#0087: It From the Pit

Several years back, I expressed with some amusement the board game renaissance of the 90s. Everything was bigger, bolder and more needlessly elaborate as companies like Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers threw as much shit at the walls as they could to see what would stick. Everyone of my generation no doubt has at least one utterly superfluous offering, and I can just imagine the bemusement of the factory workers assembling all of this bizarre crap on the production line.

"What's this one?"

"I dunno. Something about not waking daddy. I think he's a mean drunk."

And once again, we dip into that well, with potentially the largest box I ever owned, short of the one I live in. Words can hardly express the giddiness I feel as I gaze upon the absolute majesty held in the above photo. I suppose they'll have to do, though, because in the medium of blogging, I don't really have many other options beyond that. I could do an interpretive dance and hope that you somehow just pick up on my vibes, but the last time I tried solving my issues that way I ended up with a $300 fine and five months probation. I haven't been allowed near a Dairy Queen since.

But that's another story for another day trial. For today, I have only aspirations to get away from It. It From the Pit. In case you thought I meant the other It from Colorado. Haven't seen him in eons.

Fuck yes.

Look at that fucking thing, reaching out and plucking tiny little people from their hiding places. He doesn't give a single shit about your feelings, and probably whacked thousands of kids in the hands as they tried desperately to save their plastic familiars. No touching, you filthy children, they're mine now.

In addition, It was also excellent at cleaning up after you were done, helpfully collecting all of the loose pieces and storing them in the eternal hell of his swamp until you were ready to play again.

Needless to say, the ad was the driving factor behind buying It From the Pit. With its seamless blend of animation and montage of kids going 'ahh!', it was a hype machine like no other. And that theme song? It's easily in my top 10 songs I can readily remember right at this moment. Top 3 in fact, because I can only think of 3.

But are you brave enough to look at the back...?

Holy shit, It From the Pit has lore.

You're deep in the jungle, hunting for hidden gold. Step by step, you circle a giant, swirling slime pit. Beware! Danger lurks within.

Suddenly, angry eyes pop open and a giant green claw reaches out from the dark depths of the pit. Look out! It's coming towards you! It's IT FROM THE PIT!

The huge claw crashes down on the path, just missing you. Whew! You might not be so lucky next time. Will you be first to find the treasure and win? Or will you get grabbed and dragged deep into the pit?

Repetition of the adjective 'giant' notwithstanding, that's some epic shit right there. You can just feel the humidity of the tropics, your brow dripping with sweat as you amble helplessly on the precipice of doom. The fact that you don't just drop your shit and piss bolt the minute this gargantuan beast surfaces from the bog is a testament to either your courage or your greed.

I have never been as excited about anything as that kid on the right is to be playing It From the Pit. He looks like he just saw his friend get punched in the face by a stripper. You know that feeling; it's pure catharsis.

I can't help but wonder who it is that is about to lose their piece in this shot, however, because all three of them look pretty fucking stoked. I guess they all just really hate that one piece, and upon closer inspection, I kinda get it. It looks like an asshole.

There are far too many amazing things going on on this box to list them all, but I'll reel off a few anyway:

• The tagline "it will really grab you" is either an excellent pun or a legitimate threat, and both of those possibilities are equally enticing.
• The French name for It From the Pit is 'La Chose', which translates to 'the Thing'. Not nearly as catchy, but I prefer to think of it actually being a prophetic foretelling of how Los Angeles lost all of their pro football franchises in the 90s. Like, LA Chose... and it chose wrong!
• "The creature's creepy eyes pop open! It sees you and shrieks!" is actually code for: "This thing is really fucking noisy and will annoy the whole household."

Here are your fearless explorers. The precarious purples, the ostentatious oranges, the trepidatious turquoises and those fucking asshole whites. Plus a small cat that I fashioned out of paper and cardboard for some reason. His allegiances remain unclear.

As I tended to do, I needlessly assigned importance to my pieces based on who I deemed most expendable. I tried to keep the strutting man alive because he reminded me of Dr. Alan Grant, and the chick with her hand on her boobs was cool, too. It's as if she's fending off It From the Pit by beating her chest like a gorilla in the ultimate display of intimidation. The bitch with the binoculars wasn't any good, because come on man, the monster is right fucking there. You don't need a visual aid.

