Long delayed illustrated post about Wednesday!

( What I did on Wednesday! Pics taken by sundart and me. )

Does ANYBODY remember these?

I'm having a nostalgic collector item moment and it's making me sad.

So, we're taking a little trip back in time, say to when your heroine was in say, third grade (so this would be 1986/87) and there was a big fad for these particular kinds of pencil cases. They were hard plastic and vinyl and usually had hello kitty or cartoon characters and I remember major NY tourist traps had them too. The cool part was that they had two compartments for writing implements (one in the top one in the bottom) and the rest of the case were taken up by six neat spring loaded features which you got by pressing color coded buttons. One would pop out a small drawer for an eraser or other bitty object, the next one would pop up a pencil sharpener, one popped out either a magnifying glass panel or a mood indicator game out the back, depending on what kind you had, I forgot what the next two buttons did, and the last one popped the top pencil compartment up easel-style so that you could easily grab a pencil instead of having to pick it out of the compartment. You know, it was something ridiculously complex and neat and yet weirdly cute that really could have only come out of Japan. ;) And everyone had one in my school for the next couple of years.

What the hell though, now it's like they never existed. I've gone through ebay with a fine tooth comb and have gotten really creative with Google, but I can't find one example of these items... and I would so love to find one right now. I don't even care what it's got on it, it was just the fact that I would sit there and pop the buttons for hours... (hey, I was an easily amused kid... not that I'm not easily occupied now)...

still cruisin' eBay for the damn pencil box...

The much coveted item:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11120&item=5916336696&rd=1

eBay finally gave up the goods. This is it, the item I was questing for last night with no success... I'm not sure if I'm crazy about the elephants, but it is purple. I remember having a blue one once upon a time, but I can't remember what was actually on it. Anyway, I'm bidding on this.

Same idea, but crappily executed:
Ick. Barbie and Pocahontas. No thanks. But they do have the buttons and stuff...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1383&item=2224497090&rd=1&ssPageName=WD1V
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=48948&item=5514300820&rd=1

Random and cool:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=187&item=8125471852&rd=1

Is it still called the Famicom over in Japan these days? or have they finally moved on to bigger and better names?

gotta blast. :)