Good Grief!

From Thesneeze, "After I put up that little tribute to Franklin from Peanuts, Randee sent me this outstanding email:

What a nice little tribute!

I always will think of Franklin as the reason I got Charles Schulz pissed off at me.

There was a four-panel strip in a Peanuts Treasury I read when I was about 15, and in it Franklin expresses a desire to play for the NHL. Peppermint Patty immediately squashes that dream with a final panel comment along the lines of "come on, Franklin, how many black players are there in the NHL?" Which I didn't actually get the point of. I mean, true: Yep. Trenchant to point out? Not in this case.

But, at 15 I thought I might have missed what Schulz was trying to say, and I wrote ol' Chuck. I got a letter back on Snoopy stationery, from One Snoopy Place, hand typed, in which he berated me for calling him a "racist" (I'd actually said the strip could be perceived that way, but maybe he could explain it to me better) and said I'd rushed to judgment, and there wasn't anything racist at all in pointing out that there were no black players in the NHL.

The thing is, there wasn't anything funny about pointing it out either.

So, while Charles Schulz delighted generations with his Peanuts, I appear to have been a sour grape. Ah, well, I still love some of the early years.

Want photographic proof? Lemme know. It's a gem of a letter. Hand-signed and everything."

More on those comic book ads

From X-entertainment, "There wasn't a small boy in the country unfamiliar with Olympic's "Prizes or Cash" ad, satiating our inner businessmen for generations. The deal was simple: sign on with Olympic, and sell their overpriced junky crap to your family and neighbors in trade for either a dollar per item or points earned towards one of Olympic's awesome prizes.

I'm actually a former member of this brazen cult, and lemme tell you, it never worked out quite like I'd envisioned. Check out that prize sheet -- they had everything a kid could want. Aside from the well-known widely released toys and action figures based on the cartoons we loved, there was all sorts of stuff kids never knew they wanted until the opportunity stared 'em in the face. Tents, giant trampolines, rafts -- there's even an electric organ, something I portrayed no interest in prior to seeing the ad, but fuck me if I didn't base my entire existence around owning one from that point forth. Video games were frequently listed, with children falsely believing that they were a mere modicum of effort away from nailing a free Atari or Nintendo game. While some of the items only "cost" a modest amount of points (you received one point for each item sold), others were a seeming fantasy: a bicycle, for example, required 75 items sold. Nearly impossible.

When I received my kit, I often wondered why anyone would pay such inflated rates (obvious to me even as a child, that's how jacked up the numbers were) for such low grade crap. It was all of these greeting cards and stationary kinda stuff. As a door-to-door salesman, peddling god damned greeting cards didn't make me a success. In fact, my experience with Olympic kicked off a lifelong hatred of certain neighbors, who rudely slammed door in my third grade face or were less than friendly in their refusals to buy buy buy. Of the three dozen or so houses I approached, no more than three or four folks bought anything. And only six of them didn't teach me dirty words.

Even with the aid of family purchases, I totaled in with a lousy thirteen points. The prizes for that amount were laughable -- a calligraphy marker set, a cheap watch, things of that sort. I ended up getting a "Bike Generator" light set (see in the ad above), which for about a week made my bike look girly before falling off and smashing into too many pieces for my elementary level math skills to count. On a second attempt months later, I scored a mere nine points and simply opted for the cash. Nine bucks. Not even enough for me to pay one of my classmates to throw shit at the teacher.

Actually, the best part of my Olympic experience happened before the sales kit even arrived. Looking at this ad and wondering which prizes I'd pick was a lot more fun than knocking on strange doors to sell bar mitzvah invitations.

And, as shitty of a superhero as "Captain O" was, I always got a kick out of the machine on his back. They never told us what it was for. I pictured great things."

