Apologies to the Green Frisbee

Okay, I take it back.  The green frisbee I got from Toy Kingdom last Christmas isn't so bad actually.

And besides it's not really green but kinda neon--never mind if it's not professional looking and instead has Ben Ten emblazoned in the middle.  

Contrary to my previous assumptions that it will just hopelessy blend with the grass and get lost among bushes and all sorts of vegetation, the frisbee actually fared well in the green green land of Eco Park.  (Which is to say, I'll have to buy a new replacement toy gift, because after three months of successfully refraining from opening the frisbee's plastic package, I finally open the seal, and now the frisbee has got scratches everywhere.)

So in the green green land of Eco Park, me and Edge were the intrepid hurlers who went picking up our PhP 69 green flying disc among the bushes more times than we managed to catch it in midair.  

But the point is, the green color wasn't a problem, and it was just us who had slow, slippery palms.

I can't help but wonder though how come the professional frisbees at the sports stores cost a bomb.  Those things go for as much as PhP 700.  Hi-grade plastic?  Heavier more stable weight?  Better air-sailing capacity?  Or maybe it's the more professional look?  For now though, the cheap Ben Ten flying disc will have to do.

Retro Toy | Cootie. (Without the s)

Today's Retro Toy: Cootie

Cootie, without the s, or you'll end up with the fictional disease we scare kids with so they'd behave.

Incidentally, the word cootie first appeared in a World War I memoir by Albert Depew , in which he describes the horrors of unimaginable pests and vermins that inhabit trenches where soldiers wade in regularly.  Incidentally also, cooties may have come from kuto, which is the Filipino word for the dreaded head lice, a good enough theat to keep kids from playing outside, especially during hot afternoons when lice is supposedly more rampant.

Anyway, back to the toy.  Cootie is the name of the tabletop game created by William Schaper in 1948.  The object of the game: be the first to build the bug creature by rolling the correct number in a die.

In 2003, the Toy Industry Association included Cootie in its "Century of Toys List", a list of the 100 most influential and memorable toys we've come to love.

Practical Uses for the Pet Rock

Tired of your lazy Pet Rock?  Reincarnate it into something with a more practical use so it doesn't just sit idly on your desk waiting for kingdom come.

Here's a few roles your Pet Rock is all too willing to jump in for a more purpose-driven life or something like that.

1. A paper weight

2. A door wedge

3. A stone for stone soup (wash well first)

4. A new addition to the aquarium

5. Something to throw at giant rats, intruders, the like.

6. A barrier for your potted plants so the chickens don't go scratching it empty.

7. For the picnic blanket on a windy day

8. A blank canvas for kids' art hour.

9. A weight for the dish cover

10. Something to save your seat on the waiting bench

11. A weight for those wobbly desk calendars

Captain America Inspires the Skinny People Everywhere

Skinny, Pre-Captain America days

So Chris Evans played the role of Johhny Storm aka The Human Torch. 

And now, come July 2011, he's going to be Captain America.  So that's two Marvel superheroes already.  Wow, he's really bankable.  Or Hollywood is running out of good actors who can fill in superhero suits.

Somehow, I prefer to have separate actors for separate superhero roles.  I mean, if you've already played Human Torch, don't take the role of another superhero.  I can't imagine Tobey Mcguire being reincarnated as Moon Knight, for instance, after a disappointing stint as Spiderman in Spiderman 3, or Robert Downey Jr. cast as, say, Michael Pointer, no matter if he was great as Iron Man.

Ya know, we don't have amnesia.  The roles tend to stick to the actors, so I don't like them changing into a new superhero role as if they were just slipping out of spandex--which essentially, is what happens anyway.

* * *

In

Captain America: The First Avenger

, by the way, we get to see Chris Evans transform from skinny, sickly Steve Rogers to the serum-injected chemically-enanced buff Captain America.

Think Christian Bale in the Machinist but without the crash diet and fatal starvation.  Just good camera angling and lots of CGI manipulation.  (In YouTube, one comment kiddingly thanks Justin Bieber for lending his body for the Steve Rogers role. :)

So.  There's hope for the skinny people everywhere after all, failed as they are by all those high-protein diets and trips to the gym just because their genes have dictated this is as far as their body's gonna get.  Now if we can only find that Super Soldier serum.

Captain America: The First Avenger stars Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, and Hayley Atwell.

Pet Rock

Now who in their right mind would buy a rock marketed as a pet?

Apparently, lots of people--good enough to turn Gary Dahl into a shotgun multi-millioner in 1975. 

