Tag: travel

Want a $200 Lamp?

Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird

Back before we were Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird, I was CAPTAIN SLINKY’S WEIRD LAMPS. I took old, abandoned, broken lamps and old, abandoned, broken toys, mashed ’em together, coated them in 100% PURE, 24-KARAT GOLD colored spray paint, and sold them at conventions and toy shows and craft shows all over Washington State. My lamps were a beloved tradition! I had a following! I even got word that one of my lamps had made it all the way to a boutique in NEW YORK where they were selling it for $200!

And then, a series of unfortunate “Whoopsies” left me pretty much unable to make lamps for a while. That’s when we took over and started focusing on Oddmall, but not before I had started on a NEW line of lamps using the great untapped upcycling material of DISCARDED VHS TAPES.

It was during this turbulent era that I created my most viral lamp, featuring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A virtual timeline of the rise and fall of those original 90’s turtles from the cartoon all the way to the Turtley-Awesome Christmas Special and all stops in-between. Topped with Raphael’s Sai stabbing into the top, it’s GORGEOUS! LOOK AT IT!

I had made it for my good friend Erik, the biggest Turtle-Nerd I know, and he posted a picture of it to some Turle-based communities online and IT. WENT. NUTS! I was getting dozens of requests for another one, with people agreeing to pay $200 each if I could just ship one to them! Unfortunately, sourcing the materials for one of these lamps is fairly difficult (that Sai is almost impossible to find), so I had to turn them all down. But then I FOUND A PAIR OF THE SAIS AT A GARAGE SALE, so I made two more of them! One sold to a guy in Texas, and the other one… can now be yours for just two bucks.

TWO DOLLARS?!?

Yup! We are selling RAFFLE TICKETS at the cost of just $2 each for this thing! CRAZY, RIGHT??? You can only buy tickets from us IN PERSON at an event, or at the Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird CREEPSMAS Art, Craft & Gift Show November 21-22 at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe, WA!

Winner will be drawn LIVE during the Creepsmas Show on Sunday November 22 at 4pm, and the winner will need to either be there to pick it up, or have someplace local for personal delivery. I can’t ship it; last time I checked it was $60 for shipping one of these and that was like 5 years ago 😦 If the winner can’t be contacted within a week of winning to arrange delivery, we will draw a new winner!

You can also buy tickets from us at the following events:

GRANITE FALLS TOY SHOW, Saturday September 12, Granite Falls WA 9am-3pm (free admission)

Everett Comic Art Show, Saturday Oct. 10, Delta Hotels by Marriot 3105 Pine St, Everett, WA, 11am-5pm

AM I The Chosen One???

Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird

There’s a lot of confusion about the whole Application Process for Oddmall Vendors, so I figured I should write it out in a post that I can point at rather than typing it over and over and over again

STEP 1: STARTING INVENTORY. At every Oddmall, we offer the vendors the opportunity to purchase a space for the next Oddmall show; they have “Dibs”. They can pay in cash at the show, or pay online up to 3 days before we open applications to new vendors. We have between 40%-75% of our sales this way. This time around, we pre-sold 83 out of the 170 available spaces. That’s roughly 50% of the spaces before we even look at an application!

STEP 2: APPLICATIONS. We accept applications for new vendors for a week OR till we have over 150 applications, whichever comes first. We do our darndest to post on a daily basis during this time across Facebook, Instagram, BluSky and Threads PLUS send notifications via our newsletter to make sure everyone has ample chance to go fill out an application, and we announce when we close the applications.

STEP 3: FIRST PASS. We go through all the applications and pick out the ones we KNOW we won’t be approving for one reason or another; already too many vendors that are selling the same category of stuff, too “Adult”, too “Vanilla”, MLM, Pyramid Scheme, Drop Shippers, etc. Rejection notes go to them.