Comic book ads

Every kid worth their salt remembers those famous comic book ads. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those ads that showed way cool looking things that we could send away for. These ads always held mystery for me. No matter how many times I came across them, I always marveled at their coolness. Of course, it never occurred to me to pony up some $ and send away for anything, mostly because I never had any money to pony with. As I was reading Grant Morrison’s current Superman title in Borders Bookstore, I suddenly realized that the ads in comic books now suck. There’s no promise of cool things anymore. I wonder why? No doubt because with the internet you can now see what you’re getting. 25+ years later I realized that I’ve never actually seen pictures of the actual toys advertised in those 1970s comics. Well, wonder no more because all the answers are here and all you need to do is look down.





Ah, the holy grail of mystery! The ad promises an inconceivable amount of cool Army product for less than $2. So what do you get for your hard-earned cash?


Apparently you get some 2D soldiers in a shoebox. I don't know why, but looking at this picture makes me wish I had actually sent for this set, it's pretty freakin' cool in it's cheapness.







Next we have the other ad that always caught my eye. Remember this tantilizing gem?

Even cooler than the Army ad, now we get Roman soldiers fighting to the bloody death! So what's the deal? This is the deal.

Again, kinda cool. Kinda.




Another sales pitch that engendered curiosity was the Knights ad.



Again, surprise, surprise, we get some pretty cool looking flat figurines.

I started this product pursuit believing that I was going to make fun of these forgotten treasures, but now I actually want them. Now I need to gert my hands on some x-ray specs. . .

Why don't you like me, Octopunk?

A closer look at new Star Wars offerings

Well we're starting to see more and more from Toy Fair 2006. Talk about the law of diminishing returns. This year's crop looks especially poor. Hasbro might as well hang up a sign saying, "Star Wars nerds will buy anything no matter how ill-conceived or executed". What follows is a bunch of (mostly) crap.

I want to like this "extra expensive" Greedo, but I don't. His vest looks cheap and I'm not into his extra-long fingers. How in the world does he brush his teeth or do other unmentionables?

I've always loved the Biker Scout design. I know, I know, Octopunk, you've never been taken with it. But you also own the Black Bespin Guard so what do you know?
I mean, look at this figure!

It's Han in a new hat, er, I mean coat!

Look it's Luke in X-Wing Pilot gear! Oh who am I kidding, that's about as exciting as a fart in an elevator.

What the heck were they thinking? This is one of the "special more expensive" figures. Are we supposed to be excited by this morbidly obese Tuskin Raider? The only cool thing is his weapon, which I'm sure is as solid as a piece of liquorice.

Here we get Mace's ship from the Clone Wars cartoons. Of course, this is just the same ship already put out twice, but now it's purple bitch! Hmmmmmm, I might have to pick that up. It's purple!




And finally, just when I was lamenting that we never get cool mail-a-ways anymore comes this incredibly narcissistic offering. Look kids, after you spend $50 on "exclusive" resculpts, you'll be able to send away for this very special stormtrooper." He only wishes he were that thin.

It's a Death Star Party, Who Could Ask for More?

An ambitious fellow Lego freak has assembled this brilliant Death Star playset. I routinely browse through Brickshelf.com's new stuff, and this thing keeps popping up, which either means this guy is adding more pictures, or he's just re-posting to keep his creation in the limelight. It's a nuance of Brickshelf I haven't really figured out yet. Either way, he's really maximizing the potential of this playset with an array of scenes, some goofy and some not. I've included some of my faves here, but I recommend a look at the rest. Just excellent work.

Worst arcade ever!

From X-entertainment, "Atlantic City is our setting, as it so often is. My friends and I stopped renting out rooms at the major hotels some time ago -- we only go on weekends, so the room rates are insanely high. You'll shell out 300 bucks just to sleep in a place that's going to take just as much cash for their slots and give nothing back but a few consolation cherries and a comp ticket for a free drink at some subterranean lounge that may or may not exist. Only Weekend Warriors with much cash to burn can stay at the big hotels without feeling like a total sucker, so instead, we hit the streets.

