My Lite Brite Brutes Get the Yarn Treatment from Caffeinated Joe!

Some of you may remember my little creations That I called Lite Brite Brutes. They're basically little digital pieces of silliness created on a crappy little iPhone app, but it somehow managed to turn into a lot of fun for me to create a whole slew of characters. I recently eased up on them because I thought I was just annoying everyone with them, but I'm just about to stop caring about that and getting back to making some new ones. You've all been warned.

But one person who wasn't annoyed with them, Caffeinated Joe (see his blog and Tumblr here), honored me beyond measure by taking some of my Lite Brite Brutes and translating them into plastic canvas yarn creations! Please, please, please check out his Tumblr to see them all.

So, of course, I had to have him make me some, and since I'm going a little crazy on my Monster Cereals collection, I requested a yarn rendition of this...

And this is what he sent me...

Holy frijoles! How beautiful is that?! I can't even fully express ho much I love them. I apologize to Joe that I didn't get these framed yet (I was less than thrilled with my choices the other day when I went frame shopping). But these beauties definitely deserve to be framed and hung above my Monster Cereals shelf front and center in a place of honor.

Here's some larger shots of each one...

So, a huge, massive, 36-ton THANK YOU to Caffeinated Joe for both honoring me and my ridiculous little hobby and for sharing his craft with us! This has absolutely inspired me to make more Lite Brite Brutes, because creating things that you love is what it's all about.

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Wacky Wobblers!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I'm already posting about Funko products too much. But the truth is, I had this other much more in-depth idea for this week's Top 5 Friday, but quite frankly, I've just run out of time and only have a few minutes to take some quick pics, throw them up on the blog and call it good.

But don't let the fact that I'm phoning it in this week make you think that I don't love these Wacky Wobblers to pieces. Because I do.

So here they are...

1. Mr. T - This Wacky Wobbler pities fools and don't wanna hear no jibber-jabber.

2. Sugar Bear - Not "Golden Bear" who sells Super Golden Crisp. This is Sugar Bear, who sells Sugar Crisp. I always hated that they changed the name of the cereal. That's like calling crack cocaine "Smoky Pebbles".

3. Darth Vader - I love this one because it's Darth Vader.

4. The Munsters - I have a Grandpa Munster as well, but no Marylin yet. I always wished this was my family when I was a kid.

5. The Monster Cereals - You guys probably saw this one coming, right? And yes, I do have the Yummy Mummy Wobbler, but am still missing Fruit Brute. Still, I got the three kings.

That's it for this week! I promise I'll put more work into it next week! Really. I will.

My Second Funko Pop!

Well, considering that I work surrounded by Funko Pops five days a week, 8 hours a day, I've managed to pace myself pretty well. I'm only on my second Funko Pop!, even though there are about a hundred or so that I want.

I have decided, however, that I need to complete my Monsters Cereals Pop! collection, and that's why my second figure is the one and only Count Chocula!

Personally, I think that this Pop! is one of the cutest ever produced by Funko. I love his little wavy eyebrows. Then again, i think Count Chocula has always been my favorite of all of the monsters from general Mills.

Now my Boo Berry isn't so lonely...

It's seems like I'm developing a bit of a Monster Cereals shelf, so I better hunt down a Franken Berry Pop! real soon!

My First Funko Pop!

So, it was just a matter of time before I started collecting Funko Pop! figures, now that I spend all day surrounded by them. There are several current releases that I plan on getting and some retired ones that I hope to track down, but I'm trying to ease into this collection, because from what I've gathered from my fellow designers, it can get out of hand very quickly. So I'm trying to only choose pieces that I really, really want. And my first one is absolutely one of those.

Behold the button-eyed adorableness of the Funko Pop! Boo Berry...

This guy is now retired, but one of my co-workers had a spare, loose one on his shelf that he didn't want and passed along to me. I couldn't be more jazzed. What a way to kick off my Pop! collection!

Now to hunt down Count Chocula and Franken Berry.

I hope you guys don't mind, but you can expect many more Funko related posts in the future. :)

Vintage Monster Cereal Pencil Toppers!

Good grief. I went to that toy show over a month ago and I'm still not done blogging about all the stuff I got there.

Today's show-and-tell items are these beautiful vintage(?) General Mills Monster Cereals pencil toppers...

I've always loved the Monster Cereals (Count Chucula, Frankenberry and Boo Berry), and by that I mean the actual cereals themselves and the product mascots connected to them, as evidenced HERE.

I spotted these at a booth for a whopping $3 and snapped them up right away. After doing a little research (ie. trolling eBay) it turns out that these pencil toppers aren't exactly rare, and depending on the source, may or may not be vintage. I've seen a couple of mentions of them being from as early as 1972 and some saying that these came out in the late '90s. Maybe both are true.

I've never noticed the big Z on Frankenberry's chest. Anyone know what that's about?

Anyway, not exactly an epic score or anything. But I was pretty please to scoop these up. Especially the Count Chocula, who was always my favorite, as you can see here in this pic of me from a few Halloweens ago...

Now I'm off to go have some cereal.