TWO COOL LA STORES

Yesterday morning, after I attended the Stan Lee ribbon cutting ceremonies at the new Golden Apple Comics location on Melrose, I ran over the hill to the Valley to do business with my buddy Scott Shaw! Scott recommended we meet at his favorite new store, Big Kid Collectible Toy Mall & Retro Store. Wow! What a place! I urge all our L.A. area readers (and all of you who visit L.A. in the future) to stop in at both of these great stores.The new Golden Apple is beautiful. Very well organized, neat, attractive and loaded with wall to wall geek goodness. Stan was (as always) really gracious to the crowd (yes, he said “Excelsior!” as he cut the ribbon; BTW, there was a pretty big crowd for 10am on a weekday. Spotted animation director Terry Lennon on the line to get in. Big Kid Collectibles (in a mini-mall on the corner of Burbank and Hazeltine) is an amazing museum of great stuff – much of it animation related and all of it for sale. Classic TV items, cartoon cereal boxes (I snagged a cool tin reproduction of the Kellogg’s sign above), old Terrytoon board games, Soaky toys, 8mm Castle films, Harveytoon toys – everything, with the exception of comic books, was there. I highly recommend a visit to this place, you won’t regret it.