Sadly, even the crappier casino-side street motels have skyrocketed in price this past year. Even at a measly Comfort Inn, where every framed picture tilts at fun house angles and every pillow bears the territorial markings of some underpaid whore, the room rates topple dangerously close to the 300 dollar mark. Now, even if you don't gamble in AC, you go through shitloads of cash. You could probably get a small business venture going for the cost of getting half a load on down there. In that, every penny counts, and the last thing a bunch of overgrown kids want to do is spend half their casino allowance to put their bodies on semen-stained sheets in a hotel that likely doubles as a bordello for people who will pay to sleep with animals.

Finally, we found a few hotels that lowered the curve with semi-reasonable room rates. Not "cheap," but after splitting the price between the forty-six people we snuck up there, we still had enough leftover to get one of those misshapen novelty pennies that, ironically enough, cost 51 cents.




The Quality Inn! Nowhere near as terribly seedy as our last hotel in AC, but even with that distinction, it couldn't possibly be more than a one-star affair. The staff was nice enough, fitting our only criteria of not at all caring as we walked past them towards the elevators holding enough alcohol to drown the Trump Marina. The real issue my friends had was with the distance from our hotel to the fabled Atlantic City boardwalk. It wasn't much more than seven or eight blocks, but when you consider that every part of Atlantic City not literally attached to a casino is a slum filled with murderers and space aliens who moonlight as murderers, walking seven or eight blocks in the dark of night might cost you a lot more than 300 bucks.

It was I who foolishly pushed for Quality Inn to get our exclusive reservation. I came up with ten thousands reasons and excuses for it, but in truth, I just wanted a hotel that had a game room. According to the Quality Inn's promotional materials, they indeed had a game room. I envisioned a wonderful winding down after a night full of gambling and general debauchery, pumping quarters into video games without a care in the world. After all, during past trips I've spent hundreds on Bally's "Pac-Man" slots. Now I could play the real thing for hours and probably spend as much as it'd cost to get an expired Dr. Pepper out of the hotel's crusty vending machine. It all seemed so right, and after convincing my friends that this insipid hotel was clearly the perfect choice, I gleefully marched towards the game room and prepared to cash in on a selljob well done.

The good news: Quality Inn wasn't lying. They had a game room.

The bad news: At some point in the past, perhaps as long as a decade ago, a rogue bear attacked the game room and ate anything of worth.




What treasures are waiting to be found? Scroll and see...



In a small room near the lobby, the worst game room of all time patiently awaits its next victim. Perhaps, from a distance through dirty glasses, it doesn't seem too offensive. Indeed, there's plenty of sparse game rooms littering hotels across the world. What makes this one so much worse? It's not an easy thing to pinpoint, but the faint smell of rotting broccoli and dead fish may play a significant part.

The evil game room, save for two newer soda machines, doesn't seem to have had any renovations for nearly a decade. Hasn't been cleaned, either. In a place like Atlantic City, where every footprint is marked by residual puddle water and dog shit, the fact that the game room hadn't been vacuumed since 1971 puts it at the mound with one strike already against it. The walls, for their part, bore more filthy handprints than that idiot who got gang-raped in Showgirls.

Course, you're looking at that picture and might be thinking that it doesn't look too bad. It's got a few games...bitch even has a pinball machine. Let's delve deeper, because using the term "delve deeper" makes me feel accomplished.




The heart of Quality Inn's game room were these three machines, representing the industry's distant past and nearer past, but certainly not the present or future. Ehyuyh. If three games doesn't sound all that terrible, consider this: only one of them worked, and it's the least desirable of the three. Also the filthiest. Let's break it down...




"Ms. Pac-Man" was incredibly out of order -- in fact, it was so out of order that the hotel staff felt the need to cover the machine with not one, but several hand-drawn "out of order" signs. I love this game, and probably would've given the entire room a free pass had it worked. No such luck. Upon closer inspection, the joystick was covered in what appeared to be either kid snot or General Tso's chicken sauce. Perhaps the non-working Ms. Pac Man machine was a blessing in disguise.

