X-Men: First Class Trailer

The origin story that tells us why best of friends Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) drifted apart and formed their separate eternally warring factions.  


Notwithstanding the minimalist but tasteless poster for the movie, the trailer for X-Men: First Class is definitely kickin.


Michael Vaughnn directs this prequel.  In theaters June 2011

Whatever Happened to My Lunchbox...

Vintage superhero lunchboxes for the geek in you.

"...whatever happened to my 
whatever happened to my
whatever happened to my lunchbox
when came the day that it got
thrown away and don't you think I should have had some say
in that decision?"



-83, John Mayer

From The Micallef Programme | Job Interview and Toy Dinosaur

Handy Manny Is Ready To Fix

I've often wondered why is it I'm helpless around my Dad's toolshed.  The guy knows how to build anything from scratch.  


Sure, I know the names of the tools--the wrenches, the C-clamp, the vise grip, the rivet gun, the crowbar (or bareta), the plane (or katam), but dislodging a nail and straightening it out are about all the things I can do.  I often think with my eye for details I'd make a good carpenter, but then again the last time I made a screen lid for the compost bin, the thing collapsed after a few days of being lifted.


True, in Baguio me and Edge were able to make a tiny Japanese table out of bamboo, scrap plywood, nails and sturdy string, but I call it a miracle.  In the end, our lopsided table had one leg shorter than the rest, but still it served us well for a good many dinners.

* * *

Anyway, here's a guy who doesn't have to sweat out anything at all: Handy Manny!  His animated tools do all the job for him.


I saw an episode once on TV, where Handy Manny made a door for a butterfly conservatory, and I remember thinking, it's no fair: he's got tools that automatically help.  (If you'll notice in the pic below, Handy Manny's just using a pencil.  The saw does the sawing.)

Enter Fisher Price's Fix-It-Right Manny Repair Shop ($63 at Amazon)


It's the carpentry kit and workbench with an actual blueprint for creating various projects.  There are 20 projects to create, and some 40 parts to tinker with.  Nails, screws, saw, drill, boards--Handy Manny has got them all for your budding carpenter.


Exclusively for boys?  Nah.  Who ever said only boys can be carpenters?

Chapter 8, In Which the Easter Egg Hunt Goes Awry

--I assure you, you won't find it in this quadrant.  This is a dump, it's a giveaway!  The human is much too devious for that.

--Oh sure, the human hid the egg inside the fridge where we're not likely to look.

--I'm saying, why are we looking for that stupid Easter egg in the first place?  Do we get to keep it?  And then what?

--We're looking for an egg?  I thought we were looking for the Colonel's missing sock.




Note: There's an actual Easter Egg hidden in one of the pics above.  Prizes will be announced when I think up of something.

It's Earth Day, so Play Plants Vs. Zombies!

Random thoughts about getting from 43 flags to 49 flags in PvZ.




1. I'm now proud to announce that I've broken my record.  From 43 flags tp 49 flags.  Okay, not exactly a phenomenal bound, more like a tiny leap, but at least it's a record broken.


2. Do the onslaught of zombies ever reach a plateau?


3. They say "tohot" gives unlimited suns, but that doesn't work at all for me.


4. I briefly tried a four-cob cannon setup, but those pesky imp nibbled the poor corns.  


5. For the bungee zombies, I like to use the ice-shrooms.  


6. Zombies I loathe the most, in increasing order of my hatred: Gargantuar, Zomboni (the one that drives the ice machine), and the Jack-in-Box zombies.  


7. True to its name, the Yeti zombie is elusive and has never graced my screen ever before, and so simply remains a set of three question marks on the zombie almanac.  

8.  No, you can't make me sell my Tall-Nuts to Crazy Dave.


9. I wonder what's the next big thing from PopCap games, and if it can ever top Plants vs. Zombies.


10.  It's Earth Day, which is why in my own little way I'm playing PvZ.  (Hey, I also turned the compost heap this morning.  No, seriously, I do have a compost heap in the house.)

Oreo Fun Barbie Doll | Retro Toy

The disastrous merging of Mattel's Barbie and Nabisco's Oreo in 1997: The Oreo Fun Barbie.

Just because little girls love the Oreo biscuits doesn't mean they won't mind it when their beloved doll carries one as a tacky shoulder bag with matching Oreo-inspired outfit. 

