Menards O Scale Train Sets

Our first pick this morning in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a little pricey, but it’s perfect for the beginning model railroad enthusiast. Because it’s the larger train in O scale, it’s great for kids. They call it “O Gauge,” but to me it’s O scale.

For years Menards has been quietly making and selling their own line of model railroad accessories, starting with O scale structures, and then expanding to track, rolling stock, scenery, and HO scale accessories. Last year they released their first locomotive, which sold out before I could recommend it in the Gift Guide.

This year Menards has released several complete O scale sets that are ideal “starter sets” for the beginning toy train enthusiast. These are basic sets with a locomotive (with remote control sounds), one or two pieces of rolling stock, a transformer and enough pieces of their quality track that form a simple oval.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out the exact price at Menards because they have sale prices, then they tack on a 11% rebate making it cost even less if you buy in the store and remember to claim your rebate, but if you order online they stick you with a handling fee plus shipping.

Which is why I’m not listing a price for these. The sets I’m mentioning here will run you somewhere between two hundred and two hundred fifty bucks. In terms of O scale electric trains, that’s a bit of a bargain. Some tricked-out locomotives go for more than double that, without any track or extras.

Having just been to the Menards in Barboursville last weekend, I know that they have the first two of these sets in stock. The third set is the one I’d be most likely to grab for myself, but probably not online. I am including the online links for my readers who don’t have a Menards nearby. Be aware of the price flucuations. There are other sets in their online store, as well as structures and rolling stock.

Each locomotive comes with an easy-to-use handheld wireless controller.

It’s easy for youngsters or adults to hold and use. The remote functions include: Easy rotating forward-reverse directional control; Select horn or bell sounds; Trigger crew communications; Adjustable volume control; and they have quick battery replacement.

It’s a cool gateway to the more complicated remote-control sound features that more advanced train sets have.

O Gauge Milwaukee Road Train Set

This set Includes: (1) O gauge locomotive, (1) O gauge coal hopper, (1) O gauge gondola, (1) wireless remote control, (8) sections of O-36 curve track, (3) section of 10” straight track, (1) section of 10” straight track with power connection, and (1) 18-volt power adapter.

Firmly rooted in the steel mills and factories of Chicago and the upper Midwest, the Milwaukee Road’s influence reached as far west as the ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Manufactured goods headed west and agricultural products moved east. In 1950, the railroad had more than 11,000 miles of track with traffic supported by 1,307 steam, diesel, and electric locomotives keeping commerce moving.

You can find this set online HERE.

O Gauge Chicago & North Western Train Set

This set includes: (1) O gauge locomotive with two powerful motors, lights, and sounds, (1) O gauge Great Northern coal hopper, (1) O gauge Norfolk and Western gondola, (1) Wireless remote control with buttons to trigger BELL, HORN, and CREW TALK. (1) 56″ x 42″ oval of Menards tubular track, with a track section with power connection plugin, (1) 18-volt power adapter.

The Chicago & North Western covered the upper Midwest like no other railway. The line operated 12,000 miles of track, and in 1950, powered it with 6,266 locomotives. Cargo and travelers were hauled between Chicago, Illinois; Ishpeming, Michigan; Oakes, North Dakota, Casper, Wyoming; and hundreds of other towns in-between.

This set can be found HERE.

O Gauge Santa Fe Train Set

We didn’t see this smaller, slightly less expensive set at Barboursville, but it comes with the distinctive “Warbonnet” engine which always catches our eye. Also with this set you’ll get: (1) O gauge locomotive with two powerful motors, lights, and sounds, (1) O gauge caboose with lights, (1) Wireless remote control with buttons to trigger BELL, HORN, and CREW TALK (1) 36″ x 42″ oval of Menards tubular track with a track section with power connection plugin, (1) 18-volt power adapter.

This set features an iconic locomotive, often dubbed “the diesel that did it,” in the transition from steam to diesel locomotives. The Menards engine features America’s most recognized railway graphics – the classic Santa Fe Warbonnet livery that set a new visual standard for railway graphic design.

The Santa Fe set can be found HERE.

Any of these sets would be the perfect gift for the budding model train enthusiast on your holiday shopping list.

Dwellings · The Complete Collection
by Jay Stephens
Black Eye Books
ISBN: 978-1-7389200-9-9
$22 plus shipping from the publisher
Deluxe Edition available

Today’s second pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a delightully perverse collection of horror stories, told in comic book form, gruesome and disturbing, but drawn in a cute art style reminescent of old Harvey Comics like Richie Rich and Caspar.