Six months was all it took for the advertising executive to market plain old rocks to people who were fed up with their high-maintenance pet dogs and cats and African lovebirds and iguanas and discus fish.

Those were indeed crazy times, and a fad is a fad. 

Sold for  $3.95, the Pet Rock kit included:

1. A plain old rock (gathered from a beach in Mexico)
2. Hay, to keep the rock cozy and comfortable
3. A custom cardboard box, complete with breathing holes
4. A training manual to get your pet rock house-trained, and teach it new tricks which include sit, stay, play dead, roll over, and the very easy attack--the latter involving ample wrist control from the pet owner.

And because the rocks were just sourced for about 65 cents, the box and training manuals for under 30 cents, and the hay for virtually nothing (a $3 profit for every rock)--5 million dollars of sales in just six months propelled Dahl into millionaire status all of a sudden.

Of course, the only drawback of the Pet Rock: you can't post a ridiculous number of pictures of you and your geological pet on Facebook--like so many cat lovers or dog lovers or iguana lovers or African lovebird lovers or discus fish lovers out there--without looking like a fool. 

But then again, why not?

Max's Mud: A New Name for Clay

We already know that Play-Doh was originally intended to be a wallpaper cleaner in the 1930's  by one Noah McVicker.  Not exactly the kind of plaything you would want your kid to toy with on a daily basis--especially considering kids' penchant for putting all sorts of things in their mouth.

Enter Max’s Mud Organic Sculpting Dough by Planet Happy Kids.  (No relation to Mad Max the film, although keeping in mind this little word jumble should give better product recall--remember they're up against Play-Doh.

Anyways, Max's Mud is certified kid-safe and all-natural.  Sure Play-Doh is non-toxic, being made of flour, water, salt, silicone oil, and boric acid, but you'll be glad to know Max's Mud is the creation of an ex-pastry chef.  Certainly beats the wall paper origins any time.

As such, this no-gluten, fragrance-free sculpting clay is made of 100% organic rice flour, jojoba oil and vegetable-based colorants--safe enough to pop into your mouth, although you had better be eating a sandwich instead.

Being a child of the 80's, however, I swear by Play-Doh of course.

A Madder Look at Alice in Wonderland

Certainly not your regular Alice simply lost in Wonderland.

This time around, the girl is mad, mad, mad, I tell you (maybe the Mad-Hatter finally rubbed off on her.)  Or maybe, her family got killed in a fire in their house and it was all too much for poor Alice.

In

Alice: Madness Returns

--American McGee's dark-and-macabre-as-ever sequel to Alice--Alice is finally released from Routledge Asylum, where for ten years she has been under the care of Dr. Heironymous Wilson.  But alas, Alice is still a nutcase, and Wonderland and all its inhabitants (including the Chesire Cat, White Rabbit, and Queen of Hearts) are warped more than ever courtesy of Alice's own deeply-twisted mind.

Thankfully, the heroine is armed with a badass Vorpal sword (from Lewis Carroll's Jaberwocky poem), so you know you'll be fighting in style.

Alice: Madness Returns is set to be released this 2011. 

Expect Lewis Carroll to turn in his grave, but for the right reasons.

* * *

Notable: Chris Vrenna's wonderfully eerie soundtrack made entirely out of toy instruments and percussion, music boxes (reputedly a Fisher-Price music box pocket radio), clocks, doors, and various convulutions of female voices--all lending an nightmarishly unstable quality to the game.

* *  *

Incidentally, there is an actual medical condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) in which the sufferer has a distorted perception of the shape and size of his or her body and/or parts of it, much like Alice drinking the potion that shrunk and bloated her.  Distance perception is a problem too among sufferers, as well as losing the sense of time.  AIWS has nothing to do with bad eyesight; it's bad neurons that's causing problems.

Fortunately, the condition is treatable with anti-migraine pills, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and beta blockers.

Retro Toy | Labyrinth Puzzle by Brio

The classic puzzle Labyrinth by Brio circa 1940's.

Goal: By skillfully working the left and right knobs, navigate the marble through a complex of maze while avoiding the pits that would send you right back to the start.

Requirements: Excellent hand-&-eye coordination, sturdy and stable wrists, and lots of patience.

The updated version of Labyrinth

It's Horse-Folding Time

Pegasus, by Satoshi Kamiya

Pegaso, by Anibal Voyer

Chapter Seven: In Which Their "Favorite" TV Show Machete Ends

--And we are watching this because...?  It's a wooden-statue-turned-real-man with wooden acting, for timber's sake!

