#0040: Madden NFL 06 (PS2)

In every great legacy, there's a setback. Even the strongest among us falters here or there, and it's because of these missteps that we are able to grow and learn.

For Napoleon, it was Waterloo. For Nintendo, it was the Virtual Boy. For Kesha, it was pursuing a career in music. And for Tiburon, it was Madden NFL 06.

It was supposed to be a good idea. A gameplay mechanism that allowed more control and precision over your quarterback's throws. It sounded to the layman like a massive step forward from football game to football simulation.

After all, 2005's hit stick was an exciting way to finally deliver those bone-crunching tackles you'd always wanted to on puny guys like Az-Zahir Hakim. The rear cover boasted that this was the 'year of the quarterback'. It omitted the word 'shitty' between 'quarterback' and 'the', because we were handcuffed to the infamous cone of shame.

Known at the time as 'QB vision', it meant that every time you threw a pass, a ray of light shot out from your quarterback, indicating their range of visibility, or their fondness for Scott Summers. Throws made outside of this light area were horribly off-target, and suddenly this made a QB's awareness stat of utmost importance. If you were Peyton Manning, you could see almost everywhere. If you were Kyle Boller, you were Stevie Wonder.

To test it out for the first time in ages, I took on the woeful 2-14 49ers, and the results were not pretty. Steve McNair completed 15 of 33 passes for 222 yards, 2 TDs (one a miracle completion to Drew Bennett, the other an inexplicably successful 4-yard goalline grab by Troy Fleming, where the 230-pounder miraculously juked a defender) to 3 interceptions (iPhone wanted me to say interventions), and 2 sacks. On the other side, rookie Alex Smith fared even worse: 9 of 20, 136 yards, 1 interception and 7 sacks. Those are the kind of stats I'd expect if I were playing football.

In case you were wondering, yes Erron Kinney was fantastic. I'm beginning to think that he was actually the lead programmer with EA at the time, or had slept around a fair bit in order to put himself in such high regard. End game: a 13-31 win that I'm not proud of. Also, the only good game that Andre Woolfolk ever played. Historic.


As you can gather, the QB vision element was more of a hindrance than a benefit, simply too cumbersome for a game of it's pace. You could turn it off if you wanted, but then that defeated the purpose of even getting the game. If you were updating your Madden, you wanted more of a payoff than Pacman freakin' Jones.

On that note, this Madden is a bit sour grapes to me anyhow, because it came after a Titans 5-11 campaign, making them one of the worst teams in the game. So I'm playing the worst Madden game with one of the worst Titan teams... why, exactly?

Another gripe I have is that punt returning is simply impossible, because your AI won't block for you. Instead, they'll face your direction, watching with eager anticipation to see what happens next. And, inevitably, that results in your return man getting absolutely killed. In my case, that returner is aforementioned Pacman, which makes it okay.

AI issues aren't new to Madden, but because the overall package is usually so good, it's otherwise overlooked. In 06, however, it's hard to get into the game when your QB passes as well as Garo Yepremian.

Toy Flashback: Scar's Greatest Enemy

The battle for feline supremacy...

#0039: Super Mario Kids A-Peel Stickers

I am shameless enough to admit that I lived a pretty comfortable lifestyle as a kid. My family was, at that time, pretty well off, so we could afford to go on yearly holidays. For this reason, I am a wily veteran of airplane trips. It’s a sad fact that I have spent more time in airplanes than I have behind the wheel, and the reason is simple: if I’m in an airplane, I’m going to London or Hawaii. If I’m in a car, I’m going to the petrol station. And possibly, I’m going to die, because I cannot drive worth a shit.

Despite my wealth of experience however, I was hardly a patient child. Planes were an icky, cramped place to spend hours on end, and I had to keep my impressionable young mind sharp and focused. Because who knows, any time might be the moment the ninjas strike! I had to be ready. I had to be equipped with my Super Mario Kids A-Peel stickers. Yeah, fuck you, ninjas! I had Goomba stickers.

