The Daily Helmet: Flea Market Haul The Wonderful New Pitt Uniforms And 1990 Kenner Action Toy Guide

by Mike Cline Jr. in The Daily Helmet

A Day At The Flea Market

On Sunday I headed over to a nearby Antique and Flea market. I have been over there a few times and I have always come up with some decent stuff. The problem with flea markets is that a lot of these booths are run by older guys who perhaps don’t do much selling on eBay, so some of them have little idea what the true market value is on some of the items. I mean, just because it is old doesn’t mean that it is worth hundreds of bucks. I have never been one to look for high end items anyway. I find it is too risky. It is hard to tell if the item you are buying is really worth what they are selling. I think if you are paying hundreds of dollars for something or even fifty bucks, you should expect the item to at least double in price at some point if you wanted to sell it. If not, it might not be worth what it sells for. In the end, I guess the market sets the prices, or at the flea market, the old guy sitting in a lawn chair eating a Whopper.

Flea markets are bizarre places. When i was a kid, I would frequent a huge indoor flea, that occupied a old department store. As a young kid it was always a crazy place to go, where you would casually wander into booths with old Playboy magazines and drug magazines while you were looking for the rock t-shirt stand or card shop. Sometimes people sold all of the above. when I went to that old flea market I just assumed lots of illegal activities were going on in the dark corners, and that added to the allure. In the end that old place was torn down so they could build a Walmart. Now there are only a couple flea markets around, so the selection of places to find good sports finds are getting slim.

The Flea Market I went to is a huge place and has lots of different types of vendors. You have your normal junk vendors, which is a staple of any flea market. These are people who seemingly have been trying to sell the same pile of junk for decades. There also real antiques, records, toys and of course sports stuff.

The sports vendors have a lot of different things for sale. With a premium on the local sports team stuff, which is to my advantage because I celebrate all teams when it comes to buying memorabilia. The booths I visited had cool NFL glasses, pennants, Logopics, patches and lots of other assorted things you don’t see that often. The problem for me is , how much of this stuff do I really need. My sports Lair, where I’d prefer to display all my stuff is getting crowded, so anything I buy, I’d like to be able to display. I don’t see any point in buying something that will sit in a box somewhere. sometime soon, I might have to display things on a rotation like a museum.

This time I was on the lookout for any helmets I could refurbish, cheap pennants, starting lineups, specifically Bo Jackson, unopened wax packs of cards and anything else that was maybe unique and interesting. Here is some of what i picked up:

A Replacement Bo

I picked up this Bo Jackson Headlines Starting Lineup Display. They started putting out these in the early 90s which included a headline about the player, a Starting Lineup figure and a little stand to display it all. when I was a kid I had this exact one, but at some point I broke or lost the display and the Bo which floated around the house for a few years was chewed up by our dog. So, I was in the market for a replacement and I found this unopened one. It was in the original package and looks great next to my Bo McFarlane Figure.

Kenner Action Figure Catalog

Almost as cool as the Bo figure was this mini Kenner Action Figure catalog. Kenner was a toy company that was founded way back in 1946 and then bought and sold several times, being owned by General Mills until the mid-eighties, Tonka and finally Hasbro until the brand was discontinued in 2000. They were the brand who made Starting Lineups from 1988 until it was closed int 2000. Hasbro took over in 2001 and then stopped making them. Although in the last few years, several teams gave away modern player Starting Lineups as giveaways, like Jameis Winston, San Jose Shark, Joe Pavelski, and Charlotte Hornet Nicolas Batum. I love the idea of releasing modern players as Starting Lineup figures. SL mainly went out of favor because of the popularity of the far more detailed McFarlane figures. Still, there is something cool about the absurdly crude and inaccurate figures that basically look the same. The best part was of course the removable helmets, which I always managed to lose. I still have quite a few of my originals, sans helmets. Dumb young me. The Kenner catalog that came with the Bo headline set had a list of all the 1990 Starting Lineup figures as well as BeetleJuice, Ghostbusters, Robocop and Police Academy, which apparently had a pretty extensive toy line. I scanned the entire thing for your enjoyment below:

Kenner Action Figure Toy Guide (1990)

Barry Sanders Rookie Starting Lineup (Unopened)

speaking of starting lineups, I also picked up this Barry Sanders Starting Lineup from his rookie year. The package is it pretty good shape, with a little glue discoloration around the packaging.

New Pitt Uniforms!

As expected Pitt athletics officially changed their color scheme to a gorgeous royal blue and bright gold/yellow. I hated the navy and vegas gold. There was nothing good to say about that uniform and it looked horrible on television and in person. These colors are fantastic and will be a real treat to see on TV and in person when I go there for a game in October. As far as football the uniforms look really good. My only complaints would be the number fonts (whatever happened to college block?) and the weird stripes. Those are minor though and overall I give this uniform an A-

What About Dijon Yellow?

These uniforms do harken back to the Pitt uniforms of old. The ones Dan Marino wore when he threw the ball for the Panthers back in the early 80s. Back then, though, they had a much darker yellow, one I like to describe as Dijon Mustard yellow. I like it, but I am totally into this new yellow they use, which will really op on HD TV.

Helmet OF The Day: Pitt Panthers

The Panthers went to the familier Pitt wordmark and Yellow helmets in 1973 and wore them through the 1996 season, before sadly switching to a vegas gold helmet with a panther on the helmet. They would wear that logo until 2004 and then switch back to a helmet with a Pitt wordmark. Although, his one was with block letters. They would switch back to the old style Pitt logo in 2014 and finally going full circle switching back to royal blue and mustard yellow for 2019.