If you’re a late 80s, early 90s kid like me, you probably watched the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show on TV. In my case, Power Rangers was decidedly uncool in my grade, so I had to hide my love for the show from my friends and pretend not to like it during school. I was into the first three seasons of the show and was very excited when the movie came out.
I’ve went back and watched some of the early episodes in the past few years out of curiosity, and they are surprisingly rewatchable as long as you’re in an ironic state of mind. The horrible English dubs from Rita Repulsa and all the other characters from the foreign clips are hilarious, and the monsters keep getting more far fetched. Basically, it’s evidence from my childhood as to why I’m so weird now.
It’s been available to stream on Netflix for a long time, but this August it’s coming to DVD (kind of) for the first time. Shout Factory is releasing ‘Season One, Volume One’ on August 21st. Normally, a company breaking up seasons into volumes is bad news, but I was shocked to find out there are 60 episodes in this season and 30 in this set.
Needless to say, I’ll be picking up this DVD so that someday I can force my kids to relive the Green Ranger/White Ranger saga with me again.
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.
I don’t watch a lot of new TV. Adventure Time, Community, and The Office are the only shows I bother staying up to date with, which usually means digitally acquiring episodes or buying them for silly prices on Amazon Instant because we have no actual TV channels at my house. But with a summer full of (hopefully) awesome comic book movies ahead, I’ve gotten the itch to get back into some animated superhero shows.
So, a new Spider-man cartoon based on the Ultimate line of comics, with a heavy dose of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Coulson? What? Stan Lee plays a janitor at his high school? This sounds like a pretty awesome Spider-man show.
Wow…just wow. Director Kyle Roberts used the NECA Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, hand-drawn backgrounds, and a lot of talent to recreate the 80s TMNT cartoon intro in stop motion. The animation is smooth and the whole thing is very impressive, maybe minus the cover of the theme song. This looks a lot better than the TMNT stop motion I posted a few years ago.
Also make sure to check out their making of video. As awesome as this is, I wonder if they wished they would have waited for the new TMNT Classics action figures. That would have looked amazing.
It doesn’t matter whether you like sports or not, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest entertainment events of the year. The estimated 111.3 million viewers Sunday night made it the most watched television show of all time.
A big highlight from the night, at least for me, was the commercial presented by MetLife. The insurance company’s “Everyone” ad featured a bevy of classic cartoon characters.
A great aspect of the nostalgia-inducing spot was its use of B-list stars. Sure, the Peanuts characters common with MetLife advertising were present but so too were Saturday Morning heroes long forgotten. You could easily see popular ’70s and ’80s figures like Voltron, He-Man, and The Jetsons. Also on hand were lesser-knowns like Jabberjaw, Hong Kong Phooey, and Magilla Gorilla.
MetLife’s Facebook page has bios of most of them but cartoonist Mark Anderson has an exhaustive list in chronological order. Anderson even corrected MetLife’s mention of Captain Caveman to his doppelgangers Rock and Gravel Slag.
If you missed the ad, watch it below and then seek out the excellent coverage by Anderson. The Facebook page also has a few “behind the scenes” videos to check out. Oh, and see if you can find the numerous inclusions of the stripe shirt-wearing Waldo.
