80's Valentines

I thought my three ornaments posts were likely to be the most odd of what I write here but now I expect posts about greeting cards are more strange. The first time I posted about them was in 2019 when I took a look at holiday cards from video game publishers. This one is about a few Valentine's Day cards that I received in the 1980s. Regular cards aren't at all interesting but these are all cards that feature a licensed product or character. Over the years I've saved way too many things, greeting cards being among them, so as I go through them and toss many, I set aside any that have a tie-in or are very '80s. 

Since I don't have kids I've not paid attention to what is available at stores these days though I'd guess not much has changed. We used to buy a box of themed cards, typically small cardboard rectangles that have a line for your name and one for a friend's name, and then hand them out at school. Does everyone still do that? Here is one I received from a classmate in elementary school so I probably got it between 1983-85. It's actually food-themed as it is from Cracker Jack and says "You're a Crack Jack pal." I scanned the envelope as well since that has a Hershey's Valentine's sticker on it.

The next two were not from a classmate but a family member. I've no idea if the bat-themed one is officially licensed from DC Comics or not. It has a girl dressed in a bat costume with a heart exclaiming "I'm batty about you!" Whether it is official or not, it's probably meant to be Batgirl because otherwise why would anyone associate bats with Valentine's Day? Next to that is one that does have a copyright listed on it of 1987. This one is of the comic book and cartoon cat Heathcliff who states "Lookin' good, valentine!" 

This final card is full size so I've got a scan of the inside too. It's from my sister and I couldn't tell you why she initially wrote 13 as the date before overwriting it with 14 but at least she dated it so I know I received it in 1988 (copyright on the back is 1986). I'm rather surprised Hallmark had cards associated with BraveStarr, especially one for what I'd consider a minor holiday. BraveStarr launched as a toy line in 1986 and had an animated series from 1987-1988. The show combines science fiction and wild west themes, and it's not set on Earth though the protagonist was born there. Inside the card it mentions New Texas which was another planet.

Year 2: March Update

It's almost baseball season!

I posted the last update in early February and now March is nearing an end so it has been a while. Of course, more electronics have failed me which is a reoccurring theme here. One is another older item, not exactly a toy but something I had hoped to base a video on for the start of the Major League Baseball season on the 29th. A grounding wire inside of the device did detach but my soldering skills are painfully bad and I've not been able to reattach it (can't be certain that would even be enough to fix it). Also, when I first opened it I found that I left batteries in it that expired in 1993 so there was a lovely gift inside to clean up. Obviously I had not tried to turn it on in quite some time.

The other item that broke is only eight months old and that is my PlayStation 4. It was only the hard drive though so I didn't need to repair it exactly, just had to reinitialize it from safe mode but of course my save files were not backed up. Unfortunately, you have to subscribe to PlayStation Plus in order to use the cloud back-up service whereas Microsoft offers that to all of its Xbox One users. It is possible to back things up on a flash drive though I did not think I needed to. Due to my frustration I stopped playing games for a while as I let it sit in the non-working condition for about three weeks before erasing all of my game saves.

Other than the usual posts and videos, I've not been up to much. I did take apart both of my Sega Genesis arcade sticks to see if I could do anything to make them work better. Not sure if that was successful as I've not tested them but I did find the older one could use replacement parts under the buttons since they are damaged.

Sega Genesis Arcade Stick 

Sega Genesis 6-button Arcade Stick

I do continue to scan non-gaming magazines and sometimes find game ads. Mostly I'm trying to sort through stuff to get rid of and figured I should scan most of the ads, gaming or not, before I toss them. I've also started scanning and photographing some G.I. Joe items for 3DJoes.com. It's a nice site that aims to preserve the art of G.I. Joe and has fully rotating images of the toys. While I've mentioned a few times that's my favorite toy line, I have yet to actually do a video of any G.I. Joe things. There are some great videos out there of the toys already that I couldn't hope to even come close to matching on my own so I'm not sure what to do with the toys. A large setup might be the only interesting thing I could put together but I do have one video idea for a tie-in product. 

The last couple ad updates haven't been too interesting but there are some good publishers coming up soon and a little backfilling too on some popular companies. Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan