As a child, part of the Christmas ritual for me and my siblings was snuggling up with the basket of Christmas books that came out with the decorations every year. The illustrations were so vivid, the books always smelled a little bit like cinnamon from being in a box with Christmas ornaments all year, and sometimes I just want to float back to when I was 7 years old, curled up with my stuffed Rudolph and wearing a slightly itchy Santa hat and reading about the Christmas robin, the ten little angels, and the town that forgot about Christmas!

1. The Christmas Robin by David Hately.

The Christmas Robin tells the story of a fat little pair of robins who are feasting on some crumbs left on a windowsill one December when the robin wife glances into the window, sees the Christmas tree, and realizes, as robin wives are wont to do, that if she is to compete with the other robin wives she must have some of that tinsel for their nest. She sends her long-suffering husband on a dangerous journey inside the house to steal some of the beautiful tinsel. He is in the Christmas tree when he is discovered by the family on Christmas morning! He begins to sing, probably begging them in bird-language to please spare him the same fate as the turkey in their kitchen, and they are utterly charmed. The next day the tree is thrown out, still covered in tinsel, and Mrs. Robin is able to decorate her hearts’ content while Mr. Robin no doubt visits a divorce lawyer. Just kidding, of course. Birds can’t visit lawyers. The illustrations are completely charming and to this day I am convinced that I need a live bird for my tree. Still trying to convince my husband on that one.

And I apologize for the snark. Despite loving this book, even as a kid I thought the story was a little silly. What moral shall I take away from it? Needy wives should demand jewelry from their husbands? If you are a good little WASP family you might get a real-live robin on Christmas morning? I don’t know… but I suppose every Christmas book isn’t required to have a lofty message. Some of them are just fun to read and pretty to look at, and that’s okay with me.

2. Ten Christmas Angels by Ann Rickets

The battered picture above is my own personal copy, very well-loved to the point of falling apart. Yes, it is a board book for chubby little fingers. The book follows the exploits of ten little Christmas angels who flitter around Earth doing good deeds, delivering treats, decorating trees in the forest, caring for cute little baby animals, etc. The illustrations are just BEYOND charming, and you get to learn how to count to ten as a bonus! I will never forget the last page, which shows all ten little cherubs descending a golden staircase to go celebrate Christmas in heaven. Pure magic!

3. The Lost Present by Angela Holroyd

This one took me a while to remember the name and then find it- history seems to have all but forgotten this little gem. The Lost Present tells the story of a family of mice whose slightly-backward and less-than-well-dressed country relatives come to stay for Christmas. Tilly, the young city mouse, has made a beautiful quilt for her mother as a Christmas gift but in the process of transporting it has lost it behind a dresser and now, calamity and woe, the cat is sleeping in the living room! She enlists the help of her country cousin Marmaduke, silly pants and all, and learns that there’s much more to him than meets the eye. She is eventually able to teach her brother to view Marmaduke in the same manner rather than avoiding him simply because he seems strange. What I most remember about this book is the ridiculous attention to detail in the illustrations. Everything is mouse-themed, and there is even a tiny replica of the slightly-creepy Whistler’s Mother painting (please tell me I’m not alone in thinking it’s creepy), the human face replaced with that of a mouse.

See? Creepy.

Weird, the things that stick with you! Anyway, this book is hard to find now because as far as I can tell it’s out of print, but if you can get a hold of a copy (and, of course, assuming you love picture books as much as I do) you will be disappointed neither with the quality of the illustration nor with the sweetness of the story.

4. The City That Forgot About Christmas by Mary Warren

This one is very special because it actually predates my childhood by a good 25 years or so- the book that we had growing up was actually the same copy that my mom read as a child. The City That Forgot About Christmas was later made into a cartoon, and it tells the story of Matthew, a jolly woodcarver who visits a town that has completely forgotten about Christmas. The inhabitants are just as you might expect- less perverse than Sodom and Gomorrah but certainly just as unpleasant, given to yelling at their children and brawling with each other. (You know, as people are prone to do when there is no Christmas to be found.) Matthew teaches the town about Christmas once again, and as he does so he begins to create a life-sized Nativity scene that will be ready on Christmas Eve. Inspired by his gentle, giving spirit, the townspeople join in and it becomes a joint project teaching the town about what Christmas means. Christmas Eve comes around and the Nativity scene is beautiful. Families are brought together to enjoy the scene and spend time together… and Matthew is nowhere to be found.

The plot is nothing new- mysterious stranger appears from nowhere and teaches the true meaning of Christmas and then disappears- but it’s sweet just the same, and if you celebrate Christmas for sake of celebrating Jesus then this would be a great pick for your kids if you can get a hold of it.

5. A Pussycat’s Christmas by Margaret Wise Brown.

Margaret Wise Brown is the author of Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny, and she knows how to write beautiful, quiet stories perfect for snuggling down with your little snuggly wuggly. This one might win for most beautiful illustrations, by the talented Anne Mortimer. For the book’s title character, Christmas is experienced entirely through sensations like the smell of oranges and cinnamon, the rustle of wrapping paper, the warmth of a fire, and the mysterious spectacle of a tree in the living room. A Pussycat’s Christmas is a beautifully sensory experience that would make an excellent bedtime story for Christmas eve.

Nom nom nom.

What are your favorite childhood Christmas books? Did you read and love (or hate) any of these? Do you have any traditions involving Christmas books?

Digimon Tamers was the third series of the Digimon life cycle. As a kid, I remember not being as fond of this series because it rebooted the whole continuity that played out in the previous seasons, Adventures and 02. I also felt that since there weren’t as many characters (Tamers starts with only three central characters, whereas Adventures had seven), it took away from the fun. I also didn’t like how we barely got to go into the digital world in this, and when we did, it felt so different from the Adventures version I’d come to be so fond of.

And yet, as an adult, all the things I had a problem with became reasons that I now love it. First of all, I love the idea of how they rebooted the show into a world where Digimon actually exist as a TV show and a card game (not much different from our own world), and how our three soon-to-be heroes start off as avid fans of the cards and video games (not much different from the actual fans watching the series). Then when real Digimon start crossing over into our world by process of synthesizing their data into protein (a process the show calls “bio-emerging”), there is a greater sense of discovery and developing the real world and how real people would actually react toward these events. As for our trio, they are given the chance to be the Digi-destined they once could only dream of, and each of them reacts to this in their own unique way.

So while this show really only begins with three central characters, they still manage to bring a lot of variety and hold up the show very well.

Takato (left) carries the tradition of being this seasons “Goggle Head,” as every leading man from all five current season of Digimon wears the trademark goggles. Yet it’s kind of misleading because personality wise, Takato is a very unique change of pace from the others before and after him. He’s not a natural born leader like Tai from Adventures, he’s not obnoxiously hot-headed like Davis from 02 or Takuya from Frontier (thank god), and no comment on the fifth guy from Data Squad, as I did not watch that. Takato is just a carefree and imaginative young boy who wears goggles because he’s an uber-fan of Tai from the show. He’s the first, and still only kid in the whole series, to custom create his own partner Digimon by drawing a picture of it and processing it through his digivice.

The result of which is Guilmon, who in-and-of-himself is an anomaly. He takes the archetypal anime personality of “Big dumb hungry brute” and actually develops just as much as Takato. Maybe even more than Takato.

Rika (center), or Ruki as she is called in the original Japanese, is our Tom-boy archetype. Only unlike Sora from Adventures who balanced her tough-girl attitude with a caring protective nature that bordered on maternal, Rika is hard to the core. Known throughout Tokyo as the “Digimon Queen,” the runner-up raining champion of the Digimon Card Game in the entire world, Rika represents the kind of fan whose fascination with Digimon has been long clouded by her power-hungry quest to the top and to crush any challenger in her way, and once she got to the top, there was nothing left for her.

When presented her own partner Digimon, she sees it merely as a new challenge to feed her desire for battle and supremacy. She takes it so seriously that she’s just flat out unlikable, especially considering how she’s given basically the most badass partner Digimon in the entire universe, yet proceeds to treat her like dirt. Seriously, Renamon is awesome. She is soft spoken, cold minded, and moves like a ninja (despite being bright yellow), making her a suitable match for Rika, yet it still hurts to see her get shut down just for wanting to protect her Tamer.

FTR, yes, Rika does become a better person over time. But this is a kids show and it still surprised me how cold the writers made her to begin with.

Henry (right) or Li Jianliang, is left being our intellectual, mild-mannered, voice of reason. So basically, he’s the boring character. His one big personality hurdle is that he’s a pacifist that refuses to let his Digimon fight because he once let his partner in a video game get hurt (of course, this show wouldn’t be called Digimon if that didn’t get reprimanded rather quickly). Besides that, Henry acts more as a pivotal plot devise. He’s the tamer that Takato looks to for advice, his father turns out to be one of the original programmers that worked on the Digimon project, and his ethnicity is a cross between Japanese and Chinese, which I guess is meant to be symbolic of the show’s theme regarding tolerance among races. Besides that, there is not a ton interesting to say about him.

Though I will say that his partner Terriermon more than makes up for Henry’s blandness. With Guilmon being too juvenile, and Renamon too soft spoken, it is up to Terriermon to be the witty banter dispenser, and whoever handled the dubbing of his dialogue in America worked wonders. I also can’t help but mention how awesome his evolve form Gargomon is: a giant green trigger-happy bunny with turrets for arms. Serial!

I find it quite interesting how of these three Tamers, there is the one I love, another I love to hate, and another that I could care less for either way. (If you think about it, they’re like the Triforce. Takato is Courage, Rika is Power, and Henry is Wisdom.) Yet at the same time, I can still love all three of their partner Digimon whom, let’s be honest with ourselves, are the real stars of the show. It’s kind of like when I was a really little kid and I could never make up my mind who was my favorite Ninja Turtle (I had a new favorite like every week). I feel the same way about the three main Digimon. They’re all badasses.

But to bring this back to my favorite pairing, I truly feel the real selling point of this series is how endearing the relationship between Takato and Guilmon turns out to be. As stated before, Takato is very different from the hot heads that have worn the goggles before and after him. He takes the responsibility of being Guilmon’s tamer very seriously, and there are many scenes where we actually see him thinking before he acts. While he occasionally lets his excitement cloud his judgment, as any respectful ten-year-old would in that situation, he is quick to admit when he makes a mistake and always promises Guilmon to do better. He’s not even really considered the leader until 20-30 episodes in, and when he is, it’s not like someone ever comes out and says “Takato’s the leader now.” He just slowly and naturally moves into that position over time, despite the fact that Rika has far more fighting experience and Henry is far more knowledgeable.

Guilmon is as pure-hearted as they come. While he comes off as a bit dimwitted, it’s not like a Monkey D. Luffy kind of stupid where he’s just an idiot for the sake of humor. Guilmon is just very young and doesn’t know things (he’s literally born in the first episode). That’s not to say he can’t be taught either. Just listening to Guilmon’s dialogue from episode 2 back to back with what he says in episode 13, I wouldn’t say he’s made a full 180, but it’s at least 90 degrees, and that’s just the first quarter of the series.

I also find the concept hilarious that Guilmon is just about the luckiest Digimon ever. His tamer’s parents run a bakery, so he gets fed every day with day-old bread rolls, and then when we get to the part of the show where the Tamers are backed in a corner and have to tell their parents about their Digimon, and Takato’s Dad is totally cool with it and feeds Guilmon freshly baked bread rolls that are custom made to look like him. That’s right: Guilmon Bread.

Oh wait! There’s a plot I’m suppose to be discussing, isn’t there? So there’s this underground Agency called Hypnos that is tracking rogue Digimon wandering into the real world. They are run by this mysterious looking guy name Yamaki who believes Digimon to be nothing more than meaningless piles of computer data meddling in human affairs, so he has no qualms with eradicating them all together. Of course, Hypnos’ meddling with the network does not sit well for one of the four Deities of the Digital world (renamed “Sovereigns” in the dub) so he dispatches his twelve guardians The Davas, each based on one of the animals in the Chinese Zodiac, to wreak havoc on humanity and claim Digimon as the new master race. Three guesses who gets to clean that mess up.

In addition to a surprisingly touching C Plot involving Tamers‘ local mischief-maker Impmon, we have Calamon (or Culumon), a diminutive carefree nomad-ish Digimon who regularly appears as a magical catalyst to the energy that allows our heroes to digivolve to the next level.

Through the course of the show, roughly five more kids will become tamers alongside our main three. Some of them will be compelling and welcome additions (Henry’s little sister Suzy, and Rika’s one and only superior, Ryo the “Digimon King”), others not so much (Takato’s posse of stooges, Kazu and Kenta).

Digimon battles have digivolved themselves to implement the cards from the Digimon card game as actual modification tools. They can be used by tamers to upgrade their Digimon by increasing their stats (speed, strength, defense), provide weapons and body mods (wings, shields, drill arms for digging), and can even temporarily grant whole new attacks from completely unrelated Digimon. It’s great, because it gets the kids involved in the fight in a very tactical and strategic way, whereas the last two seasons whenever a fight broke out, the Digi-destined basically stood on the sidelines.

There is plenty going on in this show, so much of which went right over my head ten years ago. Yamaki, the Davas, and all the other antagonists are given motives that make sense. They actually believe what they’re doing is right. As a kid, you don’t really care about motives. You just want to watch good Digimon fight bad Digimon, which is basically what the first season was. I appreciated how this story took its time in its earlier portions exploring just the three characters, then slowly sprouted into several avenues that got surprisingly dark. For example, when Digimon die, they don’t just get reborn like they did in the past. Secondly, because Digimon and their tamers are so in tune with their emotions, tamers who loose it can unintentionally cause their partners to turn into exactly what they’re called: monsters.

While this may not be too related, it’s interesting to note that Digimon Tamers first debuted in the U.S. September of 2001, right around the corner of the 9/11 attacks. Some people like to believe that this show shares similar parallels to those current events: a misunderstanding between races, a war against an unknown enemy that can strike quickly and without warning, the value of human lives, and so-on. I honestly find it to be a bit of a stretch, though it is true that Tamers delved into the deeper intricacies of what it meant to be “real,” and whether Digimon, whose body makeup is constructed by computer data rather than cells, are in fact by definition, living creatures.