--I heard they're axing the show.  Get it? Axe!

--So all the more reason we have to stay tuned.  They'll be bringing out the guns, and fireworks, and impromptu cameos, and ridiculous plot twists, and tacky special effects in a last ditch attempt to wow the audience. But we'll just snicker at their giant fail of a remake.

--But I'm afraid I'm easily wowed, Dinkie.

--We'll switch to static snow from time to time if the drama becomes too overbearing.

Effing Meteors

As if the earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan and the earth's axis being moved by about 4 inches weren't enough, doomsayers have also began broadcasting their reassuring claims about the end of the world on the particularly sprightly day of December 21, 2012.  Nice, but our interest kinda fades.

What is it exactly about the apocalypse that lures us, good enough to buy tickets to see a gimmicky Roland Emmerich flick?  The spectacular destruction?  The romanticized disaster scene?  The vicarious futile hope for the doomed people.  The regrets of things unsaid, things not done?
 
Whatever it is, the end of the world scenario is an excellent motivator, keeping everyone on their feet.

Sick and tired of the doomsayers' fascination with the Mayan calendar and other gruesome endings for planet Earth?  

Try Effing Meteor, a free flash-based arcade game where you play the role of an invisible force/a malignant sentient out to destroy every possible world in the entire universe. 

Your job will be like Shiva the Destroyer, but in this case you harness and gather a random rain of meteors into the kind that will inflict grand-scale irreparable damage and mass-extinction in your target world.   

Finally, a game that confirms for us that an effing meteor the size of Africa or larger was the reason why the dinosaurs went kaput, although here the giant lizards aren't exactly helpless as they shoot laser beams from their eyes to wreck your meteors.

Effing Meteors is brutal and ruthless yes, but at least you're not rubbing off any bad vibe on anyone like the next froth-mouthed doomsayer out there.

* * *

We hope everything turns out okay for everyone in Japan.  There is surely something to learn from the composure and presence of mind the Japanese people have exhibited in trying times like these.

Spot the Difference

Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, circa 1975

Adrianne Palicki as Wonder Woman in NBC's 2011 TV series to be penned by David E. Kelly

It's Ludo from Labyrinth!

Jim Henson's gentle beast named Ludo, rendered as a (much-too-hairy) plush toy.  And just as in the 1986 film Labyrinth, Ludo is still laconic as ever.

* * *

Honestly, I haven't seen the film yet, though we (still) have the Famicom game cartridge (sent by my uncle from Japan) and have played it hundreds of times but just got helplessly lost in the maze, forever stunned by a swarm of evil fairies.  Maybe you're supposed to watch the film first so you know what you're doing, or you'll just end up going in circles.  The Japanese characters in the video game weren't any help either (Apparently, Labyrinth the video game was released only in Japan).  

I remember playing the game back in the late 80's/early 90's and thinking to myself, golly, I'd like to be in a real, actual maze too, and see if I can find my way out in time.  I didn't really say golly in my head, but there you go.


Thankfully, like all good game titles with stand-alone appeal, Labyrinth is frustratingly itchy fun in its own right, and so watching the film isn't exactly a prerequisite for enjoying the game, because hey, I enjoyed it.


Oh, I have an idea.  Maybe they can make a sequel to Labyrinth, and cast Jennifer Connelly again.  An older Sarah, with her younger brother, both grown up now.  Let's keep the Goblin King ageless and still androgynous though in the hands of David Bowie.  I hope they kept the puppets dust-free all these years.  But with Jim Henson long departed, who's going to direct it as beautifully (I've been told) as he did?  I'm lost.

Make a Toy Out of Urban Paper

If you like tinkering with paper but don't have the patience for the rigors of origami, there's paper toys.  This book, Urban Paper by Matt Hawkins, in particular has ready-to-cut patterns (26 all in all) for amazing designer toys, and a DVD to boot.  The DVD includes both finished and blank templates, a tutorial, interviews with the toy designers, and 33 bonus templates).

(At Amazon, Urban Paper sells for just $14.  Get it here.)

* * *

Sure, paper toys have got none of origami's purist only-from-a-single-sheet-of-square-paper quality, but designing and structuring these nifty paper models can be a real challenge.  

And while some origamists are wary about publicly distributing their diagrams as if their precious models were a closely-guarded secret, paper toymakers seem bent on the opposite: disseminate everywhere is the motto.

