So apparently I collect die-cast vehicles.  If someone had asked me a week ago if I collected Hot Wheels I could have easily said "no" without any hesitation.  There's no malice in that statement either; it's not that I dislike these little die-cast metal vehicles.  I just never thought of myself as a connoisseur of the medium I guess.  I know that I had a handful of cars as a kid, but by and large I was an action figure guy and whenever I found myself in a toy store, I was never drawn to that aisle.  I'm not even sure where I came across the handful of cars and trucks I did have, though if I had to bet I'd say they were most likely stocking stuffers.

Over the past couple of years I've found myself picking up a Hot Wheels car here and there, mostly due to some awesome pop culture vehicles popping up unexpectedly on the pegs.  I happened to see an Ecto-1 Ghostbusters ambulance one day in Toys 'R Us and thought to myself, "Neat, wouldn't it be cool if a few more die-cast cars like this started showing up?!?"  Within six months I was alerted to the fact that the Back to the Future DeLorean was released, and then shortly after the A-Team van.  At that point I was downright craving more miniature pop culture rides, and even though I found myself gravitating to the Hot Wheels section more and more it always seemed like a pretty fruitless endeavor.  There just weren't enough of these to really keep my interest in continuing the search…

But then here and there I'd find something that caught my eye.  Whether it was some of the Tron Legacy vehicles, or a retro Hot Wheels Hot Ones release (like Spoiler Sport) that reminded me of a very similar Incredible Hulk-themed version of the car I had as a kid, I couldn't help myself and before I knew it I was checking out at the register with two or three cars…

Shortly after Halloween was over last year I stumbled upon a set of Monster Cereal branded cars, which I felt obligated to own as I don't have any MC merch and this was a fine way of keeping that Halloween-y feeling alive for another week or so.  Honestly though, even at this point I didn't consider myself a collector of little toy cars.  But after picking up a slightly expensive new Hot Wheels K.I.T.T. (I didn't want to wait the eternity it seems for this little guy to hit the pegs), and splurging on a few more of the retro Hot Ones cars last week I think I now have to reconsider my stance on collecting.

I think the final nail in the coffin is that I found myself scouring Hot Wheels wikis and eBay looking for specific cars I had as a kid.  After placing a bid on one of them (keeping my fingers crossed) I think it's pretty clear that I've passed a line of demarcation.  I apparently collect Hot Wheels.

So, in honor of this realization, I thought it would be fun to do a giveaway of some of the extra Hot Wheels pop culture cars I've picked up over the last year.  I have two sets to give away, one featuring the 2010 Ecto-1, the 2011 Back to the Future Time Machine, and the 2011 A-Team van, and a second with just has the A-Team van and the BTTF Time Machine.  So what do you have to do to win one of these sets?  Well, you can send me an e-mail with the subject line "Pop Culture Hot Wheels" and list your favorite Hot Wheels toy or experience.  Be sure to include your name and mailing address.  I'll be picking the winners at Midnight on Thursday, May 31st, 2012.  Good luck!

**UPDATE**  Consider the giveaway pot sweetened!  I found two 2012 Knight Rider K.I.T.T. Hot Wheels today, so I'm adding one to each prize pack!

Now, I'm just going to sit back and hope that there will be a Hot Wheels release of some of my other favorite vehicles soon (including the General Lee, Airwolf, and Street Hawk)…

The Nerd Lunch podcasting crew recently invited me back onto their show to fill their revolving 4th chair.  This time we sat down to talk about the three original Muppet flicks (including The Muppet Movie, The Great Muppet Caper, and The Muppets Take Manhattan), though of course the conversation also touches on the show and the most recent Muppets movie as well.  Who are our favorite characters?  What are our favorite gags?  Most importantly, do we think Kermit and Piggy were actually married at the end of Manhattan?!?  Well, you'll just have to listen to find out…

You can find episode 37 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast on iTunes, or you can download the episode directly!

I had such a fun time reading the long sought-after Goonies novelization recently that I decided to dip back into my collection to find another fun one to devour.  I wasn't sure what to dip into next when I stumbled across a very reasonably priced copy of the Ghostbusters tie-in (reasonable being less than $10), so I decided that had to be the next on the reading pile.  As a quick side note, I really can't believe how insane some of the secondary market prices are on a handful of these movie novelizations.  A nice copy of the American Ghostbusters (subtitled The Supernatural Spectacular) typically goes for around $30-$100, which is just loony toons.  A reader named Erin also recently pointed to the scarcity of the Labyrinth tie-in, and doing some research I found that it sells for between $50-$200?!?  WTF?  I understand that these can sometimes be a bit rarer than say your average Stephen King or Janet Evanovitch paperback, but those prices are downright crazy town.  Actually, I'm surprised that these two in particular haven't been re-issued over the years due to the popularity of their respective franchises.  There's some new-ish Labyrinth manga and a slew of special edition DVDs, why not a newer printing of the novelization?  I guess I feel lucky that I've managed to pick a bunch of these up here and there over the years for a buck or less, but there are still a few volumes that are just too rich for my blood (in particular the horror novelizations like Return of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th, and the Thing.)  Anyway, back to Ghostbusters…

This paperback, which was printed in 1985 by TOR, was written by Richard Mueller and was adapted from and expanded on the screenplay by Aykroyd and Ramis.  The book is a little odd in that it's not the first adaptation/novelization of Ghostbusters, that honor goes to Larry Miline who wrote a very faithful and dry translation of the script for Coronet, which was published in '84 in the U.K.  That isn't a slight against Miline, by the by, it just points to the fact that in the world of movie novelizations there are basically two philosophies, straight/faithful adaptation into prose or expansion.  Are either better or worse?  Well, I don't think there's a right and a wrong, just expectation and desire and what experience you want out of reading one of these.  I'm finding that I'm falling into the expansion camp.  I mean, the standard complaint one hears when watching a film that's been adapted from a novel is that there was so much left out (whether it be plotlines or subtext.)  So when we reverse the polarity and adapt a movie to the novel format, it just stands to reason that there should be ample room to add a bit more story.  My wife, on the other hand, is four square against the idea of expanding the story and considers stray plotlines and subtext to be outside of "official" cannon.  Having grown up reading comics, I have to say that it's a hard point to argue against.  But I'm also really fond of the Laser Disc/DVD/Blu-Ray format and all the wonderful bits and pieces it brings to the experience of watching films.  Deleted scenes, director and actor commentaries, and alternate casting snafus (like the original segments of Back to the Future shot with Eric Stoltz), all this stuff really goes a long way to enriching my love of these films.  Are deleted scenes canonical?  Who the hell knows.  All I know is that I love watching Michael Beihn and Bill Paxton set up the defensive robot machine guns in Aliens, or Troy picking on Mouth, Chunk, Data, and Mikey in the convenience store scene in Goonies.  Even though a lot of the stuff I've been finding in these novelizations is weird and at times swarthy (see my update on the Goonies novel review), I love that it exists.

So how does Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular fair in terms of expanded novelizations?  I'd have to say that so far it's setting the gold standard for what a great expansion can be.  Whereas James Kahn took all sorts of weird twists and turns with the Goonies (both in the formatting, tone and added material), Mueller has done a pretty darn good job of keeping the added material and odd formatting in line with the experience of watching the film.  There are some included scenes that were either filmed and deleted (like a framing device for the film featuring two bums, Harlan Bojay and Leonard Cooms, that witness most of the story from afar), or some that I don't think ever made it from script to production (like a sequence involving a newly wed couple encountering Slimer in their honeymoon sweet, prompting the hotel to contact the Ghostbusters.)  There's also some space given to fleshing out the backgrounds of the majority of the main players; nothing too in-depth, but enough to flesh out the characters a bit more.  That's not to say that there aren't some weird aspects and wrong turns in the novel…

Some of the weirder aspects involve some odd point-of-view work in the text.  Though the book is largely written in 3rd person/omniscient, every so often Mueller dips into 1st person when he wants the characters to offer commentary.  It's generally a weird shift in narration, but like I mentioned in the Goonies novelization, 1st person is a really tricky device to use when dealing with the transition of characters from film to page.  Dipping into the mind of a character that we've come to know and love though a film can be a very weird and disconcerting experience the writer goes "off script".  For instance, everyone thinks about sex to one degree or another, but if I'm used to dealing with a character where this is never brought up, say the Librarian in the opening sequence of Ghostbusters, then when she starts "thinking" about how she feels guilty for seeking out all kinds of ancient kinky woodcuts featuring taboo sexual practices in the library's non-public collection, well, I get pretty weirded out.  As far as I can tell, the librarian character in the script is slightly different; she's written to be rotund and in her mid to late twenties, but for all intents and purposes the scene in the script is almost shot for shot what we’ve come to know and love in the final film.  Mueller, though, felt the need to paint her as a bit more sad and depraved, which for an incidental character is pretty weird.  This sort of thing pops up here and there in the novel, including in the scene where we're first introduced to Dana as she gets out of a cab and goes into her building.  The narrative is fractured into a bunch of perspectives as a handful of people on the street take notice of her and give their two cents.  One of these includes an elderly man walking his dog who glances at her and thinks, "…how long (has) it been since it's been long…"  I might be reading too much into the passage, but I'm pretty sure he's referring to having a boner.  WTF?  On the other hand though, these dips into character's minds can sometimes be fascinating, like the sequence when one of the terror dogs, Vince Clortho the keymaster, is hiding in Louis Tully's spare bedroom during his client soiree.  Mueller actually dips into the terror dog's mind to get his take on Louis.  Weird, but cool!

There's another weird sequence that actually manages to answer a nagging question I've always had about the flick.  In the movie, during the big Ghostbusters success montage, there's an odd dream sequence bit where Ray is being, um, "serviced" by a rather fetching ghost.  The bit that's always bugged me is that Ray is wearing some sort of period military outfit in the scene with no explanation as to why.  I guess, since it's framed as a dream (the screen has one of those flowing wavey filters as a transition into the scene) I always just assumed he was dreaming about being in the Civil War or something.  As it turns out, there's an explanation for the military garb.  In the book (as well as in the shooting script), there's a sequence later in the film, right after Ray and Winston are driving through the city talking about the end of the world, when the two go to Fort Detmerring looking for a spook.  They split up and Ray stumbles upon a room that is a replica of a revolutionary war officer's barracks.  He finds a uniform and puts it on, lays on a bed and promptly falls asleep.  When he wakes, the ghost they were looking for is about to go to town on his junk.  Apparently this sequence was largely cut, but I'm betting none of them wanted to ditch the blowjob joke, so they sandwiched it into the montage.  What's even weirder is that this is actually the culmination of a plot thread in the book where Ray is both lonely and changing his feelings about catching the ghosts.  Since Peter is courting Dana and (in the book) Egon and Janine are becoming an item, Ray is looking to blow off some steam, and the experience with the ghost is just what he was looking for.  Also, there's a bit with Ray thinking about how it might be wrong to catch these ghosts just to jail them in the containment unit, and when he awakes to his spectral date-night he wonders if maybe some ghosts are good.  Weird.

As far as what's new, there are a ton of little interesting tidbits like the fact that Janine designed the Ghostbusters logo (the iconic no-ghosts image), while Peter came up with the name.  In the Ghostbusters success montage (and yes, there is even a montage in the book) there are segments when the GB's are contacted by Revell models, Marvel Comics and TSR about licensing deals (none of which came to pass in reality even though all of this merchandising did end up at other companies including a West End role playing game, an Ertl AMT model kit, and a NOW comics series.)  Ok, there was a UK Marvel comics, but not a domestic one.  Their phone is also different in the book, consisting of a real number, 1-212-NO-GHOST.  There's also some neat details with Ecto-1 and their equipment that is different than in the movie.  Part of the rig on top of Ecto-1 is there to sense and destroy (with lasers) anything placed on the vehicle when it's locked and left alone, like parking tickets.  Also, the proton packs produce a generator field when powered on that will affect people standing near by that don't have their own pack on.  This field will make your hair follicles itch as well as heat up any metal on your person including the fillings in your mouth.  Another interesting tidbit is a slight difference in the containment unit.  In the book (and I believe in the script as well), there is a observatory window on the unit so that you can see the ghosts that are inside.  This comes up in a few scenes, most effectively when Ray ends up coming down at night to look inside, getting bummed by all the sad trapped ghosts that are just pacing around inside.

I don't want to spoil all the differences in the book for those that might want to read it, but I did want to point to the fact that Mueller did a really good job of fleshing out Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston.  There are sequences that illustrate the friendship of Peter and Ray, including a scene where Ray takes Peter home with him for a family reunion only to have him run off with his sister and his brother's rental car, effectively making Ray an outcast in his own family.  According to Mueller, Egon has a bit of a destructive thread in him starting back in childhood when he constructed homemade bombs that he used to detonate in deserted parking lots.  Egon is also painted as fairly asexual, much in the same way that Sheldon Cooper is portrayed on The Big Bang Theory, though he does end up hooking up with Janine by the end of the book.  My favorite bit of character background involves Peter's family being part of a traveling carnival.  He grew up a carney, and extremely devoted to his family (both immediate and communal), and viewed all other outsiders as rubes, marks, or those to be avoided.  It illustrates why he has the extremely outsider and sarcastic streak in him...

All in all, this is the type of reading experience I'm loving with these movie novelizations, and I'm dreading the first book that reads chapter and verse straight from the finished film.  I think the next book I'm going to cover will be Gremlins, by George Gipe, as I've heard that there's an expanded back-story involving the Mogwai as aliens.  Here's to hoping it's half as good as Mueller's Ghostbusters.  Oh, and before I forget, here's a link to where you can download PDF copies of either Larry Miline's original novelization, or Mueller's The Supernatural Spectacular.  I don't condone piracy by nature, but this book tends to be so darned over priced on the secondary market that it might take awhile to luck into an affordable copy like I did...

This week's Wax Paper Pop Art is all about big hairy apemen.  Whether it's the hilarious misadventures of an unruly adopted sasquatch with the 1987 Topps Harry and the Henderson's card and sticker set (which I talked about here)…

…the weird romance and ennui of the master of the apes, from the 1976 Topps King Kong card and sticker set…

…or these next two wrappers from 1967 and 1969 (respectively) featuring the Topps Planet of the Apes card sets.

Which reminds me, I need to break out my Planet of the Apes cartoon DVD and watch it again…

Brian over at Cool & Collected decided to use a suggestion I offered as a League topic this week.  It dovetails nicely with the release of the Avengers flick in theaters, and centers on the idea of a great pop culture crossover between heroes or stories that we'd really like to see.  I'm not typically one that spends any energy on fan-fiction, but I have to admit that I had an idea that I would love to see come to fruition some day.  With all the 80s remakes and franchise re-launches getting produced, I think it’s the perfect time to revisit some films from the decade that that would really make sense having sequels 20-30 years later.  In fact, in the spirit of the Avengers and the idea of taking multiple films and combining them into one giant sequel, I thought it would be really cool to take three films that were unrelated except for concept and tone and bring them together in a modern setting that would be really interesting.

So what flicks and characters am I thinking about?  Well, Wargames, Cloak & Dagger, and The Manhattan Project.  Now bear with me for a second as I'm going to get a little fan-fic-y.  All three of these film are semi-serious thrillers that starred young kids playing around in the world of thermonuclear war and espionage...

Wargames featured Matthew Broderick as David, a young budding computer hacker who taps into a government computer system (nicknamed Joshua) thinking he was stealing unreleased copies of computer war games.  Turns out that Joshua takes his games very seriously, and David unwittingly ends up challenging the computer to a real life game of thermonuclear war.

In the Manhattan Project, we're following Christopher Collet as Paul, a young genius who decides to build his own personal atomic bomb after realizing that a local pharmaceutical lab is really manufacturing weapons grade plutonium.  He takes it to a national science fair in the hope that he can shed some light on the dangers the lab presents and ends up starting the countdown to possible annihilation.

Last, but certainly not least, we have Cloak & Dagger, which stars a post E.T. Henry Thomas as Davey Osbourne, an overly imaginative boy obsessed with a fictional spy from a video game (Cloak & Dagger) named Jack Flack.  Davey stumbles upon a murder, and before he knows it the game becomes all too real.

So what's my idea?

In a nutshell, my crossover film would find all three characters grown up and embroiled in plot that would have the world on the cusp of falling into another world war.  Maybe John Lithgow's character from The Manhattan Project eventually gave in to his darker urges and sold his services as a weapons manufacturer to the highest bidder and was then double-crossed.  His weapons have been designed, built and delivered, but he was never paid and now seeks to bring down the evil regime that stiffed him.  He reaches out to an old friend, Dr. Stephen Falken (Joshua's designer from Wargames), who puts him in contact with Broderick's David (who now works for the government.)  David puts together a "Mission Impossible"-esque team including Paul (Collet) because of his ties to Lithgow's character and experience with weapons of mass destruction.  Of course things get rocky when C.I.A agent David Osbourne (Thomas) butts in and takes control of the operation.  Will the two David's be able to compromise long enough to stave off World War III?

The film would of course also feature Dabney Coleman (as he graced the screen in both Cloak & Dagger and Wargames), Ally Sheedy (Wargames), and Cynthia Nixon (The Manhattan Project), as well as other 80s kid/teen actors making cameos (I'm thinking some of the more obscure folks like Helen Slater, Robert Sean Leonard, Matt Adler, and Keith Gordon.)  Heck maybe even William Zabka would come out of his bully semi-retirement and play an unruly goverment spook.

Again, I'm not all that into the idea of fan-fiction, but I do think the idea of getting these actors together to reprise their roles from some very fun 80s kid-centric thrillers would be both entertaining and an interesting way to look at reboots and remakes.  Why simply retell the same story all the time when these franchises are brought back (ala Footloose, Red Dawn, or what have you.)  This way the studios get a chance to capitalize on the brand recognition while giving everyone something new.  I know I'd pay to see this in the theater, though I might be the only one.  Maybe they'd call it Project War-Dagger, or The War Cloak Takes Manhattan…

Looking for some other fun pop culture cross-overs?  then check out these other League members:

Christopher, Tupa's Treasures, talks about the never-filmed season finale crossovers of the A-Team and The Fall Guy!

Fiji Mermaid, Sideshow Cinema, would like to see the Predator take on Boba Fett!

Michael, Memories of Tomorrow, talks about, well, you have to read it to believe it!

Well, it's Friday and I’m really looking forward to the weekend and catching the Avengers sometime tomorrow morning.  Seems like a good opportunity to share my two main Marvel comics wax wrappers.  First up is the wrapper for the Topps Marvel Comic Book Heroes Stickers from 1974…

I didn't have any wrappers that were more in line with the Avengers, so I figured it'd be fun to pair the above with my favorite wax wrapper of all time from the 1979 Topps Incredible Hulk card set!

Here's to hoping the Hulk gets to smash a bunch of stuff tomorrow…

I've talked before about my love of souvenir movie magazines and novelizations of 80s flicks because they were a great source of obscure information and deleted content from a lot of the films I grew up loving.  Back before DVD and the internet, which provides such easy access to deleted scenes or behind the scenes commentary and the like, it was really hard to track down more about movies like The Goonies, Karate Kid, or the first Batman flick.  So when you were the only one of your friends that happened to catch a screening Batman in the theater and you remembered a scene with a little homeless girl in a trash pile and no one believed you because that scene was edited out of the theatrical cut for the VHS release, well, you had your work cut out for you in proving it.

Over the last few years I've been picking up cheap copies of souvenir magazines and movie novelizations when I can find them.  Lately I've been lucky enough to stumble upon a bunch of these 80s novelizations and I thought it would be fun to pull one out of the pile from time to time to share what insights or differences these offer from the versions of the films that we know and love.  I had a lot of fun when I read the E.T. novelization by William Kotzwinkle, and I'm hoping more of these books were written with the same sort of changes in perspective that open me up to experiencing the flick with a fresh set of eyes.  Real quick, I'd like to point out that I'm going to concentrate on novelizations, books based on screenplays, and not movies that were adapted from existing novels.  For one it narrows the field a bit, and it pretty common for film adaptations to excise material from the original books because of time and pacing considerations.

This week I thought I'd take a look at one of the harder books to track down, the novelization of the Goonies by James Kahn (adapted from the Chris Columbus screenplay.)

I say it's hard to track it down, but mainly I'm referring to copies of the book that were printed here in the US by Warner Bros.  The book was also printed in the U.K. by Coronet in 1985, and from what I can tell there is no real differences it the text except an odd Britishism here and there (I compared it to a snippet of the American edition available on Google Books), and some minor differences in the cover blurbs.  My UK edition simply states, "Take the Oath.  Join the Adventure.", whereas the US edition is a lot more wordy.  Anyway, the UK edition is more or less readily available on ebay, and lately with the exchange rate equaling out it's kind of a bargain.

Upon cracking the cover and diving into the book the first main difference that I noticed is that the book is presented in a slightly odd format.  The text is bookended by excerpts from local Astoria newspaper articles, first detailing the escape of Jake Fratelli, and later covering the "rescue" of the kids, the arrests and prosecution of the Fratelli gang, and some other interesting footnotes to the story I'll get into in a minute.  The main reason for this is that for the bulk of the book Kahn chose to use Mikey as the narrator with a first person perspective.  If I had to guess I'd say that this was in an attempt to make the novel more approachable for kids, but it ends up making the who thing very difficult to read.  First person is a tricky perspective, and when adapting an omniscient film experience it forces the narrative to constantly explain why the narrator knows about sequences that they didn't take part in or know little about.  Thus the newspaper articles are Mikey's way of opening the story with the facts of the breakout and the ensuring police chase.  What killed me is how dry this approach came off, lacking any of the humor and excitement that was in the opening scenes of Donner's film.  Not only that but some little details are lost, most importantly how the chase manages to cross the paths of all the Goonies, Andy and Steph.  Not a huge deal, but it's a detail I love in the first film as it both introduces us to the characters and gives some background details on each of them (Mouth's dad being a plumber, Steph's family working as fishermen on the docks, and Chunk being a spaz to name a few.)

On the other hand, the "articles" that close out the story are kind of interesting.  For one, they take the ending of the movie a bit further in that there is confirmation, through a series of excerpts, that the Goon docks are safe as the plans for the new golf course are ditched in favor of building more low cost housing.  The already constructed country club was even rumored to be converted into a community center that will feature a children's center, a Chinese restaurant, a plumbing supply house, a fish market, a new addition to the museum, and a public-access invention laboratory.  A little goofy, but still pretty darn cute.  The last article is a notice of the Bar Mitzvah for Jason "Sloth" Cohen, the newly adopted son of Mr. & Mrs. Jerry Cohen.  So I guess Chunk made good on his promise to have Sloth come live with him…

As for the narrative being from the perspective of Mikey, this is also a little 50/50 in terms of execution and insight.  On the plus side, it's kind of fun to "hear" him tell the story, as he adds some background (most of it pointless, but still fun) and adding his thoughts on every aspect of the adventure.  He makes a metric ton of Star Wars references (probably infused because Kahn also wrote the Return of the Jedi novelization), which is always fun, as well as playing the cool, level-headed leader of the group while describing each of the Goonies and their various quirks, annoying habits, and strengths.  He even ends up explaining some of the subtle references that made it into the performances in the final film (like when Mouth first comes to the Walsh house and starts trying to cheer the brothers up with a slight John Belushi impression.)  At the same time Kahn has him hating Saturday morning cartoons (I guess he'd rather be outside adventuring), already dating (and smooching girls before Andy), and comparing the Mad magazine "fold-in" concept to the Playboy centerfolds, which is just weird.  Again, the danger of writing in the first person like this is that we’re in Mikey's head, and being inside there is nothing like what I thought it would be in the movie.  Granted, I know we're really inside Kahn's head, but you get my drift.

Anyway, some of the slight differences in the book include Mouth's propensity for rhyming, Data pulling out inventions three times as much, and Mikey tending to censor some of the racier jokes and sight gags from the film with his descriptions (remember the broken stature of David, well Mikey didn't want to repeat Brand saying that, "…If God made it that way, you'd all be pissing in your faces…".)  By the by, in the book Mikey's mom discovers the broken statue.  There's also some interesting cross-pollinating with other Spielberg projects like Poltergeist.  At one point Mikey shares and anecdote about how he broke his arm falling into an excavation in the newly built Cuesta Verde Estates housing development.  Did I mention that James Kahn also wrote the novelization for Poltergeist?  The thought that, Cuesta Verde would be within biking distance from Astoria is pretty cool, as if there really was this specific Spielberg suburbia out in the pacific northwest where all kinds of crazy shit happened.  Maybe E.T. would have landed there too if that novelization hadn't already been written by Kotzwinkle.

Also, for all those kids out there that only caught the Goonies when it aired on cable (specifically the Disney Channel in the early 90s), the book provides vindication of some of the deleted scenes that appeared in that cut of the film.  I always thought it was weird that there were so many different versions of flicks in the 80s, one for theaters, one for vhs, one for cable, one for airline exhibitions, etc.  Deleted scenes sort of meant more then, as they were potential filler for some of the other raunchier stuff that needed to be cut for cable.  Anyway, I was one of those kids that saw the octopus scene, and the segment at the beginning when Mikey, Data, Chunk and Mouth have a run in with Troy in the minimart when the flick aired on the Disney channel, and later when watching the official VHS with friends none of them believed me that these scenes existed.  Can't express how happy I was to see them finally pop up on the DVD.  There are also a couple of extensions of the wishing well scene.  One involves Andy being inducted as an official Goony by repeating the oath: "I will never betray my Goon dock friends, We will stick together until the whole world ends, Through Heaven and Hell and nuclear war, good pals like us will stick like tar, In the city, or the country, or the forest, or the boonies, I am proudly declared a fellow…"  The oath is finished off with the exclamation of "Leech!" as Mikey realizes they’re all covered in leeches.  These scenes were new to me when I ready the youth adaptation of the movie back in 2010 during my Goonies 25th anniversary week.  Glad to see them in this full on novelization as well.

I don't want to spoil all the good stuff from the novel that didn’t make it into the film, but there's one more segment that's really cool involving an underground river.  While the gang is trying to find their way to One-Eyed Willie's ship, they come upon a cave with only one exit, which is almost completely submerged in water.  There's a raft, so they all get on as they hear the Fratelli's hot on their trail.  Along the ride they all take turns telling stories to keep each other from freaking out in the dark water-filled tunnel.  Again, nothing that needed to be in the film, but it's really fun to stumble upon an extra like this in the book.  All in all I think this one is worth the read, even though the first person narrative is awkward.  It's a great way to spend a little more time with the gang while getting some new aspects to the adventure along the way.  If nothing else it has me really jazzed to read the Three Weeks with the Goonies book by Mick Alderman.  I can never get enough of this flick!

***UPDATE***

Okay, so there was one other thing that I wanted to point out about the book, one small segment of a scene that was cut from the film involving the leeches.  I wasn't sure I wanted to mention it because it's kind of messed up, but I thought about it and I can't help it, it's just too damn weird.  So in the wishing well sequence, at the end, after Andy has sent up the bucket empty, all the kids realize that they’re covered in leeches.  Data has a bright idea and end up strapping two wires to a 20-volt battery.  He sticks the wires in the water by his feet sending a light electrical charge through his body that's lethal enough to kill the leeches.  He does this for the rest of them, and afterwards, James Kahn tags on a small scene that is, well, almost obscene.  After getting the shock, Andy and Stef are standing off to the side, and Kahn describes them as having "…limp smile(s) and small sigh(s)…"  Then Stef says to Andy, "I got all tingly – just my luck, I'm in love with a pond!"  After which the following passage appears: 'It annoyed Andy, for some reason, I don't know, like someone had made her feel good and she didn't want to…'  Then Andy hauls off and slaps Data saying "Don't-you-ever-try-that-again-with-me-Buster!"  What the hell!  Did Kahn actually suggest that Andy and Stef had orgasms from the electric shock!?!  W-T-F?!?

The day job has been licking my butt lately, so posts have been sparse, but I had a few minutes today so I thought I'd get to this week's League assignment before I get bogged down at work again.  Coming off of a more personal topic last time, this week lightens things up a bit asking what our favorite non-Batmobile pop culture ride is.  I'll be honest, I'm going to cheat a bit and pick three vehicles.  Though I think the heart of this question is referring to ground-based mobility, my mind is usually in the air so I couldn’t help but waiver between two of my favorite vehicles, which then spurred an odd connection between that two that I couldn't help but also include.  First, lets stick to the pavement and talk a bit about my favorite live action motorcycle, Street Hawk!

Debuting in 1985, Street Hawk was a short-lived action adventure TV series that rounded out the interesting 80s era vehicle-driven shows like The Dukes of Hazard, Knight Rider, Airwolf, and Riptide.  The show featured Rex Smith as Jessie Mach, a police officer chosen to test a new and highly secret urban crime deterrent called Street Hawk.  This attack motorcycle was capable of ripping through the streets at 300 miles an hour, enabling Mach to track down the scum of the streets no matter how supped-up their ride might be.  The bike also has a laser mounted on the front, which is pretty darn nifty.  The deep black design of the bike, with the Tron-esque embellishments on Mach's riding suit really worked for me as a kid and even today…

The bike was designed for the screen by an artist named Andrew Probert, who has done a ton of vehicle designs for Hollywood including working on the 1st motion picture and Next Generation U.S.S. Enterprises, as well as some of the time-machine aspects to the Back to the Future DeLorean.  Probert also worked on my next vehicle pick, Airwolf!

As I said, my head is typically in the clouds, and in my heart of hearts when I'm up there I imagine myself strapped into the pilot's chair of the Lady herself, Airwolf.  The sleek interpretation of the Bell 222, with its deep phantom grey/custom pearl-grey two-tone paintjob is hands down my favorite flying vehicle from pop culture.  There was a lot of helicopter-centric fun in the 80s (with the Apache attack copters making headlines on the news and awesome fictional whirlybirds like Blue Thunder), but Airwolf is the queen.

There are so many cool aspects to the Lady, not the least of which is her armory including twin retractable chain-guns and a trio of retractable, belly-mounted rocket launchers…

Add to this is design of the flight-suits, including the badass helmet and the winged-wolfhead logo patches and I'm in heaven.  I've worn this patch loving on my jacket for years…

All this talk of motorcycles and helicopters reminds me of my other vehicle crush, Condor from M.A.S.K.  Figured I might as well throw in a cartoon/toy vehicle, and one that converts from motorcycle to helicopter to boot!

I think if I ever tried to go the extra mile and customize an actual vehicle that I could tool around town in, it would have to be Condor.  Not sure if I can pull off a purple and yellow, all-leather motorcycle suit, but I'd at least have to try and make a custom helmet that looked somewhat like Brad Turner's Hocus Pocus.

Hopefully I won't get drummed out of the League for my failure to commit to any one vehicle, but I'm not sure I could choose just one, even with one of Airwolf's chain-guns pointed at my head…

If you have a minute, might I suggest you check out some of the other League members and their favorite pop culture vehicles...

Greg, Lefty Limbo, talks about the Landmaster!

Christopher, Tupa's Treasures, talks about the car from Condorman, and some runners up!

Fong, Haxbee, talks about the Black Beauty!

Brian, Cool & Collected, talks about Marion Cobretti's 1950 Mercury!

Rob, Action Figure Chat, talks about Mad Max's Interceptor!

Paxton, Cavalcade of Awesome, talks about a few cars including the Wraith!

Cleaning out a closet today I found a bunch of my old kicks that were in desperate need of being thrown away.  Decided I’d take a picture and while setting it up I realized that these consist of all the shoes I’ve worn over the last six years plus, which means these represent my tenure doing Branded in the 80s.  The red and pink ones are my current shoes.  The pink ones are just about dead as well...

So this week's assignment from the League is all about looking back to that fateful year when we turned 12 and for all intents and purposes we knew that our days as a kid were numbered.  With only a year left before we officially became a teenager and all the heartbreak, acne, bad hair and bad poetry that entails, what year was it and where were you at?  For me it was the balmy summer of 1989 in Florida, and honestly, the whole idea of leaving my childhood behind was really weighing on my mind that July.

I'd just exited my first year of middle school, a transition that was rocky at best with my grades and attitude suffering constantly.  Up to that point I'd always lived within a mile of my various elementary schools (we moved a few times), so I'd been accustomed to the freedom of riding my bike to school and never really feeling trapped inside the building for 7 hours a day.  When middle school came around it was quite a bit farther away which meant riding in on the big yellow Twinkie, making me feel stranded at school until the bus ride home was over.  It sounds a little melodramatic for sure, but that's how I felt all the same.  It didn't help that the middle school was in a slightly rougher area of the city with enclosed chain-link fences and a police officer that was stationed every day in the parking lot.

I'd also just had a falling out with a friend at the time and had finally found another kid to pal around with that was just as disenfranchised as how I felt.  To top everything off, my dad was preparing to move us yet again, this time out of state (from Florida to New Hampshire), and for the first time my sister wouldn't be going with us, leaving me with no touchstone except my parents in the new town.  We were planning to move on New Year's day 1990, so the whole countdown to the end of the decade, leaving Florida, my new best friend, and my sister were all pulling at my shoulders like a backpack full of rocks.

That said, 1989 was still a pretty darn good year.  Though by that time re-runs of G.I. Joe and Transformers were starting to wean, and their respective toy lines were getting pretty funky (the Joes were entering space and the Transformers were "pretending"), there was a new crop of cartoons that (at least new to me) was pretty exciting including Spiral Zone, the Bionic Six and Denver the Last Dinosaur.  Batman mania was in the air and my love affair with Tim Burton was at its peak.  I'd just recently decided to ditch collecting baseball cards in lieu of picking up comic books, and was quickly addicted to the soap opera of the Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, the New Mutants and the newly launched Wolverine.  This of course led to my first encounters inside dingy, dusty comic stores, which would be come my second home for the next decade.  After my best friend got me hooked on Metallica in 1987 I finally started branching out a little musically and in '89 started listening to a lot more goofy metal like Dangerous Toys, Suicidal Tendencies and Faith No More (whose album The Real Thing really opened me up musically speaking.)  I also started heavily reading Stephen King that summer, devouring old second-hand copies of Christine, Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shinning and Pet Semetary.  I couldn't wait to rip into his new book The Dark Half that fall.

Cinematically speaking, 1989 brought a bunch of 80s franchises to a close as we got Ghostbusters II, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as Back to the Future II (and before I turned 13, Back to the Future III.)  I also snuck into the theater to catch the first five minutes of Friday the 13th Part 8 before an usher yanked me by my ear our of the auditorium.  I crammed in theatrical screenings of UHF and Weekend at Bernie's, as well as catching Best of the Best, The 'Burbs, Gleaming the Cube, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and a couple Fred Savage masterpieces Little Monsters and The Wizard.  I even got a chance to play with a Powerglove after moving up to New Hampshire shortly after seeing the Wizard, which was cool since it was way too expensive to actually get one.  '89 was also the year that my sister rented me a copy of Peter Jackson's Bad Taste, which cemented my love of gory, campy horror.  I also started picking up my first copies of Fangoria now that I think about it.  Before I turned 13 I also caught Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Arachnophobia in the theater, (the Jeff Daniels horror spoof being my first solo trip to the movies as well.)

Finally, 1989 also introduced me to The Simpsons (I'd seen the Tracy Ullman show and was actually waiting on the premiere Christmas episode which I had taped on VHS for years.)  I still have (and wear) a couple pin-back buttons for the show that I found in my first few weeks of living in New Hampshire.  I was also exposed to the first Pete and Pete shorts on Nickelodeon, as well as a healthy dose of the first year of Hey Dude and the Kids in the Hall.

Our family ended up staying in New Hampshire for only 9 months, after which we moved again, this time down to the Atlanta area.  After spending the late 70s through to 1989 in Florida, and having since planted my roots in Atlanta in late 1990, I really do feel that 12 marks a pretty clear demarcation of the end of my childhood in a lot of ways.  Though I often say I'm still an 8 year-old inside, I guess that was the summer that I kind of grew up.

If you have a second, why not check out some of the other league members...

Greg, Lefty Limbo, talks about 1982!

Dex, AEIOU and Sometimes Why, also talks about 1982!

Ashley, Life with Fandom, talks about 1993!

Mike, Memories of Tomorrow, talks about 1985!

Reis, Lair of the Dork Horde, talks about 1984-5!

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about 1988!

Brian, Cool & Collected, talks about 1984!

Stacey, Pendragon's Post, talks about 1990!

CW, The Claymation Werewolf Digest, talks about 1992!

Wow, I can’t believe it's been almost a year since I slapped together a Wax Paper Pop Art post.  I've got to get on the ball and finish scanning my collection so I can start these up again.  In the meantime, and in honor of my BFF Wicket W. Warrick stuffed toy, here are a couple of wrappers from Topps Return of the Jedi card series circa 1983…

I find it fascinating that the designers decided that out of all the Ewoks they could have featured on one of these wax packs they decided to include a baby.  Granted, they were cute as hell, but aesthetically speaking wouldn't Logray or Chief Chirpa have been a better choice?

This week's League topic is in response to last week's Holy Grail & White Whale musings, and centers on what one prized possession we have that we would risk life and limb during a disaster to save.  I think this would be a pretty easy question for most collectors to answer, and I'd be willing to bet good money that most of these items would be relatively worthless on the monetary scale.  My guess is that it's all about long-loved trinkets that have survived since our childhoods, and for me there's no doubt that my most beloved possession is my Wicket W. Warrick plush from 1983…

Horrible picture, I know, I need to get a real camera (or at least a better cell phone...)

This little guy has been with me for almost 30 years and has never left my bedside.  Say what you will about the Ewoks (or Return of the Jedi), but at six years-old they were the coolest thing to happen to the Star Wars universe since Chewbacca played keep-away with the Ugnauts.  I think an aspect of these characters that tends to get overlooked is that they make great vehicle characters for the audience of kids watching these flicks, not just because they’re huggable teddy bear aliens, but because there's nothing super special about them.  They don't have the force, they're not 7 feet tall with incredible strength, and they don't have their own intergalactic space freighter.  All they have is their cunning wits and crude handmade weapons and traps, and honestly, what kid (especially little boys) doesn't spend hours trying to make their own slingshots, spears, and neighborhood booby-traps?  Yes, I'll admit that this is the same questionable, pandering writing process that led us to a pint-sized annoying Anakin Skywalker in the Phantom Menace, but I'd argue that the Ewoks hardly mar the viewing experience in nearly the same way.  Regardless, I loved them, and when my mom surprised me one day with this little fuzzy fella I was in heaven.

What he used to look like above…

He's a little bit the worse for wear these days as he's been on a few trips through the washing machine (which, by the way, is why his fur is so short and matted) and at some point lost his cowl, but if it's possible I love him more now than I did at six.  There were some turbulent years where we'd get into some crazy knock down, drag out fights, but we always made up in the end.  I'm being serious about the fights.  Watching the trailer for the movie Ted freaked me out by how accurate the relationship between a boy and his stuffed bear (or, er, Ewok) can be.

Also, as a topper to the story, I actually did run back into a burning building to save Wicket a few years ago during a horrible apartment fire experience.  I've lost a lot of my childhood along the way, but I can't imagine not waking up to this little guy after all these years.

Some of the other League members have also weighed in with their prized possessions.  If you have a second, why don't you check them out?

Greg, Lefty Limbo, talks about his 1980 Mongoose BMX bike.

Eric, Toyriffic, talks about his 1978 Schwinn Scrambler.

Flywheels, Random Toy Reviews, talks about a couple of prized Transformers (Dinoking and Black Zarak).

Ashley, Life with Fandom, talks about his original He-Man figure.

Charles, Geek Show Ink, talks about his original Don Rosa Scrooge McDuck drawing.

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, lets us listen to his childhood on tape!

After stumbling upon The Quest recently I've been in the mood to try and seek out some other obscure (or at least slightly forgotten) films from the 80s that I've missed out on over the years.  Since I'm not into picking up bootlegs these days though, I've felt pretty limited as far as where to look.  There are a number of films on Youtube, but the quality is typically pretty rough, rough enough to make sitting through a couple hours of choppy, static-y video migraine-inducing.  After weighing the options I decided to pop for a Netflix streaming package, if only for a month so that I'd have enough time to take in the complete Spiderman and His Amazing Friends series.

I've heard that their streaming selection is pretty bad, especially for newer stuff, but since my interests tend towards stuff that's at least 25 years old I thought there'd probably be enough to keep me occupied for awhile.  Boy, was I ever right on that mark.  Over the course of a week I've managed to dig up about 50 movies from their archives that look like the exact sort of flicks I want to dive into right now.  Not really knowing where to start, I decided to watch the first thing I stumbled across which was a weird sci-fi fantasy film from 1985 called The Dungeonmaster.  Much like The Quest, it's know by different titles depending on where you hail from, the most common alternate title being Ragewar…

Though I'd never seen this film before, there was something nagging at the back of my mind, a familiarity with the title and concept that I just couldn't shake.  It wasn't until afterwards while searching for some decent poster artwork that I stumbled upon the cover for the VHS home video release that it clicked.  I must have thumbed over this cover a million times while scoping out my local video stores as a kid.  The painting of W.A.S.P. frontman Blackie Lawless (who I always mistook for Ozzy Osbourne as a kid) with the wicked spiked headband and blood dripping down his chin and chest sent chills down my spine.  He looked like the seriously evil and really screwed up older brother of David Bowie's Jareth from Labyrinth…

Just to illustrate how awesome the cover artwork on VHS tapes were back in the day, this one was enticing but even so was still overshadowed by at least a thousand other choices.  These days, if I saw a film with poster artwork like this I'd call in sick from work to catch it in the theater.  Anyway, back to the flick.  The Dungeonmaster was following pretty closely on the heels of films like Tron and Mazes and Monsters, playing around with the concept of taking folks from the real world and thrusting them into the fantasy realm of video and role playing games.  The story centers on a computer geek named Paul who was part of a pilot program linking humans more directly to computers.  He has a very close relationship with his feminine PC at home which he's nicknamed Cal (short for X-Calibr8), who acts as his personal assistant that he can interface with via a special pair of glasses.

Actually, although Paul is the hero if the story, his creepy relationship/link with Cal sort of puts his heroics in a slightly dubious category.  When we're introduced to the character we discover that he works as an IT consultant who is letting Cal do all of the heavy lifting so to speak.  While at work Paul's glasses act as both a webcam for Cal and as mini display screens showing her commands.  It's a neat idea that the writers and directors make great pains to utilize repeatedly during the first 10 minutes of the film.  Paul uses his glasses to "hack" into practically every single computer system he comes by including one that controls the city's traffic lights (so he always gets his way.)  This culminates in a sequence where he realizes he's broke while trying to buy some flowers for his girlfriend.  Instead of passing them up, he hacks into the nearest ATM and steals twenty bucks from some stranger's account…

Not the most noble start for our hero, but I never held it against a young John Connor in Terminator 2, so I suppose I shouldn't split hairs here.  Back to the plot, Paul's been having weird dreams about his girlfriend where she's one part seductress and one part damsel in distress.  Though it's not clear in the film, I think Cal has been hacking away at Paul's brain while he sleeps in an effort to separate him from Gwen.  The flick opens with one of these dream sequences (which by the way, is the only portion of the film to feature R-rated material, in particular a full frontal nudity scene with Gwen), and in a second sequence it appears that Paul and Gwen are transported to a mythical wasteland…

This realm is ruled by the vile Mestema (played with fervor by Night Court's Richard Moll), an immortal wizard who is looking for people to torture and to face his evil challenges…

Mestema outfits Paul with some more appropriate clothes, as well as providing him access to his "magic" computer via a wristband controller device.  In the same breath he's chained Gwen up to a rock and issues Paul a challenge to face his seven tasks in exchange for liberation from this world.  If he fails, Mestema will keep Gwen and will kill Paul.

So much like Tron we have a nerdy character stuck inside a fantasy world where he must risk life and limb to escape, except in The Dungeonmaster that world is heavily influenced by table top role playing games.  Each of these seven challenges takes place in a different environment (and is written and directed by a slew of different people), from ancient temples with stop motion monkey god statues to ice caves populated by the souls of villains throughout time (including werewolves, Jack the Ripper, Genghis Kahn, and Albert Einstein?)…

There are also a couple of odd choices for environments, including a real-world scenario where Paul has to stop a serial killer in New York and a very stripped down Road Warrior-esque car chase sequence…

Though most of the film is pretty cheesy with horrible dialogue, acting and special effects, there are a few standout moments that make this flick worth watching.  If nothing else, the wide variety of effects work on display is kind of cool.  The film mixes stop motion and traditional back-lit 2D animation, as well as compositing and puppetry to bring the various villains and creatures to life.  There's a pretty goofy battle sequence between Paul and Mestema in the wasteland involving both magical and computer generated (conceptually, not animation-wise) dragons.  In fact it's so cheesy that it makes movies like John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China look like Citizen Kane in comparison...

There's also a really creepy sequence where Paul is zapped to the land of the dead in which he has to battle two undead zombie warriors as well as a demon puppet…

By far though, my favorite sequence has Paul whisked away to a heavy metal concert featuring the band W.A.S.P.  Paul has to save Gwen from a homicidal Blackie Lawless in what has to be the epitome of an over the top 80s metal music video…

I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that this film has aged well, but I also can't deny how much fun it was to watch.  If this is the sort of flicks that are populating the Netflix streaming archive than I might just have to keep the subscription going for awhile…

It's been a few weeks since I've turned in an assignment for the league, but this week's topic, on collecting and holy grails, hits very close to home.  I've always considered myself a collector of stuff, but my interest in any one of the things I've obsessed over is transitory at best.  There are a couple of reasons for this, but one of the things I've discovered over the years is that the acquisition of one of these holy grail items tends to kill any of the passion I had while seeking it.  It's a cliché for sure, but the fun is truly in the journey, and it's really shaped the way I "collect" these days.

The instance that led me to this epiphany was when I recently lucked into an almost complete set of series one Garbage Pail Kids.  After being bitten by the nostalgia bug a decade ago, GPKs were one of the first things that I tried to reclaim from my childhood.  I've never been a big spender when it comes to picking up vintage items, so it took quite awhile to put together a collection of the stickers at a reasonable price.  I'd pick up a set here and there, anything that I could find under $10, and after awhile I'd managed to scrape together eight complete sets (series three through eleven.)  What I discovered while getting back into the hobby is that these sets are the most common (when the craze was at its height), and the real challenge was finding reasonably priced auctions for series one and two, as well as the last four series when the production run was much more limited.  The going rate for series two is typically between $40 and $50, while a nice set of series one can easily set you back between $75 and $100.  Eleven through fifteen are generally in the $30 to $40 range (per set), so all in all I could probably complete a run for around $250.  I can't speak for anyone else, but dropping $250 on twenty five year-old stickers was out of the question.  I know this is the cheapskate, spendthrift, Scrooge McDuck in me, but there's also an interior battle raging over how easy it is to just buying this stuff on sites like eBay.  Again, it's brings me back to the hunt, a very integral part of the collecting experience, and one that the internet has been killing slowly for years.

What I'm basically getting at is that these days I prefer to "not try very hard" when seeking the white whales or holy grails of my collections.  The completist in me rears up from time to time and I can't help but spend an hour or two during a month hoping to find some of the things I'd like to acquire, but for the most part I've left it up to chance that I'll ever find this stuff.  Case in point, the GPK series one set that I have is still missing 10 cards (12b, 13b, 14a, 21b, 22b, 25a, 27b, 30a, 34b, and 35a), but considering that I have at least one of each of the paintings represented in my set, I'm not sweating the fact that it's not complete.  Honestly, it too 25 years before I found any series one cards in the wild as it is, and I know they're out there on the internet, but I think I'll just keep "searching" and see what happens.

As far as what I collect these days, the list is a lot smaller than you might think.  In the past 10 years I've narrowed my collecting to DVDs (particularly the movies, cartoons and TV series I grew up with), animation cels (from 80s era cartoons that I love), Garbage Pail Kids, 80s era magazines (particularly kid-centric stuff like issues of Stickers, Muppet, G.I. Joe, Thunder Cats, Roboforce, Dynamite, etc.), trading card sticker sets (like the old Topps, Fleer, and Donruss sets for stuff like C.H.i.P.s, V, or even Menudo), and small scale mini-figures (like the Hasbo Heroes lines for Transformers and Star Wars, as well as older cereal box premiums, and current art toys like OMFG and the S.L.U.G. zombies.)  Sensing a theme?  Most of the stuff I seek out is flat and scan-able as imagery for this website, or cartoon related (again, which tends to be fodder for the site.)

So what are my white whales?

Cartoons that have yet to be released on DVD in North America for sure.  Granted, this is more of a rarity based on profitability for studios, but it's still stuff that I'd love to have that I can't so I guess it counts.  I'm talking about series like Turbo Teen, Teen Wolf, The ShirtTales, Tigersharks, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling, Visionaries, Kidd Video, unedited releases of The Ewoks and Droids (with at least the opening credits sequence and original incidental music included), and probably the lest likely to ever see a release, the Muppet Babies.  I'm sure there are more, but off the top of my head these are the titles that I'd love to see made available.  Hell, I'm happy I can at least watch Spiderman and His Amazing Friends on Netflix streaming right now.  I finally got a chance to see the X-Men episode and it was awesome.  Also, while I'm on the subject, I'm still pissed no one at Marvel or Disney thought to include Pryde of the X-Men on any of the X-Men cartoon DVDs as an extra feature.  For the record I think I own pretty much everything else that's been released on DVD witht he exception of some of the Warner Archive stuff (because it's freaking expensive.)

There are also some stickers that I'd love to get my hands on, particularly the set of Topps puffy Monstickers from 1980.  These were reworkings of the old Ugly stickers from 1965, that were condensed and sold in three pack strips as puffy stickers int eh early 80s.  For the last six years I've seen them pop up on ebay, but usually at about $12 a pack, or $100 for a full set.  $12 for three puffy stickers?  Insanity.

While the Monstickers are available, just hideously expensive, there are also some stickers that are just plain rare.  The set I'd love to have were originally released in sticker vending machines in the late 80s.  They're foil prism stickers that feature horror movie icons and poster artwork.  I've managed to get my hands on a few of them, but these have proven to be some of the most elusive stickers from the 80s.  Not only did they not have a wide release (as they were limited to vending machines at movie theaters and pizza places), but I have a sneaking suspicion that they're also bootlegs as it seems very unlikely that a company could have licensed flicks from all the different studios to compile this set.  Some of the franchises and films featured in this set include Halloween, Friday the 13th, Fright Night, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Fly, Vamp, Nightbreed, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, They Live, Critters, Beetlejuice, and Return of the Living Dead.  The list literally goes on and on (you can see more of them here, here, and here.)  Back when I was first investing in a comprehensive sticker collection to feature on this site I saw an ebay auction that featured over a hundred of these stickers for $50.  I balked at the price back then, but have since only seen one additional auction pop up.  Now I'd love to pay $50 for a set that large, but honestly I think these are just too rare to reappear on ebay any time soon.

As I mentioned above I also collect animation cels.  I'm a huge cheapskate when it comes to this collection, but even so I've managed to pick up stuff from He-Man, Ewoks, The Real Ghostbusters, She-Ra, Bravestarr, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Filmations Ghostbusters series.  Anyway, one direction this has taken me into is in collection cels from the Real Ghostbusters series that highlight the monsters, ghosts, and ghouls featured over the run of the show.  I've been sharing these during the Halloween seasons in past years and so far I've managed to find cels of a lot of the cooler spooks.  I have yet to lay may hands on a cel of Samhain though, and next to the Boogey Man and the Sandman, he's probably one of the most famous monsters from the cartoon.  On a side note, I have something very fun planned for Halloween this year animation cel-wise.

If you've enjoyed reading about my collecting habits, why not take a second to check out these other League collectors and their holy grail items…

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about the Mister Rogers Neighborhood of Make-Believe Playset

Mike, Sexy Geek’s House of Swag, talks about interesting hand puppets and KISS Figures

Tommy, Top Hat Sasquatch, talks about the Muppets toyline

Brian, Cool and Collected, talks about some King Kong Grails

Jason Vorhees talks about the rare NES Championship game cartridge

BubbaShelby, Toyriffic, talks about the Shogun Warriors Rodan

Paxton, Cavalcade of Awesome, talks about Teen Wolf, The Six Million Dollar Man, and an elusive gold Yoda Pepsi Can

So I know it seems like I'm continuously going back to this same Fall 1984 issue of Muppet magazine this month, but in my defense there is a lot of neat stuff packed between those covers.  At first I had intended to just post tidbits from that issue while I was on vacation and out of the state, but there was so much neat content I couldn't help but stretch it out a bit for fear of there being too much radness for one post!  Seriously…

This is the last tidbit though, I swear.  So we all know that Breakdancing really broke through to the mainstream in 1984 what with the release of Beat Street and Breakin', not to mention classic episodes of sitcoms like Gimme a Break (where I first leaned of the phenomena back in the day.)  So, as a bastion of pop culture news for kids, it comes as no surprise that Muppet magazine was there at ground zero to cover it for the children of America.  This article features a couple of formative breaking crews, The Dynamic Breakers and their all-female spin-off the Dynamic Dolls.  The DB's are themselves the more acrobatic members of a larger crew called the Dynamic Rockers, who were certainly a formative part of the hip hop scene at the outset.  The Breakers (Airborn, Duce, Kano, Flip and Spider), saw an opportunity to market their crew and ended up going on a media blitz in 1984 including talk and variety show appearances (even teaching Penny Marshall to do a headspin), and eventually ending up in this photoshoot/interview with the one and only Gonzo from the Muppets…

I can't even summon the words for how cool it is to see Gonzo in his own Dynamic branded track pants.  Anyway, there's plenty of advice for aspiring breakers in this piece including how to create your own outfit without going broke, building your crew around a variety of styles, and even a lexicon to Freshen up your lingo…

I'll be the first to admit that I was a class-A, uncoordinated dork as a kid, and I have some very distinct memories of watching the Breakdance episode of Gimmie a Break or catching a bit of Breakin' on HBO and then rushing out to the dining room where there was some space and trying my best to do a kick or backspin and then falling flat on my face.  I think all I ever managed to eek out was a sad moonwalk or two, but I suppose at least I gave it a shot.  Thank god none of that is on video…

Seeing as I shared the Weird Al/Michael Jackson congratulatory advertisement earlier in the week, I thought it would be fun to follow that up with this Al Yankovic fluff piece (and not just because he's interviewed by Fozzie Bear) from the Fall 1984 issue of Muppet Magazine.  There's not really that much to dig into as far as revelations, or any trivia that isn't pretty common knowledge, but it is fun to see the duo in similar Hawaiian shirts…

I found it rather interesting that these articles from Muppet are attributed to both a muppet character and to the actual author (in this case Katy Dobbs.)  I mean if you're going to try and keep the fantasy of the Muppets alive by having them "interview" the celebrities, why then go so far as to list the actual writers with an "as told by" credit?  I get crediting for the work, but I think it could be handled on the contents page or something.  Just think it's a little weird.  Anyway, I thought it was neat that Yankovic also brought up the fact that he always asks for permission when doing a parody, and to connect it to last week, Fozzie's favorite song is "Eat It" by Michael Jackson…

Also included in the 4-page spread was the lyrics to "Eat It" and "I Love Rocky Road", which is a nice touch.  Not sure if the lyrics were in the liner notes of Yankovic's albums back then, but as a kid I would have totally loved being able to see them transcribed like that…

So I finally had the opportunity to catch up with the insane sci-fi musical extravaganza that is Captain EO, and it was only 25 years after it's initial release!  I grew up in and around Orlando, FL during the 80s and I took my fair share of trips "to the World", but my family only ever visited Epcot once which was closer to the time the park initially opened in the early half of the decade.  Since EO debuted in 1986, I completely missed it, and truthfully it's always bummed me out.  I was a pretty big fan of Michael Jackson at the time, in particular of his short film videos like Thriller and (dare I say it) Smooth Criminal/Moonwalker (even though I didn't care for Jackson at that point I still dug the videos.)  I've written before about how Thriller had a huge impact on my musical tastes as a kid, and how there seemed to be this three-year magical period where Jackson dominated my musical world.  Captain EO is the one aspect of this period that I never got a chance to experience.  Add to this the fact that George Lucas produced it with effects by ILM, and it becomes a missing link in the 80s era Lucasfilm cannon as well.  The 3-D film was pulled from the parks in the 90s, and was pretty much buried in the Disney Vault for what I thought would be eternity.  After Jackson's death a few years ago, the House of Mouse decided to return EO to the parks for a limited engagement…

…so you can imagine that when my wife and I recently traveled back down to Disney World, Epcot and Captain EO were at the top of my "to-do" list.

Outside of the facts that the flick starred Jackson, that it was in the sci-fi genre, and was in 3-D, I went into the screening completely fresh and spoiler free hoping to get a chance to experience what it was like to see it 25 years ago.  I can honestly say that it was well worth the wait even if it was horribly dated and quite frankly kind-of all over the place…

I'm not sure what I was expecting exactly, but it was not what we got.  That said, I think this short film has some truly amazing stuff in it, and everything else borders on the insane so it's anything but boring.  You can get the story synopsis on the wiki page (and you can even watch it on youtube, part 1 and part 2), so I won't bore you with that, but I will say that ILM was completely on their game when doing the set design and production.  Between the sail-barge influenced design of EO's ship to the utterly creepy spider-like make-up and costuming of Anjelica Houston's Supreme Leader character, everything in the film looks like something out of the Star Wars universe without feeling like it's been done before.  What really sold the film for me was how the Disney Imagineers worked in not only the 3-D, but also air effects and seat movement in the theater synchronized with the action onscreen.  So when Michael Jackson's Captain karate kicks towards the audience in one of the dance numbers, it feels like the entire theater is knocked back.  I've always felt the passion in MJ's dance-Ninjitsu, but I'd never actually felt it before!

I've been hearing rumors that EO's engagement at the parks it pretty close to its end, so if you get a chance to hit up Epcot soon, I highly suggest taking in one of the shows. 

Coincidentally, while flipping through some back issues of Billboard magazine recently I also came across a 1984 issue that was filled to the brim with congratulatory hoopla over the success of Jackson's Thriller.  This sort of trade advertisement publicity love sort of took me aback at first.  I mean I know that a lot of people made a lot of money off of the success of Thriller, but to take out ad space to personally thank Michael Jackson for the album is a little weird.  Speaking of weird, Weird Al Yankovic and Scotti Brother's Records were one of the groups who participated in this MJ love fest.  It's actually kind of touching and yet another example of how nice Al is when it comes to his song parodies (though he doesn't have to he always asks permission from the artists as a gesture of respect.)  Considering Eat It was such a big hit for Weird Al it is pretty neat to see an advertisement like this…

On the other hand you have Alfonzo Ribeiro whose management seems to be making an opportunity to try and sell their client's first single, "Dance Baby", with their ad…

Ribeiro was a kid, so the blatant attempt to capitalize on the festivities seems more like a ploy from his label or manager, but it's still a little icky anyway.  Regardless, I do have to admit that Ribeiro was a pretty damn good stand-in for the King of Pop when it came to 80s sitcoms (like his time spent on Silver Spoons) and pop culture fads (like his instructional breakdancing books.)  He's also arguably the first real child-star acolyte of Jackson (being followed closely by Emmanuel Lewis, Corey Feldman and Macaulay Culkin.)

For a truthful heartfelt thanks I have to say that the Weird Al ad beats them all, but design and subject-wise, these next two (above and below) are my favorites.  If there's one thing that I really can't get enough of, it's the imagery from the Thriller video-film so I was glad to see Vestron and John Landis both step up and give MJ some creepy werewolf and zombie love…

Most of the rest of the thankful advertisements were kind of boring or weird (like Paul McCartney's which featured him and Jackson in the sad clown make-up from their duet video), but there were a couple other's that caught my eye for being sort of fugly.  The below MTV ad is kind of neat (what with working Jackson into the MTV logo and all), but there is a hideous amount of negative space for no good reason.  The worst offender though, is Warner Bothers and their "clapping" gloved hand.  Um, is Jackson supposed to be congratulating himself in the artwork (a word I use loosely here)?  Couldn't they have at least hired the photographer and tiger (from the album cover) again for a second photoshoot?

So last week I discovered an 80s kid's flick that I’d never heard of before (The Quest), and I decided to try and document the process of finding some new nostalgia so to speak.  It's rare that I stumble upon kids flicks that I haven't seen from my youth as I was a voracious movie watcher with access to huge video stores and HBO.  I obviously haven't seen every film from 1979-1989, but even the ones I've missed I'm typically aware of them (for example D.A.R.Y.L. or Mac and Me.)  The Quest was completely under my radar though, and as I loved Henry Thomas in both E.T. The Extra Terrestrial and Cloak & Dagger, I couldn't wait to catch up with this obscure flick.

Unfortunately the film isn't available on DVD, but there are a couple of copies floating around on Youtube, so this past weekend I sat down and took it in.  Before I dig into the flick, there are a couple things I'd like to mention.  First, for those interested in watching this movie who don't want anything spoiled (I know I didn't), then you might want to skip this review until you've gotten a chance to see the flick.  One of my goals with watching this flick was to come at it completely fresh with the exception of the image on the VHS cover (which led me to the film in the first place) so that I could do my best to recreate what it would have been like watching the flick for the first time as a kid.  But I do want to talk about the various plot points in the film, so you've been warned.

Second, I wanted to bring up the confusion over the title to this flick.  It was originally titled Frog Dreaming for its 1986 Australian theatrical release, but when it made it's way to Britain and America it was re-titled The Go-Kids and The Quest respectively.  I haven't done a ton of research on the reasoning behind the change, though I can infer it was because the original title is potentially a little too metaphorical for kids.  Similarly, the original one-sheet poster was a rather tame waist-up painting of Henry Thomas' character Cody with little adornment.  This was also changed for the international releases.  I've already shared the American artwork, which features Cody, battle-ready complete with shotgun, underwater camera and a giant sea monster in the background.  Awesome right?  Well the British poster is similarly awesome, but it takes the imagery in an entirely different direction that I think also had a drastic effect on the re-titling of the film to The Go-Kids…

This poster is a weird amalgamation of The Goonies, Conan, Star Wars, and National Lampoon's Vacation (itself a parody of Boris Vallejo's barbarian artwork done by Boris himself) theatrical posters complete with raised light saber, clingy girls, and skeletons.  Watching the film I did get a heavy Goonies vibe, so this is sort of a no-brainer, but I do have to say that adding the light saber was stretching it a bit (though it is a reference to a scene in the film.)  Anyway, here’s a couple of the other posters to illustrate my point…

As for the film itself, I will say that I loved it.  It's right up there with other childhood adventure flicks like The Goonies, The Monster Squad, Flight of the Navigator and The Explorers, though it has very little of the pop and polish of any of those flicks.  The flick is sort of low key and a slow burn, but it has all the important ingredients that make it as cool as the other flicks mentioned.  So first things first, it didn't disappoint.

The flick was written by Everett DeRoche and directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, a name that might be familiar with 80s kids for his flick BMX Bandits, or to horror fans for his Ozsploitation flick Dead-End Drive-In.  I have seen BMX Bandits, though it's been 25 years or so, so I need to reacquaint myself with it.

The first thing I noticed while watching the film was that Trenchard-Smith was layering in the foreshadowing from the opening frames.  The opening titles are flicking across the screen while the camera is underwater in a murky lake which sets an ominous and slightly creepy tone.  From here it pulls out of the water and centers on various frogs around this watering hole lake.  The frogs switch to large lizards, which eventually give way to our opening set piece with involves a slightly drunk man lazily fishing on the lake.  Something is going on, the wind is picking up, the fisherman gets a bite on his line and bubbles start rising out of the middle of the lake.  Something big is in that water…

By the end of the sequence we get a glimpse at something rising out of the water in a very Loch Ness sort of fashion, but then before it can lift up completely it's back into the murky depths…

Next we're introduced to Henry Thomas as Cody, who is for all intents and purposes the idealized version of who I wanted to be as a kid.  There will always be a part of me that wishes I was as clever as Data, as courageous as Mikey, or as flippant and "cool" as Mouth from The Goonies, but I was always a little more in the realm of Chunk (though not quite as much as a spaz.)  I always saw the better version of myself as being cool, quiet, in control and smart enough to build all sorts of gizmos and machines; a sort of young MacGuyver, but totally willing to carry weapons larger than penknives.  Cody is that kid.  Between his jean jacket, camo vest, fingerless gloves, and his penchant for welding and contraption building he has a lot of the "cool kid" bases covered.  Add to this the fact that he's an orphan growing up in the Australian Outback with a disdain for authority and a flare for daredevil antics and you have one of the cooler 80s kid heroes ever on screen.  Sure, I might be playing him up a bit much, but again, I identified with the character heavily, so I can't really help it.  Thomas's Cody is the logical extension of his Elliott from E.T. and Davey from Cloak & Dagger, and The Quest is surely the third in his trilogy of kid's adventure films.

As I mentioned, Cody is a tinkerer supreme, and the next sequence in the film involves him putting the finishing touches on a retractable attachment to his BMX bike that will allow him to ride smoothly on railroad tracks…

This is also a pretty cool scene as it sets up Cody's role in the town as a bad boy daredevil.  He's planning on riding the rails from the town to school in under three minutes, but considering it's over three miles away, that's kind of fast on a bike.  On his way to the tracks people from all over see him on his way and know exactly what he's about to take on and a crowd starts to follow like a bunch of dogs following a fire engine.  This sequence also sets up his relationship with a local girl, Wendy, who obviously has a crush on him, which is one aspect of this flick that tends to differ from other similar 80s kid's flicks.  Typically there is no romance for the main kid characters (with the exception of flicks like The Wizard or SpaceCamp), and even when there is it's usually regulated to the more teenaged characters like The Karate Kid's Daniel or Bran & Andi from The Goonies.

Anyway, after a near miss and last second bail-out, Cody proves himself by making it to the school in under three minutes.  Of course the local sheriff gets wind of the stunt and ends up giving our hero some grief.  To celebrate Cody and Wendy (with her little sister Jane in tow) decide to hike into the woods for a picnic.  Being a born adventurer Cody leads them a bit deeper into the bush than expected and they end up at Devil's Knob and the lake known as Donkegin Hole (from the opening scene in the flick.)  Though he's never been to this lake, Cody does know the guy from the opening of the film as a dentist from Sydney that camps out at the watering hole during the summer.  While searching for the dentist, they group split up and before they know it, the two girls find themselves stranded on a raft in the middle of the lake.  Of course the bubbles and wind start up again as well.  Cody comes to the rescue by jumping off of a five story cliff into the lake so that he can pull the girls to shore.  This is sort of a fun set piece in the flick that again displays the careless gusto of Cody…

Back on shore they finally discover the dentist, and well, lets just say that's one dead dentist…

Cody soon discovers the legend of Donkegin Hole, which is thought to have a Bunyip (or large rat-like swamp creature) in it.  Starting to obsess over the whole thing, Cody takes a two-day trip alone out to the Aboriginal country to try and track down any information he can get on Donkegin and bunyips.  He's pointed to a mystic named Charlie Pride, who he encounters one night on a foggy dock.  Pride gives Cody a test to stand up to a demon at the end of the dock, a test that will reveal whether he's a boy or a man.  Of course he isn't afraid, and he walks right up to the apparition and discovers that it's nothing more than a scarecrow with a florescent light behind it.  Though it's not really a pivotal scene, this is where the "light saber" on the poster artwork comes from.  In a fun 80s era reference Cody picks up the light and pretends it's a light saber.  Looking back at the characters Henry Thomas portrayed in the 80s, this type of real-life kid play is a reoccurring motif.  Again, it's also something you don't always see in 80s kid's flicks either.

This is also part of a weird thread in the film that involves a bit more mysticism.  One of the really cool aspects of this flick is how real to life it feels.  Because there isn't a loud pop rock soundtrack and because everything plays out so slowly it feels very real.  So when Cody encounters Charlie Pride it goes into another place tonally.  Luckily though, Pride disappears and leaves Cody only with the experience of the scarecrow meet-up.  This only strengthens his resolve to solve the mystery of the Donkegin bunyip though, and when he gets back home from his research journey he devises a plan to try and snare the bunyip.  Of course this involves the construction of a homemade cannon, like any sane kid-plan would.  Cody baits a shark hook with a leg of lamb and then waits by the lake for the bunyip to surface, which it does, so he can shoot it with the cannon, which he also does.  Unfortunately it's not enough and the bunyip re-submerges much like the previous times it's shown up.  Plan A failed, but like any good mini-Macguyver Cody has a plan B in mind as well which involves a makeshift scuba helmet, a spear gun (mistakenly painted as a shotgun on the American poster), and a waterproof camera.  This time Cody is going to get a picture of this creature!

Again, it's this devil-may-care sense of adventure that really draws me into the film, and the fact that the main character has to devise all sorts of ways to accomplish his insane feats just cements it as a cool flick.  Take the opening sequences of The Explorers movie where the boys are building the spacecraft, or when Rudy is pulling together all the needed weapons in The Monster Squad for examples of what I'm trying to get across.  It's just pure wish-fulfillment.

Long story short, Cody, with the help of Wendy on the air pump contraption, dives into the lake hell bent on finding the Donkegin bunyip.  He never resurfaces though, which sends Wendy crying back into town alerting everyone that Cody is dead.  Or is he?

Later that night Cody's guardian and the sheriff decide to try and drain the lake to find the body, while Wendy takes one last look around Cody’s workshop trying to come to terms with his passing.  What she finds though is that Cody had figured out what the bunyip actually is, and there's a chance that he might still be alive.  She leads the town folk back up to the lake, which has been half drained by this point, and thus begins a mad rush to try and find out if Cody is still alive somewhere under the water.  It's at this point that we get the full reveal of the bunyip creature and it's not at all what the viewer expects!

In reality the creature is an old piece of mining equipment called a Donkey Engine.  It's basically an huge excavation crane that has had air trapped under it causing it to life to release some of the pressure from time to time.  Cody managed to find his way into the air pocket underwater, and as the "creature" lift’s its head out of the water he finally manages to escape to freedom.

All in all this was a really interesting flick that manages to pull together so many of the things that I loved when I was a kid.  If I'd seen this back in the day I probably would have been head over heels for it.  The only thing that doesn't sit well with me is the weird mystical subplot with Charlie Pride.  He reappears one more time at the end of the film.  Cody, after surviving the whole ordeal, makes his way alone back to Donkegin Hole to survey the area.  On a separate cliff, Pride appears, though this time he's covered in tribal garb and made up to look like a Kurdaitcha (aboriginal boogeyman).  Pride proceeds to sweep his arms about making all sorts of junk (including the Donkey Engine) to magically crawl back into the leftover water.  The film ends with Cody realizing there is magic involved, which totally negates what the rest of the film was building up through the whole running time.  I can understand if Trenchard-Smith and DeRoche wanted to keep from stripping all of the magic from the film, but to blatantly throw this sort of mystical endcap onto the film really does it a disservice.

Here's to hoping this flick eventually makes it onto DVD.  I'm also crossing my fingers that I can run across another hidden gem of a flick like this in the future…

Yesterday I opened the mailbox to see a package from Amazon and my heart skipped a beat. For well over 15 years I've been dreaming about the idea of my perfect coffee table book, and in that little brown box I knew it was about to become a reality.  For anyone who's been reading the site for any length of time probably already knows, I'm a huge Garbage Pail Kids nut.  Collecting and trading those stickers was a very big part of my youth, and though my original collection was lost decades ago I still cherished my memories of those gross and funny sticker cards.  By hook and by crook I've managed to rebuild a pretty decent collection of the vintage GPKs, including a near complete series one set that I never thought I'd manage.  All the while though I keep hoping that one day Topps would step up and release a nice photo book that reprinted all the awesome artwork from the original 15 series.  Heck, at least the first three series would have been awesome.

A few years ago my hopes got a big boost when Abrams and Topps released the first two volumes of their Wacky Packages retrospective (Volume 1 and Volume 2); I mean a nice GPK book would surely have to follow.  Well, one of the wonderful editors at Abrams assured me that something was in the works, and for the past six months I've been dying to see the final product.  Well, the wait was finally over...

Needless to say I ripped through the Amazon packaging so that I could finally put my hands on this coveted Garbage Pail Kids  tome and it's pretty much everything I could ever want in a coffee table book.  This volume reprints the first five GPK series (206 separate paintings in all) which covers the initial boom of the phenomena.  There's a forward by series mastermind Art Spiegelman that gives a nice overview of how the original series came about, and a short but sweet afterword by the original GPK artist John Pound which has some fun insights into his participation as well.  This book isn't about the history of the stickers though, it's all about a gorgeous presentation of the cards themselves.  In that department I think the book is amazing with only a few caveats in the missed-opportunity department.

First and foremost, the volume is beautifully designed in the same fashion as the Wacky Packages books, including a wax paper dust cover (which is still a very clever detail) and various bits of GPK collecting imagery (empty sticker backs, empty card boxes, stale sticks of chewing gum, and examples of the first five wax packages.) T he artwork of the cards themselves is presented pretty close to the actual size of the original paintings if I'm not mistaken, which is a very nice touch as well.  There was also a lot of care in how the "sister/brother – A& B" naming of the cards was represented, as well as working in imagery from the checklist design, and a handful of the series one Nutty Awards cardbacks.  There are even 4 included stickers that never made it press in any of the original series (for various reasons, but mostly due to overly violent imagery is my guess.)

There are a couple details that I think would have been nice to see though.  Since part of the deal with Topps was that the artists didn't sign their work, it would have been nice if the various artists had some sort of attribution by each piece in the book.  Granted, John Pound did all the sticker artwork for the first two series, but Tom Bunk joined in on series three, and for those not versed in telling the two artists apart it would have been a nice touch.  The other thing that I would have wanted to see would have been a better representation of the cardbacks for each series.  As I mentioned above, there are a handful of the series one Nutty Award backs on the inside front cover of the book, but there aren't any from the remaining 4 series in this volume at all.  Even if there were only a couple sampled at a smaller size in each chapter it would have gone a long way to completing the experience of collecting these sticker cards in the book.  Again, not a huge complaint, just a missed opportunity.

All in all though, I am so excited that this Garbage Pail Kids book finally exists and is sitting here right in front of me as I type this.  I've already flipped though this book 10 times and I still kind of can't believe it's actually real.  I know that may sound like hyperbole, but it's true.  The only thing that could top this would be seeing two more volumes collecting the remaining ten vintage sets in the near future. Abrams, are you listening?

One of my favorite pastimes since creating this site is seeking out old magazines from the 80s looking for hidden gems from the decade that I think are worth talking about.  Be it old advertisements for forgotten food like the Frankenstein's monster-influenced, chili-stuffed hot dogs (Frank'n Stuffs), or insane ads for Back to the Future-themed Power Wheel DeLoreans, there's always something fun to uncover.  Recently while flipping through some old issues of Billboard magazine I stumbled upon an advertisement for a kid's movie that I'd never heard of before.  Now I'm not the end-all be-all encyclopedia of everything 80s, but I did experience my fair share of what the decade had to offer kids, in particular film-wise.  With the exception of a handful of made-for-TV flicks here and there, I think I've seen most of the kid’s flicks from the decade.  Or I thought I had, until I saw this awesome advertisement for The Quest…

Why did I never stumble across this VHS cover while combing though the various video rental joints of my youth and teenage years?  The flick star's E.T. and Cloak & Dagger's Henry Thomas as an orphan living in the Outback with relatives after his parents pass.  Emboldened by the local legends of a lake monster named Donkegin, Thomas gears up and goes on the hunt for the creature.  Right now that's about all I know about this flick (well, that and that The Quest is the American title for this Aussie flick which was originally known as Frog Dreaming.)  I've found this flick in various forms on Youtube and I'm super excited to watch it asap.

I've never really done this on the site before, but I thought it would be fun to try and share the process I go through while looking for content to write about.  In this instance, I've found a badass advertisement for an unseen flick from the 80s, and I've tracked down a copy to watch.  I wanted to share this portion of the excitement, which is mostly the unknown and potential for finding another awesome kid's flick from my youth.  Will the movie live up to the potential and hype of this ad, or will it be an utter let down?  Some of you have probably already seen this flick and know that answer.  But I'm about to find out, and hopefully I'll be able to share my thoughts next week after watching The Quest.

I mean come on, it's Elliott with a shotgun hunting the down-under equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster!  How can this not be awesome?

Since I'm so enthralled with the pop culture of my youth, it can get kind of dicey when navigating today's modern boom of 80s and 90s nostalgia with any sort of cost-conscious mindset.  10 years ago, when I first started reaching back into my childhood, there weren't many options as far satiating my need for 80s stuff.  Either I hit up eBay and tried to buy back some of my memories, or I could scour the internet looking for tiny image files of cartoon screen captures or poorly recorded mp3s of sitcom theme songs.  It's partly because of this that I started Branded in the 80s.  If I was going to drop 15 bucks on a sticker-themed magazine from 1985, I wanted to make sure it was readily available for others as well.

Over the past decade the options for nostalgia addicts has exploded like an atom bomb.  Actually, more like an Adam Bomb.  Released by Topps back in 2003, The All New Garbage Pail Kids sticker cards were one of the first big product lines cashing in on the fondness for the 80s.  Like the re-launch of the Masters of the Universe line the previous year, these GPKs featured new artwork and concepts (though yes, some were taken from the original 16th series that never saw print back in the day) and provided more than just fresh stickers to procure, it provided fans a second chance to experience the heady feeling of procuring this stuff.  I've written about this before, but half of the fondness we have for this pop culture stuff was in the experience of discovering it.  Finding it, buying it, and collecting it.  It's not just the artwork on the stickers, it's the wax wrappers and gum they were packaged in.  The shared cultural experience of chewing hard stale sticks of gum, of walking into a gas station or pharmacy and finding your first packs by the register; it's the memories of begging your parents for money to buy them and then the idle time spent day-dreaming about the future where you'd spend all your money as an adult on Garbage Pail Kids and junk like it.

When I first walked into my local gas station back in 2003 and I saw a full, fresh box of the new GPK stickers I had to do a double take.  I had no idea these were coming out, and I couldn't believe they were sitting there on the counter.  I actually got giddy as I scooped up the entire box and had to sit and wait while the cashier scanned each individual pack.  I was finally getting a chance to be that "adult" that I day-dreamed about becoming as a kid.  In the grand scheme of things, this isn't all that important, but at the same time, these experiences don't come all that often so it's best to relish them when given the opportunity.

Again, fast forward a few years and the opportunity to buy 80s era nostalgic pop culture junk has exploded, and these days you really have to be picky where you plop down your 30 bucks to try and relive your childhood.  I'm definitely not complaining about the glut of stuff that seems marketed directly to me, but I've also kind of become numb to the new breed of 80s branded incarnations that surround us on a daily basis.  Do I really need that box of Smurf Cereal just because one side of the box has a passing resemblance to the Smurfberry cereal of my youth?  Do I really need that snap-back billed ball cap that looks like an extreme close-up of Kermit the Frog's face?  How about that ironic T-shirt with the cast of Sesame Street that says "Raised on the Street"?  Monster Cereal or He-Man branded Hot Wheels?  Back to the Future Mini Mates?  Hyper-realistic Beetlejuice action figures?  G.I. Joe Resolute DVDs?  Probably not.  But there are some things that catch my eye that I can't pass up, and 9 times out of 10 it has to do with the packaging and presentation of the product.  Case in point, and going back to Topps and the Garbage Pail Kids, there's these new GPK magnet and candy sets…

While out at my local Toys 'R Us the other day I spotted these on a kiosk at the front of the store.  John Pound's Acne Amy artwork is super iconic to me because it was a card that I saw a lot when I first got into GPKs back in the 80s.  Though I entered around the time the 3rd series was on store shelves, there were rack packs (holding the equivalent of three packs of cards, two 3rd series and one 2nd series) on the shelves that seemed to always have an Acne Amy (or Ghastly Ashley) on top viewable through the clear cellophane.  This new set of magnet cards is available in 4 different packages ($4 each), with either Ghastly Ashley, Potty Scotty, Beastly Boyd, or Adam Bomb on the front.  I'm kind of surprised the designers didn't go with Dead Ted or Evil Eddie, but they're all still iconic images that immediately evoke the GPK branding, specifically images that would relate to the adult collector.  The packaging is even cut I such a way that it resembles one of the original die-cut stickers peeled off of the backing.  As soon as I saw them I knew I wasn't leaving the store without one of each package.

I thought it was interesting that I recently read that Michael Eisner had procured Topps, and looking at projects like these magnet cards, I can kind of see the sort of thing he was doing with Disney back in the 90s.  Can't say for sure he was involved obviously, but love him or hate him, he did revitalize Disney's branding.  Back to these magnet cards, I thought it was interesting that nostalgia was the ploy used to get the prospective buyer to snag a bag of these.  Of the 16 cards in the set, only four are from the original vintage sets, the same four that are on the packages.  In a smart sorting decision, each pack comes with one of these vintage magnets (matching the packaging.)  So this was a nice way of satiating the nostalgia bug with keeping up the collectability of the set to keep you buying more.  Out of four packages I am still missing three of the new designs for instance. 

On a final note, if you pick any of these up, don't bother unwrapping and eating the included gummy candy.  Much like the hard sticks of dried out gum that came with the original sticker cards, these body part-shaped gummies are just about inedible.  I guess it's almost better that way.

Of all the toy projects I've come into contact with this past year, OMFG! (Outlandish Mini Figure Guys) has to be one of the coolest.  Not only is it independent and artist driven, but riffs on some of the cool toy lines from the 80s like M.U.S.C.L.E.s, Battle Beasts, and Monster in my Pocket.  I've written about series one before, but I wanted to make a note that voting has just begun for the second series.  You can participate by hopping over to the October Toys forums, registering and voting for 5 of the 461 new designs for series 2.

I'm pretty excited to see this project moving forward, so much so that I've thrown a couple of my own designs in the ring, Boombox (#55) and Killscreen (#57).  Just saying, my wife would kill for a Boombox figure.  Regardless if you dig my designs, if you have a moment, head on over and check out the other entries.  There's a whole range of stuff, and there is some really killer ones in there.  I know I'm partial to the Puke Knight (#357), Thatman (#429), and Deadbeet (#144)…

Also, to tide us minifig collectors over until the 2nd series of the OMFG! get picked and hopefully produced, Jakks Pacific has just released a line of really neat collectable Zombie Minifigs called S.L.U.G.s (Scary Little Ugly Guys)…

Series one has just been released and so far there are 16 different little zombie figures available (though I've heard that there are 99 in the series.)  They come in packs of 3 (where you can see the figures you’re getting), as well as a larger 12-pack that comes in a really cool looking coffin…

In order to get all 16 you'll either have to buy all four different 3 packs and the 12 pack coffin (there are 4 figures only in the 3-packs, and 4 exclusive to the coffin set), or hope you can find someone willing to trade their doubles.  The 3-packs are $4, and the 12-Pack coffin was $10.  As far as the quality of the concepts and sculpts, this set is pretty good.  There are a few duds in the set that either don't really read as zombies (the boxer), don't stand well (King Tut) or are kind of boring (again, boxer), but most of the figures are pretty darn fun.  My favorites have to be Rigamortis Lourdes, the cheerleading zombie (with severed head pom poms), Neil Armgone, the zombie astronaut, and the clever homage to Daniel from the Karate Kid, The Corroding Kid (who has had his leg swept but good.)

I'm sure these will pop up in a few stores, but right now I've only seen them at my local Toys R Us.  Unlike the Trash Pack, all these new minifigs are really doing a great job of riffing on the whole M.U.S.C.L.E. and Monster in my Pocket toy lines.  What a great time to be collecting toys again!

I find it funny that I ended up preparing for last week's vacation by making sure I had a bunch of stuff to post while I was away from the computer and stuff, and yet this week, though I'm back home I haven't had a second to update the site.  Aw well, c'est la vie.  In catching back up this week, I'm ready to finally tackle a new League assignment via Brian over at Cool & Collected.  This time it's all about media/PR announcements that managed to have us as fans saying, "Whoa!", and figuratively (or literally) pumping our fists in the air with excitement.  I'm typically a low-key kind of guy, and ever since my teenage disappointment with the direction that the Batman movie franchise took in the mid-90s I've been very wary of getting excited about much of anything, at least in terms of build-up.  There have been a couple of instances like the releases of the first Phantom Menace and X-Men trailers that had my small group of friends buzzing, but I have to say that the only time I really had to step back and say "Whoa!" in my best Joey Lawrence impersonation was when the 25th anniversary G.I. Joe figures were announced back in January of 2007…

G.I. Joe was the main toyline I collected as a kid, and I have so many fond memories of flipping through the figures on the pegs at toy stores looking for the elusive characters that I didn't have.  I can vividly remember the time as a teenager when the line finally came to an end (at least the classic carded figures), and I was still buying the horrid Street Fighter spin-off figures because they were packaged in a similar fashion.  The announcement of the anniversary line had me all excited and I was hoping that the actual figures and packaging would do the original line justice.

The initial images of the figures really wowed me, but my moment of "Whoa!" really came when I stumbled upon them in the toy aisle of my local Target.  I was excited for these, but the reaction I had when I saw these on the pegs was huge.  Like a sucker punch to the gut, I was 7 years old again.  The packaging, though not perfect, was so darn close to the original that for a minute or two I felt like I was seeing G.I. Joe figures for the first time all over again.  I'm not a big toy-buyer these days, but it was a no brainer to walk out of the store with each one of the figures that day, and for the next two years I was constantly scouring the pegs for new figures.

It's amazing the hold this vintage-style packaging had over me.  Though I wasn’t always in love with the actual figure redesigns, the feeling I got when picking up a new figure, seeing the art rendered against the classic explosive background, it was just awesome.  I was so sad to see the line end with the release of the movie figures, and my figure-buying has again ceased to all but a trickle.  For the most part, the anniversary line gave me an opportunity to relive the experience of picking up some of my favorite vintage figures (Cobra Eels, Flash, Zartan, Storm Shadow, Firefly, and the Cobra B.A.T. to name a few), but there were still some figures I was never able to get my hands on like Dialtone.  Though he was eventually released as a Joe Con exclusive, there was no way I could attend and the secondary market prices on that figure are insane.  None the less, it was still a good run, and I have most of my figures proudly displayed next to the computer at home…

Here are some other responses to this week's League assignment:

Christopher, Tupa's Treasures, talks about the re-release of the Star Wars Special Editions

Dex, AEIOU and Sometimes Why, talks about the Lucas event at Star Wars Celebration 5

Justin, General Joes, talks about the G.I. Joe Resolute announcement

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about the release of the Dukes of Hazzard Movie

Brian, Cool & Collected, talks about the Halo 3: Believe campaign

It's day five and I think we should be lounging around our resort today.  While I'm away looking for the arcade that was advertises to be at the place we're staying, why don't you take a gander at one of the meatier bits from the Fall 1984 issue of Muppet Magazine.  This time we're taking a look at the cover story, which has reader questions answered by the man, Mr. T!

By the by, Mr. T plus the Muppets equals bliss.

Hopefully I didn't get lost in Disney and will be back next week to catch up on some of the League Assignments as well as some other things I have on the back burner.  See you then!

It's day four.  If everything is going according to schedule I'll be headed to the Magic Kingdom today and spending the better part of that time trying to convinve my wife that we should ride the Haunted Mansion at least ten times.  We'll see if I win that argument.  In the meantime, while I'm out, here's some more fun from the Fall 1984 issue of Muppet Magazine.  Today it's all about Janice from the Electric Mayhem showing kids how easy it is to transform into your favorite rock superstar for Halloween!

The Michael Jackson and Boy George redos are fun…

…but my heart will always belong to Cyndi Lauper!

We're on Day 3, and I wanted to post a quikie today.  It's my favorite ad for this Fall 1984 issue of Muppet Magazine featuring a bunch of Nerds plushes!

Again, need to check ebay for one of these suckers!

It's day two of my day job vacation, and I'm diving back into the Fall 1984 Issue of Muppet Magazine to share a couple more advertisements…

First up is this Advertisement for Unico.  I've never heard of this series, but tiny flying Japanese unicorns look pretty darn fun to me.  I love that this ad wasn't geared towards girls, but instead features a boy and a girl.  Everyone loves unicorns, right?

Next up is this ad for Hallmark stickers.  What I thought was pretty cool about this is that beyond the odd issue of Stickers Magazine, I never tend to see ads for stickers, let alone the more generic Hallmark stickers.  It's something I love about back issues of Muppet Mag!

I think I'm officially off my yearly hiatus now, but this week I'll be on vacation from the day job and hopefully hidden deep away from the outside world somewhere on Walt Disney World property.  But I didn't want to leave the site with no updates for a week.  Therefore, I dug into my magazine archive to pull out one of my favorite issues of Muppet Magazine (the Fall 1984 issue with Mr. T as the main guest) so that I could share it with you all over the coming week or so.  So without further ado, and very slim commentary, I present Mr. T (with an awesome Animal T as well!)

The first thing I wanted to share today was an interior advertisement for the Go Bots that I thought was pretty darn cool.  So many of the Go Bots ads I've seen feature photos of the toys, but this one is covered in some very nostalgic artwork…

Last up is another advertisement, this time featuring the bulk (if not all) of the Ideal Alvin and the Chipmunks line of toys…

I'd love to have some of those minifigures now.  I wonder how much they're fetching on ebay…

I've been having a lot of fun with these League assignments, and this week's topic is no exception.  Brian over at Cool & Collected posed the question, what 80s kids/teen flick would you like to see get a present day sequel with the same cast now grown up.  This one required a bit more in the pondering department if for no other reasons than so many of the kid/teen flicks I grew up loving either had sequels (Karate Kid, Lost Boys, and Back to the Future came to mind) or had stories that were tied up very nicely and didn't really need to be delved back into (E.T., The Goonies, or Flight of the Navigator.)  Though I wanted to go with something like The Monster Squad, I don't really want to see the cast grown up as much as I'd like to see the concept of kids vs. monsters explored again, so that didn't seem to be the way to go.  I also thought about Teen Wolf, as it's a film series that was far from perfect and could be improved upon, it just wouldn't be the same without Michael J. Fox who probably isn't up to the make-up effects the flick would require.  Let's be honest though, seeing Fox and Jason Bateman team up for a double dose of van surfing would be pretty badass, right?  At the end of the day, I love so many of the flicks from the 80s for what they are, that dusting them off and continuing the story just doesn't tend to appeal to me.  Most recent ventures into that territory have really left me wanting (with the exceptions of The Muppets and Tron: Legacy), so I was stumped.

After wracking my brain for a couple of days I finally landed on something that I think could really be interesting though.  There are a handful of obscure flicks that I used to watch a lot on HBO back in the day that I was never fully gung ho about, but were still decent or interesting enough to keep my attention (flicks like the Meatballs sequels or Teen Witch.)  Of these, there was one film that always sort of weirded me out and felt a bit like it was shooting for something much deeper than I could appreciate at the time.  That movie is The Peanut Butter Solution.

It's a film that I've begun to appreciate much more as an adult, and one that I think is just weird and insane enough that it would be really easy to dip back into that world and create something truly magical.  For those who haven't seen it, TPBS is a Canadian flick from 1986 about a boy named Michael who wanders into an abandoned mansion and ends up seeing something so frightening that he loses all of his hair.

Ashamed of his sudden baldness and having to wear some truly terrible wigs, Michael is confronted by the ghosts of a deceased homeless couple that he had met and helped out once.  The ghosts tell Michael about the Peanut Butter Solution (in the vein of Freckle Juice, except it actually works), and by the next morning Michael's hair growth is out of control.  He's then kidnapped by a mad aertist who uses Michael’s continuously-growing hair to make designer paintbrushes that can paint pictures so real you can walk into them (as well as a really creepy hair jacket.)  Oh, and Michael's friend uses the Peanut Butter Solution to grow hair in a very nsfw kind of place.  You still with me?

The worst kind of rattail is snaking out of those pants!

Anyway, the flick is surreal and over the top, though the production value is sadly lacking as it feels a lot like a made-for-TV movie.  The world and the concepts are great though and I can fully imagine folks like Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Guillermo Del Toro, or Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze diving into this material and making something truly insane and delightful with the original cast included.  This is the kind of thing that I think would make the best 20-30-year-gap sequel, one where it's not important what decade it is, or that the actors have to try and recapture any magic that might be long gone.  For me, this would be a real treat.

Anyway, if you've never seen the flick, you can check out the trailer here.  Unfortunately this is a pretty obscure movie and it's never seen a North American DVD release.  There are some bootlegs floating around that are pretty decent watchable ports of the old VHS tapes.  It's also up in its entirety on youtube (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, and Part 10.)

Some of the other League members are also chiming in with their picks:

Christopher Tupa, Tupa's Treasures, talks about Labyrinth

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about the Breakfast Club

Reis, The Dork Horde, talks about The Last Starfighter

Iok, That Figures, talks about a different sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark

Michael, Adventureblog!, talks about Legend

Dex, AEIOU and sometimes Why, also talks about Labyrinth

As a kid I completely missed out on the whole M.U.S.C.L.E. men craze as I was concentrating all my playtime and allowance money on Garbage Pail Kids stickers and G.I. Joe & Transformers figures.  It's not that I wasn't aware of them, or how cool the little rubber guys looked packaged in their clear trashcans and bright blue blister cards; it's just that I was spread a bit thin collecting-wise.  "A kid can’t have everything…", is a statement I heard my mom say a lot at the time.  So I satiated my young mini-figure cravings with Transformers Decoys, Smurfs, figural erasers, and the old Blackstar demon or Trobit.

Years later, after the majority of my toy collecting cravings have more or less subsided, I find that the one thing that I can't bring myself to stop collecting are little mini-figures.  Whether it's Hasbro’s mini Heroes lines (aka the Star Wars, Transformers, and G.I. Joe chub figures), vending machine toys (like Little Homies), or Lego Minifigs, I just can't help myself if I find something particularly cool.  This past June I stumbled across the October Toys OMFG! (Outlandish Mini Figure Guys) project on Kickstarter and I was immediately hooked on the idea.  A bunch of artists and sculptors in the October Toys forum came together to hash out some ideas for a line of mini-figures riffing off of the nostalgia for old toy lines like Battle Beasts, M.U.S.C.L.E.s, and Monster In My Pocket.  Enough folks backed the project for it to be successfully funded, which was cool, but then began the wait for the figures to actually be produced...

I finally received my two initial sets from the Kickstarter project last month, and I couldn't be happier with the outcome!

There are five figures in this first series, Multiskull, King Castor, The Phantom Shithouse, Crawdad Kid, and Stroll, all of which have some excellent sculpting and detail work.  Again, though I never had any M.U.S.C.L.E.s growing up, I've seen enough of them to know that they weren't rendered in this much detail.  The main set comes in a "flesh" colored PVC, but there was also a Kickstarter exclusive black set that I picked up as well.  The wife called dibs on King Castor and Stroll, but she doesn't have any of the nostalgia or fondness for the pink fleshy figures, so black seemed the way to go.

Part of the Kickstarter campaign was the ability to help fund at a high level to secure a thousand minifigs in your very own color-way.  This was a great idea to get other small toy companies and stores in on the fun with the ability to sell exclusive color variants of the figures as an incentive for investing in the project.  There were four groups that chose this option resulting in a few exclusive colors including a mustard yellow (University of Muscle), a lime green (Little Rubber Guys), a true blue (Rotofugi), and a lighter "Glyos" blue (Onell Design).  There was also a sixth exclusive color-way/artist-proof, hot pink, that was split between the artists and sculptors that worked on the project.

Before Christmas, while waiting for the base and Kickstarter sets to be shipped, I noticed that the Onell Design light blue color-way was available for purchase.  Since I was champing at the bit to get my hands on these, I went ahead and splurged on this variant set.  Besides, I thought it would be fun to give a couple of the figures to my nephews for the holiday.  The Onell variants were my first taste of OMFG!, and I had a sneaking suspicion that even after I received the pink and black that it wouldn't be my last.

Ripping open the light blue set I realized that the variant color-ways that the various companies chose didn't seem to have too much thought behind them at first blush.  Granted, no one color would easily represent the figures, so this is hardly a complaint, just an observation.  Onell chose the light blue as it's the first color they used when creating their own toys a while back, but for this set it really doesn't fit with the design of the actual figures.  King Castor looks the best, as it has a cold icy feel that works decently with stones that make up the figure, and an argument can be made for Stroll being a "yeti" variation, but it's a little off.  The flesh being an homage to M.U.S.C.L.E.s makes sense, but again it doesn't really fit any of the figures.  The black exclusives, though cool, are almost too dark to really fully appreciate the detailed sculpting, and I began to wonder why each variant color was chosen.

After receiving the two additional sets from October Toys, it occurred to me that there might be some thought behind these choices after all.  The logo design of the series, the Rolling Stones-esque open mouth and tongue design is comprised of five colors (green teeth, pink tongue, yellow lettering, blue lips, and black outlines and fill in the mouth.)  Could it be that the colors were chosen to reflect the overall scheme of the packaging?  What with the two blues (the lips being offset by the blue of the background) and the two pinks (the tongue and the OMFG banner below the title), all of these colors were present and accounted for.  Could be a coincidence, but I thought it was interesting to point out.

Though I thought I would stop at the three sets, I soon found that I was really loving all the color choices (whether they made design sense or not), and I ended up picking up the green set, as well as the yellow and artist proof exclusive hot pink of the Multiskull figure (which is my favorite of the bunch.)  I even snagged a custom painted version of Multiskull that the artist (Charles Marsh) put up for sale a couple of weeks ago.  I had really wanted a version of the figure in white or grey, the traditional skull colors, and managed to score the NightFright custom which fills this gap in my collection quite nicely.  He even glows in the dark!

All in all I really love these figures and I can't even being to put into words would cool it's been to watch this project from design to fruition.  Seeing an independent artistic community come together for a project like this is rare, and seeing it come out so well done is even rarer.  October Toys and their forum are doing the initial prep work on a second series, and submissions for figures ideas are still open until the 29th of this month.  I have a few designs submitted (Boombox, Miss Pucker, and Killscreen), but there are all sorts of cool figures in the forum thread that would make an awesome second series for the OMFG! line.  Can't wait to see how far the community will take this thing!

Coming back off of a hiatus always feels a little herky-jerky, what with trying to dig up some inspiration and cleaning off the cobwebs of my practically non-existent HTML skills.  This year was a little different in that over the last few months I've been bombarded with all sorts of cool things to write about.  One thing that I've been meaning to write about for awhile is the new book by Kirk Demarais, Mail Order Mysteries: Real Stuff from Old Comic Book Ads!  For those who don't know, Kirk runs the Secret Fun Spot (as well as its weblog the Secret fun Blog) and is a freelance artist and designer who has been doing some amazing colored pencil portraits of some very familiar families of late.  He's a regular contributor to the Gallery 88 shows and an all around swell guy.  Though I've never gotten the chance to meet him, he's had a pretty big impact on Branded from the get-go, so when I saw that he was having his second book published I was pretty excited.

Mail Order Mysteries is the logical progression of nostalgic blogs, talking a niche topic and really digging into all the nitty gritty (sometimes literally into the Grit of gritty.)  Do you remember all those tempting ads in the backs of comics and magazines like Famous Monsters?  You know, the ones for the $2 Topstone rubber monster masks, the life-size Frankenstein's Monster, or the footlocker full of 100 toy soldiers for only $1.25.  Well Kirk sure does, and he's spent years tracking all of this stuff down, finding out what all this stuff was really like and cataloging his findings in this beautifully written and designed tome.

The book is divided up into 8 sections including superhero related stuff, war junk, monster merchandise, monkey making schemes, mail-order miscellanea, secret stuff, jokes & gags, and all kinds of oddities.  From the facts behind the fabled X-Ray Spex to what that $7 Polaris Nuclear Sub was really like, every single page of this volume is filled with the highs and lows of the mail-order products of the 50s through to the 80s.  Kirk lovingly photographed over a hundred pieces (most from his own collection), as well as including scans of the original advertisements so you can judge for yourself whether or not that allowance was or would have been well spent.  The icing on the cake is Kirk's keen eye for design, both modern and retro, which can be felt all over the book, from the yellowing, newsprint color-scheme of the pages, to the hidden glow-in-the-dark embellishments on the covers and spine.

For those of us who never got a chance to be lucky enough to order our own cardboard Polaris Sub (or to feel swindled by said sub), to join one of those intoxicating selling for prizes clubs like the Olympic Sales Club, or for those who just want to know how those darn X-Ray Spex work, Mail Order Mysteries is the perfect book.  You can see some more preview pages at Kirk's site.

So last week I participated in the inaugural week of "The League", a themed writing assignment that is the brainchild of Brian over at Cool & Collected.  It was really fun to tackle a topic, and then to see what all the other participants had to say about the subject.  Surprisingly, there was very little cross-over in terms of content, much like the Countdown to Halloween participants, which I thought was pretty darn awesome.  Lots of different perspectives weighing in on some shared pop culture.  The second question/assignment is now live, which asks the question, what one piece of Hollywood memorabilia would you acquire if budget and space were not an issue.

After sitting back to ponder the question for a bit, there were a couple of ideas swimming around in my head that were kind of hard to choose between.  On the one hand I've always had an obsession with helmets, hats and masks in pop culture, and I'd love to have the same sort of helmet-dispensing contraption that was in the M.A.S.K. team headquarters in Boulder Hill, except instead of just the M.A.S.K. helmets it would have a varied assortment of headgear that I love.  I'm sure there'd be helmets and masks from Airwolf, Star Wars (a Stormtrooper and Leia's Boushh disguise in particular), that Charlie Sheen movie The Wraith, General Kael's mask/helmet from Willow, Captain Power's helmet, and probably even that really weird one from Videodrome (I did say it was and obsession.)  Thinking about it though, it seemed to skirt around the framework of the question with way too many items, not just one.

