This is the coolest thing you’ll probably see… ever. It’s a fan made scene from Tron involving stop motion, cardboard, and a metric shit ton of awesome. No this is not related to toys, but I’d be doing a huge disperse by not sharing it with others. It’s like Christianity. I’ll go to nerd hell if I don’t force you all to check out what I know is sweet:
In honor of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors first session hitting DVD, I figured that it was high time I said something about the line and shared a couple of TV ads from it.
I’m a big fan of Dune. I’m not just a little fan. I’ve got a huge veiny nerd-on for Dune. Not the book, but the David Lynch mega bomb of the nineteen eighties featuring both Kyle MacLachlan in one of his greatest roles (although it is hard to beat Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks) and an almost nude Sting. If you only ever see one movie with a nearly nude Sting, make it David Lynch’s Dune. Don’t forget other mega stars like Max von Sydow and the preeminent British actor, Captain Picard. But I could go on all day, I love that damn movie too much. That’s why I love this little Lego custom:
The following post is brought to you by fellow blogger and part time friend (he’s part time because he never invites me to any of his fancy society parties in San Francisco), Great White Snark. I wrote a post over on his site, so go over there to read it, but only after you finish his post here and eat your meat. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
I’m about a month or two late on this one to be relevant considering the last Rambo movie was out forever ago, but this ad for Rambo toys is still flipping sweet. Not because of the actual toys or anything, but because the whole idea of the Rambo franchise being aimed at children is frightening hilarious. Here it is though, one of the bloodiest most violent action franchises being marketed for the kiddies:
While this week’s commercial isn’t exactly the kind of toy I usually cover here, I decided to do a TAtTF on it mainly because I’m obsessed with the game Rock Band. Okay, I’m not as obsessed as I was because my Xbox 360 is in the shop (sigh, I miss you baby) and unable to play it, but I’m wishing I had the game so I could play the new downloadable songs by Paramore and Serj Tankian this week, not to mention the STP song released a few weeks back… okay enough about that… I apologize. The Star Stage is a “toy” that cashed in on nearly everyone’s dream (especially kids) of being a huge rock or pop star in an extremely lame way. Well maybe it’s not that lame. It could just be the kid singing the terrible song making it seem incredibly lame, I mean it does have flashing lights, a working microphone, AND an echo function.
Nope, it really is that lame.
Star Stage also serves the duel purpose of being an incredibly effective torture instrument for parents who had children that owned the Star Stage.
This isn’t toy related. I just feel like shoving a big fat proboscis of awesome in your face. How’s about Christopher Lee singing a song titled called, “The Magic of Wizard Dreams” with the lead singer of European metal band Rhapsody of Fire? You bet I’m there.
The fine folks that bring you ToyFare have been messing around a bit and they came up with a classic Twisted ToyFare Theatre that’s animated. I like it. In fact, it’s what I had really hoped Robot Chicken would be. Yeah it’s funny, but sometimes there’s a lot of misses in with the home runs. I might also help that this video is one of my favorite Twisted ToyFare Theatres ever. Check out the video for yourself:
What do you think? You can leave a note to the ToyFare folks on their board and give them some input, or you could probably leave it here and they might see it. Rumor has it that the ToyFare staff has a room full of small Asian children that Google mentions of ToyFare all day long.
Anyway, this first outing is pretty cool and I’d love to see more. Perhaps we will start seeing some of everyone’s favorite characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk, drunk Iron Man, Dr. Doom, or the Star Wars Expanded Universe? Pretty please?
It’s not often when you see those around you rise from modest internet blogger to internet star, but it’s happening to ToyBender reader Unleaded Logic right before my very eyes. He’s got his very own review of the Halo laser gun games from Jasman Toys up on that fancy YouTube thing that all the kids use these days. Imagine, video on the internet!
The other day when I went on my jag about how the “new” Max Rebo band sucks compared to the power trio of old, I went looking around for a toy commercial to share that might have them in the background. Little did I know that they had their own commercial. Jebus, what Star Wars characters didn’t get their own commercial back in the day?