Incidentally, the term oreo (black on the outside and white on the inside) means an African American who speaks, acts, and has the values of white guys, often used by blacks insulting their fellow blacks. 

Needless to say, the African American community didn't think this "fun" at all, and the giant biscuit-laden was swiftly pulled out of the toy shelves.

McDonald's Goes Rio

Granted McDonald's Happy Meal cost a bomb.  It's actually the toys you're paying for.  The diminutive burger and fizzy cola are just an afterthought.


But Buyer's Remorse aside, at least you get the whole cast of Rio (the animated film from the makers of Ice Age) in all their plastic glory.   Which is nice.

I have yet to watch Rio though, so in lieu of a movie review, I'm simply and conveniently showing you the poster for the Happy Meal toys instead.  I have a feeling Rio is good, so go grab that Happy Meal, and banish all guilt about the fact you paid scads of money for a little plastic trinket.

Barbie, Lots and Lots of Barbies

• Barbie's inventor is Ruth Handler who was inspired by little adult dolls she saw on a trip to Germany.
• Barbie's first ever attire when she debuted at the American Toy Fair in New York was a black and white striped bathing suit--pretty liberal already.
• Barbie celebrates her birthday on March 9, 1959.
• Barbie's full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
• Unbeknownst to many, Barbie has five sisters: Skipper, Tutti, Stacie, Kelly, and Krissy.
• If Barbie were a real woman, her measurements would be 36-18-38.
• Over the years, Barbie has had about 80 careers already.
• Barbie's first pet was a horse named Dancer.  
• Ken was named after Ruth Handler's son.
• The first Barbie doll with legs that could bend was introduced to the market in 1965.
• Christie was the first African-American Barbie doll, and she was brought to market in 1968.
• Barbie's eyes were adjusted in 1971 to have her looking straight ahead, as opposed to looking sideways.
• Barbie is an animal lover who has had 38 pets over the years. Her animal companions have included cats, dogs, horses, and a lion cub.
• Barbie collector editions are organized into four tiers: Pink (unlimited production), Silver (up to 50,000 units), Gold (up to 25,000 in production), and Platinum (up to 1,000 in production)
• Every second somewhere in the world three Barbie dolls are sold.

The Miniature Action Figure Town of Marwencol

This is not the new promotional ad for Barbie.  This is the fictional city of Marwencol

by Mark Hogancamp done at 1/6 scale.

Marwerncol (a merging of the names of his two lady crushes and his own name) is mostly set in World War II, owing to Hogancamp's being an ex-Navy.

Admittedly, his laborious, surreal dioramas do not have any aesthetic or artistic aspirations, at least in the beginning.  In 2000 Hogancamp was badly beaten in a New York bar by five men, leaving him in a coma for nine days.  He lost some of his memories, his speech, and was unable to walk.  The Marwencol dioramas were his way to regain back a piece of his life.

So when funds were low and he couldn't afford hospital rehab anymore, he took to messing around with his beloved action figures, staging scenes and taking photos of them as a way to pass time and in the process rehabilitate himself as well.

 Each photograph is part of an ongoing narrative, much like a comic book or stills from a movie.  And eventually someone took notice.  (This kind of haunting menagerie is pretty much hard to ignore).  New York galleries exhibited Hogancamp's Nazi-invaded photos, and last year

filmmaker Jeff Malmberg made a documentary about Hogancamp simply called Marwencol.

So I Tried to Buy a Custom Domain and the Purchase Did Not Go Through

...and I ended up not having a live blog for a couple of days, so now I'm back to publishing Toyspedia in Blogger.

Will try to get a domain again, once the trauma of seeing the blog up and gone all of a sudden subsides.


In the meantime, forgive me for this unplanned hiatus.

Dogs That Make You Fetch and Dogs That Dont

In the plastic world of Mattel, the tables have been turned.   Meet Red Rover.

Red Rover getting emotional, sort of

Now electronic toy dogs bark the orders and make humans (namely kids and toddlers) fetch bones and in the process teach them a thing or two about shapes, colors, and numbers.  With a grand total of 12 color-coded bones (and twelve's mighty lot), expect the little ones to really know their colors.

Up to (4) four kids can join in this game of give-the-dog-a-bone.  The winner of course is the one who can give the right bones the swiftest.  Red Rover doesn't  sing or hum This Old Man (he's a toy dog, remember?), but he still barks encouragingly.

