Titans Terrors and Toys

Many things happened this year (as with any year), but 2022 marked a particular video game anniversary: the 50th anniversary of Atari , the company that made the home video game console a reality. Even though the original Atari Inc. officially closed its doors in 1992, the Atari name has lived on in various ways for decades, through classic game compilations, plug-and-play emulators, and the recent Atari VCS home video game console that was launched in 2021. This post lists 10 of my favorite games from Atari’s signature console, the Atari 2600. Even though the 2600 didn’t have much power going for it—even when compared to the direct competitors of its time—some programmers found ways to make entertaining games that made the most of what the system had to offer. Air Raiders (1982): The Atari 2600 wasn’t known for flight simulators of any type, but Air Raiders worked much better than you’d expect. In addition to shooting down enemy air craft, players also had to regularly land their f...

Some things never die … like classic movie monsters, and the toys that depict such monsters. In the case of NECA, not only has it produced a series of 7-inch figures that are very screen-accurate recreations of classic Universal Monsters, but it has also produced a sub-set of three glow-in-the-dark figures— Frankenstein’s Monster, the Mummy and the Wolf Man —mounted on cardbacks that match the cardbacks used by Remco for its Mini-Monsters action figure line , a line from 1981 that was also based on classic Universal Monsters. NECA + Remco = toy collector nirvana.   Even though these NECA figures are larger and much more detailed than the Remco’s original figures, seeing this mash-up of modern collectible figures with nostalgic action figure packaging almost make my toy collector head explode. Then again, NECA produced these particular figures specifically for nerds like me. Remco released its Mini-Monsters line at around the same time as I was learning about Universal Monsters thro...

File this under the better-late-than-never category: Super7 is releasing a 20-inch tall Shogun Warrior version of Mechagodzilla this summer, complete with wheeled feet and spring-loaded finger missiles. Even though Mechagodzilla first appeared in Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla back in 1974, this is the first time this Toho Studios kaiju character has been redesigned as a Jumbo Machinder , the robot toy type that the Shogun Warrior line popularized back in the ‘70s. What makes this a significant moment in American toy history is that a generation of kids got their first exposure to Toho kaiju Godzilla and Rodan through their toy versions which were released during Mattel’s original Shogun Warrior run . Mattel brought these two movie monsters in to serve as enemies to the Shogun Warrior super robots, even though these characters had nothing to do with these super robots in their home country of Japan. Nevertheless, many toy buffs fondly remember these toys, so it’s nice to see another To...

With the recent arrival of Avatar: The Way of Water at the box office, it is inevitably going to be compared to the blockbuster superhero films from DC and Marvel. Avatar , Marvel and DC movies have plenty in common: they all focus on action/adventure, have hefty amounts of special effects, and usually make tons of money. This post will give you a better understanding of how modern superhero films and TV shows work, and why they don't operate the same way as other kinds of films and TV shows. In a nutshell, it comes from realizing that superhero movies are actually adaptations of superhero comic books and the business model used to facilitate their publication. To begin, let's consider the other kind of adaptation that films are known for: novel adaptations. Usually, the adaptation of a novel will result in a single film. Sometimes, a novel may be adapted into two or three movies ( Dune , Stephen King's It , The Hobbit , etc.), but usually it is a one-to-one relation betwe...

Being a compulsively collecting nerd on a budget, I'm always looking for opportunities that provide me with durable, screen-accurate replicas from my favorite franchises at a reasonable price. This isn't as easy as it sounds but some occasional luck comes my way, such as with the Star Wars Elite Series line of figures. According to Wookieepedia , "Star Wars Elite Series was a toy line created by Disney and sold exclusively through the Disney Store, starting in 2015. It features 6-inch tall, mostly metal, die cast action figures of characters from all of the live action films to date." The four Elite Series figures I picked up are Darth Vader, a Stormtrooper, a Death Trooper, and a First Order Stormtrooper.  Honestly, I've completely lost track of how many different kinds of Star Wars action figures have been made these days. I know that there's the Black Series , and Lego Star Wars minifigs , and high-quality, highly detailed figures imported from Japan, and ....

This upcoming weekend will see the debut of Avatar: The Way of Water , the long-awaited sequel to James Cameron's hit 2009 movie. Skeptics of the new Avatar movie are being told by both film critics and fans alike to not "bet against Cameron" in light of his track record with effects-driven blockbuster films. On the other hand, Cameron himself has gone on record saying that the new Avatar movie has to become the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history just to be profitable, so one has to wonder: What happens when Cameron decides to bet against himself? If anything, Cameron has become of the king of ever-ballooning production budgets. From 1991's Termintor 2 up to the new Avatar movie, the budgets for his films just keep getting larger. The budget for his last Avatar movie has been estimated at around to $237 million, which is a far cry from the $6.4 million budget of his first hit The Terminator (1984). If I didn't know any better, it almost seems ...

Sometimes, I like a good challenge, especially when I can utilize my nerdy skills as part of meeting the challenge. Case in point: the restoration of a water damaged vintage cardboard Nativity Set into a 3D Augmented Reality (AR) model. When this challenge came to my attention, I was already using Adobe Aero to experiment with converting vintage cardboard Star Wars playsets released by Kenner into AR models. Thus, converting a cardboard Nativity Set fell along the lines of what I was already doing. Below is a picture the Nativity Set as it appeared on the box in which it was released in the 1950s.   In comparison to scanning and using detailed 3D models, it's much easier to assemble 2D images into 3D shapes. However, what made this challenging was the aforementioned water damage--the Nativity Set was somewhat submerged in a flooded basement a few years ago, which warped some of the surfaces and changed some of the colors. To fix this problem, I decided to use Abode Photoshop...