Jumping Toaster Productions

I stumbled across this website recently because I was looking for a new puppet. Yes, that’s right a new puppet! Jim Henson’s children were pretty darn smart to market their dad’s Muppets for sale through the world-famous retailer FAO Schwarz.

The Muppet Whatnot Workshop is a fantastic idea! Make your very own Muppet, start by choosing from three different body types, eyes, hair and of course little outfits. You’ll get your own Muppet creation in about 3-4 weeks and then you can start to put on your own puppet productions for your friends and family! I love this idea so much I’m waiting for a pay cheque before I go out and order mine. The Muppet Whatnots are made out of the same material and craftsmanship that the ‘real’ Muppets are made from, so you’ll know where your $129.00 went. Trust me, it’s far easier to pay a professional to make your own ‘personalized’ Muppet then going online to find a pattern, buy the materials and then spend your free time sculpting and sewing. Plus I’m not the best at sewing and I think I’d be a little disappointed after spending several hours stitching, only to wind up with a pile of crudely sown together rags and button eyes that will sit in the corner mocking me until I curb it!

Get started on creating your own version of a Muppet here at FAO Schwarz!

Absolutely no educational purpose whatsoever, but damn funny!

Jim Henson Sept 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990

So I’ve got my copy of the Dark Tower ‘Treachery’ Vol. 3 by Marvel do you? If you’re not reading the series I can understand. A lot of us out there try to preserve the original content and rather not know what the back story is or the epilogue in some cases. But in this instance, the work done by Jae Lee & Richard Isanove is incredible, their unique style fits perfectly with Stephen King’s universe of the Gunslinger. If you have no idea who Jae Lee, he worked on numerous titles under the Marvel licence such as: Namor, X-men and Inhumans. Richard Isanove has work on a few himself like: Wolverine ‘Origins’, Fantastic Four and Captain America.

If you enjoyed the ‘Gunslinger’ from the Dark Tower books like I did, check out the comic series illustrated by a handful of very talented artists. I especially liked the hard cover collection because of different ‘comic book covers’ by various artists inside. Great artists like J. Scott Campbell & Edgar Delgado or Joe Quesada & Richard Isanove and many others.

 I know Chapters (Canada) and of course your local comic book shops still carry all three titles, but if you’re interested you should probably rush out and pick up a copy before they’re gone. I recall the sticker price was around $20-$30 but once you see the artwork and the print quality, it’ll be worth it.

 Enjoy

Twenty five years after the very first episode aired on national television, the Transformers complete first season is now available in stores! This is the animated Transformers your boyfriend has talked to you about over and over again. These are the Transformers you played with in the 80’s when no mere Go-Bot would suffice. These are the Transformers you begged your parents to buy instead of those crudely moulded pharmacy toys they tried to pass off as the ‘original’. Then where’s the box mom? Where’s the box??? 

Some of you may recall there was already a Transformers DVD collection of the same hit 1980’s animation broadcast that was sold on the market. But what happened to it? Why did it get pulled from the shelves so quickly? Well a small blurb inside the DVD booklet tells it all. 

‘The Transformers DVD release prior to our 25^th Anniversary Edition was missing animation shots seen in the original broadcast. We did extensive research, found the discrepancies between the original broadcast masters and the restored masters used for the last DVD release, reinserted the correct animation, and color corrected it as best we could to match the shots before and after. But because a one-inch master tape simply can’t hold up to the quality of the restored masters, you may notice occasional shots-or even scenes-in some episodes that seem slightly softer than others. Just take comfort in knowing that laser blasts have been reinserted, backgrounds have been corrected and Starscream is Starscream once again.’

My favourite episode is still “Fire in the Sky”. It’s the episode where the Decepticons begin to siphon Earth’s heat from the Arctic Circle, which causes the temperatures worldwide to drop. They soon discover Skyfire a powerful jetfighter and Starscream’s old friend from Cybertron frozen in the ice! Skyfire’s design is basically ‘taken’ from the Robotech series which is probably why I liked him so much. Robotech is a japanimation about futuristic jetfighter pilots who can transform their ships into robots and are charged with protecting the Earth Space Colony from alien invaders. I never owned Skyfire as a kid, but I had good friends who allowed me to ‘transform’ him. Remember, one wrong twist and you had a pile of broken plastic in your hands. Or worse yet for the collectors out there, missing weapons and parts!

I still have a single Transformer in the original packaging tucked away at home. Can you guess which one I have? Leave a comment with your answer! Here’s a hint, he’s an Autobot Micromaster.

Happy guessing!

Transformers logo and illustrations are copyrights of Hasbro

A lot of people when asked “Who were the first cat and mouse team in comic strips?” typically answer Tom & Jerry or Sylvester & Speedy Gonzales. But very few know about ‘Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse’.

