – he’s now having to buy me a pony every time he makes me go to the comic shop. I ended up with two on Saturday as we went back to the comic shop twice. Any bets on how long it will take for me to have all of them?

20130120-220620.jpgApple Jack and Twilight Sparkle came home with us

Mother’s have a lot to answer for…

I’ve mentioned before that Scifi hubby’s mother used to bribe him with toy cars when he was a child. The deal was that he got one Dinky car every time he went food shopping with her if he behaved himself. He got a surprising number of them. As a teenager he then proceeded to destroy most of the cars. They were target practice, parachuted from the attic window, dropped into the river, eaten by the dog etc etc.

When I started to drag him to supermarkets he discovered that they now sell Hotwheels cars so he had to have one if I wanted him to behave for the rest of the trip. The risk of him throwing a paddy, lying on the floor and screaming or taking all his clothes off (all of which I believe he did when misbehaving as a child) was too high so I caved in and the car obsession restarted. Somehow the number of cars necessary to make him behave has increased over the years – it cost me 111 Hotwheels over Christmas! On the plus side if I lose him in the supermarket I know I will always find him in the toy aisle somewhere near the Hotwheels.

However, what do you do with that many toy cars? He does at least open the packaging for them unlike the Star Wars and Batman toys. Apart from a couple of hundred cars which fill our glass topped coffee table, we now have a few thousand cars filling up boxes in our house.

My mother has always had a large glass jar which she kept a collection of sugar packets in. Scifi hubby has had his eye on it for a while now and keeps joking with her that he would get it when she died (not necessarily the best joke to have with your mother in law!). She surprised him this Christmas and gave him the jar with a ribbon on it.

Being slightly obsessive about these things Scifi hubby can’t simply throw all the cars in. No, he has to take the pole from the mop, put a lump of blutack on the end and lower each car individually into place. At least I talked him out of trying to colour code them. Even so, this could take a while but he’s a very happy ‘boy’…

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Twelve days of Scifi hubby

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2013! I’ll do a post looking forward to what’s coming up in 2013 soon but after silence for a few days I thought I’d fill you in on twelve days away with Scifi hubby in true Christmas style…

    On the first day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    An Iron Man power band (his main Christmas present although I think he actually prefered the children’s toy version of the power bands which he also got!),

    On the second day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Two Hitchcock sketches (David Hitchcock is an amazing artist that we are friends with. He gave Scifi hubby two amazing pieces he’d done of Batman with the Penguin and Batman with the Joker. The Penguin piece in particular is beautiful, Batman is fighting Penguin in the Iceberg Lounge surrounded by evil looking penguins),
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the third day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books (to mention just a few!),
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the fourth day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Four Batman pillow cases (and a kingside Batman duvet cover – thanks Mum!),
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the fifth day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Five bottles of booze (Dad took pity on Scifi hubby and bought enough alcohol for Christmas to be easy),
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the sixth day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Six jars of mayonnaise (I know this sounds crazy but we can’t get Scifi hubby’s favourite brand of mayonnaise where we live so we’ve come home with six HUGE jars of the stuff),
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the seventh day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Seven hours at the comic shop (We have some wonderful, long suffering friends who run an online comic shop. We went to visit for a couple of hours, stayed until 1am, ate them out of house and home and then spent far too much money on yet more comic books),
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the eighth day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Eight balloon hats (my mother’s idea – a kit for making balloon hats. Some hilarious results and a very scared cat),
    Seven hours at the comic shop,
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the ninth day of Christmas, Scifi hubby got
    Nine lead Batman figures (he’s been collecting one of these 120 part magazines which come with lead DC figures. Unfortunately they won’t post them to our house so they all end up at my mother’s. She stacks them in a great pile in the guest room and we collect them when we can. Thankfully this series has just finished, unfortunately there’s a new series starting on Batmobiles. Shhhh Mum doesn’t know yet…),
    Eight balloon hats,
    Seven hours at the comic shop,
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the tenth day of Christmas,
    Scifi hubby got
    Ten Batman questions (we had a 13 hour drive home and Scifi hubby doesn’t drive so he decided his role was to keep me entertained. Sadly this seemed to mostly involve a Batman quiz app on the iPad which asks ten multiple choice questions about the Batman universe. There’s several problems with this, first, it’s timed so he couldn’t read out the answer options leaving me to guess every time. Second, the app seems to only have about forty questions so over the course of a few hours even I learnt the answers. Third, he felt the need to explain every answer I didn’t know in great detail so I now know the backstory for Joker (the Red Hood), Harley Quinn (a psychiatrist) and Jason Todd (stole the wheels from the Batmobile). Finally it’s Batman so risks making fall asleep anyway!),
    Nine lead Batman figures,
    Eight balloon hats,
    Seven hours at the comic shop,
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the eleventh day of Christmas,
    Scifi hubby got
    (One hundred and ) Eleven Hot Wheels cars (Scifi hubby’s mother has a lot to answer for – she used to buy him a toy car every time they went food shopping. Somehow this has become a Hot Wheel car whenever we go into a supermarket, and this holiday got he got a little out of control!),
    Ten Batman questions,
    Nine lead Batman figures,
    Eight balloon hats,
    Seven hours at the comic shop,
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band.

    On the twelfth day of Christmas,
    Scifi hubby got
    Driven Twelve hundred miles (hmmm maybe an massive underestimate but it fits the lyrics and I’m fed up with this song now I don’t know about you!),
    (One hundred and ) Eleven Hot Wheels cars,
    Ten Batman questions,
    Nine lead Batman figures,
    Eight balloon hats,
    Seven hours at the comic shop,
    Six jars of mayonnaise ,
    Five bottles of booze,
    Four Batman pillow cases,
    Three Judge Dredd Case files books
    Two Hitchcock sketches,
    And an Iron Man power band!

Now he’s just got to work out where to put everything…

Happy New Year!

20130104-211053.jpgDay two, part one

20130104-211132.jpgDay two, part two

20130104-211206.jpgDays one and ten

20130104-211244.jpg111 Hot Wheels cars