At its core, Digimon Tamers remains a harmless kids show with fun action, endearing characters, and just enough dark and mature undertones to cater to older audiences. All 51 episodes are currently available on Hulu in the original Japanese format with subtitles. So if you watched the dub when it first aired on Fox Kids like me, it’s neat to get a new take on the series (even if I did think the way they translated it back then wasn’t all that bad). If you’ve never headed off on a digital trip before, there is no better place to start than here.

Before technology took over

Long before the wonderful world of Nintendo took over my childhood, my favorite method of wasting time was playing with my model train set. I got my first train set for my 6th birthday. It was your basic all-in-one train set but I thought it was awesome. It was called the “Fire Fox” train set, which was a firefighter themed kit. It had a basic locomotive and all the freight cars you could want all the way down to the caboose. There wasn’t much track, barely enough to go in a circle, but it did have a train car that had a spring-loaded launcher that shot an airplane, not to mention it had a bunch of little plastic firefighter figures and a few fire trucks. It was really a complete play set that happened to have an electric train. It was a pretty good deal, both for me and my parents. However, my obsession with model trains just got worse from there.

It might not look like much but it had everything I could have wanted.

The set came with a fold-out mat with roads, houses and trees printed on it, and that sufficed for a while, but before too long the entire setup got an upgrade. Once my parents saw how much fun I had with my train, they got a sheet of plywood and that became my play space. The best part was it let me design and build my own custom landscape. My mother, the consummate crafter, helped me make my own mountains, hills and tunnels with paper mache and cardboard. Then with help from some cereal boxes, I made my own buildings and very quickly my own little city started to take shape. Toss in a few Hot Wheels and Transformers for good measure and I was all set. I remember getting books from the library on how to decorate and make my own little accessories, it was so much fun. But there’s one thing you can’t do on your own when you have a train set…make your own train.

Slowly but surely I customized my train set..check out that tunnel!

Don’t forget the caboose

You’re at the mercy of the hobby stores when it comes to train engines and extra cars, and little did I realize at the time but they were expensive. Sure, the set I got had all the stuff you needed to get started, but from that point on I built my train set up piece by piece over several years, getting a few things for my birthday and Christmas. Friends and family knew I loved my train set, so that helped speed things up. Looking back at it now, I really didn’t have a lot of stuff but when you’re 7-years-old, it felt like I had everything. I had several locomotives, a lot of freight cars…I even had a trolley and a crane! Then somewhere along the way my play space grew as we added another sheet of plywood so I had a “huge” 8-foot area on which to make the perfect train layout.

Hands on fun.

I might have had a decent collection of train cars but I had even more track. I used to spend hours just drawing and planning my track layout, and of course I always needed more. I think I had more fun planning and building than I did watching the train go around the track. I guess in the end, the train just went around in a circle, but you could create a story with the environment, and that’s just what I did. Every building had a story and every train had a purpose. I even tried to combine my slot car set and my train set…but that didn’t turn out so well.

A trolley...for those simple cross-town commutes.

Video games derailed my fun

Life on the railroad was a lot of fun but it all derailed when I got my Nintendo. Instead of wanting train engines and fake trees for Christmas, I wanted NES games. My train set eventually got packed away and I haven’t really looked back until now while writing this article. To my surprise, most of my train set was still together and probably still works. I took some time to look up the state of model trains today and it doesn’t appear as though much has changed since I was playing with them 25 years ago. There are a few new pieces of technology around today, like cameras and more computerized controls, but all in all, it’s still just a model train set.

However, one thing I understand now as an adult is just how expensive keeping a train set can be. Locomotives seem to range on the low end around $50 and up and beyond $100. That’s a lot for anything, if you ask me. Even the basic train cars run at least $20 and go up from there depending on how big and real you want things to be. Then you have all the extras like cars, people, trees, signs and telephone poles. It might seem cheap at first when a pack of something like telephone poles is only $3, but when you consider how many you need to make your set look “real”, it quickly adds up. Rather than have the dozens and dozens of the accessories I wanted, my town had to survive with only a few telephone poles and a mailbox.

I'll take the B&O for $200...wait, wrong toy...

A hobby is an investment

I have yet to find any inexpensive hobby, although my Hot Wheels addiction certainly comes close, but a train set doesn’t qualify either. I can see the appeal of keeping up with a model train hobby as there’s a part of me that wishes I had. There’s a lot of challenge and fun on many levels, from constructing environments to wiring switch tracks and painting freight cars. But model trains require a lot of time, dedication and money…and at least two out of three of those dwindle more and more as you get older and older. I’d love to see what I could do with a train set today, but I don’t think I could afford it…or more so, I wouldn’t want to. I think having a model train set is a lost art, a toy that is totally under appreciated in today’s world of techno-gadgets and video games. But I challenge any video game to amaze and mesmerize a child as much as a model train set. A train set is real, physical fun. It’s hard to beat a toy that you touch, build and are then able to watch all your hard work come to life.

Check out more model train photos over in my Flickr sets

Costumes, candy and fun

Halloween has always been a little different for me because not only is it the best holiday of them all, it’s also my birthday. Growing up Halloween meant two things to me: presents and candy…not a bad combination. Of course, to get the latter you have to dress up and pander to your neighbors, and unfortunately finding a good costume gets harder the older you get.

Halloween isn’t much trouble when you’re young. You go to the store and you pick out the costume you want, and when you’re that age, sky’s the limit…unless of course you were me and had a very crafty mother. Shy of the one store-bought costume of which I have photographic proof (I was Bugs Bunny), every other costume I had growing up was made at home, for better or worse. A homemade Halloween costume was a double edge sword, really. On one had you knew that your costume was one-of-a-kind, but because it was, you usually didn’t have all the accessories you wanted that you would have otherwise got with a retail purchase. And just like GI Joe or Barbie, it’s all about the accessories.

If only you could see the happiness on my little face.

When you don’t pay retail

Rather than have a cool plastic sword or laser gun, I had accessories made out of cardboard. One year I was a train conductor (I was big into trains) and if you exclude the kick ass hat, the only accessory I had was a flashlight. Other costume highlights from Halloweens past include a hobo in which I wore a mop on my head and a dress, a vampire that wore sweats, and a Rambo outfit that was little more that a ripped t-shirt and a cardboard bazooka. However, just for the record, I thought my Rambo costume was pretty sweet and it coordinated with the Rambo lunchbox I had at the time.

What you get when you don't buy a costume...train conductor.

So watching many of my friends prance around town in their “high end” was sometimes hard to accept, a little piece of me always wondering why I didn’t get “cool” costumes like everyone else, but little did I know my mother was just preparing me for adulthood. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve dressed up every Halloween since I was probably four years old, and I didn’t stop trick-or-treating until I was probably 18…and before you start blasting me about that, let me grab my soapbox real quick.

Why is trick-or-treating a crime?

I don’t know where, why, or when trick-or-treating became a kid-only activity. Trick-or-treating is about dressing up and embarrassing yourself by going door-to-door asking for free candy. If you ask me, anyone that takes the time to dress up and has the stones to ask me for candy deserves some. I don’t care if you’re eight, 18 or 88. If you put in the effort, you’ll get a reward. One year, however, I found out that feeling is not shared by everyone when I was denied candy and told I was too old. I don’t know how they knew I was too old as I was wearing a mask, but nonetheless, it kind of upset me. I don’t go begging anymore, mostly because my wife forbids it, but if I could, absolutely I would and I’ll tell you that the costumes I make now are far better than some of the costumes these lazy kids wear today. They don’t appreciate the fine art that is the Halloween costume, a skill that requires creativity, cleverness, humor, and humility.

Do-it-yourself and have more fun

As I grew up, it didn’t take me long to realize why my mother never bought me Halloween costumes. They’re expensive and they’re cheap. Like any other holiday, Halloween comes but once a year and retailers know it, so they charge you an arm and a leg for everything from fake blood to complete costumes. Purchasing a costume every year, while easy, is just too expensive and honestly, I don’t think you enjoy it as much. The adult costumes you find in stores are somewhat limited, typically ranging between sexy witch and giant keg of beer, and they’re all boring. These costumes have no personality and don’t really show off who you are or what you can be. Halloween costumes should be an extension of yourself. It’s the one day out of the year that it is acceptable to dress up and be whatever you want to me, so take advantage of that…don’t wuss out. Don’t be a keg.

I, Macho Man - One of the most fun costumes ever.

However, I have to admit that coming up with creative costumes year after year is exhausting. If you put your heart into your costume, you have to start planning early and gathering together all your pieces and parts. I’ve been a pro wrestling fan since I was five and to pay homage to my favorite heroes of the squared circle, I crafted some homemade costumes for a couple of years. It was a lot of fun being my wrestling heroes, first Macho Man Randy Savage and then the year after Roddy Piper. And the one cool thing about making your own costumes now is that you can buy all the accessories you wanted as a kid. To go along with my custom-made muscle suit and kilt (thanks, mom) I bought my very own championship belt. You see, I’m not anti-retail, you just have to find the balance between what you can/should make on your own and what things you really need to buy to enhance it.

Going hardcore on Halloween

I consider myself a true middle-of-the-road costumer. I don’t half-ass it but I don’t go all out either. It keeps things affordable and doesn’t make the whole process a hassle. Of course, you always have the friend that does go all out and just makes your efforts look lazy. I have one friend that dresses up full tilt every year. One year he had a Freddy Kruger outfit, complete with burn makeup and glove, and then the next year he was ultra-scary killer clown, again, complete with makeup. His costumes are always impressive and there’s never any question as to what he’s trying to be. I admire his hard work but know at the same time I’d never be motivated enough to go through the whole process. It looks cool but I’ll stick with my relatively simple creations.

Are you afraid of clowns? You are now.

And speaking of simple, some of the better and most clever costumes are those that don’t require any makeup or require extra purchases. If you just put some heart into it, you can cobble together the right combination of clothes and accessories right in your own home. You can be Bob Vila and just wear your tool belt and a hammer. Wear your pajamas, rip your shirt, and use some red food coloring and you can be Teen Victim #3 from any horror movie. Or dig out your old varsity jacket, put on some eye shadow, and be a zombie football jock. Or just find some suspenders, a hat and shave, and you can be Amish.

Point being, you don’t have to go all out to have some fun, it just requires some creativity. It doesn’t matter what your costume is or what you did to create it, it matters that you do it at all!

The future of Halloween

For Halloween this year I plan on being a character from one of my new favorite video games. I’m not telling what it is right now, you’ll have to wait and see photos, but it’s safe to say the costume will require some craftiness yet won’t break the bank or need me to invest hours upon hours to dress up. It’s just fun and that’s all Halloween is supposed to be. Fun (and  birthday presents).

What are some of your favorite Halloween costumes of years past?

Weapons of mass fun

One of the first toys you probably had growing up was a Nerf football…well, some sort of Nerf ball. They were simple enough in the beginning but before too long you wanted footballs with fins and whistles and all sorts of stuff that would make you throw like John Elway. Nerf balls are great fun and all, but we all know where the real power of Nerf lies – weapons.

Guns to be specific. You’d be hard pressed to find a more fun-yet-safe weapon than a Nerf gun. Over the years the Nerf arsenal has changed quite a bit and currently they find themselves once again going up against some seemingly tough competition, but let’s be honest…nothing beats Nerf. While at the toy store recently I was amazed at the number of ways companies will come up with to allow kids to shoot each other safely.

The original Lazer Tag. Looks a lot more fun that it was...and no match for Nerf.

Lasers and spit balls

“Laser tag” has become a somewhat common term these days, but there was a time when the name Lazer Tag meant something cool and different. The original Lazer Tag guns and accessories looked very cool – and frankly, they still do – but for all their futuristic style, the fun to be had was kind of limited. Not only did Lazer Tag guns have some trouble in the daylight, you couldn’t see where you were shooting. There was no way to see your shot, so you had no clue how close you were to hitting your target. Even though your shots were always straight, without anything to go by you couldn’t have any fun dodging bullets either. Despite the awesome commercials, you quickly realized that your dives into the dirt were unnecessary and Lazer Tag quickly lost its magic. However, to this day you still can’t bounce a Nerf dart of a series of mirrors to hit your target.

Nerf won the war against laser tag (and has several times since) but now on the shelves next to all the Nerf equipment are new weapons of war, spit ball guns. I don’t know how else to describe these guns because the ammo they use are little bits of paper. You fill up guns like the Max Force long range rifle with tiny paper bullets and add water, then pull the trigger and out comes a first class spit ball, and one that can supposedly fly 100 feet…not bad for a spit wad. And if spit balls aren’t really your bag, next to that gun was the Xploderz Xstormer gun that appears to work similarly, but instead of paper wads it shoots dissolving pellets. All in all, both of these Nerf alternatives work the same way and try to pawn themselves off as more “dangerous” than Nerf but still safe enough that parents won’t care. However, even though parents might see all these guns as safe, the one thing any savvy parent will notice is the need to constantly purchase ammo, something you don’t have to deal with as often in a Nerf world.

A spit ball gun. What happened to a simple drinking straw and spit ball?

This isn’t to say you don’t lose Nerf darts and bullets, but if you’re not too careless your Nerf ammo will last a long, long time. A single pack of Nerf darts will last a lot longer than 100 spit ball bullets that can only be used once. I guess you could say this makes the spit ball guns more like real guns, but who wants a real gun? Even as a kid, a Nerf gun was awesome because half the fun of backyard battles was trying to pick up your used bullets without getting shot. Nerf gun dodge ball. Even today, all I want is a gun I can take to the office and use to shoot my co-workers without any harm and limited annoyance, but a spit ball cannon doesn’t quite meet that requirement.