I'll never understand why Ms. Pac's pineapple bonuses were worth more than the cherries. The only people who'd pick pineapples over cherries are native Zimbabweans who still think fruit pits are gods who dictate the weather. You can see why this is a moot point, since Zimbabwe is the only country in the entire world that doesn't have a grizzled Ms. Pac-Man machine on every other street corner.




The second game -- and the only one that worked -- was called "Sharpshooter." I'm not very familiar with it, mostly because of a lifelong neurosis that precludes me from playing any video game that requires gun-shooting pantomimes in a public setting. Everyone will look at me, I just know it. From what I could tell, players aim their pistols at an eclectic combination of circus clowns and big flowers wearing sunglasses. I dunno, though...could've been the glare.

The guns were, of course, so absolutely covered in grime that I couldn't be completely sure some varmin' hiding behind the soda machines wasn't going to pop out and claim victory at gluing my hand to a video game pistol immediately after putting my coins in the slot. And that was a best case scenario kind of vision -- it could've been covered in substances much worse than glue. Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed the Eye of Sauron lurking precisely between each player's gun and color coordinated button, to the South. I keep waiting for the two tiny buttons to make out.




Finally, Capcom's "X-Men Vs. Street Fighter." I had "Street Fighter II" for the Super Nintendo, and was pretty good at it. The arcade versions were a different story. All of the SF games always seemed to have a crowd around 'em. If you were going to throw quarters in those machines, your skills had to be at least passably adequate enough to show off in front of 55 strangers of all sorts of cultural backgrounds. Mine weren't. I'd pick Blanka and be all confused when the 110-pound Chinese chick managed to kick the shit out of him. I chose the safer path of standing amongst the crowd, cheering and pretending that I knew what the fuck was going on.

Yet, I'd always plop my quarters in on the rare occasions when an SF game had no such surrounding crowd. I would've done the same for "X-Men Vs. Street Fighter." I picture using the sumo guy to kick Colossus in the crotch just a split second before protective mutant metal could grow over it. Alas, it doesn't work. Since the game had only broken in the past five years as opposed to Ms. Pac-Man's fifteen, nobody had gotten around to putting those "out of order" signs up yet. Its death is a surprise of the worst kind. Inside the corpse, a family of raccoons bring three more babies into the fold. They too are rabid.




Say, how do you feel about ice cream? Fan of the ice cream? Maybe it'll help soften the punch of Quality Inn's video game assortment. You've got three different kinds of ice cream bars to choose from, and they'll only cost you a buck and a half each. Finally, Atlantic City has a stereotypical bargain to match Vegas' gamut of three dollar all-you-can-eat buffets. There's just one little problem...




It's filled with crap, and I know what you're thinking. It's just gooey melted ice cream. Gross, but not too gross. You don't want to touch it, but even if you were unable to keep the ice cream wrapper from touching it, it wouldn't be a dealbreaker.

No, no no no. Even if you want to believe it's ice cream -- and it's not -- please scroll back up and check out the photo of the dreaded machine. See that poster thing depicting all the assorted cones and sundaes a person could conceivably get if the machine suddenly morphed into a better model that actually sold cones and sundaes? Posters like that haven't been produced in at least, what, fifty years? If those are just ice cream stains inside the love tunnel, they're stains that have been fermenting and cultivating other stains for decades. If they've somehow attained sentience, they might grab your hand and eat it.

Sadly, it isn't ice cream. We thought it was, too. The smell suggested otherwise, but what else could it be? Upon closer inspection and several debates, we hadn't solved the case, but we universally agreed that the substance inside was definitely not ice cream. My personal theory, illustrated by a crudely drawn storyboard, involved a large, old, dirty man hopping up and down with his ass exposed, desperately trying to hit what the crazy men call "hundred point targets." It got a few nods of agreement from my cohorts. So yeah, the ice cream machine has shit all over it.




