Titans Terrors and Toys

With the 2018 holiday season officially upon us, now is a great time to talk about toys. For this blog, that usually means robot toys--in this case, a series of robot combiners based on the 2017 anime series Tomica Hyper Rescue Drive Head Kido Kyukyu Keisatsu .

I've written plenty of posts about Japanese robot toys that were sold in the U.S. during the '70s and '80s, but one line that I never got into too much detail about is Godaikin, a selection of "Super Robot" toys that were sold here between 1982 - 86. Unlike other imported Japanese robot toy lines of its time, Godaikin never became a household name; however, between its brief, unique history and the high quality of its products, Godaikin remains one of the best Super Robot toy lines ever released.

Last weekend, I finally got around to seeing The Meg in 3D. While it doesn't set a new standard in sharksploitation excellence, it's fun enough in its own right, the 3D effects are pretty good, and it's leagues ahead of all the cheapjack sharksploitation films that have surfaced over the years (e.g., Atomic Shark , Santa Jaws , Nightmare Shark , the Sharknado movies, etc.).

Last year, I had the pleasure of discovering Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures , an animated escapade through a Lego version of the Star Wars universe that featured a great voice cast, witty scripts, and enough Easter Eggs to keep Star Wars fans rewinding and pausing their video playback machines for hours on end. The series ran for a total of 26 episodes across two seasons, and not much was said about the future of the Freemaker family after that … until the arrival of Lego Star Wars: All-Stars , which debuted last October on various Disney media channels (e.g., Disney XD and DisneyNOW). Even though All-Stars has been touted as a series of eight shorts and four episodes that span the entire Star Wars saga, it really is the third season of Freemaker Adventures . It uses Lego-themed parodies of Solo: A Star Wars Story to provide an origin story for the Freemaker family, and then it fast-forwards to the sequel trilogy era ( The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi ) to explore