Office warfare

I’ve always had Nerf guns at work along with many other toys and video games. Video games aren’t for everyone and can be a total time suck, but a Nerf gun is instant gratification with little harm and risk. I have yet to find anyone that doesn’t enjoy squeezing off a few rounds of foam darts, regardless if they’re aiming at a stationary target or a person in the cubicle across the way. A lot of people say shooting real guns is very therapeutic and even though I’ve never shot a real gun before, I can tell you that unloading your Nerf gun in the office can be just as rewarding. And if you have a workplace like mine, then the appeal of Nerf spreads quickly and before too long you’re on the verge of all out war.

Nerf war, the perfect stress reliever for the workplace.

I took my Nerf Maverick to work and within a couple of weeks everyone else had guns too. I guess they were tired of not being able to defend themselves. With half the department armed and ready for a showdown at any minute, it made the work day a lot more enjoyable. Nerf guns are also easier to hide from the boss, so if you need to stash them in a hurry, you can. Of course, you can’t have epic battles all day long, so we would set up other toys and action figures as stationary targets to practice our accuracy, but as anyone who has ever spent time with a Nerf gun knows, they are not known for their accuracy or consistency. Even the fancier guns that require batteries and have motorized shooting aren’t all that great. So the trade-off with Nerf seems to be safety in exchange for power and accuracy, a sacrifice I’m willing to make in the name of fun.

Another great thing about Nerf guns are their variety. My weapon of choice at work is the Maverick, which is pretty tame to say the least, but if you have the means and motivation you can get a Nerf gun that is almost as intimidating as the real thing. Guns like the Nerf Vulcan cannon come with a tripod and claims of being able to shoot three rounds per second. Imagine pulling that bad boy out at work! The range of options in Nerf world let you be anyone from James Bond to Rambo. It’s safe to say there’s a Nerf gun that fits your style and your budget (and your job title).

Definitely quitting time.

Not your normal Nerf

Nerf guns are plenty of fun as-is for most people but that doesn’t mean you can’t make your Nerf weapons do more if you have the time, tools and creativity. You’ll find that the world of Nerf gun modding is pretty big and pretty fantastic. Some mods are purely cosmetic, often turning Nerf guns into favorite movie weapons. Other mods are designed to turn your previously safe Nerf into instruments of real power and destruction…of course, you probably don’t want to take your jacked up Nerf shotgun into the office, but this niche of Nerf is worth admiring.

Nerf will never die

If the last Nerf toy you had was a football, it might be time to give the name another look and see what it can offer. You might consider Nerf guns to be a little juvenile…and they are…but don’t underestimate Nerf’s ability to put some fun into your otherwise boring work day. Nerf has been giving kids of all ages safe fun for more than 40 years and if their current selection of weaponry is any clue, they don’t show any signs of changing that formula anytime soon. You just can’t stop Nerf!

So simple yet so loved

Stuffed animals could very well be the most primal toy. Next to a good old fashioned stick, no other toy is seemingly enjoyed by so many people across so many generations. I find it somewhat amazing that in a world of technology and gizmos that a plush toy can still be the best thing ever. Much like video games, simple is often better and because of that, a stuffed animal can still be a thing of endless charm and imagination.

Even though I grew up in an age of action figures and awesome D-battery toys, I had my share of stuffed animals and plush toys. I’m sure I had dozens upon dozens of stuffed animals as I grew up, but I only remember a few of them and then mostly only because I have photos of me as a child with them. It’s amazing what a picture will do to jog your memory. However, I do remember one stuffed animal that I loved and the story that goes with it, and that animal was Huckleberry Hound.

Stuffed with memories

Not the same one I had, but close.

Yes, Huckleberry Hound, the blue, slow-talking, Clementine-singing cartoon hound dog with a long Southern drawl that was most famous between 1958 and 1961. No, I’m not that old but thanks to reruns and syndication, I was able to enjoy Huckleberry Hound along with Quick Draw McGraw, Secret Squirrel and others, so I knew who Huck was, but it’s not like he was one of my all-time favorites or anything. However, he was better than Yogi Bear, or at least he was to me.

One summer my family took a trip to King’s Island near Cincinnati, the same amusement park once visited by The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family and even Evel Knievel. At the time, King’s Island had a kiddie section of the park called Hanna-Barbera Land, which was filled with rides and mascots from all the classic cartoons. Naturally, all the merchandise and toys being sold there was from the cartoons, and like every kid there that day I wanted a toy. Usually my parents weren’t ones to give in to over-priced theme park souvenirs, but apparently they felt differently this trip as they let me pick out something from the gift shop, and that something was Huckleberry Hound.

Even though Huck didn’t talk or light up or do anything real fancy compared to my other toys, I loved him to death. He was my buddy for what felt like years, even though it was probably only a couple months following our trip. I didn’t love him just because he was a big plush with a cool bow tie and awesome hat, I loved him because he was a special present from my folks. The memories certainly outlast his stitching. I think he eventually lost his bow tie but he never lost his hat. I’m not sure what happened to my Huckleberry Hound plush. My hope is that he ended up in an attic somewhere rather than in the trash or donation bin. Maybe one day I’ll rescue him.

Cheap, stuffed love

One unique trait about stuffed animals is their association with amusement parks, fairs and carnivals. I got my Huckleberry Hound at an amusement park and who knows how many plush toys I won over the years playing cheap games of skill at locations all around the midwest. We all know stuffed animals are insanely cheap, especially if they’re not licensed, and that’s why all these carnies have them as prizes, but yet we’ll spend four, five, even ten times their worth for no other reason than to give them away as a gift.

I remember another visit to an amusement park on a elementary school trip, this time at Cedar Point, I spent who knows how much money on a game in effort to win a stuffed bear to give to a girl I had a crush on (it worked). It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to impress the pretty girl or lure in the cute guy, a plush toy will always do the trick. You can’t do that with a pop gun or baby doll. The emotion we associate with stuffed animals is fascinating and clearly timeless.

The best things aren’t always purchased

You call that an Ewok? My mom is laughing.

As I mentioned, my parents weren’t keen on buying me over-priced toys whether they be action figures, cars or stuffed animals. However, when it came to stuffed animals I had a distinct advantage over a lot of my friends – my mother could sew. Along with your typical clothes and blankets, my mother made me a couple of stuffed toys that were by far some of my most cherished plush toys ever.

If you’ve read some of my previous articles, then you know I was a Star Wars kid, and I wanted a stuffed Ewok just as much as I wanted the Millennium Falcon playset. I got neither, but mom made up for it best she could by making me my own Ewok, and I can safely say it was better than any one I could have gotten from a toy store. For one, my custom Ewok was huge, near as a tall as I was at the time and he was crafted out of the finest yellow polyester fur you could find. He had jointed legs and arms so he could sit down and grab around my neck during play time. He also had the trademark hood that I could take on and off as much as I wanted. My Ework might not have been as detailed in the face as the retail version but its playability was off the charts and I can tell you he was well loved and beat up extensively, far more than Huckleberry Hound.

As if a custom Ework wasn’t enough to make my friends jealous, my mom also managed to make me my own custom Cabbage Patch Kid as well. I don’t ever recall wanting a Cabbage Patch Kid, but as popular as they were I’m thinking my mom just wanted me to have one so I could hang out with the rest of the cool kids. So while other parents were getting trampled at Children’s Palace looking for these things, my mom just bought a plastic head that looked very similar to a CPK and made the stuffed body herself. She also crafted some clothes for the doll because, after all, you can’t have a naked doll. My mothered fashioned a flannel shirt and some little jeans for the thing…and how disgusting is this? They coordinated with the real clothes I wore! God bless mothers.

Growing up plush

Stuffed animals are some of the first toys we ever have as infants and through our early childhoods, but that’s not where the love and affection stops. As adults we might not drag our stuffed toys around like security blankets anymore, but I know we all have some stuffed animals on our shelves that put a smile on our face. In some cases we’ll buy new versions of stuffed animals we had as a kid for the nostalgia alone. At other times we’ll buy stuffed animals because they’re the ones we never had as a kid, which was the case a couple years ago when I got a plush Gizmo from “Gremlins”. And I can’t even count the number of Star Wars plush toys I’ve acquired over the past 15 years, everything from Yoda to Chewbacca to Lando and then some…however, I’m still waiting for them to release a stuffed Lobot.

How can you not find that addorable?

Why do I still buy stuffed animals? It’s not just because they’re licensed from my favorite movies, it’s because plush toys are just…well…they’re just harmless. They’re cute, they’re cheap and they look as good sitting on your shelf as they do being hugged by a kid, and they bring joy in both cases. I have loving memories of GI Joe but not Barbie as my wife might, however, we both have stories about our long lost and well-loved stuffed animals. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl, a kid or an adult, everyone can still appreciate the memories and emotions associated with a good stuffed animal.

What stuffed animals memories do you still cherish?

The decade that started it all

Growing up the 1980s, mine was one of the first generations to have near unlimited options when it came to franchise toys, games and cartoons. That decade lays claim to some of the most iconic toy franchises in history, including Transformers, GI Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, of course, He-Man and his little sister, She-Ra. Being surrounded by so many choices, all you could do as a kid was pick the one that had the coolest toys and the best cartoon, and that formula didn’t prove fruitful for He-Man. However, Masters of the Universe deserves some credit from a historical stand point.

He-Man and Skeletor in their prime.

Thank you, He-Man

We all owe the He-Man a lot when it comes to toys and cartoons. Masters of the Universe was one of the first cartoons that was produced pretty much for the sole purpose of selling toys to children. Some parental organizations took exception and called foul but we all know how that debate ended. Surprisingly enough, the reason many cartoons from that era had have the now famous PSAs was as a compromise with those groups. In the end, however, without the He-Man cartoon we wouldn’t have been blessed with the likes of Transformers or GI Joe or any of the countless other cartoons from that time…and without the cartoons there would be no toys.

See this kid. That's not me. It's Screech showing off his He-Man love.

Why He-Man failed as an action figure

I was not a fan of He-Man as a kid and that’s because neither the toys, nor the cartoon, were that appealing. I surrounded myself with GI Joes and Transfomers while my best friend next door had a toy chest full of He-Man stuff. I had a few He-Man figures that I received as gifts but they never got much play time because they just weren’t that cool. More often than not, my He-Man figures were portrayed as the evil giants in GI Joe land, partially due to their formidable size in comparison, but also due to their fantasy theme. I’m sorry but in a cage match between giant robots and a barbarian, the robots win hands down. And let’s say that if He-Man managed to survive a chair shot from Optimus Prime, Duke and the rest of the GI Joes would have swooped in and cleaned up the pieces left behind.

But He-Man did corner the market on well-sculpted mustaches.

Lets look at some of the obvious reasons why He-Man was a less than impressive action figure. First off, He-Man doesn’t have many joints and thus couldn’t really be put in many poses. Prince Adam and his buddies could only move their arms in one direction and only at the shoulder. They also didn’t have any knees to speak off, and they could only twist at the waist. So if you wanted Skeletor to kneel or even sit at the table like a good evil lord, he couldn’t do it. He-Man figures just weren’t as versatile as say, GI Joe figures, nor were they as well sculpted. With such limited movement, your own adventures in Eternia were stuck being wrestling matches. Of course, wrestling matches made sense because the figures were pretty big, so it was hard to have them play well with other action figures.

The zoo that was Masters of the Universe

Masters of the Universe also featured some of the weirdest characters that looked as good as they also confused. It seems that unless you were He-Man or Man-At-Arms, you were some crazy, hideous mutant with bizarre powers that weren’t really useful, even in fantasy land. For example, Mekaneck, whose awesome superpower was…a long neck. Yeah, that’s who I want in a fight, giraffe man. And who can forget Mantenna? His ability to make his eyes bug out most certainly struck fear into the hearts of men all around the universe. Even though He-Man’s cronies were ridiculous and unfun, several of them do deserve credit playing with our senses in ways that other figures did not. Figures like Moss Man and Stinkor not only gave our fingers something new to touch, but they also attacked our sense of smell…and Stinkor was a character that really earned his name, PU!

Man-E-Faces was one of the better figures but still big and inflexible.

Masters of the Universe did have some interesting vehicles, albeit few, but they were also quite ugly and otherwise unusable. Especially when you look at what GI Joe offered in terms of accessories and playsets, He-Man just doesn’t stand a chance. The Transformers had little in the way of accessories and vehicles…but wait…oh yeah, they were the accessories and vehicles! You could probably argue that Prince Adam “transformed” into He-Man, but to make that happen you had to buy both figures, so when it comes to bang for your buck, Transformers are the clear winner.

Important does not always mean better

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was incredibly popular and important for millions of children around the world. The series deserves the utmost respect for ushering in the era of toy-shilling cartoons that is still chugging along today. However, just because you’re the first to do something doesn’t mean you’re the best, and when it came to the action figures and toys, He-Man just couldn’t keep up. I want to thank He-Man for everything he did for us, but  when I go into battle, I’ll be teaming up with Transformers and GI Joe.

Some assembly required.

When Star Wars could do no wrong

I was a Star Wars kid. Everything was either GI Joe or Star Wars, and I mean everything: movies, action figures, books, posters, toys and even games. Somewhere around first grade I got the Return of the Jedi Battle at Sarlacc’s Pit board game. It was awesome…in first grade. When you’re young anything with “Star Wars” tattooed on it is cool, but sometimes a bad game is just a bad game.

And when you knock Boba Fett in, it burps.

Better looking than a half-built Death Star

However, let’s first give credit where credit is due. This game looks cool. I mean, look at it! Jabba’s sail barge is sitting on top of the Sarlacc Pit. After you assemble the cardboard pieces you’ll find you have an actual pit that angles into the Sarlacc’s mouth, and it all looks awesome. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing about the game pieces. Sure, you have a fine selection of Han, Luke, Leia or Chewy (no Lando?) to take and beat up Jabba’s finest goons, but they all look horrible. The pieces are molded fairly well but it looks like they were painted by Nick Fury. I know the figures are small but come on, put some effort in to it, huh? I’ve painted mini-figures before and it’s not that hard…and this is Star Wars, show some respect. Yet even with these flaws, when the whole thing is put together it looks quite impressive sitting on your table. It just begs you to come play.

Wait, wasn't Leia wearing a slave girl outfit on Jabba's sail barge?