Feeling winded? Take an imaginary seat. This table, the only table, was thrown in a corner by the soda machines and seems to have taken on the new identity of a trash receptacle, what with all the ice cream wrappers and half-empty cans of Pepsi Lite strewn around it. Conventional wisdom paints it as a convenient baby-changing table for gambling parents on the go. That's even worse than the shit in the ice cream machine.




Hey hey! "World Cup Soccer '94 Pinball!" A cute puppy holding a trophy! Lights that were actually blinking and whistles we could really hear! Maybe this would be the game room's unlikely avenger!




Nah, sorry, it didn't work. Lights were flashing and assorted noises blasted through and through, but all I got for my fifty cents was the right to tell people that a pinball machine stole fifty cents from me. I took this right to the front desk and demanded a refund. They gave me a quarter and said they couldn't be held responsible for me being an idiot by putting fifty cents into what was clearly marked as a quarter machine. We gave each other cold stares, at least until some hobo waddled in and wondered loudly if anyone had a quarter to spare. Then we laughed. It all fit together so well.

"World Cup Soccer '94 Pinball" looked like it would've been fun, though. I bet, if you got the right bonus, that cartoon dog on the teaser art would pop out of the giant half-soccer ball, bachelor party style. If he doesn't, they blew a great opportunity there.




A "Big Choice" crane machine! A classic! And it works! Nothing could stop the game room from rocking now. My love for crane machines is outmatched only by my love for the Cosby Show episode where Rudy and Olivia battled over who got to play with the leashed toy duck. Olivia won, because Rudy was going through puberty and nobody wanted to side with what she looked like.

Just one small issue, here. I've always preached about how it didn't matter what was inside a crane machine -- it was all about the thrill of winning. It's a Man Versus Machine tale, and if you think about it, that's a Hell of a lot more worthy than an X-Men Versus Street Fighter tale. I fought valiantly for this ideal, believing in it without flaw. You were paying for the joy of craning, and the prizes were terminally secondary. Only now do I realize the kink in my beliefs. Somehow, I've only ever played at crane machines where at least one of the prizes was negligibly interesting. Quality Inn's crane machine is something else entirely. It's a crane machine filled with the kind of stuff that creates a need for the stern government over one's own subconscious, because the unseen brain will never permit its shell to willfully expend efforts in winning such completely shitty, worthless prizes.




God, I'm in the card shop of a hospital in Taiwan. On second thought, I didn't notice that cool koala while at the hotel. I was too blinded by Generic Red Bear -- straight from a Coca-Cola Christmas photo shoot where Santa spills his sack of toys all over someone's roof. The machine clearly didn't deserve to carry the "Big Choice" moniker, and I'm going to start a petition about this real real soon.




It's not just a vending machine for snacks. It's also a vending machine for the unprepared hotel guest...




All of the basic grooming needs are covered. Razors, shaving cream, toothpaste, toothbrushes, aspirin, shampoo and Sour Skittles.

As is always the case with such dilapidated vending machines, adventurers are sure to find food of only the most foreign and outdated kind. This has become a little game for me -- it's an aboveground time capsule, constructed years ago by a family of well-doers from the candy industry. There were a couple of items of impressive age in the machine, but while this one seems to be perfectly recent, it's by far the most interesting...




Snyder's Hot Buffalo Wing Potato Chips. Holy Christ. It's like they took a bunch of regular ridged chips, wiped 'em along the sides of long discarded Domino's Pizza buffalo wing boxes, sacked 'em up and shipped 'em into the stomachs of unsuspecting chicken and potato fans nationwide. Most people would have a hard enough time picturing a chicken-flavored potato chip that sounds remotely palatable, but even if you can, it's not this. The chips have an aftertaste similar to that of stained glass flux, something I was admonished for experiencing early on during 7th grade shop class. They smell like an attic that's had a lot of creatures die in it.

From the back of the bag: "Imagine a plate of sizzling chicken wings smothered in tangy hot sauce. Snyder's of Hanover captures this flavor with Hot Buffalo Wing Potato Chips. If you love chicken wings, these chips are for you!" If that's the pitch they're going with, I think we need to call Don West in for this one.

