These were my favorite part of magazines like GameFan (RIP) I ordered some DBZ figures from one of them, I remember my mom calling the number and talking to someone to place the order. Good memories.
I still remember seeing these in the early 90s in GamePro and EGM and wanting to buy a used Super Famicom because it was like $50 cheaper than getting an SNES locally, and you still came out ahead with the cartridge adapter for US/SNES to JP/SFC. I scrimped and saved my allowances all summer and even scraped together some money from doing odd jobs for neighbors, relatives, and whatnot, until I finally had enough cash saved up minus the current week's allowance. When I told my mom how much I had saved up, what I was going to do with it, and asked if I could have my $5 or whatever for the current week before the banks closed for the weekend, she said "no" and proceeded to use that money as her personal piggy bank while she dragged me around to various garage sales that weekend.
To this day, I don't even remember what she bought or if she ever fully paid it back; I just remember the nausea from her manic stop-and-go driving in that shitty Cavalier, lurching from stop sign to stop sign to stop sign for an entire afternoon. "Uncertainty and nausea" sums up a lot of my family interactions, come to think of it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. 
she sounds normal