Basically, these were vinyl stickers that you’d plonk onto a storyboard to create your own fun and amusement, and because they could be peeled off with ease, you could reallocate them however you saw fit. Did you need another set of chairs at the table? No worries, just pick them up from where you’d previously left them, typically underwater, and chuck ‘em where you wanted ‘em.

This set includes all of the necessary Mario characters, including a disco-loving Bowser, and a Blooper that says ‘sup?’


I myself never knew anyone who looked like the kids on the packaging. They’re a little too 80s ghetto for my liking.

The best Kids A-Peel packages spanned multiple pages, and offered a bevy of stickers. They were often Disney stories, so you knew they weren’t going to cut corners there. If we were going to have an ultra-condensed version of Beauty and the Beast, we were going to be given so many stickers we wouldn’t give a shit. I liked putting Mrs. Potts in places she really didn’t belong. When the Beast was facing off against Gaston, he could rest easy knowing Mrs. Potts was in his corner, grinning as she supervised the action.

Then, it grew to even greater proportions, with Mrs. Potts escaping the confinement of the sticker book, appearing on windows and the refrigerator. Eventually, she just up and left one day, and I haven’t found her since. I’m sure she’ll resurface someday, having tucked herself into an issue of Where’s Waldo or Les Misérables.

The Super Mario sticker sheet however, was only one storyboard, so you couldn’t mess around. You had to place as many strategically placed enemies about the map as you could, for sticker Mario to navigate around before finally plucking the axe from the bridge and sending Bowser plummeting to his doom.

Me personally, I always thought Bowser should either get rid of that axe mechanism that led to eight straight deaths, or just shoot fireballs from the safety of the floor behind him. I mean, bro, that bridge was doing you no favours. Get off the damned thing!

Now, on the 20th birthday of my fantastic Super Mario reusable static cling vinyl stickers storyboard, let’s see what kind of epic fable I can assemble!


We begin with Mario taking his anger out on the first hapless Koopa Troopa who happens to be standing there at the time. The Koopa looks at me, as though to say, ‘shit, you’re kidding me!’ before he dies a fiery death. His funeral is small and inexpensive.


On his way to the next world, Mario punches a block. However, like most blocks, it is empty, and hitting it results in nothing but a broken hand. Surely, he should have realised that that was a bad idea?


Now Mario scales down towards the darkened catacombs. On his descent, he comes upon a Paratroopa botanist who is quite flustered with his early arrival. ‘Wait!’ the Paratroopa shouts, ‘I haven’t set up my vine yet!’, but Mario cares not. He moves on with disinterest, and the Paratroopa is left aghast that the vine he had worked so hard on for all these years was for naught. Poor pedantic Paratroopa, says the alliteration buff.


Now in the underground cavern, Mario comes upon a Lakitu who threatens him while hovering upside down, in an effort to get into Mario’s head and weird him out. However, Mario has no time for this existential, passive aggressive attack. He carries onward.


‘Feed me, Seymour!’ the Piranha Plant pleads. Mario takes the Piranha Plant out to dinner at an upper-class French restaurant, and then they go dancing at the local discotheque. They are now going steady.


Mario passes by a pipe he had seen earlier above ground. He had been tempted to go down it before, but was advised against it by an odd worm with blue hair. Relieved, the worm mutters to himself, ‘If she’d ‘ave kept on goin’ down that way she’d ‘ave gone straight to that castle.’


Though he should have now been able to head down directly to Bowser’s dungeon, Mario falls afoul of a block which should not have been here. ‘Curse you, Dungeon Master!’ he shouts, before rolling a +20 in fortitude. He proceeds on through an alternative route, where he happens upon Bowser’s drug money. Lucky!


He comes out of the fortress and now he’s FUCKING HUGE!!!


An ominous cloud hangs about the next room. Though at first it arouses Mario’s suspicion, he later dismisses it as a rogue weather pattern. I can honestly assure you that this was not the sort of plot I was creating 20 years ago.

…Because clearly, I would have had the drug money in a different room.