Nice: Kid-safe plastic parts, amusing and educational at the same time.
NOT Nice: Only nine (9) letters in the alphabet are used in the bones.  Not so educational after all. 

Red Rover is priced at $19.96 at Amazon.

Since we're on the topic of toy dogs, here's a nifty canine made out of tightly woven and corded recycled newspaper from VivaTerra.  The dog doesn't fetch or make you fetch and teach you stuff, but it sure knows how to sit and stay.

Magic Highway, anyone?

An excerpt of Disney's TV cartoon episode entitled Magic Highway USA aired back in 1958,

Very imaginative and visionary, exhausting almost every possible improvement that can be made in the name of transportation.  So you see, Disney isn't just good at inserting those subliminal messages.  They make pretty exciting predictions too.  Sure, we're still a looong way off from mass-produced flying cars and tubular highways and the other 95% of mouthful of innovations presented in the clip, but Maglev cars, entertainment system, GPS, hybrid cars, web conference, etc--they're all here now.


Now if only we could think up of something to nix road rage once and for all.

* * *

Take note of 3:58 though where the narrator makes a slight slip: On entering the city the family separates. Father to his office. Mother and son to the shopping center.  Sure.  All the working moms out there would be glad to hear that.

Fold a 3D Omega Star!

Devised by origami artist John Montroll.

Made from a single sheet of square paper.  Not a perfect 3D star though as there'll be an unjoined part with a gaping hole,  but considering you made a 3D star with just one paper, it's still ingenious as hell.

If you want something more compact, you can also do the Omega Star using 6 modular units-- using 6 square sheets of paper.  Laborious but neater.

Here you go:

The Ship Inside a Bottle Inside a Bottle Inside a Bottle Inside...

Chances are you have this at home: a ship inside a bottle, or else a nipa hut enclosed.  As a kid I've often wondered how they manage to deftly put the thing inside.  Via the bottle's mouth or a hole at the bottom to be sealed back later?

In the Philippines, before everyone was forcibly made to dance Thriller en masse, prisoners used to make these painstaking bottled crafts to earn extra.  Maybe, they still do.

Watch Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones where Mark Wahlberg plays the role of a dad with a huge collection of bottled ships he then proceeds to smash when his daughter dies.  The collapsible ship fits effortless through the neck, and then you just tug some strings to unfurl the masts and sails.  

Maybe the nipa hut is devilishly harder, but I still I cringed when Wahlberg tosses them ships to the wall.

Here's Julia Morley, sweating it out over Lego bricks for three days.

SS Lego

Kooky | Film

Puppets and props designed by Jakub Dvorksy of Amanita Design, who brought us Samorost and Machinarium.

Ogling Hasbros' My3D Game

from Wired.com

"Like pretty much anything that comes out nowadays with “3-D” in the title, Hasbro’s My3D — which lets you play 3-D games on your iPhone or iPod Touch — isn’t really great yet… but it has potential.

At the moment the device, available exclusively through Target until June, is basically a glorified View-Master. Snap your handheld into the appropriate tray, connect the tray to the viewfinder, close the device, and peer through the goggles to see your phone in three dimensions.

Thumb holes in the bottom of the contraption allow you to select menu options, navigate within games and — depending on what the game demands — shoot stuff."

 * * *

Incidentally, Fisher Price's View-Master was included in the National Toy Hall of Fame.  Will Hasbro's My3D make a similar impact on our consciousness beyond just our retinas?

How to Survive in Star City in 9 Easy Steps

The last time I set foot on Star City, I think Fidel V. Ramos was still the president. 
Back then, me and my sis didn't get on a single ride, we just played inside a playpen filled with colorful plastic balls, kinda like Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory but without the genius.

As a rule I don't ride the really scary rides at theme parks, scary meaning any ride which leaves me feeling helpless about an otherwise avoidable danger.

That means bump cars are okay.

Still, my latest visit to Star City (courtesy of complimentary ride-all-you-can tickets) didn't stop me from riding the Star Flyer, despite the news two years ago about the man who died while riding it (Star City maintains it was suicide), barely two months after the inverted roller coaster ride premiered in the theme park.

Anyway, here are 7 things you need to know in order to survive in Star City or any theme park for that matter.

1. Pack light.  Star City doesn't have lockers (yet), and while they do have a temporary baggage counter (for when you get on a water-based or inverted ride for instance), sometimes they just let you hug your bag while you hold on for dear life.

