Top Hat Sasquatch

I don’t know why toy companies didn’t use stop motion animation to market toys to me when I was a kid. I was obsessed with stop motion and often made (crappy) action figure movies on my own, and I’m sure if they were doing it too I would have begged my parents to buy me even more toys.

A reader tipped me off to this new video from Playmates using the new toys based on the Nickelodeon show, and it’s pretty awesome.

I hope they keep making more of these videos, I can’t get enough stop motion Turtles. If I had more free and patience time I’d get back into doing stop motion animation, but yeah…I don’t.

When I started an Instagram account for Top Hat Sasquatch a few months ago, I never thought I would enjoy it so much or “meet” so many cool people. I just created the account so I could regularly post geeky/nostalgic photos instead of flooding my personal account. Five months and 800+ followers later, I’ve been having a blast on there.

Pretty soon after I joined I found the Retro Collective group. Browsing photos with various retro gaming hashtags inevitably leads to a few cool folks like @BowserIsKing, @SBKRetro, @Dano_Brown, @WTFIsThisNerdShit, and @Matchu_Payne. These guys were building a retro gaming community around a hashtag and eventually expanded it to an Instagram account. There are a few weekly hashtag-based contests around things like Complete in Box (#CIBSunday) games, Sega, game manuals, and more.

The coolest thing about the group though is the sense of community and the general awesomeness and generosity of everyone involved. Whether it’s someone mailing you some old Game Boy manuals or trading a game they have doubles of, the Retro Collective folks are always there to help. They also have a bitchin’ logo that I was lucky enough to snag on a t-shirt, and they have a new Duck Hunt inspired shirt up for order right now.

If you’re on Instagram and you’re a fan of retro gaming, make sure you go and follow all those guys and start browsing the #RetroCollective hashtag. I’ll see you there!

If you read this site, chances are you’re familiar with Alex Deligiannis. He is a super talented artist and a friend of the site (he designed our Sasquatch!) and we’ve had him on Bubble Pipe Theater as well as featured some of his awesome geek art.

Well, he’s been busy drawing these awesome Mars Attacks! sketch cards for IDW Limited’s upcoming book. If you’re lucky enough to snag the Red Label edition you’ll get 40 sketch cards by Alex. From the official press release:
Read More

One of my favorite things about looking back at 80s/90s Turtlemania and collecting bits and pieces of TMNT memorabilia is the wide variety of art styles that were used in all the licensed stuff. Some products had horrible character art that made you wonder how it ever got made, while others had awesome art that I could (and sometimes do) frame and hang on my wall.

One of my favorite styles of TMNT licensing art is the half cartoon/half comics style, for lack of a better term. The Turtles don’t look as cartoony as some versions, the lines are usually a little thicker, and overall it looks more serious. The TMNT board game art is a perfect example. I have a few pieces of TMNT stuff that look like they’re all from the same artist, and I wish I could track down who illustrated it all. Some puzzles, children’s books, and stickers have the same style and I can’t get enough of it.
Read More

Confession: I’ve never bought a LEGO Star Wars set. Yes, I’m a huge LEGO fan and yes, I’m a huge Star Wars geek. For some reason I’ve just never felt the need to start collecting them, mainly because I know I wouldn’t be able to stop at a few sets, I’d need to have a shit-ton.

That being said, this upcoming $250 LEGO Ewok Village is amazing and looks like a lot of fun. I could see myself getting a set like this to satisfy my LEGO Star Wars urges. The 1990 piece set was just unveiled by LEGO and will be a Shop@Home exclusive release in September. It has 16 minifigures and would probably take me a couple weeks to build, but it would look awesome on a shelf being stormed by LEGO Orcs or with some LEGO Avengers hanging out amongst the Ewoks.
Read More