Which is why you can easily download the patterns (think the dotted line drawings you cut out of the back of cereal and pretzel boxes) and print them on good sturdy paper.  With just a few snips of the scissors here and there, some folds where indicated, and a dollop of glue to keep the thing together, you get something crazy like this:

Whimsical, cartoonish, and unapologetically fun, these pop-art -inspired paper toys are bold lines and colors and demeanor all throughout.   

Typically Lego | This Used to Be My Childhood Toy #10

From the Toyspedia inbox half a month ago.  (I'm sorry I didn't check sooner.)

The humble Lego block appropriated as a ring

"I stumbled into your site today.  I would have to say my favorite childhood toy was lego.  Sounds sooo typical I know, but those 20 or so initial shapes really forced you to engineer your builds."

* * *

I never had a Lego set.  My cousins had them, and my parents probably felt I can always play with them provided my cousins had the sharing spirit in them, which thankfully they had.  Still, nothing beats having your very own Lego. 

End of sappy story.  Anyway, to Mr. George Vamos, thank you very much, for the email. 

The S in Screature

This is the dinosaur you do not want to meet in the forest on a rainy night: the Dilophosaurus.

The venom-spitting and dramatic neck-frill in the film Jurassic Park have no scientific basis though, and it's just, according to Michael Crichton, creative license at work.  Too bad for actor Wayne Knight.

* * *

This is the same Dilophosaurus rendered in toy form, simply called Screature ($39.75 at Amazon). 

From creators D-Rex, the one-foot high interactive Screature spits (thankfully water not eye-blinding venom) if you're not good to him.  With infrared sensors, Screature can be set on guard mode to guard your stuff, he spits and bites, remember?  Don't expect the chap to walk though because he can't.  But this toy dinosaur is interactive all right.  He just spits and snaps his jaws and makes loving gurgling sounds or ferocious growls depending on your petting style, flares his neck frills, and then spits some more.  Spit, spit, spit.

Water reservoir is disappointingly small though--which is why I only got as far as three spits--actually the animatronics toy packs in as much as 10 squirts.

Here's something from McDonald's Happy Meal circa 1995 or thereabouts: a toy dinosaur (I'm too lazy to track down the exact species.)  Not being animatronics and just a wind-up toy, the dinosaur's movement is limited to a simple up and down motion.  And it's been in the bathroom for the last nine years or so.

Batman: Arkham City Trailer

Batman: Arkham City

Is this just the trailer or the game cutscene?  Either way, it's impressive graphics.  Don't you just wish Autumn 2011 were here already?

Let's Have A(n Origami) Ball!

Thanks to one Mitsonobu Sonobe, there is such a wonderful thing in the world as a sonobe unit--a parallelogram (such as below)


which you fold from a piece of square paper and which you combine with other sonobe units to build something like this:

Pentakis dodecahedron: requires 30 modules

Or if you have lots of time in your hands, and are up to the challenge, something like this:

A whopping 270-unit sonobe ball

Obviously, the more sonobe units, the more-faceted ball you end up with.  Three modules give you, well, a basic pyramid called Toshie's Jewel (named after Toshie Takahama), while lots and lots of the modules will give you something grand, not to mention a headache.

This sonobe ball of mine is a modestly-sized project: just 12 units, not too few you get bored easily, and not too many you feel overwhelmed by fiber.  I've had this for three years now--taught to me by my then 9 year old cousin.  I prefer using cardboard for the modules for a sturdier ball you can throw around anytime.

 How to fold the sonobe unit?

Sonobesan is not the only guy responsible for modular units.  Check out Robert Neale's and Tomoko Fuse's works too.  This module, for instance, creates a more stellated dodecahedron.

So Who's the Next, Er Younger Lara Croft?

Angelina Jolie reportedly says she's sealing her involvement in the Tomb Raider franchise.  So far, she says she's happy with the last film in 2003: Lara Craft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life.

"The first one [Lara Croft: Tomb Raider] kind of frustrated us, because we were trying something new. The second one, I felt like that's kind of how I wanted to do it, and I don't really feel the need to do another one," says Jolie.

Which is all right because producer Graham King is planning on a "young and dynamic" Lara Croft for the Tomb Raider reboot.

They can, of course digitally erase the years off Angelina's face, like they did to her hubby Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, but in the end, it's still up to the actress.

* * * 

Now, for the game to be released this 2001 by Square Enix, succinctly-titled Tomb Raider.   

This being the origins game, Lara Croft is just 21 years old, stranded on an island after having been shipwrecked, and must constantly find water and food and fend for herself whilst grappling with her new self-discovery about her fondness for ransacking ancient tombs.  