Truth be told, sometimes when a piece I like was nabbed, I begged to reach in and swap it out for the binoculars woman. I was a weird kid. I am now a weird man. Hence why I'm talking about children's board games.

Anyhow, the point of the game, as we've established, is to land on the treasure at the end of the board. You take turns rolling the die and moving ahead, with the option to take a pit stop (pun?) on higher ground like a sissy coward. Meanwhile, It spins around like he was at the disco and had taken all of the drugs. Theoretically, if you were an asshole, you could move up to the safe route and really take your time before your next roll, hoping that your rivals were snagged in the meantime.

Once you've arrived at your destination, you'll loop around a circle until you land on the exact spot where the treasure is located; one of those board game rules that makes sense in the literal context, but is kind of funny when you think about it contextually. What exactly is that silly blue explorer doing? Are they just wandering past the chest and deciding that they need another lap before they've really earned it?

With all of that being said, let's turn this sucker on and watch him molest!!

...Wait, what?

It, bro, that's your cue. I put a brand new battery in your clacker and pressed the 'on' button. This isn't 'on', It. This is decidedly stationary. You won't be stopping anyone from stealing your treasure at this rate, dammit! (And no, it isn't because this is a photograph, you smartass, my fucking monster isn't moving.)

A quick scan of the instructions isn't helping, because for some reason the English version is nowhere to be found. I guess we assumed that only a French Canadian could fix any potential It-related issues (henceforth Itssues), because there is more Français here than a Montreal Alouettes documentary.

"Le premier joueur qui s'arrête sur la case du coffre au trésor par un compte exact, gagne!"

What does that fucking mean?? I'm assuming it's talking about the ultimate joy only arriving when you trespass upon the exact compartment, Verne Gagne. But that doesn't help me at all. It seems that my stupid board game is, as the French say, le fucked.

I'm trying to work out why, but I'm no mechanic. My responsibility only goes so far as pressing the button and watching as innocent people get killed by a ravenous beast. It makes the vaguest of sounds, as if it's considering perhaps doing something, before ultimately deciding that it's just not worth it.

Does it have something to do with the fact that I didn't remove its battery for many years?

A battery that was best if installed by January 1998?

What a ripoff! The commercial assured me that I couldn't get away from It (It From the Pit), but unless I accidentally trip and fall into the swamp, I'm confident that it's really, really, really easy to get away from It. You swindler! You swine! You owe me the $5 I expounded on two C batteries, because it's not possible to buy just one. You owe me the time I wasted setting you up and opining about how fantastic you would be. You owe me my dreams, It, and those are the most precious commodity of all.

I suppose I will just have to admit defeat and slink off into the shadows, unable to provide you with the ecstasy of watching a twenty-six year old toy do something. I mean, all it takes is a quick scan of YouTube to find other people with Its that work perfectly well, but it's just not the same. I wanted it to be my It. I wanted to relive the innocent bliss of my childhood, but instead got a grim reminder of my adulthood; broken and clearly not going anywhere. This game has turned fucking real, man. Too fucking real.

"What? You woke me up for this? Screw that, come back to me when Trump is out of office. There's only room for one monster around here..."

Good Eeveening

One more quick hit for my spree of Pokemania; I thought I would show off my collection of Eevee Legacy plushes. These gaffers retailed at $25 each upon launch, with one being released every month. Considering their size and quality, that's actually a pretty good price - I was able to nab them at $20 apiece, but that's neither here nor there.

Eventually they got down to clearance prices of about $9 each, which is absolutely mental, but by then it was just a few lonely Leafeons whose cherubic smile belied their internal misery. I have this weird obsession with collecting a full set, so once I ventured down the dark path of buying Vaporeon, I eventually knew I had to see the journey through. Which will be great until they inevitably unveil a new Eeveelution and I have to start all over again.

Also in this photo: a Ninja Turtles pillowcase I have had all my life and can't bear to part with, a sun-bleached fully packaged Rosalina amiibo and my cat alarm clock that used to annoy the whole household. The joys of visiting dad's place!

#0086: Pokemon Gashapon Figurines

After the raging success of the last entry (I asked the serial killer who occasionally visits my bedroom what he thought. He described it as being 'pretty cool', then proceeded to remove another one of my organs), I surmised that we ought to continue embracing the frenzy of Pokemania. Today, we're going much more minuscule, and for once, I'm not even dipping into my usual fallback of McDonald's-related merchandise.

These nifty Pokemon Gashapon figurines are not only tiny and adorable like a Colombian prostitute, but I think I could eat them all without even a single episode during the digestion process. Sorry, all that talk of McDonald's made me hungry.

I have had many dalliances with Gashapon machines over my thirty miserable years on this earth. Though not every toy vending machine falls under that branding, you're pretty much getting the same thing from all of them; wee little trinkets that you'll probably throw in the bin shortly thereafter, or in my case, store in a drawer at your dad's place for a decade, for reasons unknown.

One of my most vivid toy vending machine memories came when I used one that was dispensing rubber bug toys. I received something with big mandibles that resembled a stag beetle, which is fairly unspectacular by most accounts, but the main reason that I remember it is that I somehow broke the container in my feverish attempt to wrest my prize free, cutting my hand open on the jagged plastic. Think of the most gruesome death you've ever seen on The Walking Dead. It was basically that, but worse.

Fortunately, this happy trio is yet to cut me open. It consists of Turtwig, Chimchar and Piplup, the starting Pokemon from Diamond, Pearl and Platinum. For various reasons, gen 4 doesn't receive a lot of love; the victims of Pokefatigue and perhaps less ambitious than they should have been, they are still, of course, fantastic games that don't deserve a lot of the flack they catch. That kind of vitriol should be reserved for gen 7. Ho ho! Controversial.

Turtwig et al play merrily below an unspectacular tree, the ground dotted with several holes that suggest there was once some kind of apparatus to stand the figurines up. Of course, such an apparatus remains only a telltale whisper on a scandalous wind, so its veracity is dubious, at best. That there is fancy talk for I dunno where the fuck them things is at.

Don't worry, boys. We've all been there.

The figurines are unfathomably small, to the point where if you were to give them a whiff, you'd risk snorting them directly up your nostril. As such, any kind of aromatic pleasure you hope to receive from them is a fool's errand, and is best reconsidered. They have an admirable amount of detail, from Chimchar's cheeky monkey grin to Piplup's plumage. I bring attention to the latter because it has these white dot things on its chest that look all too much like nipples. Frosty penguin nipples, for all the world to enjoy. ...Did you enjoy? I thought they were okay.

What I can't help but wonder, though, is what purpose they are meant to serve. Not only are they incredibly losable (which is apparently a real adjective and that makes me very happy), but they don't really do much of note. They are more ornamental than anything else, and once you lose the pegs to actually make them stay put, as I am wanton to do, they don't even perform that task particularly well.

If you intend on flipping the script, pointing an accusatory finger my way and demanding to know why I bought them in the first place, my extravagance is already well-established. You are, after all, reading the blog of a man who bought this, these, these and this. Your words can hurt me no more than I can hurt my own bank account, so neener neener neeeeener!

I also have another Gashapon critter in my possession, but this one is even harder to explain.

Yes indeed, that there is Mr. Fancypants Darkrai, still in his original packaging and coming complete with a transparent Ash Ketchum boy toy of his very own. He comes from the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl Blockbuster line of Gashapon figures, and I can only surmise that this refers to the fact that they all had a movie about them at some point. I know for sure that that was the case with Mew, Lugia and Entei, each of whom are also included despite the fact that they have nothing to do with Diamond and/or Pearl, but the rest I'm not so sure of.

In fairness, there have been approximately 195 Pokemon movies, and most of us checked out mentally during the first one when the conflict between good and evil was resolved with tears. I was nine at the time, and as I sat there in the theatre with my dad, I couldn't help but feel ashamed by how lame that was. WHY WAS MEWTWO UPSET BY THIS DESPITE THE FACT THAT THIS WAS HIS INTENTION THE WHOLE GODDAMN TIME? BY HITTING CAPS LOCK I LOOK LIKE EVERY INTERNET COMMENTER AND WOW, IT'S A LOT MORE SATISFYING THAN I EXPECTED.