Mario is instantly hit by a flash of bright colours. Disco Bowser is here! But he’s not where he should be! He’s listened to my advice, and is standing a great distance behind the bridge. Bowser yanks the axe, and Mario falls into the lava. His funeral is better than the Koopa’s.

And that is the end. It was fantastic.

As for the sup Blooper, he’s gone off on his own quest, in honour of his hero, Mrs. Potts. Will we ever meet again? The odds are good. When you’re next flipping through the pages of your tome, keep your eyes peeled (pun!), and maybe… just maybe… you will be paid a fruitful visit by the sup Blooper…

#0038: Goo the Boxing Kangaroo

Another day, another customer who tumbles out of my closet, begging to be relieved from his duties as though it was slavery.

I really wanted to do a horribly ugly plush I had acquired from MGM Las Vegas in 1993, but somehow, the very notion that I held in my position a nineteen-year-old plush from MGM makes it hard for me to part with. Funnily enough, I keep nearly accidently forgetting a decade, and I had almost claimed it was nine years old. If that were the case, I would be thirteen. Ha. Funny.

So I copped out and went with a much safer option. A silly little puppet I bought while visiting an Australian souvenir store. I don’t know why, exactly, I saw fit to purchase him, and he really hasn’t had much use in this life. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Goo the boxing kangaroo requested reprieve.


The name Goo is a moniker I gave him, because like most toys I believe to be unlicensed, he didn’t exactly come with a robust profile. Officially speaking, he’s really just ‘kangaroo with boxing gloves’.

He doesn’t particularly inspire me to type anything of pertinence as he sits here in my lap, staring at me with those big, glassy eyes. He’s fun to wiggle around and reshape, but I quickly grow tired of that.

As I mentioned previously, my fiancé is a grade 2 teacher this year, so I’m hoping in earnest that she can find a way to integrate him into the classroom. In grade 2, we were taught lessons by a parrot named Zazoop. We wanted to call him Zazu, but the teacher had this weird vendetta against infringing copyright.

Zazoop taught us not to talk to strangers, or get into cars with people we didn’t know. As near as I recall, these things were all illustrated by some really sinister-looking pictures. They were monochrome and depressing… The expressions told nothing… The world they portrayed was blotchy, inky and empty. This was either the world of pedophilia, or rejects from the easel of Stephen Gammell.


Mild exaggeration, although I certainly wouldn’t get in a car with that man. At the very least, I doubt he’s a cautious driver.

Our buddy Goo here, however, will regale students with tales about how to be a better friend, and how to conduct oneself in the classroom. Because this is much more fun, and doesn’t throw my childhood askew as badly as the last paragraph does. Though if I may make a creative suggestion, I would cast Goo in the crucial role of mischievous foil. The little devil on the shoulder who tries to lead us astray, but fails due to our commitment to morals.

Because, for crying out loud, he’s a boxing kangaroo. He embodies the miserable world of illegal animal fighting rings, and he’s probably drunk all the time. We’ll omit that last detail from the classroom, however.

Goo only holds one secret, and it’s obviously a very well hidden secret, because until literally right after I had finished that last sentence, I had never noticed it. This secret is, of course, that Goo’s head is filled with tye-dyed fabric, and frankly, this could mean anything.


Was he once a pillow of some sort? Did he murder a hippie during an inebriated stupor, and hide the evidence within his very noggin? It’s hard to say. In fact, it’s impossible to say, and if you could possibly defy this notion, then… please don’t. I don’t care enough to argue your factual evidence with my theories of cushions and dead flower people.

…Stephen Gammell imagery resurfacing… Oh dear god…

#0037: The Lake at the End of the World

‘They told me there was nothing left outside. They said the world was empty, finished.’

Such is the chilling passage on the rear cover of this young adult fiction by Caroline Macdonald (RRP: $11.95 AUD), a book that describes Hector’s venturing out from the underground community which is all he has ever known. There, he meets Diana … and the mystical lake where she lives with her parents.

It is a multi-award-winning novel which has become a classic of its genre. Laurie Copping, of the Canberra Times, describes it as being ‘beautifully sensitive and thoroughly believable – a fine novel … the final resolution is a triumphant climax to a gripping story.’