STEP 4: OBVIOUS CHOICES. During The First Pass, we will have marked all the applications that are just obviously too awesome to not be in Oddmall; Stuff we’ve literally never seen anywhere else, vendors we have poached from other shows (shameless!), stuff we REALLY want a chance to buy and bringing them to OUR Oddmall might be our only chance… Acceptance Letters go to as many of those folks as we have spaces available.

STEP 5: THE GRIND. Every day that we DON’T sell out of spaces entirely, we send another two or three “Obvious Choice” vendors acceptance letters. We also start grouping the Obvious Choice vendors into categories of what they sell so we don’t end up over-saturating with one type of vendor, and we start approving folks based mostly on what kind of vendor I want in a space rather than just any vendor regardless of what they do.

STEP 6: ENDGAME. Once we have just 5 or 6 spaces left, we look at the amount of Approved Applications we still have out there that haven’t paid and make a few posts about how we’re really down to the nitty-gritty here and those outstanding vendors might not get in! We usually time this around one or two vendors who have been approved and they contacted us to say something like “Aww jeez can I pay on Friday?” so we make a post saying “Okay, if we still have spaces come Saturday Morning, we’re approving more vendors!”

STEP 7: REMNANTS. Once we have filled all the spaces, we send rejection letters to everyone that’s left to let them know they’re definitely good enough for Oddmall, we just ran out of room!

WIN!

Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird

FAME AND PRIZES FOR THE WEIRDEST AD IN THE ODDMALL CREEPSMAS VENDOR MAP! You don’t even need to be one of our vendors! Heck, you don’t even need to be a business! Just give us the WEIRDEST THING that we print and you’ll get your money back, a Prize Pack, AND an award! Check it out:

  • Buy a 2″x2″ square of advertising for the Captain Slinky Presents Oddmall Emporium of The Weird CREEPSMAS Art, Craft & Gift Show Vendor Map for $30 at https://form.jotform.com/240726931110144 (also accessible by just clicking on that big old image up there).
  • Make it WEIRD. No politics, no religion, just fun! Advertise your business, tell the world how much you love spaghetti, congratulate your dentist for a job well done, share that picture you took of the Oreo Cookie that looked like Robert Downey Jr., whatever! If it’s too offensive or graphic I’ll just reject it and refund your money.
  • Your add will be printed and seen by 4.7 BAZILLION ODDMALL CUSTOMERS* the weekend of November 8-9 at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds, and they’ll actually HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR AD because we use the Vendor Maps as a part of our Door Prize Redemption System! We give out HUNDREDS of prizes at each and every Oddmall that require the winner to go on a “Quest” for their prize, deciphering clues and contacting vendors via The Vendor Map. EXAMPLE: You gave us $30 to print a picture you drew of a crying unicorn. The winner may receive a quest that says “Redeem your prize from the vendor to the left of The Crying Unicorn” and we will direct them to the Sponsor Page, where they will find your crying unicorn right next to an ad from Chance Encounter Games, which is where their prize will be! EVERY AD WILL BE LINKED TO AT LEAST ONE QUEST!
  • Captain Slinky himself will choose The Weirdest Ad In The Vendor Map and contact that person to let them know they won! And what do you get for winning? 1) Your $30 back, in CASH! All you have to do is come on down to Oddmall that weekend and get it straight from The Captain! 2) An Oddmall Prize Pack! I packed and sealed this prize pack quite a while ago so I have no idea what’s in it, but I’ll bet it’s cool! Just in case, though, we’ll also load you up with some official Oddmall merch! 3) A Major Award! You will get a ribbon/badge proclaiming that YOU were the WEIRDEST CREEPSMAS ADVERTISER OF CREEPSMAS 2025! 4) Your ad posted to all our social media accounts so everyone can see just how weird of a winner you truly are!
  • Anyone and everyone who places an ad in our Creepsmas 2025 Vendor Map is eligible to win, vendors and customers and Oddmall Staff included! If you already bought an ad? YOU’RE IN! No need to buy more ads unless you REALLY want to win!