Krazy Kat was first conceived by George Herriman in 1903 when he appeared in a newspaper gag panel as a tiny black kitten with a white bow in the ‘washbolla’. Krazy was really no more than a black smudge on the page. But the cat continued to appear in George’s work until September 6^th, 1903 when he got his first half page comic strip. Thus the Kat was born and given a name! He continued to grow in popularity and soon in 1913 regular “Krazy Kat” comic strips were found in pages of the New York Journal.

It wasn’t long afterwards that George took a simple mouse that appeared in the backgrounds of his comic strips and pair him up with Krazy Kat and the birth of the first cat and mouse team was born. Ignatz mouse was depicted as an angry straight man that reacted to Krazy’s mad off the wall insights and remarks. Krazy was a carefree indeterminate gender cat who constantly tried to ‘win’ Ignatz heart. The mouse, clearly offended by this would hurl a brick at the cat’s head, but Krazy took this as an expression of love. You could say there was also a bit of a love triangle, due to the fact that there was also a bull dog involved in later strips acting like the ‘protective’ boyfriend of Ignatz, but that gets confusing to follow.

And so, Krazy and Ignatz mouse along with a few other friends from Coconino Country told their tale in Sunday newspapers across the country week after week, then year after year! Biographically there really isn’t more to say about George Herriman’s career. He did go on to make a few animated ‘shorts’ of Krazy and Ignatz, but never really got to give the production the direction they sorely needed.

Feel free to do a little more research if you want to learn more about George Herriman’s contributions to comic strip art.

🙂

Okay, now who understands the title of this post? Anyone? Well it’s from Bucky O’Hare, written by Larry Hama, artist Michael Golden and colorist Cory Adams back in 1978. A great read if you like ‘animal comics’ and outer space themes.

Bucky O’Hare was this green rabbit in a British military outfit, welding a space blaster, leading a team of other animal characters against the toad empire. The toad-humanoid characters invented a super computer that ended up taking over their world ala Terminator so they started invading other planets to ‘feed’ the machine. The other animals started a military operation willing to take on the toads and thus the ‘Sentient Protoplasm Against Colonial Enroachment’ was born or S.P.A.C.E. for short.

But wait there’s more! Willy Du Witt was a bit of a brainy kid (human) who built this Photon Accelerator which transported him through a different space time continuum to the animal dimension. The animals take him for a shaved baboon and recruit him into their military coup against the toads. Willy was able to ‘jump’ back and forth but the teleporter closed trapping Willy in the wrong dimension. Willy then helps Bucky lead a few animals into battle against the toads and it plays out a little like a Star Wars clone, with Willy attempting to leap home every now and then.

Bucky O’Hare’s tale spun off into an animation series on the BBC for a 13 episode run. It followed the same storyline, with very few alterations. It grew in popularity enough in the 80’s to create a video game and action figure line by Hasbro . But this little icon got lost among the giants of the time like the Ninja Turtles, He-Man and numerous other comicbook characters that it just couldn’t hold ‘shelf space’.

Check out the intro below and post a comment about what you think of the cartoon.

All right ladies! Let’s croak us some toads!

A street performer dressed up as Darth Vader.

Fantastic!

Victoria, BC

Who is the Blue Bomber you ask? Well he’s most commonly referred to as Mega Man in North America, but if you’re from Japan, he’s known as Rock Man. Mega Man was first conceived in 1987 when he first appeared in his own title released by Capcom. His popularity grew after the first video game launch to become the company’s primary iconic character in the video game industry among such giants as Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog and Crash Bandicoot. 

Mega Man games were some of the most challenging games I have ever played in my life. Primarily due to the fact that Mega Man games had what the industry referred to as ‘Nightmare Levels’ where the chosen level will never be played the same way twice. Another factor of Mega Man’s popularity was that the player could gain the robot masters ‘special ability’ after defeating them in battle for use in later levels. The name ‘Rockman’ was initially conceived by Akira Kitamura, when he took the children’s game of Rock, Paper, and Scissors and applied it to Mega Man, where the Blue Bomber must choose a defeated bosses special ability to use against another boss. The name ‘Rock Man’ didn’t carry over well to North America due to the fact his robotic female counter partner ‘Roll’ never appeared in the game. Her absence made it confusing to the marketing team, thus the name Mega Man was chosen instead for the North American franchise. Over time Mega Man developed other ‘standard’ abilities that the player utilized from the start of the game like sliding and then charging up the ‘Mega Buster’ to release a large plasma projectile to make the game more challenging to play. 

Mega Man’s universe slowly spun off other amazing titles like Mega Man X, The Power Battle and went on to appear in numerous other Nintendo titles as a playable character. Mega Man’s popularity grew to such a huge following that he had an appearance in a short lived animation show called Captain N: The Game Master, and finally his own animation series Mega Man: The NT Warrior. The clean lines and attention to detail that Keiji Inafune uses in Mega Man universe to depict Akira Kitamura robot creations really drew me into the Mega Man franchise, which is why I’m such a fan! My favourite robot baddie out of the entire universe has got to be Guts Man. Something about a huge marauding robot flinging cubes of crushed metal at your head really speaks to me. 

