I love monsters movies. Show me a film about an alien with acid for blood, a pissed off shark with a taste for people, or hoards of ravenous zombies, and I’m a happy girl. I love the plucky heroines like JLo in Anaconda and Reba in Tremors. I love the kick-ass manly heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator and Vin Diesel in Pitch Black. I love Sigourney Weaver because she just keeps kicking alien ass in movie after movie. I love post-modern endings where everybody dies (Dawn of the Dead and Cloverfield). It doesn’t matter what it’s about or how it ends. If there’s a monster in it, I’m a fan.  But I especially love, more than all the rest, more even than zombies and aliens, even more than Sigourney, I love dinosaurs.

Godzilla isn’t exactly a dinosaur. He’s too big and technically a mutant iguana. And the 1998 remake of the movie was right up there with the dumbest dialogue of any monster movie ever (and I’ve seen Snakehead Terror). But he was maybe the best looking monster I’ve seen in some time. I loved him.

So that’s why Godzilla is my Thrift Pick of the Week. When I saw this big, beautiful stomping monster toy in a thrift store years ago, I had to buy him. And that’s also why, even though our boys have long since outgrown him, I have not.