Less fun than a bacta tank

The game might get lots of style points but when it comes to game play, it fails worse than a ton-ton past the first marker. Playing the Sarlacc Pit game involves little more than moving your pieces next to each Gammorean guard and knocking them off the side into the pit. I know that sounds kind of cool, but there is absolutely no challenge or skill required to do so, and there’s barely any luck. You draw a card, move a few spaces and knock over the bad guy. There’s no way to really fail and that’s never a good thing. And before you start saying that I’m not analyzing this as a kid, think again, because I was a kid with this game and even back then it got boring because there was no challenge. You pretty much knew how the game was going to end before you even started. Even though the game manual makes the game sound quite complicated and interesting, it’s all just a Jedi mind trick.

The Sarlacc Pit game quickly became less of a board game and more of a Star Wars play set. Without any interesting rules, I would get out this game just to play with it like I would with any other toy. I would use my own action figures and vehicles, and it was a lot of fun. I don’t need rules or playing cards to have fun knocking Boba Fett, Nikto and Jabba into the Sarlacc Pit. Oh, and you might notice that Jabba is conspicuous by his absence in my photos. That’s because the Jabba game piece probably ended up being part of other action figure adventures, especially since I wasn’t lucky enough to have the actual Jabba play set.

Looks aren't everything, even a galaxy far, far away.

Yoda couldn’t even save this game

You wouldn’t think that playing on Jabba’s sail barge would ever be boring, but that’s what you get in the case of the Sarlacc Pit board game. This is just another example of something mediocre being disguised by the Star Wars name. The problem is, this game came out in 1983 along with the movie, well before Star Wars branched out into television, cartoons and home video games. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I’m tired of all the Star Wars stuff out on the shelves right now, most of it just trying to cash in on the franchise, but this game proves this was always the case.

It’s easy to complain and talk about how good things were “back in the day” but not everything was better, even if it was something we loved like Star Wars. I wrote recently about some board games being nothing but a gimmick, all flash and no substance, and the Battle at Sarlacc’s Pit game is a perfect example, but even then it’s really cool to admire…and hey, it’s still Star Wars.

Check out more photos of this game and other toys on Flickr

The game of Life as I knew it...Art Linkletter approved.

The sweet Life

Like many of the games I had growing up, Life was another garage sale find my mother picked out, and surprisingly enough, the game was complete. I remember it being a huge box and when I got home discovered an equally massive game board…but this was no normal game board. Whereas Monopoly just had some simple, ordered squares on it, Life had mountains and buildings and a giant spinner! It was like the Wheel of Fortune was in my living room, only smaller. Better yet, every player drove a car, which means I wasn’t always arguing about being the car like I did when I played Monopoly. The board was a lot of fun, even though it looked like it was designed by Stevie Wonder, and the cars were cool, but better than all of that was the money.

The game of Life introduced me to denominations of cash I could never have imagined. I thought I was rolling big time with a $500 bill in Monopoly, but now I had $50,000 and $100,000 bills at my disposal, each with some old guys’ pictures on them. This was a step up from Uncle Pennybags…it felt more legit. Life felt like an adult game. It didn’t hurt that Life also had a few extras like promissory notes, fire insurance and life insurance, and you could even play the stock market. There was a lot going on and keeping track of everything was quite a chore for any child, but I liked that challenge. I liked that it demanded a little more responsibility…and I also learned what the heck a promissory note was.

Thankfully some things never change

Predicting the future

One thing I couldn’t have predicted was just how much the game of Life follows what the average person’s real life was really about. You start out pretty much poor and then go to college, then get married, then acquire some kids and then experience a bunch of random events that could pay off the first time and then bankrupt you the next time, eventually all leading you to a life of riches or (usually) a trip to the poor house with nothing more to show for it than a good story. Say what you want, but the game of Life lived up to its name. Life introduced me to the importance of insurance and showed me the stock market is always a gamble. It also showed me you never want to have more than two children and apparently you can buy yourself a nice yacht for a mere $36,000…not bad.

Of course, my whole experience with Life is based on the 1960s release of the game, which featured a whole-hearted endorsement by Art Linkletter on the box. To this day I couldn’t really tell you who Art Linkletter was or why his endorsement on Life made a difference, but every time I hear his name I just think of this game. Nonetheless, this version of the game felt and looked just like the time period. Even though I was playing the game in the 1980s, I knew it was older than that and that was part of the fun. I always liked learning about the history of the game and I loved thinking about my parents playing this same game when they were young. It felt special knowing we all have stories and memories about the same game.

I'm surprised they didn't increase the number of children you could have.

Life comes to an end

Unfortunately, like many of my toys and games, Life lost its attraction and became cannibalized for other purposes. In this case, that cause was Monopoly. I find it ironic that Life served as a replacement for Monopoly only to have Life be eaten alive by a Monopoly addiction later in life. My friends and I would play some hardcore Monopoly to the point where we needed more cash, houses and hotels. LEGObricks served as super hotels while the $20,000 and $50,000 bills from Life ultimately served as Monopoly money. You’ve never seen a free parking pot until you’ve seen a few $100,000 bills in it, each with Art Linkletter’s face on it. Thanks to Monopoly, my yard sale game of Life was slowly dismantled and eventually got so out of whack and missing parts that it was unplayable. I think my game of Life eventually ended up in the trash, although every now and then I find a random auto insurance policy in a box of old toys.

Life ain’t what it used to be

A few years ago while my wife and I were wandering the aisles of Target looking for something to do, we decided to buy the game of Life and relive a bit of our youth. Of course, what we found on the store shelf was not the big 1960s version I grew up with. No, this was an updated version with cartoon characters and smiling families all over the place. I was not amused and not impressed, but I was in for even more of a shock when we started to play with a few new rules and changes.

If only real pay days put 50s in my pocket.

It had been a while since I had played that original game of Life so my memory was a bit fuzzy, but as we played through the new version I started to notice quite a few differences that just kind of confused me. This modern game of Life introduced career cards and salary cards, as well as “Life” tokens that are redeemed at the end of the game for some extra money points. Apparently just meandering through the twists and turns of Life earning and spending money wasn’t enough. The career cards tie directly to the salary you command and help you quickly feel depressed about your luck before you even earn your first Pay Day. There’s nothing worse than seeing your friend get $80,000 being an athlete while you’re stuck with $30,000 as an artist. I feel like the original game of Life kept things a little more fair, at least to the point where your luck was limited to what square you landed on. However, the one way these new careers lend themselves to being a better game is that some “pay” squares on the board are tied directly to a career, so you’re not always paying the bank. If you land on a square that makes you buy a painting, your money goes to the player that is the artist rather than the bank. I admit that’s kind of fun, but only if you have more than two players, which in my case, isn’t that often.

Even though the new game of Life adds a few rules and concepts to the game, it’s entirely playable, but there’s one area where they just dropped the ball entirely – the design. Not unlike the card game Mille Bornes, the 1960s version of Life had a very simple and stylish design. It wasn’t adorned with a bunch of eye candy and it focused on what was important. The game board today is almost over done with cartoons and photos but even that I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is the complete un-design of the money. Life used to have some stylish bills that made you feel like you were playing with more than just fake money. The old Life money had very ornate designs with etched pictures of people and all the frills a real dollar bill has. This new game of Life dumped all that in favor of a more traditional Monopoly-like design that is little more than a color and a number and it no longer feels important. It doesn’t make you want to hold it and not let it go…it’s just, bad. On top of that, apparently they also felt things like fire insurance and promissory notes were too complicated. They dropped fire and life insurance entirely from the game and now we just have a basic “bank loan” rather than a beautiful, red IOU note. They even replaced the car tokens with an SUV. No longer can you take your family of six out on the town in your big, green Cadillac. Sorry, you’re stuck with the Durango.

Changes in car tokens, money designs and careers are one thing but when you change the end of the game you’re just asking for trouble. If you look hard enough at the game of Life you’ll notice that now you can’t really lose. Sure, one player will have more money than all the others but you can no longer end up in the “Poor Farm” as you could before. You’ll either go to the prominent “Millionaire Acres” or the less-classy “Countryside Acres,” which sounds more like assisted living. Either way, you never end up in a place that sounds too bad, which really isn’t how life always turns out is it?

Only one word can describe that money - boring.

A life to enjoy

Despite all this poo-pooing, the updated game of Life is still fun. It’s the same core game that I played when I was little, with just a few extras. However, it’s unfortunate that many of the additions don’t seem to add much to the game. Changes like these always make me wonder why Milton Bradley thought they were needed. I understand that Art Linkletter might not carry the same weight now that he did in 1962 but did the game really need a major overhaul? Lets just say that the modern version of the game of Life in my closet now doesn’t get played all that much, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m 20 years older. Although, I don’t care how old you are, throwing down a couple hundred grand on the board still feels good.

The man behind Hot Wheels

The inventor of Hot Wheels recently passed away. His name was Elliot Handler and he was 95 years old, but let’s not discount the fact that the man also co-founded the entire Mattel toy empire, so his impact goes well beyond Hot Wheels. To be honest, I didn’t know his name until one of my friends posted about his death. That might be shameful of me to not know the man’s name but it got me thinking about how much we really take the toys we have for granted. Many toys, like Hot Wheels, have been around for so long that it’s easy to forget that someone actually had to invent them. Diecast cars are so ubiquitous these days that we rarely stop to think about how awesome they really are. Something so simple can be so much fun to play with and enjoy.

Undoubtedly one of the best birthday presents ever.

The passion grows

Staple childhood toys like Hot Wheels were not chosen by us, they were just given to us. I don’t recall the first time I told my mom I wanted Hot Wheels. It was a toy I just received without asking and from there my love of them grew. They were as popular then as they are now and because I’m a boy, friends and family always got them for me as presents. Hot Wheels were (and still are) cheap to buy and always put a smile on my face, so for boys they’re an easy “go to” gift. I don’t even remember how many Hot Wheels cars I had as a kid, hundreds probably passed through my hands…but I always wanted more. You could never have too many Hot Wheels.

When I think about all the toys I grew up with, I’ve learned that there is a common way to tell when a toy meant a lot to a kid…when you received the “rip off” versions of the same toy and got mad about it. It doesn’t matter what popular toy you’re talking about…Hot Wheels, GI Joe, LEGO…you loved them so much that you could spot, and would reject, imitations in a heartbeat. You could smell a fake a mile away, a skill our parents could never quite figure out. There was nothing worse than being excited about a present only to open it up and find some sort of bootleg version, and Hot Wheels was no different. Parents and grandparents would try to pawn off cheap Woolworth’s diecast cars as Hot Wheels but I knew better. The quality, the colors, the style and the fun just wasn’t there. If there’s one thing Hot Wheels is not, it’s being able to be copied.

Imitated but never duplicated.

Toys that are meant to be played with

Many of the Hot Wheels you see on the shelves today are little more than mini versions of real life car models…Corvettes, Porsches, Volkswagens, etc…but the other half of the Hot Wheels catalog were fantastic designs that could speak to every child. The crazy designs created by Hot Wheels looked like they came right out of the pages of my childhood sketch book. I loved Hot Wheels because they weren’t normal, whereas brands like Matchbox cars were all about accuracy. They were the “collector” cars…but really, what kid wants a Mustang when they can have a Sol-Aire CX-4? If you just wanted to put cars on a shelf, you got Matchbox cars. If you wanted cars you could play with, you got Hot Wheels. And don’t forget about all the “gimmick” cars that Hot Wheels released of the years; cars that changed color in water, cars with peepholes and pictures on the inside and cars that came “pre-wrecked” and flipped when they hit the wall. Mattel knew what they were doing and knew what kids wanted…and we wanted to play. Hard.

Why have a Porsche when you can have the Bone Shaker?

Hot Wheels are certainly the toy cars with the best performance when it came to play time. They are made to be played with. Hot Wheels are meant to be scooted across kitchen floors and flung off of ramps made of shoe boxes and magazines. Of course, what every kid really wanted was just miles and miles of the iconic Hot Wheels “orange track” that came with the playsets. I remember taking all of the Hot Wheels track I could find and connecting it all together to make a giant downhill track on the steps in my house. Sure, you’d toss your Matchbox cars and other dime store cars down your track too, but none of them could hold a candle to the real deal of Hot Wheels.

I’ll never forgive myself

However, as I grew up, my Hot Wheels found a fate that many of my toys experienced – total destruction. I’m not sure if every boy goes through a “blow everything up” phase, but I did and nothing was off limits, including my Hot Wheels. Most of my cars along with my GI Joe figures, Transformers, Construx and many other toys suffered a fate of low end fireworks, bonfires, brick smashing, dismantling and even the occasional drowning in my sandbox when it was filled with water. It’s hard for me to think back to that time because I’m not really sure what came over me that made me destroy all my toys. It makes me sad, and not because I’m thinking what all of those toys would be worth today…it makes me sad just because I loved them so much and I still do. Thankfully though, becoming an adult affords us all an opportunity to reclaim a little bit of our childhood, and I did just that when it came to Hot Wheels.

Picking up where childhood left off

As I mentioned before, Hot Wheels are still a very cheap toy to buy – they’re still only a dollar. Find me another toy that hasn’t changed its price in more than 20 years! In a world of $12 action figures and other expensive gadget toys, the simplicity of Hot Wheels combined with the attractive price cannot be beat. About 10 years ago I started collecting Hot Wheels again. I never left Target or Walmart without at least one car in my bag…usually a dozen or more, actually. It’s a great feeling to go on a Hot Wheels shopping spree and know you’ve only spent $20 for 20 cars. At first I was selectively collecting them, only buying the models I wanted and putting them on a display case my grandpa made me when I was a kid. It felt good to reclaim some of my childhood but putting them on a shelf to admire just wasn’t enough. It didn’t feel right, so I went about finding a way to have fun with Hot Wheels as an adult.

My first custom Hot Wheels. Not too bad, I guess.