My friend: Excuse me, what do I do with my bag?
Ride operator: [bluntly]  You just hug it, Ma'am.

So bring only the necessary stuff, leave your diary and your personal vacuum cleaner home.

2. Dress comfy.  No gowns please, unless you want to get snagged.

3. Never shout "Boring!" because you just might provoke the ride operator.  Which can also be rephrased as "Never underestimate a ride."  or "Be nice to the ride operator."

Us: Boring! Boorrrinng!

[a few seconds later...]

Us: Stop!!  Get us out of here!!

For example, just because the Viking has a simple swinging pendulum-like motion doesn't mean it's peanuts compared to something as convoluted as, say the Star Flyer.  In fact, the Viking can be a pretty terrifying ride too, especially when you sit on the extreme end, and more especially when you just ate.   Which brings us to Number 4.

4. Plan your meals.  Even the most macho men will puke under the most intense rides, so be good to your stomach (and to the people adjacent to you) by planning your meals accordingly.

Ideally, eat and drink after you've had a go at all the rides.  If you must drink, sip little amounts from your water bottle.

Vendor:  [casually]  That'd be ninety bucks for the Coke.
My friend: Can I pawn the bottle afterwards?

5.  Sneak in your water bottle.  Food and drinks aren't allowed inside the Star City premises because they've got to squeeze as much money out of you as possible.  Which is to say the expensive food and drinks sold inside are patterned after the rides.  Both are heart-stopping.

The price of a bottle of Coke and a hotdog on stick, for instance, can already feed a family in Sudan.  At such rates, you'll probably even have second thoughts about giving in to your impulses to throw up after a nasty ride at Surf Dance.

If you're coming in by car, pack food and a big water jug enough to hydrate you and your family or friends, and you can just eat at the parking lot.


6. Bring your camera.  Whether you abide by film cameras or digicams, just bring one with you.  And extra batteries too, and film or memory card.

Star City's resident photographers will aim their huge cameras at you after a particularly trying time at the rides when you're especially soaked aboard your log boat on the Wild River.  In this case you must smile and look relaxed, because you don't know where those pictures might get posted on the Net.  But since those photos, just like the food, probably cost a bomb, you're not really going to claim them afterwards (unless you really want to).  That's why you brought your own camera.

7. Remember your physics lessons. Potential energy and kinetic energy to be exact, and G-force too.  No particular reason.  It just helps to know what's at work when you ride the rides.
 
8. Remember to breathe.  You scream at the top of your lungs especially during the kinetic part of the ride, but then forget to breathe, or else breathe too shallow.  That would really tire you out.  The next thing you know, you've passed out.  Wait, how can you know if you just passed out?

Whatever.  Just remember to breathe deep--because most riders don't--and you'll be okay. 

9. When you're on an ride-all-you-can ticket, by all means ride all you can!  And don't close your eyes in an effort to minimize the scare factor.  That's cheating. 

Remember roller coasters are very safe; they're subjected to precisely-controlled design and rigorous tests, not to mention constant maintenance, so you're in good hands.  In fact, you're more likely to figure in an accident during the trip from your house to Star City and back, than on a roller coaster.

So buckle up and enjoy the ride, and try not to get some on your seatmate.

Star Wars Battlefront 3 | A Sneak Peak

From the much-anticipated Star Wars Battlefront 3 from LucasArts.

Setups for Endless Survival

Who would have known the humble Gloom-Shroom could be so potent against the zombies in the Endless Survival mode?  

Some install an extra pair of Gloom-Shroom at the back to ward off the Digger zombies, while some put their faith on the unassuming Spiderocks.  

Whatever your leanings, PvZ pros will tell you to include in your arsenal:

• a column of toxic Gloom-Shrooms, your lawn's first line of defense,
• the ever-reliable Cattails, for targeted zombie deaths,
• a Cob Cannon or two, for superior blasting,
• lots of Winter Melons for slowing down the zombies' already plodding gait, 
• and an Umbrella Leaf to repel renegade bungee jumpers and catapults alike.

I also swear by the very temperamental Squash; they come in handy and pack a nasty stomp which remarkably weakens Gargantuar.

Setup 1

Setup 2



Setup 3

Amanita Design is Back with "Osada"

After the brilliant Samorost 1, Samorost 2, and Machinarium, you're probably asking how can Czech game studio Amanita Design possibly top all that?  What's next?