It is best read while listening to TLC. My favourite page is page 70. It is the Lake at the end of the World. …And I have never read it.

Near as I can recall, it came into my possession when I won a writing competition. The prize was $100 worth of books, and the only one that caught my fancy was about animals that lit up. So though I couldn’t tell you a damned thing about Hector and his lake, I could rattle on about anglerfish and fireflies for nearly fifty seconds. That may not sound impressive, but go ahead and try it. And don’t cheat by talking in a slow voice.

The only things I’ve been able to surmise from the cover is that Hector looks like Sephiroth, and Diana is pure evil. Look at that smirk as she sticks her hand into the magic lake. She’s probably reaching for the skull of her latest victim.

The story spans across 184 (possibly) action-packed pages. Assuming we’re working on the basis of the recommended retail price, that means each page will cost you less than 7 cents. That sounds like a good offer, but I resent forking out $12 for a paperback novel. I wonder if you could remove some of the pages and round it off at a neat $9.95?

Here are some things I did instead of reading this book:


I played basketball.


I became Super Mario.

I watched Gummi Bears.


I ate a child made of paper.

So as you can gather, I’ve clearly not had the time to attempt the sheer enormity of this fable. My fiancé is a primary school teacher, maybe she’ll find a use for it. Or are primary school kids too young for it? I suppose they might be. At their age I was reading shit about cats and owls getting married, and a frog and toad who went on magnificent adventures. Honestly, I would love this book more if it was a Frog and Toad book.


However, this book does have a very special quality to it, which makes it a best-seller and a must-read.

For you see…


It houses the Master Sword. In order to claim the sword and save Hyrule, you must first open the book, and while you’re there, why not give it a read?

#0036: Spider-Sense Peter Parker

Here’s a random memory: While on a flight from Australia to Canada in 2004, I watched Spiderman 2. However, I had already seen it a fair few times, and it was becoming old hat, so I made the curious decision to watch it in French. And it was fantastic.

“Qui est Speederman?”

“C’est Peet-air Park-air!”

“Park-air?!”

It really opened the movie up for me: new possibilities, new discoveries, and perhaps even new references to croissants. I wouldn’t know, because I hardly speak any French. I learnt Italian instead, which has so far never proven useful to me in the slightest.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at this exciting toy. It’s the amazing(ly shitty) Spider-Sense Peter Parker. Or, as the French say, Peet-air Park-air. …Chiudi la bocca!


As you can plainly see, this thing is quite hideous. This McDonald’s prize from 1995 represents Peter Parker’s apparently dreadful fashion sense as he gallivants about New York City, hoping to get that elusive perfect shot for the front cover of the Daily Bugle. Maybe it’s the brown jacket I don’t like, zipped up so tightly it almost entirely conceals his red undergarments. He looks like a flasher, dammit. Add to that a utility belt either carrying camera gear, ‘spider’ gear, or gimp gear, and I truly do not want this man to take my photo.

Also, that camera is quite uninspired. It’s just entirely coated in an unhappy layer of black paint. Not even the scarcest attempt at adding a little colour for a lens, which makes it look suspiciously like one of those fake cameras that squirts water at you. You know the kind. It pissed Tom Cruise right off then, and it pisses me right off now.

And, to compound this frustration (and to begin three straight paragraphs with A words), the painting job at rear of camera is shoddy at best. The skin tones of Peter’s hand has spilt out onto the camera itself, causing the perfectionists among us to waggle our fingers in disdain. It could also possibly cause the deluded among us to fear that this is actually a horrifying display of Peter’s hand melting from mere contact with the camera. And though this is certainly the more exciting option, it’s hardly plausible.

Furthermore, why in God’s name has he got an arm raised skyward? Of course, you know the mechanic behind this, and if you don’t, persist with patience and ye shall be rewarded. But I mean, come on. The man is trying to take a picture. Why would he do this while shooting a fist to the air? Is it a curious gesture of ‘smile for the birdie?’, or is he dangling haphazardly from an invisible string in a daring attempt to catch his targets unaware? Or did he just take a particularly good photo that he’s chuffed as chips about?