The solution turned out to be something I and all men are pretty good at – taking things apart. I started exploring the customization of Hot Wheels cars. I’d take them apart, paint them, modify their bodies, swap out tires…just about anything. Although, what kid didn’t paint their Hot Wheels at some point? I would take my mom’s acrylic paints and give my cars quite a covering, but now with better tools at my disposal, I could do the job right, effectively turning my Hot Wheels into very tiny model projects. I even brought a car that survived my childhood back to life. I took these experiences to the web and started blogging about what I was doing and how I was doing it. It was fun and got a few eyeballs but not until I took my Hot Wheels chop shop to the world of racing did things start to get interesting.

No other toy has done more for me

Give me some track and some Hot Wheels and I'm happy.

If you were ever in a club like Boy Scouts that did pinewood derby races, then you know what I’m talking about. Giving Hot Wheels new paint jobs and shiny wheels is one thing, but trying to make them faster in a downhill race is another thing entirely. I continued writing about my Hot Wheels racing and somehow it turned into an entire online game, a fantasy league for Hot Wheels drag races. The blog I started, Redline Derby Racing, was intended to be little more than a way to chronicle my custom work, but now it stands as what I believe is the only online Hot Wheels racing league around, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch it grow. Not only am I playing with my Hot Wheels as a 30-something adult, but it’s serving a purpose by entertaining quite a few people. What started as my return to the world of Hot Wheels has become a full time hobby and I’ve found myself in the middle of a community of people that are looking for the same thing I was…simple, nostalgic fun. I always get funny looks when I tell people I run a web site dedicated to Hot Wheels racing, but I always shrug it off because I know that everyone collects something…and chances are it’s “stupid” too (and probably more expensive). We all geek out about something and I just happen to go nuts for Hot Wheels. It could be worse.

Some people…most people…see Hot Wheels cars as nothing more than a cheap, disposable toy. Something to keep their kid from crying in the store or something to stuff in that Christmas stocking at the last minute. But for kids like me, Hot Wheels made quite an impact and despite a phase where I thought I had outgrown the toy, I returned to the brand with renewed interest (and a wallet full of cash) to finally have the fun I couldn’t have when I was a kid. I’m not sure any other toy has stuck with me as long as Hot Wheels. I can’t think of any other toy that I was able to enjoy so much as a child but then also as an adult. It’s easy to look back and remember how much you loved some toys, but how many of those toys can you still enjoy like that today? Hot Wheels made an impact on me then and continues to do so in a very positive way, and for that, I must thank Elliot Handler and the other people at Mattel that created Hot Wheels and the other toys we all love so much. His name may not be well-known and might be forgotten, but his toys will live on forever and continue to make kids of all ages happy.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and races Hot Wheels weekly while also co-hosting live podcast.

All my best friends in one easy place. How can I not be happy?

It has never been a secret around here that I am very attached to Nintendo and generally prefer their systems and games over any other systems or games. For full history (and I’ll try to keep this short), we go back to when I was only 2-years-old, roughly. It was my dad’s birthday, so my mom decided it would be fun to get him a Nintendo Entertainment System. Neither he nor I knew that the system would really turn out to be for me. I sat and played Super Mario Bros endlessly. I’d rent and borrow any games that people would loan me. I played as much as possible (somehow avoiding most of the games the AVGN hates to much, except TMNT, which is awesome if you know how to play it).

When it came time for the next generation of consoles, back then being something completely new, there was the choice of the Sega Genesis or the Super Nintendo. I couldn’t afford either, so I waited and waited and waited. Finally, probably half way through the SNES’ life, my cousin decided to sell his SNES to me, a system that he had modified to play Super Famicom games (who knew I’d eventually want to play Dragonball Z games on the system?).

I received a Game Boy not long before that as an amazing birthday gift, and then a Game Boy Color when my cousin decided he needed to get rid of that, too. From there came the N64, another system that I had to wait painfully long to finally buy, eventually snagging one when Mario Kart 64 came out, bucking the trend of buying my cousin’s hand-me-down systems. He would taunt me about purchasing Ocarina of Time Day One, implying how much better he was than I. It pained me but my parents refused to let me blow the entirety of my money on the one game. They forced me to rent it instead, then borrow it from a friend under the assumption I might not like it. Little would any of us know that it would become my favorite game ever, regardless of how clichéd that is to say.

Finally remaking this was just begging me to spend every cent I had.

That was the final straw for me before I had a steady flow of disposable income to call my own, so the GameCube was a purchase I made as soon as it was available. The Game Boy Advance was bought a little later just because I felt like it and had some money that was burning a hole in my pocket. That system lead to a number of impulse buys such as Advance Wars and Golden Sun, risks that definitely paid off. My GameCube would get the most love of just about any system in my house over the next few years as Super Smash Bros Melee brought about a competitive streak/pettiness inside of me that no game since has matched.

Flash ahead to the DS cropping up, a system I wouldn’t have the money for just yet, only to be rewarded for my patience with a system under the Christmas tree that same launch year. The Wii, however, I bought instantly and never looked back. That was my blow-by-blow for Nintendo systems. I never owned a Virtual Boy, didn’t buy a Game Boy Pocket or Advance SP (until only a few months ago for my wife) or a DS Lite. Each and every system has been played to the point that the money spent was well worth it.

That should set the stage for where I am now with Nintendo. I’ve been through it all. I was there in the early stages, the rough patches, and the recent successes. I’ve seen how the company handles itself in good times and bad and most importantly I’ve seen the progression of gaming, not just small snippets here and there. All of this leads me to say as follows: Nintendo has a history of people just plain not getting them.

I can point to this very much during the GameCube era. I was labeled as “Nintendo Boy” by my drama teacher in high school, a hardcore Xbox/Halo fan. I was never really sure what to do with that, whether I was supposed to feel guilty (as it as always meant to be hurtful when shouted by my teacher and his followers), or rather if I should feel proud of my loyalty through the roughest times.

And the GameCube era really was the roughest of times for Nintendo, at least in the public’s eye. Nintendo and its system were labeled as “kiddie,” a completely pointless and just blatantly ignorant observation based on the fact that the GameCube did not have Halo or some such pew pew shooter. To explain the kiddie moniker, Nintendo, especially during the GameCube lifetime, were all about fun and accessibility over something adult for the sake of adult. Games were becoming more realistic and trying to prove that graphics were absolutely everything, whereas Nintendo was making games with as many vibrant colors as possible. Guess who loved Super Mario Sunshine? This guy right here.

I'd gladly clear graffiti off buildings with a water pack that doubles as a propulsion method. Go chew a mushroom and get off my back.

I argued with more people than I care to remember regarding the GameCube’s “kiddie” attribute, each time having to point out a short list of games geared toward older players such as Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, and even Metroid Prime. Speaking of Resident Evil 4, it was supposed to be an exclusive, and I was proud to say it was exclusively on my system, as were Nintendo. Of course, Capcom being Capcom decided to do what they always do and said “Hell with it, let’s put this on the PS2 with more content.” In fact, one of Nintendo’s supposed biggest faults in this current generation is their lack of support toward 3rd party developers. I say that you can look to Capcom’s actions here for a solid explanation as to why Nintendo looks out for Number 1 more than the 3rd parties. They touted this exclusive title and Capcom broke their deal. Shame on Nintendo for basing things on the honor code.

Granted, Nintendo weren’t always the nice guys, as Sony can tell you regarding the PlayStation. The NES era, while packed full of classics, was also packed full of garbage. Overpriced garbage I might add. Back then Nintendo had zero competition and could decide on prices and quality, and they picked “high” and “whatever gets this out the door” as the only qualifiers.

Still, currently, Nintendo does have far less of a hand in promoting games on its system unless they’re 1st party titles like Mario and Zelda. I can argue here that this is all because Nintendo is only a game company, unlike Sony and Microsoft who just have relatively small game divisions compared to their massive size. They can take bigger risks and throw money at any situation. Nintendo, historically, has been unable to do that.

This doesn’t mean that Nintendo has been penniless though. A lot of people kept saying that Nintendo was about to go out of business and become the next Sega when it became clear that the GameCube wasn’t outselling the Xbox and PS2. However, “not outselling” and “failing to perform” are two very different things. During the GameCube/PS2/Xbox cycle, Nintendo was nowhere near flopping, even if the GameCube was a complete failure, which just wasn’t the case (a complete failure means discontinuing before the next console, not getting integrated into it). See, Nintendo’s always been more or less bulletproof thanks to their handheld market, which they’ve never lot a grip on.

Mario usually helps with this quite a lot.

That is until now. As soon as the 3DS was announced, fans were clambering to find out more. “What games will be on it?!” “When will it come out?!” “How much will it cost?!” That last part is what did a number of the usually eager fanbase. $250 is a lot to spend on a portable system. It’s one of two reasons I never had an interest in a PSP. The other was an entire lack of excitement for the games on the system, which the PSP and 3DS also have in common for me. Launching the 3DS without any immediately significant games is no good, but it’s once again not without precedence. More on that in a moment.

First, I want to talk about another aspect of Nintendo that a lot of people, specifically now, are feeling. There is the assumption that Nintendo does not like its fans, does not want their money, and does not want to learn. People got mad when the GameCube was released without a DVD player in it (awesome, it kept the price down and I already had a DVD player). Then the same thing happened with the Wii (awesome, kept the price down and I already had a DVD player, and ironically I watch Netflix on my Wii as I don’t have to pay for a Gold account to do so, which I had to do on my Xbox 360). Operation Rainfall is a great example of fans demanding something from Nintendo and getting, essentially, told to shove off.

But why?

The motivation behind Operation Rainfall is to get Nintendo of America to release three Japanese RPGs here in the United States, two of which have already been localized for the UK. Despite demands, despite petitions, despite being a generally great gathering of like-minded gamers, Nintendo has said the usual “We don’t have plans now, but wait and see someday.” A lot of people see this as Nintendo being just downright stupid as there are thousands of gamers wanting to give their money to Nintendo but being refused. Just hold on though, because there are two parts that make rational sense as to why Nintendo has hesitated here.

I'm still all in favor of fans getting their way.

Let’s talk Earthbound. Why? Because I love Earthbound. You probably love Earthbound as well. A lot of people love Earthbound. Except most of us all loved it after the fact. It was a colossal failure on the SNES and has been the main game people can point to as to why Nintendo aren’t willing to try something new on the RPG front here in the US. Sure, we whine and complain a bunch, constantly wanting more games to be localized, but then comes the other half of the equation we always, ALWAYS seem to forget: Fans of geek culture never turn up when they’re supposed to.

Take a moment to think about Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Great movie, right? Oh yeah, I loved the hell out of it. I saw it in theaters twice and then bought the DVD. Guess what other fans forgot to do? Go see it and buy the DVD. Scott Pilgrim ended up getting completely trounced in the box office for no good reason as hundreds of thousands of geeks said they wanted to go see it. Kick Ass was the same deal. Simple fact: We’ve proven that we can’t be trusted to show up when companies take risks on us doing just that. Want some game-related anecdotal evidence? How about No More Heroes or Mad World or Zack and Wiki or A Boy and His Blob? All great games, all applauded for coming to the Wii, none sold enough to matter much. Oops.

So when Nintendo says kindly that they have no immediate plans to release certain games in the US, remember that there’s a precedence already set. Do I want the Operation Rainfall games to show up in the US? Absolutely. Will I buy them? Not a chance. Does that make me a bad gamer? I don’t really think so.

Now we’re back to the immediate state of Nintendo. The 3DS hasn’t been selling amazingly due to the high price and the lack of AAA games for the system, games that Nintendo has announced but hasn’t given us yet. Thus far we have Ocarina of Time 3D (I bought that one, in case you were wondering), and soon Star Fox 64’s remake, a new Kid Icarus, a new Mario game, a new Mario Kart, a new Paper Mario, and a new Luigi’s Mansion. And of course a new Smash Bros somewhere down the line. I couldn’t be happier with that line of promises. Best of all, those titles will be staggered just enough that even I will be able to afford them. Happy day indeed.

C'mon, you can make this happen, I believe in you.

See, another thing to learn about me, I never understood the constant complaining of people saying that the Wii had no good games. I can disagree completely there. I can come up with at least 10 games on my immediate shelf that felt entirely worth the system’s existence, all released at a staggered pace. I got the most time out of Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 and Smash Bros Brawl, but Donkey Kong Country Returns, No More Heroes, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Paper Mario were all great to me as well. And the best part is, my collection isn’t done yet. There are still a handful of Wii games I’d love to own soon, like Masamura: The Demon Blade, A Boy and His Blob, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn. I just haven’t had the money yet to buy any of them. Most of my games come secondhand from my Xbox 360 relatives, and from that system I can only count about 5 that I own and really loved with a handful of others that are on my “buy if they’re cheap” list. And I still have Skyward Sword to look forward to this year.

“But Chris! I don’t like Nintendo games!” Yeah, alright, what’s your point? Then don’t buy a Wii. I don’t like Modern Warfare and yet people everywhere love those games and flock to them like moths. And I can understand exactly why, but I don’t get mad because the Xbox 360 is flooded with similar titles. I just get happy playing what I feel like.

Back on the 3DS, the price suddenly drops by $80 and everyone rushes to point fingers and ridicule. By Nintendo dropping the price they’ve effectively signed a statement reading, “Yup, we’re getting desperate so please buy the system.” In all reality though, would we rather they slash the price of the system to encourage new buyers, or would we rather they acted too proud to see when something needed change. They’ve already announced the games we want, now the system costs something we can all get behind. And if you bought the system early, you get 20 free games from the Virtual Console as a thank you for supporting the initial launch.

I still don’t understand the hesitation behind the 3DS’ eventual library of games. Systems never launch with strong titles anymore. The Xbox 360 had pretty much nothing that made me want the system immediately and the PS3 still doesn’t have anything that can convince me I need the system right now. Remember, Nintendo is just one company, so they can only make so many games at one time. They didn’t make Capcom release crap like Resident Evil Mercenaries or watered-down versions of whole games like Street Fighter IV. And they didn’t tell Ubisoft to remake Rayman 2 and pump out more Rabbids games. Let other publishers take the blame for stupid and frankly lazy choices, not the company offering the platform. Do we applaud Apple for Angry Birds? Hell no. Do we boo them for flashlight apps? Hell no.