If you’re interested in playing Mega Man there are lots of emulators out there online or if you can track down a copy of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the Xbox you can play all 10 Mega Man titles on your Xbox 360.

Happy Robot Hunting!

Mega Man is copyright of Capcom

Astro Boy was the very first japanimation cartoon I saw when I was a young boy, growing up in the 80’s. My sister and I would watch Astro Boy together after school and there was always a heated debate as to what the error was in Astro’s debriefing report at the end of the show. Typically Astro Boy would make an ‘error’ on purpose in his debriefing report to the professor and the viewer had to guess what fact he had lied about. In most cases it was fairly obvious, but sometimes they threw in one that was really confusing to sort out the details. So my sister and I would argue about who was right regarding the inconsistencies, she always won in the end.

Astro Boy was created in 1952 by one of the great ‘Manga’ art masters; Osamu Tezuka. The origins of Astro Boy were unclear to me until I stumbled across the original 1963 black and white broadcast of the animation show on VHS tape. The creation of Astro Boy was responsible by the head of The Ministry of Science, Dr. Tenma whom had created the android in an attempt to preserve the memory of his little boy whom had died in a car accident by creating a metal version of his son. He soon realized that the metal contraption could not express ‘human’ emotions and the very sight of the soulless android caused Dr. Tenma to greave. Sickened by the monstrosity he created, Dr. Tenma abandoned the little android at the Robot Circus where Astro was mistreated and forced to perform pathetic circus acts for groups of taunting humans. It was at one of his performances that the good doctor; Professor Ochanomizu the new head of the Ministry of Science took in the little robot and taught Astro how to become more human. He witnessed Astro’s incredible strength and ‘super powers’ and guided Astro Boy to become the city’s guardian against renegade robots and robot hating humans. I have no idea what happened to the creator of Astro; Dr. Tenma, I’m sure you’ll have to refer to the manga comics to find out because if memory serves me in the cartoons he goes through a bout of depression and disappears from the storyline almost entirely.

So that’s the story in a nut shell, numerous media sources state that there’s a CG animation movie soon to be released in 2009 along with the original 1963 broadcast on DVD. We’ll just have to wait and see if it comes true or not, frankly I’m a little tired of all the 3D animation movies that have been released year after year let’s see some ‘traditional’ animation feature films or better yet more ‘stop-motion’ animations!

If you’re interested in the whole Astro Boy universe, step into your local comic book store and request a copy of the manga adaptation or look for the DVD’s of the 1980’s rendition already in stores.

Enjoy!

While on one of my many trips to Victoria, BC with my girlfriend, I stumbled across the coolest window display I’ve ever seen! It was at Cherry Bomb Toys located in the ‘hip’ downtown neighbourhood, that there was a diorama of Jedi Knights taking on a group of zombies. I was super excited and immediately entered the store!

‘Sweet’, is the first word that came to mind when I stepped inside Cherry Bomb Toys! The owners just recently moved to a new location and just finished setting up a brand new diorama in the window! Besides the window display, Cherry Bomb Toys has got a ton of ‘vintage’ collectibles from all generations and genera. I noticed a lot of rare and ‘hard-to-find’ collectibles all around the store. Some I had, most I wanted! The Transformer triple-changer Blitzwing was one I especially wanted and of course Ecto-1 from Ghostbusters. I was taking it all in when I noticed the Doctor Who Tardis (Police Box) sitting right there in front of me, and there was the Dailek over on the other side. There were treasures all around me, from the Predator Helmet to the Star Wars ‘X-Wing’ there was an over load in my brain!

Set in a very ‘vintage’ atmosphere, this massive store with amazing display cases and original ‘rough-brick’ walls really set this comic store apart from the rest with its’ character. The owners, Candace & Biagio Woodward are very passionate about collectibles and are super knowledgeable about new and ‘up-and-coming’ toy release dates. I easily spent an hour in awe at the many display cases housing a very impressive collection of Transformers. My girlfriend also enjoyed the amazing collection of Strawberry Shortcake dolls and the Teddy Ruxpin stuffed animals, for you see Cherry Bomb Toys is not just for ‘big boys’ it’s for everyone of all ages! They even had a couple of bins where we could get ‘hands-on’ with some of the toys we played with back when we were kids. My Blackstar action figure got a butt-whoopin from The Peculiar Purple Pieman of Porcupine Peak. Good times!

Cherry Bomb Toys has something for the child in all of us and the helpful staff can take your order, or even buy your vintage collectibles. The good folks at Cherry Bomb Toys are also writing a blog! Check it out and register for new toy release information and what’s happening at the store!

Enjoy