How would you like to be slapped in the face with awesome? Well how’s this 3 3/4ths action figure scale arcade cabinet that was posted on Hisstank:
By Crom, that is an amazing replica of the classic Star Wars arcade cabinet. It was created by a crafty customizer who also got a Mortal Kombat II cabinet if Star Wars doesn’t do it for you:
Out of my Christmas haul my biggest get (at least toy wise) was the new(ish) AT-ST put out by Hasbro. If you don’t remember this bad boy, I geeked out for it a few months ago and never thought I’d actually see it, much yet own it. If you’re on the fence or want to know if you should go out of your way to get one I thought I’d throw together my non-review for you all.
I’ll let you in on a secret. I’ve almost given up entirely on buying single carded figures in the 3 3/4ths scale. This is due to the fact that I’m poor and can’t fathom paying over seven dollars for one tiny figures. That’s why I’ve been digging these “Blockbuster Value” two packs that I’ve found at Target. How can you go wrong with getting two figures for the price of one? And yet, many of the two packs have been auto passes due to the crappy B side figures. Well, I found this guy the other day and thought that he was a pretty good A side, so good that the B side must be pretty damned bad. I picked him up and turned him around and was amazed to find…
Oh those crazy Lego builders are at it again, this time coming up with a Nebulon-B frigate from Star Wars with a length that measures four feet and six inches.
That’s a pretty amazing accomplishment, if you can actually count this as an accomplishment worthy of praise as opposed to curing cancer or saving a baby from a burning building. I do love that there are even little X-Wings and a Millennium Falcon attached to the frigate.
By the way, I do think I just broke the record for the number or times the word “frigate” has appeared in a post on PoeGhostal.com.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do with PGPoA is discuss not just the latest toys or the machinations of various toy companies, but also the nature of of our hobby and, in particular, the way the toys regularly intersect with media since the days of the “half-hour commercials” in the 1980s. And so it’s with great pleasure that I present this interview with Prof. Henry Jenkins. If you’ve never heard of Professor Jenkins, I think it’s your duty as a geek to become familiar with his work.
Real Name: Henry Jenkins
Specialty: Educator
Base of Operations: henryjenkins.org
History: Henry Jenkins is the Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He arrived at USC in Fall 2009 after spending the past decade as the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. His newest books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. He is currently co-authoring a book on “spreadable media” with Sam Ford and Joshua Green. He has written for Technology Review, Computer Games, Salon, and The Huffington Post.
1.) An easy one first: what were your own favorite toys as a kid? Did you have any action figures?
I think you could say that I was raised on the cusp of the era of action figures. Many of my favorite toys were extensions of media properties that mattered to me. For example, I love, to death, a rubber King Louie figure which was produced to coincide with the release of Walt Disney’s The Jungle Book. I had many stuffed figures who embodied cartoon characters or cereal box icons — some of which had pull cords which activated phonograph recordings hidden in their bellies. I had a series of small plastic figurines which embodied key characters from the Hanna-Barbara cartoons, and a company called Soakie distributed bubble bath in plastic cases designed to look like popular characters as well. We collected these and used them to block out little plays. (more…)
Toy Aisle Trolls is a feature highlighting acts of vandalism to in-store toy items. If you find a ruined package, a stolen figure, a swapped-out figure, or any other such acts, take a photo (cell phone photos are fine if they’re not blurry) and email them to poe AT poeghostal.com. Also, please note: I’m deliberately being over-the-top with my condemnation of these people.
Today’s Toy Aisle Trolls comes courtesy of Poester Zach, who came across these examples of holiday season horribleness at a Walmart (of course) in Roswell, Georgia. (more…)
I recently ran across this picture on The Brothers Brick and it would have been criminal not to share:
This was posted by Chris McVeigh on his Flickr account. Check out other cool pictures there.
I gotta say, that’s a lot of Lego tauntauns. I had to spend about 25 bucks to get a set that had just one. He’s sitting on my desk with Lego Indiana Jones riding him which is cool and all, but I never thought of using him as a reindeer.
