Toy Bender

Toy Movies

It’s been awhile since I did one of these! Anyway, with the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen steaming up the theaters as we speak and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra soon to lay a big on our our chests, here’s what some other movies inspired by toys might look like. Overall they’re pretty good, but I’m not sure if Alf really counts as a “toy” film, since he was more of a television show than a toy property. Out of all of them though, I think I’d pay good money to see My Little Pony vs. the Care Bears. That has a lot of potential right there.

Oh yeah, if the video doesn’t play just go to the Atom films website via the embedded video. That’s what I had to do when I first saw this thing. I like the video and all, but I’m not real fond of Atom films. There’s reasons why YouTube is so popular and one of those reasons is it’s not 99% ads.

And if you wanted to know my thoughts on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen I posted my “review” on The Robot’s Pajamas.com, so you can check it out there if you’d like. Here’s the short version if you’re too lazy to click on the link: It’s not very good.

A lot of people know Mark Bellomo from his work on the Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe and his Transformers identification guide. They may simply think of him as an author, but he’s actually an uber collector. You see Mark doesn’t just write about toys, he owns almost every toy he writes about. If you’re a toy collector (and thank you for reading this blog if you’re not) you should really check out a series of videos called “Collectable Spectacle” that features Bellomo and his enormous collection of toys. If you’re not an uber fan of G.I. Joe, I’d recommend at least watching the parts where Mark is digging around his storage shed. Some of the stuff he pulls out of there is simply amazing, if you know how much some of this stuff goes for.

Just looking at another persons collection may be boring particularly if you’re not interested in the figures that the person has. What’s neat about this is Bellomo’s commentary on both the items and his thoughts on collecting in general.

What I came away from this is that while I want a lot of the stuff he has, if I ever need that much storage space for it I’m doing a massive sell off. If Mark didn’t have an outlet for these things like his books, I think it would be fair to say he would have a little too much.

I also learned that I like Mark a lot more through these videos than I do of the other, more famous toy collectors like Steve Sansweet who just comes off as pompous and/or smarmy. Mark appears to be a genuinely nice and down to Earth guy. It’s kind of nice to see, and I dare say, perhaps a bit rare in someone that has a huge mega collection of toys.

To see the entire series you can go to either YouTube or here.

Ahh there are some very simple things in life that bring me joy and this custom Danger Mouse Lego creation is one of them. The car by Louise Dade looks great and those mini-figures (made by Louise’s Mom of all people) look perfect as Danger Mouse and Penfold. I really wish this could be purchased in stores.

(more…)

Today’s Star Trek themed toy commercial is from the rather successful Playmates Star Trek run. This time it’s from the Next Generation line of figures:

The computer voice is annoying, but if this commercial does one thing well it’s make the figures look friggen awesome. I never cared for the Playmates Star Trek figures at the time. I guess I was turned off by their unrealistic proportions. Now after watching this commercial, I kind of wish I would have at least gotten that bridge set and a few of the core bridge crew. Curse my metal hide!

I love the little thing at the end with Patrick Stewart asking us to come and see the Christmas Carol with him. If he was in my town asking me personally to attend his showing, I’d be a damned bloody fool if I didn’t go.

I fall in and out of geek franchises all the time and for a few reasons my liking of Star Trek has been reignited a bit. Sure the upcoming J.J. Abrams film might have a bit to do with it, but I can thank unemployment that allowed me to watch lots of Next Generation on TV again. There’s also a writing project I’m working on that has me writing about the show, and then there’s the fact that I’m the biggest geek ever and I picked up a Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual at Half Price Books the other day. Don’t look at me, I’m so hideously nerdy I might offend your sensibilities.

Anyway, this new found love of Star Trek had me thinking I should see what was out there for Star Trek toy ads. I found a few good ones so I’ll be posting them in the upcoming weeks in honor of the upcoming Abrams Star Trek flick.

(more…)

Wow, it’s been a long time since I did a Toy Ads That Time Forgot, probably so long that most everyone forgot about them. Anyway, I ran across this commercial on YouTube for a doll called Baby Laugh A Lot. The gimmick is that the doll laughs. Considering the amount of things a doll can do now days it’s extremely primitive, but that’s not why I’m posting it today. I’m posting it because it’s friggen scary as hell:

<

If a child of mine had one of these things, I’d throw holy water on it and smash it with the nearest hammer. There’s no way a doll that looks like that and laughs like an unhinged maniac could not be evil. Hell, even the commercial is creepy with the way the girls and the announcer all start laughing like lunatics by the end.

I was checking out Raving Toy Maniac and I saw some pictures of Star Trek figures I hadn’t for some reason seen yet. First let’s watch some crazy extreme Star Trek action before we look at the crap:

(more…)

Yeah, I realize everyone has seen this thing by now, but I feel like it’s my duty to post a toy related movie spot on this toy related blog after I had posted the G.I. Joe one. So here it is, the 30 second Super Bowl ad for Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen:

I find this ad slightly less stimulating than the G.I. Joe ad mostly because it’s kind of stuff we’ve seen before already. There’s big robots that sort of look like they Transform, but don’t resemble what I think of as “Transformers.” There’s also lots of explosions. I guess you could argue that the Joe stuff was all done before, but at least it had Christopher Eccleston, something which seems to be clearly lacking in Transformers 2. The only thing that really gets my nerdy rage up a bit is that stupid giant wheel robot. What’s with that?