Christmas dog wishes you another, very sleepy Merry Christmas.
Due to popular demand, Christmas dog is back to spread his sleepy cheer across the land. We’re tearing ourselves away from eating every snack in sight. Since there’s not much in toy news and I’m hoping that most of you aren’t sitting on the internet all day today, I don’t have a full on toy related post for you. However, I do have a couple of videos that are now a Christmas must watch for me and should be for you and yours.
Emma from TreeHouseJukebox.com, sometimes commenter on this very site, and all around good person, recently shared a video with me that I had to post on here. It features the world famous Smurfs and their wonderful Christmas music release of 1983:
Did you see why I put this video on Toy Bender? Aside that it comes from one of the golden time periods of my youth for toys, it doesn’t seem to have to do much with them directly. Well if you didn’t see it, look closer. The one kid opens his present to get a mint in box Kenner X-Wing.
I go crazy for this sort of thing. Nothing is better than seeing a toy you used to have or wanted in an old commercial, TV show, or movie. The most famous example of this would have to be the appearance of Star Wars figures in E.T., since there was a scene that had Elliot showing E.T. his figures. I prefer when something is in the background or isn’t the main focus. It makes me nostalgic for the time when you could just go to the store and buy a vintage Star Wars figure. Maybe I’m just an oddball.
What’s interesting to note is that I don’t get nostalgic for toys after after a certain point in my life. Vintage Star Wars figures? Hell, yes. Early 90s Star Wars figures? Meh. I don’t think I’ll ever feel nostalgic for toys produced after I turned thirteen or so. Perhaps it’s because that’s about the time I transitioned from full time toy user to full time toy collector and girl repeller.
On a side note, this Christmas album sucks. When the Smurfs sing, they don’t sound like any of the voices on the show. Any moron can sing through a voice filter to sound like the little blue guys and gal and replace some adjectives with a form of “Smurf”. If you’re going to have an album full of Smurfy songs, you better damn well have the real Smurfs singing them.
Long and boring post made short, the Smurf’s album sucks and getting X-Wings for Christmas rules.
I figured that I haven’t had enough Christmas/nutty other religion posts this time of year and I better get cracking. For God sakes, OAFE even has falling snow on their page and I’ve got almost no mention of C day. Well, here’s a lame video post to try and make up for my shortcomings.
The following video is one of my favorite YouTube videos of a kid freaking out. I can’t confirm that is truly is a Christmas video, but it surely shows how you want to feel at Christmas when you’re a kid.
I think that this video goes to show you that Pokemon can be worse than narcotics in some instances.
There’s a few commercials that still stick out in my mind from my many days of spending afternoons away from school cartoon watching and not kissing girls. The Hit Stix commercial was one of the commercials that would make a regular rotation through the shows of my youth like The Real Ghostbusters, Bravestar, and Super Mario Brothers:
I’ve always been an action figure fan over anything else, so Hit Stix weren’t the kind of toy that would have got me very excited back in the day. The prospect of drumming in the air and producing a beat upon impact with anything is neat and all, but there wasn’t much else to the things. I think it’s the fact that I was way more into anything that even had the slightest hit of sci-fi to it. There’s no exciting story to tell with these things. You just produced noises that were little more than what the crappiest beat machine running behind the lamest 80s pop song could do.
The kids in the ad didn’t do much to help me want to get one either. Even when I was young I realized how dumb these actors look. Just check out that one kid when they something about going crazy.
The only thing this commercial has that’s good is that is has one catchy ass rap song. No matter how stupid it is, it’s still some pretty good marketing even though I’ll stand by my claim that rapping and toy commercials is never a good thing.
Star Trek doesn’t get enough loving on this site. That’s partially because it kind of sucks and is not at all as cool as Star Wars, but it still has it’s place. I decided to share this Star Trek ad for mainly one reason:
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