To refresh you, I got a DS the Christmas season it came out. I didn’t have a single game for it until Mario Kart DS came out. I bought that, Animal Crossing DS, and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time all within a month of each other nearly a year after actually getting the system. New Super Mario Bros would follow a bit later as well as Metroid Prime Hunters and Pokemon Diamond/Pearl. I just think it’s a shame they pushed Pokemon Black and White onto the DS instead of holding them back for the 3DS. That small move and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Let's try for another one like this, eh?

My point is that I know the best is yet to come. I know the good games are on their way, even if Capcom doesn’t like Mega Man fans anymore. I know that Nintendo still knows what they’re doing. Cutting the price doesn’t look like a company getting desperate; it looks like a smart company being aggressive with their risks. Nintendo president Iwata doesn’t sound like someone who isn’t listening to fans. On the contrary, he sounds like he’s more than ready to work with them to make the 3DS a success.

I bought a 3DS today along with the Ocarina of Time remake. I’m ready to buy the next game that comes out on that short list of first-party games up there. And then the next. And so on. I’m excited for the Wii U. I’m optimistic about Nintendo’s future, even if so few people seem to remember where Nintendo’s come from. Here’s to you Nintendo, for all those years together. Let’s make it many, many more.

I joined Google+ a couple weeks ago with the other 20 million people and it’s a nice change from Facebook. I feels like a chance to start over with the people you follow and take interest in. My circle of people is extremely small but even with less than 20 people, one of them posted a photo that really brought back some happy memories. They posted a picture of a card from the Mille Bornes card game.

Lots of cards, lots of fun with Mille Bornes.

Going the distance

Like most of my childhood games, my mother got Mille Bornes at a garage sale. I’m not sure why she bought it. If I had to guess it was because it is a game about cars and, well, I like cars…and it was only 50 cents so you really can’t lose. As was done with many games during those years, we made up our own rules and it was a lot of fun. It was a game we played often, especially because I couldn’t convince my parents to play Monopoly with me all that often. However, as I would learn later in life, Mille Bornes is a pretty complicated game. There are a lot of rules and conditions that dictate when certain cards can be played, not to mention scoring in the game requires a decoder ring and a math degree. There is quite a bit of strategy involved in order to avoid car accidents and red lights while also laying down distance cards that earn you points. It’s a game that is easy to start and addicting in attempts to master.

Mille Bornes is not only a team game that can bring out the best and worst in people, it’s also a card game that is beautiful to look at. As my friend on Google+ captioned in the photo, the cards are a “great balance of style & substance,” and I couldn’t agree more. When I was young it really didn’t matter to me, all I knew is that there were cards with cars on them and some crazy foreign words I didn’t understand (but I did learn a little French), though as a I started a career in design and art, the Mille Bornes cards really stood out and still hold up after more than 50 years in production.

Simple and elegant. Playing card design you rarely see.

The lost art of playing card design

My copy of Mille Bornes is from 1966 and the mod style of the time is alive and well…and awesome. Every card has a great illustration on it symbolizing whatever it is the card does, and then both English and French text. Being a game about driving, you of course have your cards featuring cars, accidents, spare tires and the likes, but the most enjoyable aspect of the cards are the actual scoring cards. The object of the game is to be the first team to reach a thousand miles, so you have numbered cards that total up for your distance. The cards range from 25 to 200 miles (points) and each one has an animal associated with it. For example, the 25 card has a snail and the 200 has a swallow. All the animals make sense except for one, the butterfly, which is seen on the 75 mile card. Between the snail and the butterly is the 50 mile card, which has a duck on it. I’m not a zoologist, but I’d bet you a duck can outrun a butterfly…just saying.

Regardless of how well the animals match up with their corresponding speed cards, they are all perfect examples of how to use icons to convey a purpose while also being a lot of fun to play with. All the cards are printed with a limited color palette which only adds to their charm. Even when I was a kid I knew this game was old and the images on the cards were dated, but that didn’t make the game any less fun. Just because they weren’t shiny and new or embosed with holograms didn’t make me less interested in the game. The game is fun no matter what the cards look like and that’s a real testament to just how good this game is. Some things don’t need to change to continue to be fun and interesting, they just need to be experienced.

More flavors than Baskin-Robbins

Original games are still fun.

I look at a Monopoly, Risk, Uno and a long list of other games from my youth and they’ve all changed. In some cases it’s just cosmetic, as you’ll see with all the licensed versions of Monopoly, but in other cases they’ve reinvented or changed the game entirely. Monopoly is not without its derivatives and I’m sure each one is fun, but what’s wrong with just plain Monopoly? And don’t even get me started on the game of Life because that board game has done a complete 180 since the 1970s version I played (and loved) as a kid and now it’s just not as much fun. They dumbed it down a bit too much.

Okay, before anyone points it out in the comments, yes, I know that even my beloved Mille Bornes went through a brief period of reinventing. The game play didn’t change but they updated the card style with more “realistic” pictures and you know what, they didn’t help the game at all. The elegance of the original deck was lost in attempts to cater to a new generation of players that they seemed to assume couldn’t understand what a card with a snail on it meant. Instead all they got was a game that looked cheap. If you need any proof that the redesign of Mille Bornes was a bad idea, just look for the game on shelves today and guess what you’ll find? The original card designs. I can’t think of a better example of simple being better than this.

Don’t forget your roots

Of course, also on toy store shelves these days are “classic” versions of already classic games. Next to Star Wars Monopoly is a limited edition, all-wood version of the game, complete with collector’s box. It is nice to have these tried and true games in more of an original and elegant form, but I fear these wonderful games in their original state are being missed by generations upon generations of children and adults. I often wonder if kids playing Monopoly Crazy Cash or U Build have or ever will play the original game? Games like Mille Bornes and others are a lot of fun as-is and have been for decades. I’m not saying variations on these games shouldn’t exist, but let’s not forget about these original games. We can enjoy them with our kids and families because they are still a lot of fun and stand on their own quite nicely…plus, if you look in the right places, you can still pick them up for less than a dollar.

Hopscotch

Okay, I can’t say for sure that this time honored game has been lost but I do know I haven’t seen many hopscotch courses on the sidewalks lately. Frankly, hopscotch never made much sense to me. You draw your squares and then you hop. Not very hard. When I played hopscotch with friends we tried to turn it into a real game. I grew up with a giant driveway so my friends and I had all the hopscotch real estate we could ask for and we took advantage of it.

Hopscotch. Boring until you add some real challenge.

Our hopscotch courses were more like obstacle courses than a few numbered squares. We applied the same rules but we drew more challenging outlines that included lava pits, giant spikes, wild animals and the always popular pendulum battle axe. Our landing zones were often far apart and small making the one-footed jump alone the challenge. If I remember correctly, we even had a point system setup for successful landings and certain zones, it was quite elaborate.

So maybe that’s what is missing from classic hopscotch – the game. Where’s the fun? Where’s the excitement…the drama…anyone can throw a rock and pick it up. Trying doing it from five yards away over a pit of snakes.

Tetherball

A popular recess game, tetherball was another game that never made sense to me. It was a ball on a rope hooked to a pole. I think I failed to see the “game” in it and none of my classmates really knew how to play tetherball so we always improvised, creating our own rules which meant no one really knew what the heck was going on. Unlike hopscotch, tetherball couldn’t be saved by creating new rules.

Tetherball might have made sense when a ball on a pole was high tech but by the time I was in elementary school, we had better ideas. The only thing tetherball was used for then was torture. My one clear memory of tetherball involved a kid in the grade ahead of me getting his hand wrapped up in the rope against the pole. This poor kid was just hanging from the pole crying for help with his arm getting squeezed by the rope. Ouch.

Red Rover, Red Rover

Kids running at each other...how bad can it be?

Speaking of pain, Red Rover is another summer game that doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Red Rover was invented on the school playground but made its way to the backyards of America with gusto. And much like tetherball, Red Rover was a simple game that made sense once upon a time but by the mid-80s was a guaranteed bruising. Red Rover was more or less banned from the schoolyard but my friends and I didn’t let that stop us as we took Red Rover to a new level at home. I admit, Red Rover was a brutal game, but that was the point. On one side, you had a line of kids all holding hands. On the other side you had a kid run full tilt at the line in attempts to break through their arms. What could go wrong?

There is, of course, a correct way to play the game but around my neighborhood Red Rover quickly turned into something not unlike a WWF main event. We all came up with ways to both break through the outstretched arms of our friendly opponents and also get around them. Some tried flips, others dives and some just relied on brute force and speed…none of which worked very well. I don’t recall any broken bones playing Red Rover, but there were plenty of bloody noses and scraped knees. Actually, maybe Red Rover is better lost to time, but then again, you have to build up your tolerance to pain somehow, right?

Roller Racer

With every summer comes new fads and the Roller Racer was no exception. I never had a Roller Racer but they were so cool! Part roller skate, part Sit-N-Spin, the Roller Racer was a toy that confused as much as it delighted. The first time I tried a Roller Racer I didn’t go anywhere. I just sat there trying to figure it out (probably swearing), eventually just using my feet to scoot along. Naturally, I thought the Roller Racer was a piece of crap, but once you figured it out, it couldn’t be beat. The Roller Racer was a near perfect balance of rewarding challenge, exercise, and speed. When you got good on the Roller Racer you felt awesome, like you just solved an ancient riddle, and if you could do tricks with a Roller Racer it was even more special. Of course, tricks on a Roller Racer basically meant being able to go backwards and do a 180 but hey, a trick is a trick.

The Roller Racer didn’t last long, probably due to its confusing method of motion, but I don’t see it being any different than the wiggle skateboards I see kids riding down my street on today. Their fun will pass just like the Roller Racer did. I might look for Roller Racer to make a comeback eventually, everything else does…and this time Roller Racer would most certainly be a “new and fun” way to exercise and burn off all that video game weight.

Jarts

Otherwise know as lawn darts, Jarts is another game kids of today will never know because of the so-called “danger” involved. Out of the box, Jarts isn’t much different than horseshoes; Opposing teams stand 10 yards apart and attempt to toss aerodynamically enhanced spikes into a ring on the ground. Okay, so Jarts was little more than throwing tiny javelins, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t fun and couldn’t be enjoyed properly. I am happy to report that none of my friends got hurt playing Jarts despite us doing our usual thing by turning a simple backyard game into something a bit more epic.

Look at how happy they are! We used to have fun with Jarts, why can't we now?

My friends and I did away with the teams and turned Jarts into a solo competition, each of us getting points depending on how close we got to the rings. We usually had several rings in the yard, each with different point values depending on their distance away from us. I know that doesn’t sound too special but consider that the rings were in the next door neighbor’s backyard with a tiny obstacle in-between…and that obstacle was the garage (or the house). Yes, we blindly threw mini spears over the roof hoping to land near the point rings. Of course, none of us were stupid enough to stand in the landing zone, which is apparently more than I can say for some kids because thanks to them, Jarts got banned in pretty much all of North America by the 1990s.

Get out there and play!

You may have noticed a pattern here. Most of these classic summer games haven’t been seen in 20 years due to their lack of safety. However, I’d like to go on record by saying that I never got hurt playing any of these games, nor did my friends (except that tetherball kid, but he wasn’t really a friend). Games are only as dangerous as kids make them, and…well…my friends and I did our part to up the risk factors, and while that was most stupid of us, I look back at those years with much fondness. Kids today will probably never experience many of the summer games I enjoyed, but I like to think that children are still doing their best to “improve” on the games of summer.

Want some more summer activity suggestions? Try these out:

-Backyard Shenanigans: Simple Backyard Toys for Spring

-Drench With Power: A Super Soaker Retrospective

-Too Much Awesome Podcast: Episode 5

A building block pioneer

If I remember hard enough, I probably played with Tinker Toys well before “Lego” was a part of my vocabulary. I remember my grandma had some Tinker Toys that I played with when my family visited. For some reason I always ended up with a giant cube when I put the Tinker Toys together, but as a small child that was quite an accomplishment. Tinker Toys were all-wood and had a limited set of parts so to me Tinker Toys felt more like a math problem than a toy. Tinker Toys really don’t keep you interested very long, especially when you have things like Lego bricks at your disposal. Once you start down the path of Lego you rarely look back and things like Tinker Toys are just inferior, but the concept Tinker Toys was not lost on later generations.

Tinker Toys. 60% math problem, 40% toy. All wood.

From wood to plastic

I’m honestly too old to have enjoyed them, but it’s easy to see the lineage from Tinker Toys to K’Nex. The K’Nex building toy is just a souped up Tinker Toy. They combined the rigidness of Tinker Toys with the plastic of Lego bricks to get the best of both worlds, and the result is really quite impressive. Like Tinker Toys, K’Nex was essentially rods and connection joints, nothing too fancy, yet a quick search for K’Nex will result in tons of fantastic K’Nex creations from kids young and old. However, K’Nex had something Tinker Toys did not: motion.

K'Nex, The modern Tinker Toy.

Following Lego’s lead, K’Nex added electric motors to some kits that let kids construct even more fantastic things like giant Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds. Personally, I probably would have created some sort of catapult (like I did with my Lego bricks), but to each his own. Of course, Lego had their Technics line well before K’Nex was even in stores, but had I been 11 years old in 1993, I’m sure I would have found K’Nex to be a lot of fun. I would have made one heck of a bridge.

Build and smash

Being a child of the 80s, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I had an extensive collection of Contrux toys. Contrux had a very limited run, only about five years or so, but they had a huge impact on my life, right behind Lego. If I had to guess, my huge collection of Contrux came to be because of their relatively short retail life, which put them on sale very quickly and my mom was known far and wide for her smart spending. However, I’m glad she was because my best friend and I beat the snot out of our Construx to the point where almost none remained.

Construx, one of my all-time favorites.

My next door neighbor and I had thousands of Construx between us and we would make these huge cars and trucks, and then we’d ram them into each other destruction derby style. It was our own version of Robot Wars…just without the robots. We would design our vehicles with spikes, rams,  shields and the whole bit and then let em rip. It was a lot of fun but Construx were made of some very rigid plastic so they shattered wonderfully when smashed together. Much like Tinker Toys and K’Nex, Construx were pretty much just rods and joints. Construx were themed like a construction site so their pieces mimicked i-beams that connected at small ball joints. For the most part Construx pieces were all straight, but some playsets had curved beams and angled connectors so you could make wings and stuff for your super futuristic ramming machine. Plus, Construx had awesome rubber wheels that made your creations faster than any Lego car.

Building for the smart kids

The other building toy I had and loved as a child is by far the most complicated construction toy of all time, the Erector set. Not until the Lego Mindstorms many years later did a building toy have more complexity than an Erector set. With tiny nuts, bolts, screws, wrenches and pulleys, you would lose half the parts before you even got started. I don’t even want to think about how many little metal pieces got sucked up by my mother’s vacuum cleaner.

I didn’t appreciate my Erector set until much later in life when I had the capacity to engineer the the things I wanted to build. And yes, you really had to engineer your Erector creations. You couldn’t just jump into an Erector set and have something fun after an hour play. You had to go into things with a plan. If you wanted to play with your Erector set, you had to block out a good chunk of time…and possibly have a slide rule.

Tell me that doesn't look complicated.

Long before Lego and K’Nex spiced things up with motors and computers, the Erector set was the only toy that let you make functioning creations with motors, gears and pulleys. I remember making a crane with a crank that I used with my Lego sets. The Erector set also has the distinction of being all metal and they still are to this day, a feature I admire in these days of over-bearing child safety. For the most part, the Erector set was great for building stationary objects, although later sets did include things like wheels to make cars and tractors

However, due to the very small parts and effort required to even make something as simple as a tower, the Erector set was only for the smart, dedicated kids. I was way too lazy for an Erector set. The Erector set just couldn’t do enough to justify the amount of time needed to create something cool when I had snap-together Lego bricks and Construx at my disposal. I’m glad I had my Erector set, as it helped teach me the importance of organizing your tools and parts, but in the long run the Erector just couldn’t compete.

For once, my toys are really better

Like Tinker Toys, the Erector set may have been hot stuff in its time, but even these pioneers of building toys can’t compete with the fun and excitement of more modern and creative toys like Lego bricks, K’Nex and even the short-lived Construx. It’s easy for all of us to say that our generation’s toys were better than the previous ones, but in the case of construction toys I have absolutely no reservations in declaring that to be 100% true. The building toys I grew up with may owe their existence to the Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs and Erector sets of the world, but our toys were just better. Period.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs and tweets about video games, toys and other retro fun.

Want more articles on classic toys? Then check these out:

-Vintage Robot Toys

-More On LEGO Bricks

-Drench With Power: A Super Soaker Retrospective

Sufice it to say, as cool as this set is, there's no chance my parents were ever able to afford it.

My childhood with LEGO is a happy one, as is the case with most of my childhood stories unless my parents couldn’t afford some childhood toy I demanded. Oh wait, that happened with LEGO all the time. Snaps! The thing is, with LEGO, much of the price goes to the brand name, but the tradeoff is that you have access to LEGO sets that incorporate Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Batman, and many more snazzy licenses that no other building block companies can sell. Very cool.

I’d love to be able to write something like, “Ah, the sweet memories of my lego star wars collection…”, but I cannot. The truth is, I’ve only ever had two LEGO Star Wars sets in my life (also, I’d capitalize Star Wars and LEGO as you saw me clearly do). Did I have the awesome Millennial Falcon? Nope. How about an equally awesome AT-AT? Nope, again. What about a still-pretty-awesome X-Wing? Nope and check mate. In total, I had a miniature AT-AT and a random carrier for the Droid Army seen in Episode I, so everyone except Kyle has probably forgotten what it looks like.

Even though I missed out on the Star Wars sets, surely I had to have had a number of other rockin’ licensed sets? Sadly, the only license from my childhood was the aforementioned Star Wars license, and the prices for the Star Wars sets were so outrageous that even as a kid I knew that simply asking for something as glamorous as a LEGO Death Star was akin to straight-up telling my dad that he didn’t make enough money.

Where did sets like this go? I miss them.

What I did have, however, were a handful of truly special sets from all over the place, as any good LEGO collection should be (LEGO is synonymous with “eclectic,” or at least it’d only make sense). One amazing Christmas I’d wake up to find a truck stop set that included several big rigs, a set that any kid worth his salt should have leapt for joy upon witnessing, which is what I did. Except, you couldn’t just have big rigs rigging all day long, which was why I also had an RV, in case any of my trucker LEGO people wanted to take a vacation. They didn’t have to worry about the truck stop burning down while they were gone either as I had a small fire jeep with a fire chief patrolling the area. Top this off with the coolest LEGO plane (remember, toys with wings are instantly cool) and I was one happy camper/trucker.

But wait, there’s more! Eventually my parents began getting me space sets with strange space helmets and vehicles that seemed to serve very little purpose but were extremely cool. There was even an evil black LEGO robot from space that’d cause trouble. But I never had to worry because I had a time traveling pirate ship with wings. It even came with a monkey because, hey, we’re time traveling so why not bring a monkey?

See! Evil space robot! With evil LEGO space pirate!

I really wish we’d see LEGO video games with some of these older, original LEGO sets rather than the movie licensed LEGO games that’re all the rage these days, but alas, I come from a different generation with cooler LEGO sets and a wilder imagination. My favorite set, beyond the space robots and flying time ship and truck stop, was simply my big blue tub of LEGO bricks meant for construction with no rhyme or reason. So many wondrous creations emerged from that blue tub. Perhaps it’s time to go find it and build something new.

But enough about my LEGO childhood and me. What about you? What is you favorite LEGO set? Or did you even have the chance to grow up with LEGO bricks? Leave a comment and let me know. Otherwise how will I build a great website without the many building blocks that are your comments?

Want more articles on classic toys from your childhood? Check these out:

-The Life and Times of Mr. Potato Head

-Spring-loaded Serenade: Exploring Nerf

-Guys and Dolls: A Male’s Retrospective on Barbie

Lets get ready to rumble

One of the first and most iconic wrestling toys is without a doubt the all-rubber Wrestling Superstars action figures. Released by LJN, these figures were surprisingly detailed and copied these larger-than-life athletes wonderfully, Macho Man included. However, since they were not jointed in any way, it was hard to play with these figures in the ways you saw them fight on television. You couldn’t exactly make Hulk Hogan do his trademark leg drop nor could Randy Savage drop the elbow from the top rope, but for all you couldn’t do with these figures, they were as tough as nails. You might not be able to put them in a figure four leg lock, but you could throw them against a brick wall over and over without worry. In a way, the toy’s toughness wonderfully mimicked that of the superstars they portrayed.

The first and the best wrestling toys.

Of course, as wrestling grew more and more popular, there were more and more toys. The action figures went through a lot of changes over the years but the WWF didn’t stop there. The other memorable toy from the golden age of wrestling is easily the Wrestling Buddies. Wrestling Buddies were basically just over-sized, stuffed toys that looked like your favorite wrestler, again, including Macho Man. The Wrestling Buddies didn’t do much but it didn’t matter because these plush toys put the power of muscle heads like the Ultimate Warrior in your hands. And like the old rubber action figures, the Wrestling Buddies were rough and tough, ready to be played with hard. How else could you practice the Sharpshooter and not get yelled at by mom?

The other wrestling toy that you couldn’t avoid back in the day was, surprisingly, not from the WWF or even the WCW. Instead they came from Japan and they were called M.U.S.C.L.E. men. These little pink wrestling figures always confused me because I wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do with them. They were too small to do anything and they didn’t bend or have any joints. You could try to collect them all, but the collecting craze spawned by Pokemon was still several years away, and why would any kid want a funny looking MUSCLE man when he could have King Kong Bundy in his back pocket? Nonetheless, without the popularity of professional wrestling on TV and on toy store shelves, MUSCLE men would have remained in Japan.

You just know that Hulk fears Macho Man

Wrestling then and now

Pro wrestling is one of the few things my generation can say we saw and helped grow from the start. We helped turn wrestling from a smoky gym sport into an international spectacle, and that being the case, it’s interesting to see the wrestling toys in the aisles today. Back then the WWF only needed to sell toys to kids like me. The funny thing is, they can still sell toys to me. Like many of the other franchises these days, there are wrestling toys targeted at young kids and toys targeted at us “old” wrestling fans. Next to the 6-inch action figures of today’s wrestling superstars like John Cena are “collectible” figures of wrestling’s greatest players, like the Iron Sheik and Roddy Piper.

These figures range in price from $10 to around $20 and while they’re beautifully sculpted and detailed, they just don’t seem offer much more than the old figures. Don’t get me wrong, the action figures on the pegs now look more like their real life counterparts than ever before, and even though these figures have articulation and can actually move, they still can’t “perform” many of their trademark wrestling moves. You would think after a period of 20+ years that we would have action figures that could actually be put in a Boston crab or camel clutch, but we don’t. I purchased a new Undertaker figure at Walmart and while I can see the tiny skull tattoos on his arms, I can barely bend his legs. He even has a hard time standing up straight. I know these figures can do a thousand more things than our old rubber figures, but I guess I would just expect them to do more by this point.

I think one of his tattoos says "Mom".

Our old school figures could be dragged behind the school bus for miles and come out relatively unscathed, but the figures today just don’t feel like they would be able to take much abuse…and what other type of action figure should take more abuse than a wrestler? Wrestlers are basically giant cartoon characters anyway, each of them capable of taking an inordinate amount of punishment, so it only makes sense that their miniature versions should do the same, but I’m not so sure they can. My Undertaker looks mean but I think inside you’ll find a brittle little man.

And if you thought the MUSCLE men were left back in the 1980s, you’d be wrong too. The actual MUSCLE men are now the things of yard sales and flea markets, but in their place you’ll find mini versions of today’s top WWE performers. Billed as WWE Rumblers, these 2-inch figures resemble the Marvel Superhero Squad toys in that they have large proportions with all-happy faces. But like the old MUSCLE men, I’m not sure what you can do with these little guys besides just collect them. At most the WWE Rumblers would be great desk toys at the office. They’re small enough to go unnoticed but still something to show off your wrestling fandom.

Old isn’t always better but it was more fun

It’s easy for me to say that the toys from my generation are better than today’s toys, but that would be a lie. Toys today can do a lot more than the toys of my day, and they look better too. Yet, when I put them side-by-side, the modern action figures just don’t carry the same spirit as the old toys. The old toys captured the fun and ridiculousness that was and is professional wrestling. The new toys just seem more interested in being collectible than useful in the hands of fans both young and old. But don’t let that stop you from buying a Paul Orndorff figure to show off at work.

Want more talk about toys then and now? Check these articles out:

-The Glory of G.I. Joes: A Retrospective

-Creating My Own Sagas: Dragonball Z Action Figures

-Spring-Loaded Serenade: Exploring Nerf

Now, 5,000 years later, a boy named Yugi unlocks the secret of the Millennium Puzzle. He is infused with ancient magical energy, for destiny has chosen him to defend the world against the return of the Shadow Games, just as the brave pharaoh did 5,000 years ago.”

If I chronicled the phases of my childhood obsessions, it probably would look something like this: 3-5 years old, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 5-7 years, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. 7-8 years, Beast Wars. 9-10 years, Spider-Man and X-Men. 10-13, Pokemon and Digimon. 13-15, Dragon Ball Z. And finally, 15-17, Yu-Gi-Oh. By the time I was 18, you’d think I’d give up obsessing over kids shows, and you know what, so did I for a little bit.

“But nooooooo.” Because Nickelodeon just had to whip out one last kickass series that would ultimately annihilate any chance I ever had of growing up (Pranger’s Note: It’s Avatar. I bet he’s talking about Avatar). Anyway, what was the subject of the day again? Oh right, Yu-Gi-Oh, what I consider the finale of my official unofficial childhood.

Yet again, don't ask me where they all went. I couldn't tell you.

 Probably the most common misconception I’ve seen repeatedly concerning the Yu-Gi-Oh card game is that duelists (people who play Yu-Gi-Oh) are often thought of as aggressive, insecure outcasts who get easily offended when outsiders either mistake their game for Pokemon, or worse, call it a shallow knockoff of Pokemon. I’ll say while it is true that several older Yu-Gi-Oh fans have been known to be quite defensive in their support of this franchise, it’s not without its reasons. One reason being, well, it’s annoying honestly. How is Yu-Gi-Oh any more a knock off of Pokemon than Monster Rancher, Card Captors, or friggin Digimon? (It technically predates Pokemon, but that’s an argument for the ages.) It’s almost as annoying as people who wouldn’t stop calling James Cameron’s Avatar ‘Dances With Smurfs’ and think they’re so clever for it, even though all they’re doing is quoting South Park.

As for the card game itself, it is far from shallow. If there is anything Yu-Gi-Oh shares with the Pokemon card game, I would say it is its sense of simplicity of structure. Besides that one element, both games have a very unique style to play. In the case of Yu-Gi-Oh, the detail surrounding its simple structure feels far more complex. In Pokemon, all strategies are built strictly around the monsters you chose for your deck, with the energy’s being a requirement and trainer’s just sort of there for a little support. With Yu-Gi-Oh however, there are so many ways to string the three types of cards together; Monster, Spell, and Trap cards are all equally important in constructing a deck.

Pity this guy was never on the show.

To talk briefly about my strategy, I stuck with Dark type monsters for the majority of playing the game. Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer was the driving force of my deck for quite some time: A four star monster (the highest level monsters that can be summoned without sacrifices) with 1800 attack points that allowed me to remove from play two monsters in my opponents Graveyard (discard pile). This ability was useful because it highlighted my biggest strategy. Monsters that were sent to the Graveyard were never really gone forever, because there were far to many avenues to revive them, (Monster Reborn, Call of the Haunted, a ton of others). Figured my best bet was to remove as many cards from my opponent’s Graveyard as possible. I also stocked my deck with other removal cards like Noblemen of Extermination and Noblemen of Crossout.

