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.

I love Coraline. I’ve always been a huge stop-motion nerd, but Coraline got me really excited about the medium again, and I’ve been waiting and waiting for Laika’s second movie to hit theaters. ParaNorman looked amazing from the first teaser, but could the new studio pull off another awesome animated film without Henry Selick’s directing or Neil Gaiman’s story?

I was really worried ParaNorman would be all style and no substance. Thankfully I was wrong.
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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had some crazy merchandise over the years, but one that has a particularly interesting following is a snack from the early 90s. Yes, I’m talking about Pizza Crunchabungas, the pizza-flavored corn snacks. The reason this random TMNT tie-in has a following with fans is because it was marketed with a very cool commercial. The commercial was the only time the Turtles were animated in Claymation, and it was done by master animator Will Vinton of California Raisins fame.

I looked for this commercial on YouTube whenever I thought about it, but for some reason I never found it until now. The turtles look awesome in claymation form, and I wish we could have had a whole series (or at least a special) done in this style. I’d love to see Krang, Bebop, and Rocksteady in stop-motion.

If you want to learn more about Pizza Crunchabungas (why wouldn’t you?) you should read Matt’s definitive article at XE from a few years ago, and also check out Tokka’s video and painted model photos on Flickr.

I’m sure all you Halo nuts have seen the line of Mega Bloks at the store at some point. I have a set, but I can’t get past the idea that I’d much rather have Halo LEGO sets. Regardless, I’ve always wondered if anyone was animating these. Turns out, someone was.

Even if it’s a Mega Blok/Xbox 360 marketing ploy, it was very well done and it’s cool as hell. Check it out in two parts, and see if you can resist going out and buying some blocky Elites.

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Henry Selick. Henry Selick. Henry Selick. It sucks that he never gets the billing he deserves on his films. He’s always overshadowed by Tim Burton’s name, and a lot of people I’ve talked to think that Burton directed his movies. But that’s not important, I just needed to get that out there.

James and the Giant Peach is a fascinating biproduct of the success of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I’ve never found it as entertaining as Nightmare, but I am a huge fan of Selick and stop-motion animation in general, so I still enjoy it.

Disney is continuing their dedication to the Blu-ray format by releasing James and the Giant Peach, available as a Disney Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack.

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