Dwellings is a new kind of horror, written and drawn by Jay Stephens, and there’s nothing else quite like it to which it can be compared. It’s like if Stephen KIng and Clive Barker teamed up with the folks behind Precious Moments.

This edition collects all six issues of Jay Stephens’s creepy cute horror series from cover-to-cover in a limited one-time print run. With an introduction by cartoonist Stephen Bissette!

This definitive edition brings together issues 1 through 6 in a beautifully crafted 260-page volume, is printed in a compact 5.75 x 8.25 trim size that will perfectly complement Jay’s previous collections, Dejects, and Jetcat & Friends. Available from Black Eye Books in both Trade Paperback and Deluxe, signed Hardcover editions.  A signed softcover is also available. A mass market edition is available from Amazon.

This is for Mature Readers (not for children). Kids might get really messed up if they read these comics, seriously.

This is the perfect gift for the comimc book-loving horror fan on your holiday shopping list who may just have a very sick sense of humor.

Frenchy and The Punk
Midnight Garden
Available on CD, Vinyl or Download

Our first pick today in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is Midnight Garden,  the latest album by our friends, Frenchy & The Punk. Just released in June, this epic post-punk masterpiece with goth, surf and New Wave inclinations has already become a Radio Free Charleston favorite.

I’ve played every track on this album, some of them more than once.

If you have a fan of Siouxsie and The Banshees on your shopping list, this is perfect for them, but anybody who loves good, alternative music will enjoy the hell out of this album.

If you want a taste, check out this music video…

Full disclosure time here: I’ve been a fan of Frenchy & The Punk for over fifteen years, back to when they used a different name, and they’ve even crashed at my house when they were in town playing a gig. That doesn’t change the fact that they make powerful, independent music that connects on a unique level.

Midnight Garden is packed with nine powerful songs that will take your soul to a dark cabaret and ply you with ubernatural enticements.

You can order Midnight Garden as a CD on Blue Vinyl, or if you don’t care about wrapping it, you can download it from Bandcamp (maybe wait until Bandcamp Friday so they get to keep all the proceeds). If you’re already a fan, or got hooked by the video, maybe check out their merch, while you’re at it. It makes a fantastic gift for the discriminating musicologist on your holiday shopping list.

Today’s second pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a bundle of all three treasury-sized issues of G.H.O.S.T. Agents. This is the perfect gift for the lover of Silver Age comics, treasury editions and spy fiction on your holiday shopping list.

I met Rocko Jerome, the writer/producer of GHOST Agents at Kentuckiana a couple of years ago, and I was knocked out by his cool comic book project.  This is an original creation that harkens back to the golden age of spy adventures while also mining nostalgia for the tabloid-sized treasury comics of the 1970s.  It does all this with excellent art and is just loads of fun.

As the PR says, “Published by Cosmic Lion Productions, GHOST Agents is an art-forward anthology series made up of short, self-contained pieces; where every story exists in the same world, and characters reoccur throughout the centuries spanning narrative. If you read it all, a rich overarching storyline will emerge, but you aren’t required to do that, and readers are encouraged to dip in as they please.”

It’s got terrific art, great shorter-length stories and it’s printed on newsprint in an oversized format, which is near and dear to my heart.

Allow me to quote from the website:

Rockin’ Pins

Today’s first entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide revisits an online retailer that I included in last year’s guide. I’m putting them in here again because they continue to introduce really cool new products, and the proceeds go to a wonderful cause that is near and dear to my heart.

Rockin’ Pins started out as a jewelry company, making enamel pins of cool rock stars. They have expanded their range quite a bit lately, and in addition to really nice enamel pins they now make apparel, mugs, books, figures, patches and tons of other cool things, and they don’t just feature rock bands or musicians anymore. I’m partial to their button-up shirts, myself.

Rockin’ Pins has been leading the way in helping to restore classic Max Fleischer and Gumby cartoons. Hopefully they’ll have DVD and Blu Ray collections of these available for sale. Right now the only way to see them is to go to one of the cool screenings they’ve having around the country.  There was one in Saint Albans in 2022.

They also have a full range of merch based on Gumby and Fleischer’s KoKo The Clown, in addition to ultra-cool musicians like Bauhaus, The B-52s, Cab Calloway, Frank Zappa and others. They even have cool stuff with Groucho Marx available.

