Haul-iday Highlights 2022

 Back from the holiday break with the annual showing off of holiday loot!

We'll kick it off with the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special Funko Pops.

First up we have Groot and Peter Quill. Groot is looking better here than he did in the actual Special itself, I am not a fan of that costume. Quill's got a Santa hat (which you can't see much of here) and a wrapped gift. I'm glad they did these so I can bring them out every year to give a Guardians tweak to the holiday decorations.

Drax has his "little man" lawn ornament and I just love it! Also loving Mantis' festive headband. What I'm not loving? The fact that you can only get Holiday Rocket in an Amazon exclusive 5-pack. Booooo!

Quite a few Funko Pops this year! This really cool Hot Topic exclusive 2-pack is done in grey scale keeping it in line with their movie origins.

Finishing out the Funkos is Gingerbread Jack! He's another exclusive. I think it was last year they introduced the gingerbread Pops with Marvel and DC characters and they're another fun way to help decorate for the holidays.

My stocking was just about full with Disney pins! I used some Amazon gift cards to get these cool pin storage pages. I've been collecting the pins for decades and always get new ones when we visit the parks every few years. I finally decided it was time to do something with them...even if these pages smell like new tires.

I'm really digging these pins that mimic the look of vintage trading cards.

The Rocket and Groot singles, along with Dr. Strange are older pins but the rest were all gifts. As you can see, I got a load of the Marvel pumpkin ones. The big Rocket & Groot one is actually two halves that come together. And I'm just now realizing I forgot to take a pic of the Haunted Mansion pins I got!

Speaking of the Disney parks...

I think this is my first winter Astromech. You might remember seeing me post some Halloween themed droids like this one from 2016 or these two from past October. The holiday droids are Disney exclusives and while I mainly collect the Halloween ones, this one is really cute with his hat and scarf.

I also got my first Micro Galaxy Squadron vehicle. I've been following this line since it debuted and pretty much have just been admiring it on the shelves. They are really great and if I had the space to display some of the larger vehicles, I definitely would pick a few up.

I didn't take pics of this but if I remember, I'll show it off more during this year's Countdown to Halloween. It's a retheme of the junior version of Ticket to Ride where instead of trains, you're building a spooky parade route between places like a Pumpkin Patch and the Circus of Dread.

Rounding the post out are a couple of books.

I hope this one is as fun as it sounds! It's 1994 and 13 year old Wes tries to help out his friend, former 80s TV horror vixen Cassondra Dagger, keep her independent video store open because nobody's watching horror anymore.

The Life Day Treasury is a collection of short stories from around the Star Wars galaxy that take place during different winter celebrations. I'm only one story in so far and it does feel a little weird reading about winter holidays in Star Wars.