Top Hat Sasquatch

Throw a rock these days and you’ll hit a website that’s offering a “Geek Christmas Gift Guide”.  Usually, these are little more than a list of links to Amazon with uninspired ideas like Captain America on Blu-ray, a Batman graphic novel, and something having to do with Boba Fett.  Yawners.  So with that in mind, up until Christmas, we here at Top Hat Sasquatch are going to present a few focused posts highlighting a cool and unique item that would be a good gift for the geek in your life.  To kick things off, we’ll start with a subject that is near and dear to every nerd’s heart – robots.  More specifically, custom-made robots from My Robot Nation.
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I’ve loved the work of Jim Henson my entire life, and it seems like each year my appreciation of his creativity grows more and more. Even with his life being cut tragically short, his body of work is huge. As you could tell from our Muppet podcast last week, everyone has different parts of Muppet history that they remember the most, and there are plenty of pieces to pick up on later in life and enjoy for the first time. For me, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is one of the pieces of Muppet history that I didn’t see much as a kid, but now love as an adult.

There are a lot more dedicated Emmet Otter fans than me out there, but I recently did some digging, learning as much as I could about the special and comparing home video versions, so I thought I’d share the love a little bit.
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I’m a huge Aardman Animations fan. I’ve loved their Wallace and Gromit shorts since I was little, and equally loved all their feature-length movies to date, with the exception of Arthur Christmas. Anyway, I’ve been seeing the trailer for The Pirates! Band of Misfits a lot lately, and I’ve gotten very excited about it. After doing some research I was surprised to see that the title of the original book (as well as the movie in the UK) is The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists.

It seems the powers that be in the Sony Pictures marketing department don’t think having scientists in the title would be a good thing here in the states. So, they’ve completely taken out any mention of the scientists from our trailers, making it confusing when you see Hugh Grant’s Pirate Captain character wearing a lab coat, but whatever, I’m sure they know what’s best for us.

Christopher Lee, aka The Beast is Back, is an artist and designer who has been creating a series of prints based on the classic Playmates Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure line, and they’re freaking awesome.

If you grew up on TMNT and you appreciate geek art like I do, you’re going to go broke looking through his online shop. He’s covered the majority of the awesome TMNT action figures, from Leatherhead to Muckman, Ace Duck, and even Scumbag. Now he just needs to do Monty Moose and Sergeant Bananas and I’ll be satisfied.

You can buy prints of all his work, including a lot of awesome, non-TMNT art, on his online shop. Also make sure you check him out on Deviant Art (and don’t miss his amazing toy room).

Via Strange Kids Club

To me, it never really feels like Christmas until I’ve watched ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’, the 1965 special that introduced us to the animated world of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. Well, this year you can experience the classic in a whole new way, thanks to Loud Crow Interactive’s new app, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The app, which is available for iOS as well as Android (but shines on the iPad) re-imagines the animated special as an interactive storybook. Scenes from the cartoon are rendered as beautiful illustrations complete with narration by Chuck himself, Peter Robbins. Besides reading through the story, you can play the piano, decorate your own pathetic Christmas tree, finger paint, and be assured that a few bucks can at least buy a few minutes worth of holiday nostalgic goodness.
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