All posts in Toys

My son loves Imag­inext Dinosaurs, I mean, really loves them, loves them so much that he wants not just one red Tyran­nosaurus Rex but also its part­ner, the looks-just-the-same-except-for-the-color green Tyran­nosaurus Rex. Both are named Razor, by the way, but my son never calls them that. It’s always just “T-rex”. And those T-rexs live, of course, at T-rex Moun­tain. He loves these dinosaurs, which I sup­pose are prob­a­bly the heirs to my old Adven­ture Peo­ple from years ago in the 1970’s. And man, I loved those Adven­ture People.

And the dinosaurs are pretty cool. They move and make noises and stuff like that, but rather than just make them dinosaurs who coex­ist with each other, Fisher Price has turned it into a bat­tle. From the Fisher Price site -

Imagine…a prim­i­tive civ­i­liza­tion of humans and dinosaurs, liv­ing in a lush, green land. One side—the predators—are using up its nat­ural resources, wip­ing out every­thing and every­one that gets in their way. The other side—the ecovores—want to pre­serve their land. And they’re will­ing to fight to make that happen.Will the preda­tors suc­ceed in destroy­ing the land, caus­ing their own extinc­tion? Or will the ecov­ores stop the destruc­tion and make the land a place where dinosaurs and humans can live together peace­fully? In the world of Imag­inext®, any­thing is possible!

Is it pos­si­ble? Really? “If I had a hammer.…”

Let me ask you this — did the preda­tors win? Or the ecovores?

I don’t want to give this away, gen­tle reader, espe­cially if you don’t know how this whole thing ends, but I really, really can’t help myself. I’m sorry. It’s just too dif­fi­cult to keep such spoi­lerific infor­ma­tion all to myself.

Okay, I’ll say it — they both lost!

Here’s how it happened.

The place is Pangea, and our ene­mies, the Preda­tors and the Ecov­ores, are meet­ing up and about to have one of those mother-of-all bat­tles, you see, and there they were, Razor and Rip­per and Slasher and all of their allies, and they were mov­ing in for the kill on Whip, Thun­der, Tank and Ham­mer, when out of the blue, they heard some­thing in the sky. They stopped their run­ning and slash­ing and bit­ing and looked up, quizzi­cally, to the sky.

“ROWR?“
“ROWRROWR!“
“RUHROWR?“
“RUH…ROWR!”

BANG.

And thus died the Imag­inext Dinosaurs as that big comet hit the Earth and destroyed them all. Sadly, they, and their polit­i­cal agen­das, were lost in the com­ing ice age.

Can’t we just let them be toys?

Look at the pic­ture to the left. What is it? Is it the Mil­len­nium Fal­con? Or is it Han Solo’s pal Chew­bacca? Is it both? And what have they done to Chewie’s crotch?

What hath Has­bro wrought?

What you’re look­ing at there is a Star Wars Trans­former, the lat­est in a loooooooong line of Kenner/Hasbro toys that attempt to cap­i­tal­ize off of the (fast fleet­ing) mem­ory of Star Wars in the minds of today’s chil­dren. How can you sex up a line of toys spawned by a 30 year old film for Gen­er­a­tion Wii? Try synergy.

Michael Bay, the rich man’s Uwe Boll, is helm­ing a big screen live action star span­gled ver­sion of the Trans­form­ers that will be hit­ting mil­lions of the­aters near you in the com­ing weeks. Will kids want Trans­form­ers toys after see­ing this film by the man that gave us Pearl Har­bor? It’s hard to say, but I think Has­bro has seen the writ­ing on the walls and know that their 30 year old main­stay is not aging well.

One only has to look at the cur­rent Star Wars site that Has­bro main­tains to see how lit­tle they have left in their arse­nal. First off, kill the music, Has­bro, because you couldn’t have made it much louder. Once you get past the ear-splitting theme music and into the sec­tion that includes the toys by cat­e­gory the bore­dom begins. What is Darth Vader doing rid­ing a motor­cy­cle? It’s pathetic and silly. From the site –

As out­laws, rebels and rene­gades take to the road in a galaxy far, far away, the Star Wars CUSTOMS shop designs and builds awe­some chop­pers with expert pre­ci­sion. These chop­pers are built to the exact spec­i­fi­ca­tions of their own­ers, each with a few spe­cial modifications.

You want speed? You got it. Horse­power? Ditto. Atti­tude? Plenty to spare.

So hop on and hold tight as this cus­tom chop­per cruises all over the galaxy!

Rev it up and let it go for smooth rid­ing action! Detailed chop­per comes with lightsaber.

I guess “If you like Amer­i­can Chop­per, you’ll love Star Wars CUSTOMS!”

Next up is ATTACKTIX, which I think are some sort of nerd-pleasing role play­ing game pieces that can actu­ally shoot/fight/etc.. The prob­lem is that some of the pieces have weapons the size of the char­ac­ter car­ry­ing said weapon. And the pic­ture on the main page of Chew­bacca with a huge wavy hand is not comforting.

Last up is the FORCE BATTLERS, large, car­toony fig­ures that barely resem­ble the char­ac­ters you love (Chew­bacca) or ones you couldn’t care less about (Gen­eral Griev­ous, Jango Fett, Emperor Pal­pa­tine). Each comes with weapons that were prob­a­bly never used by the char­ac­ter (Chew­bacca has a freak­ing shield!) or silly weapons (Pal­pa­tine comes with, get this, balls of energy).

Granted, Star Wars fig­ures were always the hall­mark of the toy line, and Has­bro has come a long way in updat­ing the fig­ures we 6 and 7 year olds horded on the play­ground, but how many times should I buy an R2-D2 fig­ure? Thee or four times? Sure, the lat­est one looks like the real deal and is very detailed, com­pared to that clunky clicky one that I had as a kid.

But then it comes down to eco­nom­ics. Does Has­bro need my money? Star Wars fig­ures aren’t like buy­ing con­sum­ables like milk and bread; you hang onto them and put them away in air­tight bag­gies, pray­ing for that day that some­one will pay you 100X what it was worth when you bought it.

Has­bro, let Star Wars die. You’ve kicked your dead Tauntaun enough. Let it go.

This cre­ation, seen below, is called the Joba Horserid­ing Exer­cise Machine. It is man­u­fac­tured in Japan by Mat­sushita Elec­tri­cal Works, based in Kadoma, Osaka, in con­junc­tion with Nagoya Uni­ver­sity in Nagoya, Japan. It’s being called an “indoor fit­ness machine”.

It offers its user the abil­ity to access a form of horseback-riding ther­apy, which allows the user to get the effect of phys­i­cal exer­cises just by sit­ting on the machine with­out any exer­tion from the user.

The ben­e­fits are clear as it helps stim­u­late sel­dom used mus­cles in the dor­sal and abdom­i­nal regions.

Um…I don’t think the woman in the pic­ture is “exer­cis­ing” in the com­mon ver­nac­u­lar. Look at her face. She sure looks like she’s ben­e­fit­ting those sel­dom used mus­cles in the dor­sal and abdom­i­nal area. Is that the face that you would make if you were rid­ing a horse? Well, she’s rid­ing something…hmm. Well.