Darkrai is of a more serviceable size, but despite this utility, I kept him imprisoned like a particularly off brand version of Han Solo. And you know what, I really can't begin to tell you why. It's not like I was dismayed that I hadn't gotten Jirachi instead, choosing to cast Darkrai aside in an effort to show him that he's not pretty enough.

The mystery is so deep and complex, I think I'll keep him in there as I send him off onto his next chapter in life. Someday, someone more benevolent than I may decide to release him from his stasis, or the cycle will continue forevermore; a perpetual loop of ghastly misery.

As for Turtwig, Chimchar and Turtwig? Man, fuck those guys, they won't even stand up long enough for me to snap a decent photo. As if I care where they end up.

...Spoiler alert, I actually do kind of care, because I'm vaguely hopeful that someone really will either eat or snort them up. I don't know why I'm this way. I just am.

#0085: Charizard & Blastoise

Ahh, Pokemon. That kooky phenomenon that captivated the world for a solid two years or so. This may sound insignificant in the vast enormity of pop culture history (and even more so if you extrapolate that figure to the dawn of mankind), but that is, in actuality, an incredibly long run for what some might deem a 'fad'.

To be fair, Pokemon has more merit than the curios of yesteryear like Beanie Babies and Pogs, by virtue of the fact that it was built on the foundation of a video game that was actually incredibly good (albeit hugely flawed, if you're willing to incur the wrath of stubborn genwunners who have had their fingers in their ears for the last two decades), and as such, it has enjoyed great success to this day.

But damn, to be a kid at the turn of the millennium when it was at its peak, it was something else, man. And other than everyone's third favourite rat Pikachu (behind only Mickey Mouse and Donald Trump), this formidable duo was at the forefront of the whole thing.

Odds are, you have fond associations with your very first Pokemon, particularly their evolved forms, Charizard and Blastoise.

...Unless you were smart enough to choose Venusaur, that is. But hey, we can't all be luminaries.

By the time we had reached 2006, Pokemania was little more than a collection of shrapnel scattered on the floor, threatening to be carried away by a strong Gust (it's super effective!) But I was still hooked. I am still hooked, obviously. I'm little more than a petulant man child who happens to be wearing a Litten hoodie at this very moment. And no, you can't have a photo.

So it was an inevitability when Jess and I arrived at McDonald's that Saturday evening in September that I would be walking out there the proud(?) owner of a figurine made for children. To give you the full scope of the situation, here's a blog entry I made the day after...

Our order was prompt; twenty chicken McNuggets, a quarter pounder and a Big Mac. ...Hmm, sounded more impressive at the time. And I lie, it was not prompt; I hesitated in my decision to go with the Big Mac. Foreshame, Tony.

Possessing the sustenance, I peered up at the menu above. I keenly noted that they were still hawking their cheesy Happy Meal wares, and today's selection would be of the Pokemon variety. Ho-hum, how tacky, how 1997, how childish, how droll... OH MY GOD THEY HAD CHARIZARD.

I will now admit, I get all giddy at the very mention of Charizard, simply because he's a massive angry dragon whose tail is on fire. He's everything I ever dreamed to be, and though in actuality he ranks like thirteenth or fourteenth on my list of Poke-preference (the upper echelons reserved for such legendary beasts of valour as Venusaur and Dragonite. Those are the money-mon), he was always meant to be the most utmost cool Pokemon. I mean, seriously, his trading card game card cost like $100. That's one expensive lizard.

I had previously expressed my Charizard-fancy to Jessica (probably as an off-handed remark; 'Yes I'd like a coffee, and some scrambled eggs, OH MY GOD CHARIZARD RAWR'), and she could no doubt see the intensity in my eyes.

She quickly asked how much the toy would cost on its own, and I was taken aback. Sixty years from now, though there shall be a special place in my heart for my graduation day, wedding day, and the inevitable day I win the Superbowl, they will all bow down to the day when Jessica would buy me a Charizard. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the true mark of saintliness. ...After all, it's not like I was gonna ask for the friggin' thing, I look like a twenty-six year old stoner, don't need to act like one too.