My other thought seems to be more in line with the parameters of the question, which would be a full-size replica of an AT-ST Scout Walker from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.  The idea is that this chicken walker would make for a perfect backyard "tree fort".  Something I always wanted as a kid but never managed to really make work was some sort of clubhouse/fort for my friends and I to hang out in and plan our daily neighborhood gallivanting.  I'm sure it stems from loving flicks like The Monster Squad and the Goonies (I mean Mikey's house might as well have been a clubhouse.)  There were a couple of attempts, but nothing ever got past the elaborate illustrations in our school notebooks.

It also reminds me of the Return of the Jedi Jungle Gym playset advertisement I shared a couple years ago.  Now that I'm looking at it I'm wondering if that was the intention of the designers that worked on it, as it kind of resembles an AT-ST in a way…

In doing a little bit of research on the internets, I see that there are some enterprising fathers out there that have had this same idea and have tried to give their children the ultimate tree forts.  Bravo!

(Attribution on the above picture was very hard to nail down, apologies to the original poster.)

Makes me wonder what ever became of some of the full-scale sets that were built for the ROTJ film.  Did anyone get to take those home I wonder?  Anyway, a man can dream (about 40-odd-foot-tall, two-legged, mechanical walkers equipted with dual watergun cannons, and a flip-top hatch!)

Here are some of the other League members talking about their dream acquisitions:

Christopher Tupa, Tupa's Treasures, talks about the One-Eyed Willie's Pirate Ship

Nat, Nat - Not Nate - Dot Net, talks about the Thunder Road from The Explorers

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about the Trolley from Mr. Roger's Neighborhood

Gina, MercanStyle, talks about Ms.-Piggy-on-a-bike from The Great Muppet Caper

Matt, Matt-Can-Draw, talks about the Supreme Being's map from Time Bandits

Dex, AEIOU and Sometimes Why, talks about Flynn's lightcycle 2.0

Reis, The Lair of the Dork Horde, talks about his 5 favorite pop culture rides

Though I haven't recorded an episode of the Branded podcast in awhile, I was lucky enough to be asked back to guest star on another episode of the Nerd Lunch podcast this week.  I'm not sure, but I think I might be on the road to eventually becoming the Charo of the nerdy/pop culture podcasting set.  Crossing my fingers.

Anyway, back to the Nerd Lunch episode, this week's theme was all about introducing the guys to the work of Hayao Miyazaki, in particular the film Spirited Away. T hough Jeeg, CT, and Paxton have all experienced some level of anime in the past, none of them have really become fans of the genre perse, so I thought Studio Ghibli might be the way to ease them back in and could very well get them into watching some more Japanese animation.  Did it work?  Well you'll have to listen to the discussion to see.  You can find episode 24 of the Nerd Lunch Podcast on iTunes, or you can download the episode directly!

Recently Brian over at Cool and Collected posed the idea that a bunch of us like-minded writers, toy-fanatics, bloggers, and collectors should come together once a week or so and all write separate articles with a singular topic.  This way we can all get some inspiration to write and to be inspired by the collective's output.  A League of Extraordinary Bloggers as Brian put it.  I can't promise I'll be hitting this up every week, but I've had a lot of fun doing this sort of thing in the past with helping to run and contributing to the Countdown to Halloween, and Zartan Zaturday was a blast a while back too.

The first assignment has been sent out and it concerns a go-to, Saturday afternoon comfort movie from our childhood that we watched a bunch on TV or VHS.  I took in a metric ton of movies on Saturday afternoons, both on cable and on our local Fox affiliate back in the 80s, and at first I wanted to pick something really obscure that might be a hidden gem for those who missed it back in the day.  Something like The Million Dollar Mystery with Tom Bosley, Eddie Deezen, and Rick Overton, or The Heist with Pierce Brosnan and Tom Skerritt.  I also considered talking about Near Dark as it's one of my favorite films as both a kid and an adult.  But no matter how many times I find myself browsing my nostalgia DVD shelf, I always come back to the same film.  It was something I watched countless times on HBO, and was one of four films (including Rad, The Monster Squad and Transformers the Movie) that I religiously rented from video stores every weekend.  Most importantly, it's a film that I never tire of and one that I've never discussed on Branded before. That film is Red Dawn.

I'm sure there were a lot of folks back in the day that dismissed the flick as just another one of those Brat Pack films filled with young stunt-casting, but as an impressionable 8 year-old who was really into G.I. Joe and spent the better part of his childhood daydreaming about defending my backyard from terrorists and megalomaniacal warmongers, Red Dawn is the perfect escapist fantasy.  Set in the then modern day, the film plays off of the palatable fear of a World War III due to all of the nuclear weapons grandstanding during the waning days of the cold war.  Communism was still the number one threat to our borders (it seemed), and the idea of a war whose main front was being fought on our own domestic soil was pretty darn scary.  In fact, the image of the Communist paratroopers all of a sudden floating out of the sky still kind of haunts me to this day.

For those who haven't seen it, the film centers on a group of teenaged kids who manage to survive a paratrooper assault on their high school and town.  Led by brothers Jed (a young Patrick Swayze) and Matt (Charlie Sheen), this rag tag group starts off as 6 friends (including C. Thomas Howell, Darren Dalton, Brad Savage and Doug Toby), but by the middle of the film it grows to include a couple girls (played by Jennifer Grey and Lea Thompson) and a grizzled veteran fighter pilot played austerely by Powers Boothe.  This band of young patriots brand themselves the Wolverines (their high school mascot), and they proceed to strategically attack the communists, engaging in guerilla warfare tactics in an effort to save townsfolk from being executed and to try and make a dent in their forces in the hopes that the U.S. military will eventually come to their aid.

Again, the dizzying high I got from this flick as a kid was equal parts awe and horror as it acted as a sort of wish-fulfillment for my playtime daydreams.  It sounds a little weird to say that I sat around hoping we'd be attacked by Commies so that I could "play" G.I. Joe for real, but I'd be willing to bet that in the climate I grew up in a lot of kids probably had similar thoughts.  Another aspect that I loved about this flick was the dead-serious tone that director John Milius brought to the production.  He managed a similar feat with the first Conan film, both of which had scripts that could easily have gone way too over the top to stay believable and engaging.  Don't get me wrong, I love films like Commando and Rocky IV as much as the next red-blooded American, but even in the day it was clear how much they came across as campy, patriotic propaganda.  Red Dawn is grounded in the story of the eight kids, their bonds of friendship and loyalty, and it's heart-wrenching when some of them get killed in action.

For a crazy conceptual 80s war flick, Red Dawn still holds up pretty darn well.  Even crazier, it manages to provide an opportunity for C. Thomas Howell to play a geek turned into a sawed-off-shotgun-toting badass with absolutely no irony whatsoever.  That is not a feat to be dismissed lightly.  Also, as everything from the 80s is apparently rebootable these days, there is also a new Red Dawn film destined to hopefully frighten and inspire a whole new generation almost 30 years after the original.  I'm pretty curious to see if the writers/producers/director can nail the same serious tone of the original or if it'll just deflate into yet another crappy remake that has barely a 10th of the heart of the original.  Time and an invasion from some strange evil nation can only tell…

You can find some of the other participants of the League below:

TL, Flashlights are Something to Eat, talks about Poison Ivy

Christopher Tupa, Tupa's Treasures, talks about The Goonies

Fiji Mermaid, Sideshow Cinema, talks about Fright Night

Jeff, Siftin', talks about Superman II

Justin, General Joes, talks about the 70s Live Action Spiderman

Paxton, Cavalcade of Awesome, talks about Back to the Future and the Star Wars Trilogy

Stacey, Pendragon's Post, talks about Temple of Doom

One aspect of the American pop culture experience that I find endlessly intriguing is how certain portions of it so completely subvert class, race, religion, and creed.  It's hard these days to pin down someone's race or religious beliefs based solely on the music they listen to, or the video games they play. We’re becoming more and more eclectic as a nation, but the foundations of this cultural oneness has been steadily built over the last century with some unlikely materials.  If I had to point to one thing that ties most Americans together it would have to involve food as it's something we all need.  Through the lens of pop culture, it's the brands that stand out, the merchandising, packaging, and promotion that we are attracted to and hold dear.  One product over all else really shines through this lens, and is not only an important part of our shared pop culture experience, but also a very important part of one's daily breakfast, Cereal!  It's sugary, sweet, fruity, colorful, corny, wheaty, full of rice, oats, and the occasional marshmallow marbits.  It provides fiber, iron, whole grains, and most importantly for those seeking to break through the walls of the time-space continuum, high levels of riboflavin.  Through over a century of ad campaigns, commercials, and cool prizes we've all been influenced by breakfast cereal, and now writers Marty Gitlin & Topher Ellis have taken a shot at condensing this shared snap, crackle, and pop culture experience into The Great American Cereal Book.

Published by Abrams (for a February 1st release), this beautiful volume chronicles America's favorite breakfast food with a semi-chronological listing of ready-to-eat cereals from seven of the largest manufacturers of the last century including General Mills, Kellogg's, Nabisco, Nestle, Post, the Quaker Oats Company, and Ralston.  Each product listed features some vital statistics including a description, when it was introduced and/or discontinued, the various popular slogans, characters and endorsements associated with it, as well as various tidbits and trivia.  The book is also heavily illustrated with beautiful color photos of many of the more popular and eclectic varieties.  Breaking up the timeline of sweet crunchy nostalgia are a bevy of lists, essays and mascot profiles including a glimpse into the development of characters such as Cap'n Crunch and the Trix rabbit.

What really struck me when I first cracked the cover on this massive tome was the high level of thought and care put into the presentation.  The design of the book is absolutely gorgeous and has a perfect tongue-in-cheek humor imbedded into every page.  The book resembles a box of cereal, from the hilariously placed nutritional chart and ingredients list on the spine, to the rainbow variety of cereals adorning the inside front and back covers.  This book was envisioned and designed with those that are truly a kid at heart.  I also love that the photos lean more towards the kid's section of the cereal aisle, including so many of the sadly extinct varieties like Smurf-Berry Crunch, Pac-Man, Batman, C3PO's, and the dearly missed Croonchy Stars (the Sweddish Chef's Muppet-themed cereal from the late 80s.)

Abrams really has their finger on the pulse of nostalgia when it comes to their line of books aimed at pop culture fans, whether it's their inventive layout and design of their "vault" editions (like the World of the Smurfs and the Transformers Vault), or their stunning art books (like Wacky Packages, More Wacky Packages, and the upcoming Garbage Pail Kids book.)  The Great American Cereal Book is a fine addition to their lineup and would fit nicely on anyone's shelf or coffee table who grew up glued to the television on Saturday mornings watching cartoons and slurping up a huge bowl of Cap'n Crunch or Fruit Loops.

Just about done with the yearly hiatus, but in the meantime, I was a guest on the The Nerd Lunch podcast again, this time to geek out about the more lunch-y side of nerdom.  The show features NL alums CT and Jeeg, as well as Paxton from Cavalcade of Awesome, and once again a great time was had by all!

We spend the episode discussing the fizzy, syrupy goodness that is soda, a pop culture touchstone that pretty much anyone can relate to.  Whether you call it soda, pop, coke, or whatever, chances are you’ve imbibed a bit of one carbonated elixir or another, and you probably also have a favorite.  Listen to us talk about our favorites, least favorites, and bunch of general soda nerdery.  You can also find their show on iTunes.

Just wanted to take a quick break from my annual holiday hiatus to share this awesome magazine cover that I've been sitting on for far too long.  This was pointed to and provided by the awesome allhallowSteve over at Halloween Addict.  What more needs to be said other than Santa on a lightcycle!?!

This is just carrying on the new tradition here at Branded of showcasing Santa riding some kickass vehicles, like last year's BMX ad…

It has been a crazy and fun year here at Branded (my sixth), and I hope that everyone out there in internetland is having a wonderful holiday season.  Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate and see you guys in 2012!

Recently the kind folks over at The Nerd Lunch podcast invited me back on the show to geek out on some more of our favorite topics.  The show features NL alums CT and Jeeg, as well as Paxton from Cavalcade of Awesome, and once again I had a blast!

We spend the episode discussing the classic Masters of the Universe toy line from Mattel.  From our first memories of the toys to how we feel about them almost 30 years later.  If you want to hear me wax nostalgic on MOTU, then head on over to Nerd Lunch and give the episode a listen.  You can also find their show on iTunes.

Alright Boils and Ghouls!  We're finally here, Halloween is upon us and tonight lucky kids all over the country will be knocking on doors and stuffing pails, sacks, pillow cases, and bags with all sort of sugary goodness.  Tomorrow is set aside for a million tummy aches, but tonight there will be chocolate!  And fake blood.

For this last post of the season I've decided to share the longest single ad in my collection.  It comes from issue #117 of Fangoria which was printed in 1992.  Featuring witch boobies, corpses, devils, skeletons, silly masks, licensed masks, Aliens, Critters, demons, vampires, Frankenstein's Monsters, gore, and 5, count 'em, 5 different Jack-o-Lantern masks!  This is a crazy blowout sale ad from the folks at Distortions Unlimited, and I love it!

All told, I've shared in the neighborhood of 370 different masks from all sorts of companies, and that's just a fraction of what was available between the late 70s through the early 90s.  I've been wanting to showcase these mask ads for awhile and it feels good to finally have them up on the site.  Now it's time carve my 7th pumpkin of the season, watch a few more horror films, and kick back and wait for some trick-or-treaters to come by begging for candy.  Hope you all dug the countdown this year, and as always…

…if you're looking for a ton of Halloween content all through the month of October, make sure to stop on by the official Countdown to Halloween site and check out the list of participating blogs for 2011.  You'll be glad you did! Have a happy Halloween, and maybe tonight will be the night that the Great Pumpkin finally does show up…

We're up to our second to last post for the Halloween season!  Today it's all about Dracula.  Well, Francis Ford Coppola's film version of the novel.  Actually, it's really the effects team and designer's interpretation of Dracula filtered through Morris Studios sculptors work.  Yeah, that's the ticket…

This ad comes from issue #130 of Fangoria from 1994 and features 4 of the more gruesome and creepy iterations of Oldman's Dracula character from the '92 film.  Though Keanu Reeves is horribly miscast in the flick, it still holds up for its amazing in-camera effects work.  Seriously, go back and watch the film.  All those effects are in-freaking-camera.  That's some pretty crazy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stuff going on in a Coppola film.  Bananas!

Anyway, come back tomorrow for more mask tomfoolery, and if you're looking for a ton of Halloween content all through the month of October, make sure to stop on by the official Countdown to Halloween site and check out the list of participating blogs for 2011.  You'll be glad you did!