Over the last year they’ve introduced all kinds of cool new items, like a button-up shirt based on “Swing You Sinners,” one of the trippiest cartoons ever made. They also have a cool Bluto as Sindbad Sweater, a Koko figurine and loads of Betty Boop stuff. 2025 is going to be a huge year for Betty when her musical hits Broadway.

Rockin’ Pins straddle the multiverse of pop culture, bringing together The Little Rascals, Megadeth, Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go, Betty Boop and Pink Floyd, all under the same roof. You can find everything from Beavis and Butthead to Cheech and Chong, as well as Laurel & Hardy and The Three Stooges.

For a top-notch, brilliantly-curated selection of the cream-of-the-crop of nostalgic pop culture that blends classic animation, progressive rock, classic comedy, rock music and more, visit their website and look for the perfect gift for the folks on your list. Fans of classic animation, music or just damned nifty stuff will be thrilled with any gifts you find for them here.

Still under the gun writing The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, your humble blogger reached into his sketchbook and pulled out a reference drawing I did in charcoal pencil during one of our trips this year. I think it may be from Chicago, but I can’t say for sure because I didn’t date it and when I use charcoal pencils I jump around in the sketchbook so I don’t smutz up all the pages.

Anyway, it’s a pencil drawing of what I think are HVAC units on the roof a building across the street from whatever hotel I was in. I seem to remember considering this scene for a Hopperesque painting, then deciding against it for unremembered reasons.

To see it bigger try clicking HERE.

Over in radioland we are having some server maintenance done this week on The AIR.  There will be times when the station may go down for an hour or three, and we won’t know exactly when it’ll happen and what shows will be scheduled.  So, to take advantage of this uncertainty, this week I will be skipping Radio Free Charleston for the first time this year (I’ve done a new show every week going back to last December), and will be tossing together some non-vital marathons of our shows that will be great if you can hear them, and won’t be too big a deal if you can’t.

Everything should be fixed by next week, and the plan is to have all-new musical specialty programs during the last week of The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, which, coincidentally, continues later today.

Tonight we’re revisiting a ten-year old vintage magnum of The Velvet Brothers, while we continue work on The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide, and we’re doing it up all classy with an episode of The RFC MINI SHOW from October 2014.

The legendary Velvet Brothers, had just reunited in September, 2014 when we recorded them at Bruno’s on Leon Sullivan Way in Charleston.  In this edition of The RFC MINI SHOW you can hear them perform “Savannah Rose” and “De Do Do Do, De Dah Dah Dah.”Yes, that latter song is a cover of the old Police tune, rendered in a velvety-smooth lounge version.

The Velvet Brothers were the first full band that I featured performing live on the Radio Free Charleston radio show way back in 1989. We’d had some acoustic performances on the show, but never a full band. The studio wasn’t big enough to hold the entire band, so we ran cables all over the building with the drummer in the hallway, the bass player in the production studio, and the keyboard player in the newsroom. With the guitarist and vocalist in the FM studio with me, the band managed to create a magic moment, even though it was three in the morning and they’d just played a full set at The Charleston Playhouse earlier in the evening.

The Velvet Brothers are still performing together, but Bruno’s is gone.  Still, it’s a good time to take a moment, relax and enjoy the Velvety goodness of this recycled PopCult post.

RFC 109 "Shazam Shirt" from Rudy Panucci on Vimeo.

This week we go back to August, 2010 for the 109th edition of Radio Free Charleston‘s video incarnation.  This ws our third “show without words,” where we showcased instrumental music and films and animation without dialogue. Our music this time came from David Synn and D.T. Stephenson, who later teamed up to form the band Frequency Down. David is back doing solo stuff again, and D.T. is in Static Fur.  We also had RFC faves, Blue Million, ripping through an instrumental blues jam during a sound check.

Our animation was courtesy of Frank Panucci and we also featured the oldest surviving Plant Ro Duction Mini Movie. We also got a quick, photographic tour of LiveMix Studio, our longtime and much-missed production partner.

Host segments were presented in the style of a comic book.  This way I was able to not speak on this episode.  Full production notes can be found HERE.

STUFFED COKEY THE BEAR
$30 from Kentucky For Kentucky Fun Mall

I’m sure you remember Cocaine Bear, the pop culture superstar, movie legend and object lesson in “Just Say No.” Well, as I have mentioned in PopCult before, he currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky, at The Kentucky For Kentucky Fun Mall.

In fact, your humble blogger and his lovely wife just saw him there yesterday. No lie!

Our next pick in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is a plush rendition of this ursine superstar, wearing the State Trooper’s cover he currently sports, while holding three fresh bricks of cocaine…and with a few telltale specks on his nose.