I merrily watched on with anticipation as the McEmployee sifted through her box of mystery for the Char Czar. She came back empty-handed, expressing that there were none available.

WHAAAAAAAAT?? The sign clearly stated, AVAILABLE NOW. Had NOW expired in the duration of the last couple seconds? Was the Charizard on display in the case next to me mocking me at that very moment? I should have staged a McMutiny. I should have sent HER to St. Louis!!

She did however mention that for $2 I could have a substitute Blastoise. Jessica asked if I wanted that one, and, save for the fact that I felt like a seven-year-old who was just denied his favourite toy, I couldn't help but pity the poor Blastoise.

He's no fire-brandishing dragon, nosirree, he's a turtle with water cannons. He's like the G-rated Charizard. The Diet Coke of Charizards. What Charizard would be if he was a sissy. Whereas Charizard sits at a mighty 18 on my Poke-list, Blastoise probably occupies a conservative 35. I was still gonna get the Blastoise, oh hell yeah, but I was gonna sulk all the same. Additionally, keep in mind that the previous couple paragraphs all happened within the span of a couple seconds, which suggests that I really do ramble on.

Funny how times have changed. Charizard later took a tumble down the power rankings, fuelled by my bitterness that it got such adulation where others would be forgotten. But enough about that. What of the toys themselves?

They're both pretty damn cool. Quality figures, with their own little quirks and hidden abilities. Charizard's tail lights up with the fury of a thousand suns (or at very least, an alkaline battery or two), and if you press a button on its back, its wings wiggle. Barely. When I unearthed it from the drawer, it was doing its best Sephiroth impression by being a one-winged angel, and even after I had tracked down the missing appendage, its movement is particularly unmoving. It may have to take these broken wings and learn to fly again, learn to live so free.

Blastoise don't mess around, on the other hand. It's a wind-up toy, and boy howdy does it go like the clackers. Its hydro cannons poke up and down as it powers along, and its arms are outstretched in the ultimate display of aggression. Plus, it just has this look of genuine unhappiness on its face that I can only assume comes from having been dismissed as my 35th favourite Pokemon twelve years ago.

Which one is the truly superior toy? Well, there's only one way to find out...

In hindsight, there was probably a more academic way to solve that.

#0084: The Littlest Pet Shop

Rub your eyelids furiously, kick off the dust, and shoot some heroin into your veins - because we're back, baby!! I can't be held responsible for any enjoyment you may get from this blog entry, nor from any drugs you took on an ill-advised whim. Side note: I always found it funny that heroin and heroine sound so similar. Side side note: I mean, I didn't always find it funny, obviously. It's not like I was an infant in the crib giggling to myself about heroin. At least, I don't think I was. It was a long time ago, after all.

What? Blog? Oh yes.

So 2016 was a year of grim absence - only one blog post to its name, and it wasn't even a proper toy-related entry: instead, it was a way of showing off my amiibo collection! More the pity, no wonder a spambot added a comment linking to a variety of illicit websites. The punishment should fit the crime, and in my case, my punishment was a computer virus and an eyeful of dong.

What of this year, though? What opportunities has it afforded me? Well, I've started writing for a quirky pop culture website known as Nerds4LifeBlog (cheap plug), and I've even gotten some stuff published on Fox Sports, too. It's tucked away in a quiet little corner of the site, but you know what? It's there. It's mine. It's exciting.

But enough about that! Considering I'm the only one who really looks at this blog, this is reading more like a diary entry than anything else (next I want to talk about Charlie Fitzpatrick from chemistry class - he's dreaaaaamy). Fuckers aren't here for exposition. They're here for exhibition. Of toys. And who did I decide would make the perfect hosts for this return? Why, it's the Littlest Pet Shop, that's who!

Before you start pointing digital fingers at me like a surly group of naysayers, I assure you that these were my sister's toys. I was into more masculine things like Ninja Turtles and Sonic the Hedgehog and Murder, She Wrote. I was able to convince my sister that it was time to free these sad animals from the garage, and unleash them on the world. It'll either be a wonderful experience, or they'll spread the deadly T-Virus. Fingers crossed its the latter, I'm sick of this shit already.

