Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Go to Walgreen's, Bring Arizona Home

This entry is part of a photo challenge with Carly and Duane, to post pictures of kitschy souvenirs from our respective locales.  I'm quite interested to see what souvenirs you walk past every week without buying, so feel free to post your own response to this photo challenge and leave a link.

As usual, I'm in overkill mode on this, so I'm going to do it in two entries.  Tonight will be souvenirs found at Walgreen's only.  Tomorrow we'll expand our horizons a little.

Most of this stuff requires minimal explanation, so I'll try to be less wordy than usual.

First I tried one of the newer Walgreen's locations.  They didn't have much.  Either it was all gone or in storage because tourist season is over, or the bulk of the tourista tschochkis were never stocked at this store. They did, however, have postcards, the obligatory cheap T-shirts, and rubber saguaro car antenna toppers.

putting a rubber saguaro on your car antenna is a fresh idea!  postcards, candy, or tabloids?

Left: saguaro antenna toppers.  Right:  Shall I buy the Enquirer, or some postcards with cacti on them?

Tonight I went to a much older Walgreen's, the one where the late Tracy Murray worked in 1990.  The Arizona souvenirs were mostly on clearance, or at least on "Manager's Choice."  Oh, yeah, that's the stuff: Kokopelli everything, chili pot holders, piggie banks, photo frames, live (or possibly fake) cacti for only $1.99, souvenir spoons, and best of all, real scorpions encased in Lucite!  You know you want one.  No?  Well, actually, me neither.

Souvenir of Walgreen's - It's Arizonapalooza!

Arizonapalooza at Walgreen's!

live cactus - cheap!

Anybody wanna buy a cactus, cheap?

Don't worry, they can't hurt you!

The classic tacky Arizona souvenir of all time - dead scorpions in plastic paperweights.

Tomorrow:  other classes of Arizona souvenirs.

Karen

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Karen

ROFLMAO! OMG...you are amazing! I LOVE it! OMG, I can't stop laughing, tee hee. I have to have one of those Cowboy antenna toppers. Oh my that's funny. Jeepers I even went to the Elephant Pharmacy and the shelf was bare. We MUST do this one again, maybe this summer. A scorpion encased in lucite! Ewwww! Way to go girl! Hilarious!

Always, Carly :)

Anonymous said...

Karen
I found you through the link Carly put in her journal so we could see the tacky souvenirs.  Glad I found you.  I have scrolled down and read some of your earlier posts and decided you are going on my alerts list.  BTW, so far, you've topped Carly... going to check out Duane's now.
Sam

Anonymous said...

Hmm...well, I already covet the chili pepper hotpad and always need a keyring from every place I visit... LOL

Anonymous said...

Well, I finally got finished with my tacky souvenir entry.  Not what I was hoping for, but I think it turned out okay.

If I ever come to Arizona, I've got to have a dead scorpion paperweight.  That's what I've been searching my whole life for - I just didn't know it until now.