How the Father of Claymation Lost His Company
I’ve been a huge fan of stop-motion/claymation since I was a very little kid, and Will Vinton has always been one of my favorites. I was vagely aware of what happened when his studio was taken over by Phil Knight of Nike fame, but I didn’t know the whole story. It’s pretty incredible what happened to him, but it has to be said, would films like Coraline and ParaNorman have been made if the change didn’t happen? I think Laika has a bright future but it sucks that Vinton got booted from his own company.

Watch Stop-Motion ‘Usagi Yojimbo’ Short Film
This short is rough, but it was just used as a proof-of-concept for the filmmakers to get the rights to Usagi Yojimbo to make a stop-motion animated feature. I love stop-motion and I love Usagi Yojimbo (through his TMNT connection of course) so this is pretty awesome.

How Laika Pushed 3D Printing to New Heights with ‘The Boxtrolls’
I love that 3D printing is helping keep stop-motion animation alive. Laika’s movies are great and I can’t wait to see the Boxtrolls.

See the Ghostbusters Ride That Was Never Built
This would have been a really fun ride.

Inside the Wild UI Design of Guardians of the Galaxy
I love when a sci-fi movie has a great UI design, and Guardians certainly did. Beyond the screens and holograms that we’re used to seeing, it had some amazingly weird “UI” in Ronan’s ships. Just another thing that this movie did right.

Heads up Ghostbusters fans, the classic film is coming back to theaters on August 29th to celebrate it’s 30th Anniversary. I’ve never seen Ghostbusters in a theater before, so I’ll definitely be there. Also, in September, this sweet Blu-ray collector’s set of both films comes out. This will be the first time the sequel has been released on Blu-ray, so it might be worth a purchase even if you already have the first film. I think Ghostbusters II has a bad rap and isn’t nearly as bad as people claim. Just sayin.

Would you pay to see Ghostbusters in a theater again?

File this under That escalated quickly. One minute I’m checking out this cool post on Reddit featuring a high-res, textless version of the iconic poster for RoboCop, and the next thing I know I’m browsing a hundred-page thread on Blu-ray.com featuring even more textless poster art. If you follow THS on Instagram (and really, why wouldn’t you?) you know I have an office with walls full of geek art. I’m always looking for cool stuff to frame, and I’ve had a couple things printed just based on high-res art and photos I’ve found online.

I’ll leave it to you to browse the two threads (one for PG-13 and R films, the other for G and PG) to find what appeals to you most, but here are a few highlights.
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I told myself I was going to go to Toy Fair this year, but it didn’t work out. Hopefully next year! I wish it could have happened because there is a metric shitton of cool stuff getting announced. I’ll be keeping tabs on all the cool stuff and rounding up a lot of links and photos this week.

First off, Playmates teased a ton of new TMNT toys and they all look great. I’m lagging behind with their current Nickelodeon line (I haven’t been hunting for new figures for a while), but I don’t know how much longer I’ll try to get every figure in that line. However, they announced a cutesy line of Turtles called Half-Shell Heroes and they are the cutest things ever, so I will be buying all of those up.

It looks like they’ll release Half Shell Heroes versions of just about every character, a few vehicles and playsets, and even some jumbo versions of the cutesy Turtles. I think I may actually like these more than the main figures in Playmates’ current line. They look so fun.

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For a kid, the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas has to be the most excruciatingly slow time of year. It’s a never-ending wait to see what toys will be you under the tree come Christmas morning. When I was little, I would spend this time making wish lists and browsing through the toy pages of the store catalogs. I’d revise my list again and again in hopes of getting the perfect mix of loot.

Now as an adult, I remember those in-between days fondly. Like many things in life, I know that anticipation is equal to, if not greater than, the event itself. As a parent I also now realize how impractical my vast Christmas wish lists were. I wanted so many different things that a certain degree of disappointment was inevitable on Dec. 25. There were always things on those lists that were left unfulfilled.

Christopher Tupa remembers those days as well. The artist and toy collector has created a book of toys and collectibles he wanted as a child but was never able to receive. His free ebook can be downloaded from his website.
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