Unboxing Video: 1999 Team Rocket "Devastation" Pokémon TGC Theme Deck

I've recently got back into collecting Pokémon cards - basically I dug out my old box of cards, bought myself an Ultra Pro binder, 50 card sleeves and began sorting out my old 1990s cards into numerical order. My favourite set, despite how unplayable they are in the competitive TCG are the Team Rocket set.

To boost my collection, I bought myself a theme deck - which was new, but not shrink-wrapped for £12 on eBay. I've been wanting to film an UNBOXING video for a while now - so I thought I'd start with this theme deck - the 1999 Team Rocket "Devastation" deck.

As you can see, I've finally got around to verifying my stupid YouTube account and began making my own video thumbnails. They're so pretty. :)

1990s Nostalgia: Spyro The Dragon Cereal Box Prize

Another forgotten relic of years gone by is when in the morning (usually before school), you'd open up a fresh box of Kellogg's cereal and inside there would be wonderful prizes. (In the UK we never really called them 'cereal box prizes' per se, but the influx of American TV shows sort of introduced us to the phrase) You'd find stationery (like pencil sharpeners), little toys, action figures, books and sometimes CDs or CD-Roms. Because I'm from the 90s (and the UK), I missed the trend of decoder rings and stuff - but I did manage to find this:

That is a little plastic toy of Spyro The Dragon. So I'm assuming Kellogg's ran this deal around the time Spyro The Dragon was at his peak of popularity during the Playstation 1 era, somewhere around 1998. Remember when Spyro used to be good? Before the influx of all this fucking Skylanders bullshit? Yes, everyone with any decent taste in games knows that the last good Spyro game was Spyro 3: The Year Of The Dragon, and the series went downhill from there - very similar to the fate of Crash Bandicoot - as soon as they hit the PS2, they got shittier and shittier. At least Crash Bandicoot never lent his visage to a series of games that cost upwards of £500 to access every area of the fucking game! 

FIVE FUCKING GRAND. Are you SERIOUS? And in order to maintain their mint condition, you'd NEVER be able to remove them from the packets! Oh, and bear in mind, these are just the figures - NO game is included! I mean for fuck's sake, I'm all for DLC - and the idea of DLC you can physically hold in your hand is awesome - but Skylanders as a gaming property is just utter SHITE. I mean really, compare this:

To this:

What the fuck really. What the bloody hell did they do to Spyro? The original 1998 Spyro in his pseudo-64-bit graphics looks a million times better than the new Spyro. He looks like he's got some sort of learning disability, with his fat face and squished nose. The 90s Spyro was cute, as well as being quite cocky. How I miss the 1990s. :(

1990s Nostalgia: Super Mario Kart Ride

I'm a child of the 1990s - born in 1991 I was brought up with the Mega Drive during the early 90s and the PlayStation in the last few years of the 90s. Back then, arcades and amusements on the seafronts of practically every British seaside town was packed to the brim with great arcade game machines and lots of little rides for younger kids that usually cost around 20p per ride. As I kid I loved these; in Scarborough there was even a miniature Ferris wheel that lifted you up about 6 foot in the air sitting in a little metal seat.

Looking through some old photographs (you know, REAL photographs that were developed in a proper camera shop which took like a WEEK), I found this gem:

I'm guessing this photo was taken around 1995-1996, so it's likely that this ride was made around the same time as Super Mario Kart on the SNES. I didn't have a SNES as a child; but my big brother Ian did. (I actually didn't own my own SNES until I was 21.) How much do you suppose one of these rides would sell for online now? It's an official Nintendo one too - look at the massive seal on the front!

Children nowadays are so deprived of life's simple pleasures that we were all brought up with. I know these sort of rides still exist, but they take the piss - most of them cost upwards of 50p or even £1! Some of the rides I used to go on, you could get SEVERAL goes on it for 20p!