And yet, buying the bag was all worth it. One of the potato chips was shaped just like Pac-Man.




I could not play his wife, but I could eat his chip. Can a buffalo wing potato chip shaped like Pac-Man save the reputation of an otherwise hideous Atlantic City game room?"

And speaking of alternate universes...

The birthplace of the original Jeff & Jeff's Pandemonium is on the block! And look what they've done to her! Yes, this is my old house, the one I grew up in. It's all foofy these days. Check out all the info here. I recommend looking at the 360 degree views -- not only is it weird beyond weird, but checking out the "pool" one is the only way to figure out what the hell they did to the kitchen (they knocked down the wall between kitchen and dining room, but they also made the ceiling higher. Crazy stuff.

Lego Reports Return to Profitability

Lego Reports Return to Profitability

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Danish toy maker Lego Group said Wednesday it returned to profitability in 2005 and expects to post a profit in 2006, while warning that it expected a "difficult year" and will move at least some production facilities to low-wage countries.

The privately owned group famous for its colored plastic building blocks posted a net profit of 505 million kroner (euro68 million; US$81 million) in 2005, compared with a net loss of 1.93 billion kroner in 2004, on strong sales led by its Bionicle line of snap-together creatures. The company doesn't give quarterly figures.

"I consider the results satisfactory in view of the very difficult market in which we are operating," said CEO Joergen Vig Knudstorp.

The furor over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad has led to a widespread boycott in many Muslim countries of goods from Denmark.

But even though Lego is one of the country's best-known international brands, the company said the boycott has had very little effect on its bottom line.

"The Middle East is only around 0.2 percent of our turnover, so it's really a very small part of our sales," said spokeswoman Charlotte Simonsen. "We know that some shops have removed our products from their shelves, but it's not a general picture; some have and some have not."

In addition to the Bionicle line, the group said it also saw growth in its preschool Duplo line, as well as classic products such as Lego City and license-based lines like the Lego Star Wars products.

Overall revenues were up 12 percent to 7.05 billion kroner (euro945 million; US$1.12 billion) in 2005, compared to 6.32 billion kroner the year before.

"The increase in revenue is attributable to global sales increases," Lego said in a statement. "Despite the general recession for traditional toys, the Lego Group has captured market shares on most markets."

After experiencing its worst year in its history in 2003, Lego embarked on an elaborate recovery plan that included increased focus on its classic products.

As part of that plan, Lego announced last August it was closing a production facility in Switzerland and five distribution centers in Denmark, Germany and France, and moving the operations to the Czech Republic.

Also in 2005, the company sold off its four Legoland amusement parks to the U.S.-based private equity group Blackstone Capital Partners for euro375 million.

The company said it would continue to focus on profit by streamlining its operations "which will involve transferring production _ in whole or in part _ to low-pay countries."

"2006 will be another difficult year for the Lego Group," the company said. "The size of the global toy market is still expected to decrease, and the suppliers of traditional toys will therefore still be facing strategic challenges."

Lego said it is eyeing a pretax profit of 500 million kroner (euro67 million; US$80 million) in 2006.

"In the coming years, we will first of all concentrate on improving the group's profitability," Vig Knudstorp said. "This will be done through streamlining and cost savings. Not until satisfactory profitability has been ensured will we turn towards sales growth."

The Lego Group is a family-owned company, based in Billund, which employs some 5,600 people worldwide. Though the company is not publicly listed it has published earning reports since 1997.

Founded in 1932, Lego's name was invented by combing the first two letters of the Danish words "Leg godt" (play well) without knowing then that the word in Latin means "I assemble."

Longshot

And here's your damn Longshot figure, Summerisle. Looks like they got his number of fingers right (he's got 4 on each hand, counting thumb). In the comic that bandolier he's wearing was full of weighted throwing blades, much like that one in his hand but obviously much smaller. This is from the era when Toybiz was making good figures, although this character was never really all that great. He's got a mullet, for one thing.