There’s only one thing I’m kind of looking forward to during the Super Bowl, the G.I. Joe live action movie trailer. I really don’t care for many sports and I especially don’t care about football. Sure I’ll watch the occasional game or I’d even go to one, but if football disappeared off the face of the Earth I wouldn’t care a bit. Well there’s one thing that’s compelling me to watch the game and it’s the G.I. Joe film trailer (that and the fact I’ve been invited to a Super Bowl party and I desperately need to socialize). A ten second tease was aired already on the usually worthless show Entertainment Tonight to super tease the hell out of us, but here’s a 30 second trailer right here:

Look, I’m not someone who thinks this thing is utter dog crap without seeing it, but I really don’t have much hope. The Baroness looks cool, but I’ve had enough of Matrix-like missile dodging to last me the rest of my life. And I have to admit it, this trailer got me a little bit excited. I can’t help it, it’s friggen G.I. Joe!

Oh yeah and the Transformers 2 trailer will also debut during the “big game.” I wasn’t a super huge fan of the first film, although it didn’t dissapoint me very badly either. It was just kind of there. Hopefully this next film will have less “hilarious” hijinks.

Thanks to: /Film and The Braxcave

If there’s one move that’s super awesome that doesn’t ever get the respect it deserves, it’s Starship Troopers. The friggen movie is balls out awesome. It’s got war, gore, acting and a story that’s so horrible that it transcends awful and enters the realm of genius. As an added bonus there’s boobies for no reason. Yeah, it’s pretty much the perfect movie. If I have to tell you that the film is based on the book of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein, then you need your nerd credentials ripped from you and then drummed out of the nerdcore. Starship Troopers the film has so far spawned two direct to DVD (or Blu-Ray) sequels and a short lived CGI cartoon series called Roughnecks: The Starship Troopers Chronicles.

There were also toys based off the first Starship Troopers film back in 1997, but they didn’t last long, which makes perfect sense considering the toys were based on a film that was amazingly inappropriate for kids. The idea in itself lead to a popular parody video seen here:

(more…)

(more…)

According to CNN (how often does that phrase appear here?), three people were killed during yesterday’s Black Friday retail events. One death occured at a Wal-Mart where an employee was trampled to death when he was killed trying to unlock the doors at five a.m. This is arguably the more tragic of the stories as the guy was just doing his job and his killed by a bunch of idiots.

The next two deaths occurred at a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California. Two men were shot dead in a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California. There’s not a lot of details at the time of this writing, but the shooting may have been brought about by an argument between two groups of shoppers.

Here’s a video report I managed to dig up:

This just goes to show you that it’s better to sit out these kinds of events where tempers can flair and people lose their sense of decency.

Well not a whole lot has happened in the toy world to write about… so I suppose it’s time for one of these things.

Item: I’m curious to find out if any of you folks have dared to venture out into the shopping battlezones that is collectively known as Black Friday to get some crazy ass deals. I avoid stepping outside my door on this day, having had to work in retail too many times.

Item: Speaking of Black Friday, Toys R Us had a 25 dollar off a purchase of 50 dollars or more if you paid via Paypal. I was going to post it here, but when I clicked on the link the offer had expired. Curse you, Reed Richards!

Item: Hasbro Toy Shop has a bunch of stuff that’s on sale. I couldn’t find much of anything, unless you like the awful 12″ G.I. Joe figures. They’re twelve bucks for a limited time. They also have some girlie items that I managed to snag for some Christmas presents for my wife. Hurray sales!

Item: MMMM pie. Sorry, I was just enjoying some pumpkin pie.

Item: Item: Brian’s Toys put up it’s recent newsletter. It has deals, if you like that sort of thing.

Item: I’ve been playing Resistance Fall of Man 2 for the PS3. It’s pretty cool so far. It’s no Halo or Gears of War, but it’s pretty decent. Oh yeah, if you don’t know I also have been writing on the video game blog 1pstart. Don’t expect it to be as good as ToyBender, though. Nothing can be as good as ToyBender, except maybe pie.

This Toy Ads that Time Forgot let’s us take a look back at a highly successful toyline of the 90s, Toybiz’s X-Men line of figures. The toys came out about the same time as the amazingly good X-Men cartoon that aired on Fox. Mutant loving kids bought these figures by Toybiz in droves and they weren’t disappointed in their cool looks and awesome variety of action features.

My filthy fingers weren’t on the pulse of the toy collecting world at that time, because I was still on the bubble of wanting to play with toys while still knowing I was getting too old to do so. Collecting such things had never crossed my mind. However there was one exception. While reading a magazine, which I really want to say was Wizard because I don’t think ToyFare existed, I saw that the Wolverine seen in the above commercial was considered a “rare” figure worth about 25 bucks at the time. This resulted in me looking all over at whatever stores my mother would take me to until I eventually found this super rare figure. This Wolverine marks one of the first figures I kept “mint on card” and while he’s probably worth nothing now, I shall keep him MOC for the day when the museum dedicated towards me is opened as an example of my first shaky steps into the world of toy collecting.

Thanks to: Metal Misfit

It’s my birthday today and I’m really hoping that your present is in the mail. If it is not, I will really have to reevaluate our blogger/bloggie relationship. Since it’s my birthday, I brought some virtual treats of things that are awesome.

We’ve got Puppies:

(more…)