Game Informer warns the new Tomb Raider will be dark and gritty (note Lara Croft's bloodily stranded photo), somewhere along the lines of the new Batman Arkham City and James Bond.  Nice.

* * *

Sidebar: Frankly, Lara Croft's ultra-short shorts aren't great, on a pragmatic point of view.  If you're a tomb raider and you explore craggy caves and all, you'd better put on something longer that'll amply protect those supple legs and all.  

Then again, no one likes to watch a prude raiding tombs.

Toy Robots with a Moral

This toy blog's borrowed image model: the Wii Cardboard box robot created by Japanese designer Kiyohiko Azuma in 2007 for the comedy manga Yotsuba&!.  The toy robot goes by the name "Danboard".

And since we're showing recycled robots, here's more:

Me likey this black one. :)

Ruro, the Japanese-speaking robot advocating recycling.

And here's a blunt one (the poster not the robot) advocating the proper disposal of e-waste.   
 
Nokia, btw, has bins where you can chuck off your broken cellphones and chargers, dead batteries, and other beyond-repair electronics.

Maxwell Widens His Vocabulary

Ernest Hemingway was a writer who disfavors adjectives.  True, his terse writing, influenced by his being a journalist, may have won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, but I don't think Maxwell would like that.

In Super Scribblenauts, released October last year by 5th Cell, the game's character named Maxwell, discovers the many wonderful brilliant outrageous insane uses of adjectives as modifiers of noun.  

Previously in Scribblenauts, Maxwell was just conjuring nouns out of thin air so he can collect those prized Starites, but why stop at just nouns?  So in Super Scribblenauts, game designer Jeremy Slaczka and his team introduced adjectives--which will certainly get gamers fumbling for more imaginative modifiers than just cool or nice or great or even super. 

In the sequel, you type an adjective to describe your noun, say weightless dinosaur--or even a string of adjectives--weightless transparent winged angry puce dinosaur--and you get what you wish for.  

And hopefully that exact apparition helps Maxwell get out of his current conundrum.  The game, by the way, has 120 puzzles all in all, a little short especially for the particularly eloquent types, but still, for all the brain activity it subjects us to, Super Scribblenauts is a winner.

As in the original Scribblenauts trademarked terms and vulgar/profane terms are a no-no, so typing in Barney dinosaur or f*#%ing dinosaur won't get you anywhere.  I've yet to try typing in existential to see what happens.  Even sexy isn't recognized at all.

I bet this would make Ernest Hemingway reconsider.

 

* * *

The Super Scribblenauts scores so far...

Metacritic 81%

Game Rankings 82.33%

Nintendo Game Magazine 86%

How I Got From Cyclops to Michael Pointer

Bear with me on this one as I'm not a comic geek, and whatever limited knowledge of the Marvel universe I have was communicated to me by that long-defunct TV cartoon classic X-Men and the films thereafter.  I'm just tracing a process, so if you're an expert, please don't rub it in.

Anyway, I was wondering the other night how Cyclops' strength measure up against all the others' in the Marvel universe.  Obviously he's no Thor or Silver Surfer, but still...

1. Cyclops' powers are: Optic energy beams and intuitive spatial geometry.

2. But what the heck is intuitive spatial geometry?  A good sense of direction?  Apparently, Cyclops can manipulate his energy beams with surgical precision, and can even reflect his beams and bounce them off many different surfaces in rapid succession.

3. Then I read about Cyclops' beam being able to pierce through the Blob.  What?  The Blob has unpierceable skin?  Well, I guess he's not a blob for nothing.

4. So off I go reading about the Blob.  And sure enough, he's got Superhuman strength, endurance, durability and resilience, and a personal gravity field.  Currently, the Blob is depowered though.

5. What's a personal gravity field, you ask?  Apparently, having your own personal gravity field, like the Blob, can make you practically immovable as long you have contact with the ground.  A nice skill to bring to a football field.

6. Those strong enough to make the Blob budge an inch though are the Hulk, Juggernaut, Strong Guy, and Colossus, who burrowed underground and lifted the ground on which the Blob was standing.

7.  But wait, he's currently depowered?  Is this a sort of on and off thing?

8. Turns out in the Decimation storyline, on the fateful day called M-Day, the Scarlet Witch (power:Reality warping, Hex energy) strips off all the power of every mutant in the planet, which includes the Blob.