The basic concept of TLPS (oh god, that's a horrible acronym) is that you buy a variety of cute little animals in lovely enclosures. As you can see from the header photo, complete with terrible lighting and questionable feng shui, critters range from kitties to puppies to goddamn swans, making me assume that this pet shop has some particularly loose morals. For ninety bucks, they'll give you a puppy! For two hundred, they'll kill a man.

It should come as no surprise, that several of the animal population and their homes are now missing, an eerie form of genocide that my government still hasn't recognised officially. Now there's just a bed, a lonely, empty house, some poop litter and a basket that may or may not actually be part of this collection. It's sad, but not nearly as sad as the former residents of this once great (and yet somehow decidedly little) pet shop. There's fluffy tailed furries and clawing critters that no longer have the scratching posts they once possessed. So now, they look more like they just want to strangle you.

Some of them are actually miniature figurines that came as part of a little playset, suggesting that the aforementioned pet shop was not in fact the littlest, a misnomer that perhaps led to the company's demise.

Here we see little Abigail resting in her cot, watching idly as her bunny friend Amber hops along the rolling fields of grey. Amber's younger sister Wendy observes cautiously from a nearby tree, while Bruce and Betty spin merrily about for hours on end. The evil pink starfish watches unseen from above, because every tale needs a villain, and more importantly, I forgot to include it in the group picture.

My favourites? I'm so glad you asked. There's the fluffy Yorkshire terrier that has long flowing hair that can be pulled from behind to make it into a long flowing tail - just like a real doggie! Then there's the large grey cat with its mouth agape that is perpetually crawling along the floor like some sort of struggling alcoholic. And not to be left out, there's a pair of mice that used to be part of a cute little enclosure. Only the bottom part of this feature remains, a delightful maze in which to test your wits. One of the mice has a magnet in its butt like some sort of test subject, you see. Originally, you would place a magnet on the other side of the plastic, and have it navigate the maze to collect the many pieces of cheese haphazardly stuck to the floor. It has no access to this magnet now, so it can only sit there at the starting line in misery. It could be worse, though - the other mouse doesn't even seem to have a face at all.

The series has continued to this day, relaunched in the mid-2000s with a new art direction that chiefly consisted of REALLY BIG EYES. Like, seriously, those things won't just stare into your soul, they'll look right through it and perv on your wife's soul before you even realise what's going on. Call me a purist (go on, I fucking dare you), but I prefer the more understated appearance of the original series. Especially the drunk cat - seriously, that chick is awesome.

Odds are, as the years go by and I continue to unearth more items from dad's garage, I'll end up finding more and more of these fun friends, so doubtlessly you can look forward to those being arbitrarily shoehorned into other entries when I can't be bothered to make a follow-up post.

For now, though - there's something more exciting to prepare for... A FROG JUMPING CONTEST. That's right, just like we used to do in the old country. Join on in, it'll be a hoot! Or at least, a warble.

Addiction renewed, part 1

So what happens, you may be asking, when a blog dedicated to clearing space and moving on in life comes to a stall?

...Addiction sets back in, of course. And because I've arbitrarily made the commitment to never get rid of any toys unless they're in the guise of this blog, there's only things coming into my possession, when it's supposed to be the other way around.

But hey... I hope you enjoy my amiibos!! I certainly do. I wonder if they're the only item that's rapidly multiplying? Stay tuned...

Team X-Stream

So it's been a few months now, and no doubt the lack of updates have given y'all reason to believe that I have, in fact, fallen into a bear trap of unfathomable size, been accosted by deadly wasps with laser eyes, and then combusted into a million pieces, each of which was then eaten by camoflagued wolves. It's the only logical explanation, after all.

The good news is that it's only the half truth. I'm doing fine, and will possibly begin toy blogging in a few months. Got that wedding to save for, after all. Should you miss your quarterly intake of Tony, however, you may be excited to know that I've taken up streaming and Let's Play-ing (awkward verb is awkward).

Check me out on Twitch if you're so inclined, or head on over to my YouTube channel to see gaming excerpts of all shapes and sizes. You might like it!

...I mean, you might hate it, too, but that's a risk I'm willing to take to hawk my shoddy wares.