I don’t know. But I’m sure Sarah Michelle Gellar Sticker is sick and tired of all these damned paparazzi. Though frankly, I’m sick of her. I’ve been trying to tear that thing off the bed head for years, but she refuses to go down without a fight. These damned feminist movements, they’re too empowering, you see.

…I totally didn’t intend on making a pun about a sticker not moving being caused by a feminist movement. That’s fucking fantastic. Additionally, this entry is so wordy it hurts. Don’t think I haven’t noticed this. Ouch!

But as the toy promises, every now and then (like when he sees a particularly attractive lady), Peter will feel his ‘spider-sense’ tingling. I sort of cock an eyebrow to this one, because although he can ‘do whatever a spider can’, at no point have I ever known spiders to be fucking clairvoyant. If they were, surely they’d be much better at avoiding being squashed by boots. …Or is it a self-fulfilling prophecy? Shit, now I’m confusing myself with spider paradoxes. I’ve never pondered such things before, and I’m alarmed to be doing so now.

Without further ado (and by ado I mean stalling), here is the manifestation of Peter Parker’s spider-sense.


Yup. I don’t get it either.

Evidently the spider-sense ravenously consumes half of Peter’s head, causing a sick amalgamation between mild-mannered photographer and daring web slinger. It looks quite painful, really, and it is a harrowing reminder of the burden that is Peter’s to bear. With great power comes great responsibility, and, on occasion, half of a mask will eat you.

You see, in my mind, this would be the more logical scenario for Peter’s arm to be raised. When he’s in a normal state, and either trying to take a picture, or just strolling around NYC, it just doesn’t make sense for him to be doing it. In the former instance, that would surely cause the camera to be unsteady and the photo blurred, and in the latter instance, Christ, you just don’t walk around New York with an arm up. People will think you’re crazy. Or that you want everyone to get a whiff of your new deodorant. In which case, you’re still crazy. You just smell nicer.

And that’s really all there is to this toy. He’s hardly up to the lofty standard set by his Spawn counterpart, the Clown, but I guess he’s kinda okay. I would be disappointed to have gotten him with my Happy Meal, though. It’s a Sad Meal for me.

I don’t know how I mustered over 900 words on this crappy thing. It must be the journalist within me, subconsciously triggered by Peter’s employment in the newspaper industry. That’s almost deep in a sense. Troubling, but deep.

As a final aside, if you position him just right, he looks like a mutated freak.

Time for ACTION.

I've been focussing on a new little particular of this blog lately; making sure there are a few different, accurate labels for each post.

Basically, because it's a neat way of finding what you're interested in, without sifting through crap like sand lizards and TMNT vs. the RoboBugs. I mean, me personally, I love crap like sand lizards and RoboBugs, but I realise it may not be everyone's cup of tea (in which case, what kind of sick-ass tea are you drinking?!)

So I've been able to use a few key labels that encapsulate key demographics of this blog: plush... video game... that sort of rot.

But what is a toy blog without a label for ACTION FIGURES? Why, it's hardly a blog at all! FYI, I reckon making the term capitalized, bold and italic makes it much more dynamic.

The only thing is, I came to a bit of a snag... how do you define an action figure, really? Wikipedia gives a fairly robust definition, highlighting some key features of an action figure. Things like accessories, and body articulation.

So then, does anything that comes with nifty weapons and a spinning head fall under the classification of action figure? If so, is Regan MacNeil an action figure?

I know which ones are obviously action figures. The Turtles, Clifford the Rock Climber, etc., they fit the definition to a tee. But then you reach a grey area. The recently departed Ickis, for example, lacks accessories or full articulation, but he otherwise has action figure qualities: is he a contender? How about the posable McDonald's toys, like Robin Hood and Manta Ray? Frankly, I think they stretch the boundaries of 'action' to the umpteenth degree. It's like Christian rock; it's an oxymoron.

Anyhow, I'm opening the floor for discussion (just don't fall in!) - to you, the toy enthusiasts, what makes an action figure an action figure?