Posts Tagged ‘toys’
2 items.
Just in case you guys don’t know what those big green fists are that I’m referencing in today’s strip, here’s a link to the acutal product they’re selling to your kids. Just to send the message home, here’s a picture, too.
Man, that kid is scary. Too much sugar in his diet.
Let’s stop for a minute and think about this product. While undoubtably cool, is this the kind of item you want to willing hand over to a TV-addled 10 year-old? It’s not as though they aren’t ALREADY going around punching everything and everyone. Now we need to give them a bigger surface area to hit with and ELECTRONIC SOUNDS?
I envision many sad, sad parents after this weekend.
The Hulk marketing machine seems to be churing at full-tilt. His ugly mug is on everything from my can of Mountain Dew to my stylish birthday party paper plates?
It raises the question “Why the HELL did director Ang Lee allow Universal to market his picture with such wanton abandon?”
Part of the answer may stem in the price tag for the movie. Apparently Universal has sank over $150 million dollars into it plus another $20 million at the last minute to make the Hulk “extra real”. No wonder they’re trying to recoup on their investment.
I don’t think there’s a doubt in anyone’s brain that The Hulk is going to pull in serious green (HA, HA!) this weekend. Whether it can remain for the long haul remains to be seen. Terminator 3 is on the horizion and pitching straight up the middle of Hulk’s audience – geeks who wished they were powerful. If anything, I think it’s a safe bet that it’ll be better than Daredevil There’s no Ben Affleck factor to drag it down!
Still, even though I know the Hulk Hands will be fodder for childhood nostalgia site X-Entertainment in a few years, I really want a pair just so I can sock anyone in the mouth who says the CG Hulk looks fake.
Jared. I know where you live.
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This was actually supposed to be the comic you guys were get on Friday and the Live Free or Die Hard comic was the one you were supposed to get last Wednesday. Of course, since my computer completely melted down last Wednesday, the order is all screwed up.
I’m sure it makes no difference to you, but I enjoy being timely with the comics. It’s one advantage the web has over digital media. So, for me, it would have been a lot more fun if I could have gotten the LFoDH comic up on Wednesday when the movie started playing in theaters and having this Ratatouille comic up on Friday before the latest Pixar film was proven a success with a near $50 million opening weekend.
There has been so much crap written about Ratatouille and these concerns that it wouldn’t connect with audiences. Rats in a kitchen? Yech! French cuisine? Double yech! So what? If the story is good, the audience will be there. And I think word of mouth is only going to improve on this thing, from what I’ve been reading.
Marketing aside, the only red flag that came up for me is that the original director Jan Pinkava was replaced by Brad Bird. But then, that’s like having Nolan Ryan come in to finish out a pitching session for a rookie’s first time on the mound. Everything is going to be fine.
Shamefully, I didn’t get to see ANY movies this weekend due to my overwhelming computer issues. What a pain in the ass. I finally got a hold of a new hard drive Friday night and it pretty much took me the rest of the weekend off and on to get Windows XP and the rest of my software loaded back onto it. I didn’t really suffer any significant data loss, but it just takes SO MUCH TIME. Like, HOURS at a stretch, it seems. I don’t really have that kind of free time with Henry in the house. I pretty much stuck him with Cami all day Sunday. Father of the year, over here, gang.
At this point, my concern is falling behind. In addition to Ratatouille, both Cami and I want to see Sicko. But it’s a matter of finding the time and getting someone to babysit Henry. My radar is up for Transformers on Wednesday. Begrudgingly, I think I have to go to this one. Not particularly because I think it’s going to be a good movie (I certainly don’t respect the direction they went in regards to the robot designs) but because I feel like this is the movie everyone is going to be talking about.
In a way, Michael Bay and company were right to wait until the July 4 weekend. It seems like Spider-Man 3, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Shrek the Third all kind of blew their wad by landing in theaters back in May. No one is really talking about them now because I think they all kind of canceled each other out. I’m looking at the upcoming release schedule and I’m not really seeing anything that is going to challenge Transformers dominance. I mean, Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix will probably steal some of it’s thunder, but that’s the fifth movie in the franchise and – truthfully – haven’t we seen it all before?
I never thought I would find myself in the position of defending Bay or Transformers, but I really think it’s going to be the blockbuster to beat this summer. It’s going to show us something new. Or at least a big-screen version of a concept we’ve been waiting to see for the last 20 years.
However, unlike Sicko and Ratatouille, Transformers is a movie Cami has no interest in seeing. So I might be able to sneak out of the house Wednesday night after Henry is asleep and check it out for myself. I kind of hate that it’s come to this – me seeing these movies by myself. I used to really like dragging Cami along with me. But I’m kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I kind of have to see these bigger movies as part of my "job," but with a baby, you can’t drop what you’re doing and go see everything you want. I feel like I’m being selfish going by myself. But for the immediate future, this looks like the best solution for us.
Oh, well. What about the rest of you? Have you finally started to give in to the Transformers hype
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