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada reveals the need for the Decimation storyline: it was a way to keep the number of mutants at bay because after forty years of publishing just about every imaginable mutant power for all occasion has been devised, and things have gotten out of hand.

9. The result millions of mutants lose their power, and only a few hundred (198 to be exact, or if U.S. Government Liaison Henry Peter Gyrich is to be believed) around 300 still.

10. But since the Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy is neither created nor destroyed, all that stripped off superpowers must have gone somewhere.

11.  True enough, all those powers amalgamated into one, and spent a time hovering above earth until it bonded to Michael Pointer, a humble mailman in North Pole, Alaska, with the ability to absorb and manipulate Mutant energy. 

Having siphoned off everyone's power, Michael Pointer thus becomes known as the Collective.  As the Collective, he kills members of the Canadian superhero team Alpha Flight but was later subdued by Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, and the Sentry who dispatches him to Genosha.  Spider-Man later discovers the true nature of the Collective.


And that is how I got from Cyclops to Michael Pointer. 

Getting to Know Pac-Man (More)

No, not him:

 

I mean this Pac-Man.

Pac-Man installation rendered in tin cans.  Thousands of them

Aside from the fact that Pac-Man turns 31 this May 2011, you've probably already read the Yahoo article on the little known secrets of Pac-Man, but here's a link to that anyway: Five Things You Didn't Know About Pac-Man.

Now I can't wait to see if Blinky the red ghost really does relentlessly stalk Pac-Man. 

 

The Eco-Conscious Doll House

Notice the wind turbine, the solar-paneled roof, the water barrel for collecting rainwater, the electricity-powered scooter, and the ample open-air ventilation of the structure.

Certainly not your average doll house.

It's the eco-conscious doll house or simply Eco Home by Plan Toys.  Just because the house inhabitants' are crazy about the environment doesn't mean they have to live so sparingly like hobos.  (If you'll notice they even have a huge flat-screen TV, so who said tree-huggers can't have a luxurious lifestyle?)

Sure, they don't have the Sylvanian Families' and Calico Critters' classic charm and immense cuteness, but do those woodland creatures have eco-sense in them like the little in wooden members of Eco Home?  We think not.

* * *

A few other notes:

The Eco Home is built using wood salvaged from rubber trees that no longer produce sap for latex.  A good way to extend the trees' usefulness since they would otherwise be simply cut down and burned to make way for new rubber trees.  

Non-formaldehyde glue and non-toxic water based dyes are used for the toys.

Sylvanian Families

Drawn by Paul O. Zelinsky

I hear Disney's Tangled is nice.  Because I wasn't able to watch it when it hit the theaters, I will just resort to the handsomely-illustrated Rapunzel book, for which Mr. Paul O. Zelinsky won the prestigious Caldecott award in 1997.

Paul O. Zelinsky (1953 - ) is also the man behind the wondrously lyrical drawings in Carl Sandburg's More Rootabagas, another children's book (only PhP 60 at Book Sale some three years ago). 

I remember reading the book for the first time, checking out the wispy drawings now and then, and consulting the book's cover for the name of the illustrator. 

I also remember wondering how painstakingly drawn each blade of grass was and practically every other detail in the scene.  In the surreal country of More Rootabagas, Zelinsky's graceful, quirky and a little lonesome drawings find an apt home.

Here's Mr. Zelinsky eating Belgian waffles.

Retro Toy: M.U.S.C.L.E.

For those with long memories that harken back to the days of Nintendo Famicom, you've probably played this game before but just forgot the title.


M.U.S.C.L.E.  by Bandai.
Gameplay was sluggish, plot and story were essentially nil (not that it mattered), and the wrestlers were hopelessly short-limbed, clunky, and knew only about four kinds of moves: run, jump, knock, and roll.

If you'll notice, the reference to muscle(s) is only implied, as the graphics are too crude to show any real muscle definition.  From afar the wrestlers even look like kids horsing around, unable to inflict any real pain to each other--which, come to think of it, is what real-life wrestlers are all about anyway.

Apparently, the M.U.S.C.L.E. game also has an accompanying toy line (whichever came first I'm not sure).  The action figures (think specially-grooved and carved gum erasers resembling action figures--are 2 inches tall, rendered in flesh-tone pink (or some other monochromatic color), and have no movable joints, but are now considered as vintage, rare collector stuff.

In the Famicom game there's only 8 characters you can choose from, but the toy line features more than 200 of these angry-faced, teeth-grinding guys ready for action.

M.U.S.C.L.E., by the way, stands for Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere.