Highlander II: The Thriftening

Usually when I feature something on Thrifty Terrors, it's an item so mind-blowingly weird, scary, poorly made, in awful taste, or just unimaginably bad that I feel no qualms about laughing at it.

Which is why when I found THIS treasure at Goodwill, I knew it had to go on the blog, if only as an honorable mention:

Highlander II: The Film Disavowed By Everyone Ever Involved In Highlander.

If you're not familiar with Highlander II: The Quickening, you should know that it's considered by many to be one of the worst films ever made.  (Don't believe me? Watch The Spoony Experiment's review.)  It's so bad that the rest of the Highlander films -- which, in spite of their cult action-movie status, are not exactly the highest form of cinematic art -- booted it out of canon and refuse to acknowledge its existence in the series storyline.  The movie's producers even re-edited the film and re-released it to remove all the [SPOILER] references to space aliens and flying stardust people, calling the new edit "The Renegade Cut."

But this is not that version.  This is the original film, in all its terrible post-apocalyptic, plot-holed, planet-full-of-inconsistently-immortal-aliens glory.  And it was still in plastic wrap, with K-mart discount stickers all over it.  How could I do anything BUT invest 99 cents in this... er... classic?

So I picked up the movie, thinking I had hit the bottom of the barrel for that particular store.  But that was before I discovered a whole cache of Christopher Lambert movies.

Nooooooooooooooo!

The postscript to this story is strangely appropriate:  Even though Highlander II was "new" in retail shrink wrap, when I finally opened it to show it to a group of friends, it turned out to be a used copy re-sealed in plastic. The previous viewer had stopped in the middle, and didn't even bother to rewind it.

(I can't really say I blame them.)

2-pack: Counting Is Hard

No, that's not the latest single from an undead rapper.

This is technically not a Thrifty Terror, since it's in a retail store and not a true thrift or secondhand shop -- but it's a dollar store, so we'll give it an honorable mention.

I was walking through the baby supplies aisle, and noticed that everything this particular company sells comes in a 2-pack, labeled as such in the upper right-hand corner.  As advertised, many of the packages did, indeed, come with two items:  Two plates; two bowls with lids; two bottles; twelve spoons...

Wait -- twelve?

Counting is hard.

Yep.  Guess it's too much work to ask the graphic designer to stick a 1 in front of the 2 on the product card.  *facepalm*

Return to return the nature

It's not really a terror in the usual sense, but it did come from a thrift store.  Here's some painstakingly-translated text from a humidifier box:

And it even specifies that the product's Alignment is EU market.  After that description, I would have guessed Chaotic Neutral.

Donate or Trash?

It's time to play "Donate or Trash" -- the game that answers whether or not things should be donated to a thrift store for resale!  The rules are simple: If the item in question is something that another person can enjoy and would pay money for, the answer is Donate!  If it's an item that would not be appropriate and/or safe to share with others, the answer is Trash!

Ready? Let's begin!

Item #1: Vintage golf practice kit in original box (complete with lightning bolts to show that it's electronic):

Nobody knows what happened to Oscar Senior.

If you answered Donate, you're correct!  Some thrift store-haunting woman might just buy this for her golf-obsessed dad for Father's Day.*

Item #2: An obviously opened and partially-used container of edible goods:

Clearly not sealed for your protection.

If you answered Trash, you're correct!  It's not a good idea to resell potentially-contaminated food product at your local thrift store.

Item #3: Your grandmother's entire 347-piece bear figurine collection:

What do you call a group of bears? A pack? A herd? A cartload?

That's right, the answer is Donate!  Someone whose grandmother also collects bears may need a cheap last-minute Christmas gift someday.

Item #4: A used tube of lip balm:

Um. ...Ew?

If you answered WHAT THE #@$&! IS WRONG WITH YOU, you're correct!  Donating used personal items to a thrift store may result in your shoes being vomited upon, and/or getting beat up in a dark alley.  Just saying.

That's all for today, folks! Join us next time for another exciting game of "Donate or Trash!"


* Yes, I did. And he liked it.