The Forum was the useless. Now it is the gone.

Why can't the old Knight Rider be the new Knight Rider...

Sadly, I finally came to the end of the 53 episode run of Arrested Developement.  That show was made up of so much win, that I can only wonder, how in the hell is a show like the new Knight Rider still around, yet Arrested Developement is canceled?  I suppose I’m partly to blame since I never watched the show while it was actually running, but Jesus, why didn’t someone tell me back then how good it was?  This same crap happened with Firefly too.  At least someone at Fox was smart enough to bring the Family Guy back.

Oh my

Quick post to keep the 80′s toy train rollin’.  How did I not turn out gay playing with crap like this as a kid?  Thank you, Dolph Lundgren, for killing this one off.

Rip off in disguise

Keeping with the theme of 80′s toys rising from the dead with 21st century movies.  How could you not go wrong with cars that could turn into death machines?  Oh, right, Gobots.

Luckily, my son loves Transformers and they even have re-makes of the “classic” figures from my childhood.  Unluckily, much like most things of this generation, they are cheap and made of all plastic.  In my grumpy old man days, they at least had a little bit of metal in them.  Nowadays, you can rip the plastic legs and arms off and “transform” them like you would “solve” a Rubik’s Cube.  You can even purchase tiny Transformers that don’t transform.  The package actually says, “does not convert”.  Since when does anyone refer to a Transformer’s transformation as converting?  How can it still be a Transformer if it doesn’t convert?

That’s like buying a computer that doesn’t compute.  Oh, right, Macs.

The Greatest, non-real, American Hero

Seeing the new G.I.Joe trailor durring the Super-Sized American Football Game that Determined this Season’s Champion last night, it brought back fond memories of one of the greatest toy lines ever created.  As such, I shall now ramble a bit on why G.I.Joe was so full of the awesome.

From around ’77 through ’82, the action figure market was being dominated by the, then Midi-chlorian free, Star Wars toy line.  Light saber wielding figures, with plastic capes, who’s arms and legs could only move as if they were marching for Hitler?  How could something like that be stopped?   Fisher-Price attempted to compete around that time with something they called, Adventure People.  Seriously, that’s what they were called.  I remember that one of them came with a motor cycle, and his legs actually bent at the knees, but if he was ever not on his motor cycle, he looked like he was walking with a load in his pants.

Then in ’82 Hasbro re-launched their G.I.Joe toy line, this time not as the 12″ Ken dolls with army fatigues that old people used to talk about, but as 3-3/4″ plastic Star Wars killers.  What made G.I.Joe great was so simple, yet so much better.  Knees and elbows.  However, the poseability didn’t stop there, the next year they drove the stake through Luke’s heart with Swivel-Arm Battle Grip aka Kung Fu Grip.  With Kung Fu Grip my toys could finally hold a gun in a semi-reasonable way as opposed to the previous standard of holding a gun in such a way that the safest place to be, was directly in front of the gunman.

Star Wars tried to make a go at things with Return of the Jedi, but the Ewoks just couldn’t compete with the technological terror Hasbro had created (a figure that changed color in sunlight and a 7 foot long aircraft carrier).  Not to mention, they still lacked knees and elbows.