Carefree or Spooky?  Scene from Osada

Well, Samorost 3 is still in the works (no screenshots yet though), plus two more titles: Botanicula (about critters with a mission to protect the last surviving seed in their planet--more on that later)  and Osada.

Osada is a web-based point-and-click interactive music video but without Machinarium's migraine-inducing puzzles.

The scenarios for each music video are reminiscent of Samorost: surreal and bizarre landscapes, peopled by bugs and howling dogs and oddball figures, in a hodgepodge mosaic of photos and drawings and animations. Think of the wickedly quirky music videos you'd expect to see from Mark Romanek.

The point of the "game" seems to be that you just have to listen to the music being dished out as you click your way through the screen.  Musical instruments employed in Osada include a banjo, keyboards, electric guitar, tube, sax, harmonica, Jew's harp, violin, clarinet, even the didgeridoo--an Australian wind instrument invented by the aborigines.   You can't get any more eclectic than that.

Scene from Botanicula

Osada features what Jakub Dvorsky, calls "Czech psychedelic country music"--richly multi-layered tracks always busy and festive, and the best part is you're the boss.  

One thing though, the music tends to be too short to be played comfortably and tolerably on loop (unlike the soundtracks of Samorost 1 and 2).  Get stuck in one music video, for instance, and the music will start to feel like annoying cacophony instead.

Incidentally, Tomas Dvorak--the man behind Samorost's hypnotic soundtrack--is absent from the list of musicians for Osada.

So you're clicking things on screen to activate the music.  But to what end?

See for yourself and enjoy.

* * *

Osada is now playable at http://amanita-design.net

And the Mastermind Is...

Unlike the original plastic coding board and pegs of the original Mastermind board game, this one here is made of wood.  Very chic.

Over the years, the classic game has evolved, including a Mastermind with  5 colors (Grand), 8 colors (Deluxe), numbers (Number Mastermind) and words (Worf Mastermind) instead of colors, and even a  Mastermind Walt Disney  edition featuring Disney characters in lieu of the colors. 

The last mutation was in 2004 simply called New Mastermind, where the only new variation in the game is its five-player capacity.

Run, Shia, Run!

Shia LaBeouf utilizing his leg muscles (yet again) in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, to be released on July 1st.

Pic is from superherohype.com.  Michael Bay directs (yet again) and commentors on the site aren't thrilled.

LEGO Fun for instance complains:  I thought they were trying to convince us this film was actually about the Transformers...?
 

Where are the transformers? 

Right.

It's kinda sad because the Transformers, as one of the coolest superheroes of our childhood, deserve a better film adaptation, not something gimmicky as the last two films had been.

* * *

For what it's worth, I made the mistake of watching the first Transformers movie sitting in the front row of the cinema.  (The place was already jampacked when Edge, my sis, and I got there, and it was the only available seats.)  Not surprisingly, what with being super close to the screen and unable to re-engineer the focusing mechanisms of our eyes on such short notice, all we saw were metallic blurs here and there.

Actually, I made the mistake of watching the first Transformers movie.  Period.

Botany Vs. Zombology Action Figures

I saw some Plants Vs. Zombies action figures at the Clipper store  (the Japanese/Japan-inspired novelty gift shop) last last week, and a single toy costs about 800 friggin bucks.  I think I picked up Tall-nut (always my favorite, next to Squash) and Torchwood (Torchwood had a nice orangy translucent plastic for a flame, while the rest of the body is rubber, kinda like your regular rubber duckie, but without the squeak.)  

Somehow, the label action figure doesn't suit them; they don't move or have movable parts; they just stand cute on your desk.  So it's a misnomer.


But if you google Plants Vs. Zombies action figures, you nevertheless get an image such as this:

I doubt these are the same set I saw at Clipper.  Those were large, as big as a pocket book, although for all I know the guys on the left could be big too, and not gashapon-sized.  (Squash is on the third row, far right, looking grumpy as ever.)   The set sells for $105 at Salesmanb2b.com.   The zombies are a no-show, however.


In any case, notice the lawn, it's studded with daisies.  I've recently reached 100 feet tall for my Tree of Wisdom, but because it's not 500 feet tall or 1,000 feet tall, daisies are about all the things I can make sprout for the time being.  1,000 seems such a long, long, looong time.