No pictures yet, but apparently the long-rumored Masterpiece Grimlock is real and will be eating up $150 of my hard-earned cash come next spring. (For those of you who don’t know, G1 Grimlock is my favorite toy of all time.) Here’s hoping this isn’t just the latest round of rumor-mongering.
Now I just have to figure out how to justify the expense to DMG…
ODD: DCUC4 has arrived, and the winner is: James B! His selection of October 9 was right on the money. He’ll be recieving a mint-on-card Batman Beyond. That contest is over, but you can still win some free Z.O.M.B.I.E. toys! I’ll be reviewing DCUC4 over the course of next week, since you people seem to like reviews.
END: Is it just me, or does it seem like this has become a pretty dead period for toys and toy news? Maybe everyone’s holding back for Christmas, or maybe the looming economic recession is weighing heavily on everyone’s minds…I don’t know. Just seems dead lately.
ODD: You may have noticed I’ve added a link to my Twitter feed in the upper right corner. If you’ve ever wondered what random thoughts pass through Poe’s mind on a daily basis, this link’s for you.
END: Poe’s Patented CSI: Miami mini-review: OK, let me think…what was last night’s episode about? Oh yeah, the Russian mafia. I’m guessing mob boss Ivan (seriously, CSI: Miami? Ivan?) will be a recurring villain this season. The promos for this ep suggested it would be about a cannibal serial killer, and I’m kind of disappointed that wasn’t the case. The Russian Mafia? Having dealt with Italian mobsters and the Mala Noche, I guess Horatio’s going to work his way through all the ethnic gangs. I wonder when the Yakuza will show up.
Yes, this is what I watch instead of Heroes. I should turn in my geek badge and lightsaber.
“Years ago, a group of monsters was chased by torch-bearing villagers for crimes they, admittedly, committed. These monsters promptly escaped to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by angry mobs, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire…the Monster Squad.”
(Click any picture for a larger version)
Some have called them the Marvel Legends of Universal Monsters. Others have called them crappy.
Michael Crawford wrote a comprehensive review of these figures way back in April ’07, and he sure didn’t like them. Here’s his summary of the review:
With poor sculpts and weak paint, it’s not too likely that you’ll be thrilled with any of these in person. The only thing saving them from an even lower score in the overall is the relatively decent articulation and the inclusion of the BAF. […] While some of the photos might not appear too bad, the cheap feel of the plastic ends up hurting these once you get them in hand. I’m disappointed with them, and it’s unlikely that any other than the Creature or the Frank BAF will end up on the display shelf.
Despite what was definitely a negative review–and I usually agree with MC’s opinions–I really, really wanted these. (more…)
My first-ever TR list is up–check it out:
A compendium of my reviews of horror- and Halloween-related toys. I’ll add any new reviews I do this month as we go along.
A couple days ago on his blog, Ethan Kaye highlighted a Super-meme. Well, in honor of my favorite horror writer, here’s my entry.
If you were a young boy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, chances are you were quite familiar with the crown logo of Imperial Toys.
From the admittedly limited perspective as a six-year-old boy, Imperial was known for one thing: rubber dinosaurs.
Imperial specialized in those solid rubber dinosaurs you’d find in convenience stores, pharmacies, and the metal floor bins of toy stores like Child World. They usually sold for about a buck. Those dinosaurs were tough bastards; you could throw them against the wall all day long and they wouldn’t get a scratch.
The sculpts and paint applications were crude even by contemporary standards and there was nary a point of articulation to be found on them, but when I was a kid that hardly mattered. The rubbery feel of the dinosaurs skin, coupled with their Godzilla-like indestructibility, made them the preeminent dinosaur toys of my youth.
A lot of the Imperial dinosaurs were of questionable paleontological validity. Tyrannosaurs with stegosaur-like plates and apatosaurs (which we called brontosaurs in my day) with pointy teeth were common. My particular favorites were a small yellow tyrannosaur (now residing in my Toy Shrine), a duck-billed dinosaur thing, and a black creature that was sort of a cross between a frog and an allosaur that I called “Bumpy.”
If you were a kid in the 1980s with a love of science fiction and action films, you had it made. The combined awesomeness of the Alien, Predator, Terminator and, to a lesser extent, Robocop franchises constituted the best run of bad-ass sf action to date, and all four are still bringing in money in some way or another.
With the exception of Robocop, director John Cameron had at least a minor contribution to each franchise (he suggested Stan Winston add mandibles to the Predator creature design), and directed the first two Terminator films and Aliens. Since Cameron pretty much made the careers of Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen, it’s no surprise they had roles in several of these movies. But both actors also share a very special distinction–they’ve both been killed by a Terminator, an Alien, and a Predator. (more…)
I can’t recall whether I saw The Monster Squad (1987) in the theater, but something makes me think I did. Even as a kid I thought of it then as a sort of store-brand Goonies, albeit a very fun, entertaining, and surprisingly violent one. Except for the infamous “Wolf Man’s got nards” line, I more or less forgot about the film until I saw it in 2004 while visiting a friend (thanks, Rustin—always the classy host!).
The Monster Squad is a kids’ horror film featuring what are traditionally thought of as the Universal Monsters: Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and the Gillman (a.k.a. the Creature from the Black Lagoon). However, unlike other monster mashes like the recent Van Helsing, The Monster Squad wasn’t a Universal film; Universal only owns the trademarks to the character names (meaning you can’t call your movie just “Dracula”). In the case of Dracula and the Monster, the novels are long out of copyright; while the Mummy, the Wolfman and the Gillman are just generic monsters (though I do think they’re on shaky ground with the Gillman, given how much he resembles the Black Lagoon creature).
(more…)