This is a perfect gift for the lover of plush animals on your holiday shopping list. It’s also great for fans of the Cocaine Bear movie. It’s also a surefire winner for folks who just love bears. And it’s also a kick for the person on your holiday shopping list who really loves cocaine!

Let me turn it over to the KY4KY product description:

Kentucky for Kentucky aka The Home of Cocaine Bear aka The Keepers of Cokey aka The Protectors of Pablo have sketched and sculpted and worked and reworked to bring you a fully custom plushie available nowhere else in the world!

We can’t put a price tag on the real stuffed Cocaine Bear so we’ve recreated ole Pablo as a smaller, cuter, and fluffier Cocaine Teddy Bear with bricks of cocaine and signature blue hat. And we added a little nostalgia with a Cocaine Bear™ hang tag complete with Cokey’s birthday and a poem. Get yours today! You never know, they could be selling miniatures of these in Happy Meals someday.

You can read the story of how Cocaine Bear came to reside at the Kentucky Fun Mall here, as well as Cocaine Bear’s numerous press reports.

Super soft black plush stuffed bear. ~10″ tall sitting. Fully custom. Designed by The Hern. Cocaine not real. Hang tag poem reads:

“Straight to it’s heart the cocaine went,
This party animal got completely bent.
From the Chattahoochee Forest straight to you,
Cokey wants a hug and maybe a bump too.”

I have to confess, I got this for Mrs. PopCulteer last year, and we were thrilled to see that they still had plenty in stock. In fact, they have a ton of Cocaine Bear products available, from T Shirts to Christmas Ornaments to “Blow” Globes and more. Check out their website for ordering info.

Because everybody loves snow at Christmas!

The PopCulteer
November 15, 2024

Animal Warriors of The Kingdom
Available from Spero Toys and other online retailers

Today’s PopCulteer entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is for an entire action figure line that you may not have heard of yet. This is the perfect gift for the action figure collector on your holiday shopping list who might be feeling a bit of ennui at the regular offerings, and longs for something new.

Animal Warriors of the Kingdom is an immersive action figure fantasy line created by Spero Studios featuring the many adventures of Pale, the white-fur ape, and his allies as they fight to end the reign of the Tyrant Kahlee and restore peace and prosperity to his home. The story features Animal Warriors of all shapes and sizes throughout the Kingdom and fans can look forward to seeing many more Animal Warriors featured as each wave is revealed.

Each figures stands 6.50 inches tall and feature 26 points of articulation.

I first saw this line at PowerCon in Columbus in 2023 and I caught up with them this year at JoeLanta back at the end of September. Even though I was attending as a civilian, I was impressed enough to grab a few photos and make a mental note to include them in the Gift Guide this year.

Here’s some of the photos I took at JoeLanta that came out in focus…

Each Primal Series Figure includes several accessories with Add-On sets available for even more accessories. Heads, hands, and certain armor pieces can be easily swapped out to personalize your figures.

These figures are based on an original concept by Jason Bienvenu and it combines fantasy and science fiction adventure with anthropomorphic hijinks. It honestly put in the mind of Jack Kirby’s excellent Kamandi series, just based on the looks of the action figures. Coming from me, that’s high praise.

I would recommend the comics, but they aren’t currently available. A trade paperback collection is due out in a few weeks, but the individual issues are sold out as physical items, and I don’t like to point my readers to eBooks, since they are so tricky to wrap.

When the stories are back in print, readers can learn about the world that the Animal Warriors inhabit and experience the adventure alongside the series main protagonist, Pale, in order to thwart the plans of the vile Emperor Kah Lee!

There are over two dozen figures already available in the line. They feature remarkable sculpting and top-notch articulation. Most of the figures sell for around $35 each (these are 1/12 scale figures), with some basic figures available for as little as $15, and very large, deluxe figures topping out over fifty bucks. There are also accessory sets and spare heads for the customizing action figure collector.

This is a wild action figure line, and will light up the face of the figure collector on your shopping list. You can order directly from Spero Toys, and you can also find these figures at Big Bad Toy Store and Amazon. There are several figures you can choose from to start a collection.

Here’s a cool animated trailer, just to give you a hint of the concept…

And this entry in The 2024 PopCult Gift Guide is our animalistic PopCulteer this week. The Gift Guide is taking the weekends off this year, but after our second entry later today, it will return with two more entries on Monday.  Meanwhile, check PopCult every day for fresh content.