These were especially helpful when up against a Fiber Jar (a card very popular when I was a duelist) that’s effect enforced both players to reshuffle all cards in play and essentially reboot the game with the exception of life point count. Any cards I removed previously would not return to my opponent’s deck, and even if my opponent had a similar strategy, Kycoo had a second ability that prevented my opponent from removing any cards, and that was my strategy: Ostracize my opponent from his minions while keeping my own team together.

And that is why friendship is the greatest thing in the... wait, what the heck is Duke doing here?

Probably one of the most appealing things about Yu-Gi-Oh was that its card game was so much in sync with the anime. They made starter decks named after characters in the show, containing cards identical to the ones they used. I remember being sixteen and in High School when this game was a hit, but I could only imagine what it must have been like to be six and in Grade School at the time of this game’s/show’s hay days. It must have felt super special awesome to actually use the exact same cards as Yugi and Joey. All we were missing were complex holographic duel systems, which, let’s be honest with ourselves, if they really existed, EVERYONE would play this game.

I would now like to focus our attention on the Anime. Yu-Gi-Oh was based off the manga of the same name by Kazuki Takahashi. The series was licensed by Shonen Jump in Japan and localized in US on Kids WB by 4Kids Entertainment. Now, before we all jump on the 4Kids hate wagon… again, I want to be fair and admit that at the time, I had no problem with the way the series was translated. We hear over and over again how 4Kids has utterly ruined every single anime series ‘One Piece’ at a time (Pranger’s Note: I see what you did there), starting with their opening themes, and I am more than aware of this occurrence. But to their credit, the opening theme music for the English dub of Yu-Gi-Oh, was actually really good. Easily some of the best work 4Kids’ music department has done.

The name changing, censoring of guns, and a couple punches to the face didn’t bother me all too much either. What did bother me was when I found out about how several bits of dialogue completely changed subject matter in translation. At its roots, Yu-Gi-Oh is the story of a young boy [Yugi] in present day Japan who discovers the game he thought to be a simple hobby has become the battleground for modern day sorcerers attempting to harness ancient Egyptian magic to do their bidding, and he must ally himself with the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle [Yami] to return the magic back to whence it came. It’s quite a compelling story to juxtapose kids in modern day just playing a game with a 5,000-year-old Egyptian prophecy, yet much of the discussion about the mythology surrounding the game, including Yami’s origins, is etched out of the early portions of the dub and replaced with more pep talks about friendship. What ends up happening is once we do get to the final season that actually does take place in Ancient Egypt, it wasn’t built up properly and almost felt like it came completely out of left field.

I think I was maybe one of four people in the theater when this came out.

I should mention as I write this, I have not seen any of the current Yu-Gi-Oh spinoff known as 5D’s, and I only watched a few episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh GX before I completely lost interest. So when I say that I loved this show for its colorful characters, surprisingly clever strategies, and its ability to create a legit amount of suspense and drama (out of playing children’s card games no less), you’ll know I’m talking specifically about the original series. But now that I’ve gotten this far, it would not be right if I left my history of Yu-Gi-Oh without talking about Little Kuriboh’s Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series.

Actually now, it's three times.

What we have here is quite possibly the greatest series of web videos ever made. Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged stars a full grown British guy named Martin Billany, better known throughout the web as Little Kuriboh, who takes clips strait from the Yu-Gi-Oh anime and dubs the voices of all the characters himself (save for a few guest appearances), adding sound effects, music clips, and well-known movie/TV quotes to create one of the most balls-out equal-opportunity-offender parodies of all time.

The series first aired July of 2006. I was introduced to it somewhere late 2007. At first I wasn’t sure what to think because the videos struck me as someone who didn’t even understand the series trying to put it down (LK has openly admitted to never actually playing the Yu-Gi-Oh card game). But as I watched more of his videos, his audio and voice work got better and his writing and sense of satire grew on me. I realized just how much he got this series and was probably no less a fan of the show than I was. On his 50^th Episode, Joey Wheeler Ace Attorney (my favorite character BTW), which aired end of October last year, there was one bit of dialogue where Little Kuriboh dropped the act and let his true feelings for Yu-Gi-Oh shine through, even if it was only for a moment:

Joey: Maybe we have committed copyright infringement, but you gotta’ know we’ve done everything in our power to support the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, and if it weren’t for us, I don’t think the show would be nearly as popular as it is right now.

Johnson: And where is your evidence, as such?

Joey: Look around, Johnson. There are more Yu-Gi-Oh fans now than ever before, and the more you try to stifle our creativity, the more we’ll try to express our love for a show that’s more than just about children’s card games. It’s about fighting for what you believe in. And I believe in this show and its fans now more than ever. Because they believe in me.

Yugi: This is so Meta.

Joey: Flame Swordsmen! Use the power given to me by the Yu-Gi-Oh fanbase to wipe out Judgeman’s life points!

Flame Swordsmen: My name is FRAAAAAAAAAAAAANK! (cuts down head of 4Kids Legal Department)

Johnson: NOOOOOOOOOO!

And for that, Mr. Martin Billany, I thank you for persevering through so much controversy to keep this series and it’s fan base alive. For better or for worse, you pioneered the entire Abridged fad that is sweeping across Youtube. I’ll keep watching, and praying to the Egyptian Gods that you survive another 50 episodes.

P.S. your voice work as Frieza in Team Four Star’s DBZ Abridged is easily stealing the show. Keep up the Super Special Awesome work.

So there you have it, and you know what? I really want to play some Yu-Gi-Oh right now.

Like Children’s Card Games? Maybe you’ll like these:

-Forget-Me-Nots: My History With The Pokemon Trading Card Game

-Bakugan Battle Packs Game Review

-Uno: A Brief History of the Classic Card Game

Back in my day

I remember my first remote controlled toy was a tank. I got it for Christmas and I thought it was the greatest thing in the world, but even at a young age I didn’t understand why it only moved in two directions. The tank moved forward in a straight line but always turned left while going backwards. It was a little awkward and far from the cars I saw at Toys R Us, but it was something and right then my quest for a better R/C car was born.

It didn’t help that one of my friends had a “real” R/C dune buggy. By “real” I mean it was a total kit car that had an engine, shocks, required actual gasoline and had a remote control that rivaled Doc Brown’s. This was one expensive toy and it was meant for serious action. I knew it was way out of my league and parental price range, but a boy can dream, can’t he?

Is there anything better than a R/C car? There is now...

Where the rubber meets the road

My little two-way tank had a rather short life. Its limitations made it rather uninteresting and required several pounds of C batteries, so before too long it just became a GI Joe accessory. I wanted a full R/C car real bad and my parents knew it, finally obliging me on my birthday somewhere around third grade. As far as I was concerned, my parents went all out because my first R/C car was a Ferrari Testarossa. I didn’t know at time that it was a Radio Shack toy that only cost $20 but it didn’t matter, I thought it was the best car ever made. Finally I had a car that could go in every direction, went fast and looked cool. It was metallic silver but I quickly painted it red so I could pretend to be Magnum PI.

I had a big driveway growing up so my house quickly became the neighborhood race track. We’d draw a course with chalk and practice our skidding and donuts. However, one interesting challenge to the whole thing was that my next door neighbor had the same car and it operated on near the same frequency as mine, so whenever we raced we’d end up half-controlling each others’ cars. I’d press left and my car would turn right. He accelerated and his car went in reverse. Our Saturday afternoons of racing looked more like a destruction derbies than the F1 races in our heads, but it was all fun regardless. I went through a few other remote controlled cars after that but the Ferrari was my first and will thus always be my most loved.

I'll just be outside...flying my Apache helicopter!

Flying the friendly skies

However, that was then and this is now..and right now I’m jealous of every third grader out there. All I wanted was a simple car, but today kids can have R/C toys I could only dream of…helicopters!

I admit, next to a helicopter that can fly and terrorize people from above, a Ferrari seems pretty boring. I still don’t think there’s anything wrong with some good old fashioned speed on wheels, but these helicopters are a lot of fun and come in all shapes and sizes. You have your expensive models, of course, that fly nearly like the real thing, but you also have your affordable, near-disposable helicopters that are little more than styrofoam with a propeller. I can play with these little guys all day long at home and at the office. I can only imagine what my 9-year-old self and best friend would have done had we a couple of R/C helicopters. We could have been TC and Magnum PI at the same time! Honestly though, they probably would have crashed and gotten stuck in a tree within two days, so maybe a car was better in the long run.

Driving and flying not your bag? Fine, how about a boat?

As if helicopters weren’t cool enough, you can even find affordable R/C boats at the toy store these days. Helicopters were one thing but boats were for the super elite only. Cars only needed a few yards of sidewalk. Helicopters just needed a little open air, but you need water for boats and that made them instantly more fun because it was all the rarer. As a kid I knew that R/C boats were not toys, they were for the serious hobbyist and well out of reach. Now 15 years later and you can find yourself a mini R/C boat for your bathtub for less than $10. Even larger scale boats are under $50 and most certainly worth every penny if you have access to a pond or river near your home.

Oh to be a kid today

Technology is a wonderful thing and not only makes our lives easier but makes toys a lot more enjoyable. Remote controlled toys may not be any cheaper these days (they still hang around $20 for starters) but you’re no longer limited to the road like I was. You can defy gravity with any assortment of helicopters, UFOs, and air planes, or you can rule the open seas with a speed boat or hovercraft. However, as an adult, the one remote controlled toy I want more than any other is an easy decision – a blimp.

Want more articles about R/C vehicles and cars? Check these out:

-Air Hogs: The Most Popular Remote Controlled Toy for 2009

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-The Privileged Childhood: A Power Wheels Retrospective

Now that's a board game cover to win over just about any child, am I right?

Flash back to my childhood years in the early 90’s for a moment, will you? I’m aware of the X-Men mostly through the Saturday morning cartoon featuring the X-Men costume designs made popular by Jim Lee, but other than that I’m nowhere near what you’d consider a master on the subject. I know the main X-Men and their powers, but that’s about it. Oh, and I know that the X-Men are stupidly awesome, but that’s a gimmie. Therefore, when I unwrapped a random box with the X-Men Under Siege game sitting in wait for me, I was elated. But that was before I actually tried playing the game.

I believe in the entire time I’ve had this game, somewhere in the ballpark of 15 years, I may have played a full game through once, possibly less. The largest reason behind this is the amount of dedication you have to have in order to understand even the slightest bit of the rules. The instruction manual for the game is 14 pages long. That’s 14, a double-digit number, for a board game aimed at kids. I reread it just before writing this article and I still don’t have a full grasp for how it’s played.

The gist is that while the X-Men are away from the mansion, a bunch of evil mutants infest it and force the X-Men to get a call that it is, as you may have assumed, under siege. Opening the box reveals one huge game board (more on that in a second), dozens of little pieces (more on those as well), and 18 X-Men figures.

Tranaslation: A whole lot of confusion.

Those figures were very obviously the highlight of the game for me as they didn’t require the game to be played to find enjoyment with them. Sure, they were just little gray chunks of plastic, none in any sort of dramatic pose, but they were still the X-Men and they were cool. Though, here’s an excerpt from the manual: “Each X-Men character has a superbly sculpted miniature figure…If you wish, you may paint your figure.”

First, I’m just astonished that the game had the gall to say the figures were “superbly sculpted.” Honestly, they were passable at best and lazy at worst. Secondly, don’t act like you’re allowing people to do what they wish with the contents of the game they just purchased and own. If I want to use the figures for Monopoly instead, then I’m totally allowed to do that, even if the game hasn’t specifically told me so.

Regardless of snootiness, the figures themselves were certainly more than you’d expect from a game like this, especially 18 of them. Normally, the best you could hope for were paper cutouts for each character, or at most maybe six individual figures, but 18 full pieces is at least something to be amazed by. Frequently, I’d pull the box out and just play with those, specifically Archangel as he had wings, and have my fun that way. But playing the game proper would be a whole new level of challenge, all because of the sheer amount of moving parts in play.

The game board was one reason for the complexity. For one, the game folded out the long way instead of just opening up into a square-shaped board. No, it opened up into a double-length board representing the X-Mansion and all the rooms. Each floor is stacked on top of the other, but I would have preferred some space to work with, specifically when talking about a table size. A smaller table works for the standard game board, but a double-length board requires a longer table and creates more of a headache that frankly isn’t needed.

No, the headache is plentifully supplied thanks to the illogical amount of game pieces littering the board and the play area. You’ll need damage counters for the X-Men themselves, damage counters for the evil mutants, room pieces for each room secured, blood tokens for specific damage done to enemies, cards used to move around the mansion and perform other actions, and even stat cards for the X-Men.

All of it just seems way more complicated than the typical kid will bother with.

Looking through the game and reading the instructions, what it seems like more than anything is that the game wanted to be a full-blown tabletop RPG but just wasn’t allowed to be. Every X-Man has a rating for combat (Wolverine is the highest with 7 by the way), plus a durability rating that says how many counters they can have, and an intelligence rating that says how many cards you can carry (Beast wins with 4). What draws the D & D connection is the X-tra Skill they all posses that lets them do something unique to them, like reroll a die if it lands wrong or heal quicker when not in battle.

Still, the choices of X-Men is somewhat strange. You’ve got Archangel, Banshee (who wasn’t that big at the time this game came out), Beast, Bishop, Cable, Cyclops, Gambit, Havok, Iceman, Jean Grey, Jubilee, Longshot (who I’ve never heard of, even after extensively reading Marvel comics), Maverick, Nightcrawler, Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, and Wolverine. In this lineup you have all the X-Men from the cartoon, plus the gang from the original lineup thanks to Archangel and Iceman. But where was Colossus? Where was Kitty Pryde? And if we’ve got these strange also-rans, why not replace Longshot with Forge or X-Man? Oh well, can’t win ‘em all.

Speaking of which, the conditions for winning were a little odd from my perspective as well. As you played through the game, you were supposed to check every room on a floor for evil mutants, then engage and capture them through battle. When enough rooms on a floor were secured, it was just assumed that the whole floor was secure as well. It’d be like beating Magneto and just assuming the attic was clear, even though Sabertooth was hiding behind some old mattresses, giggling and kicking his feet.

At least the game came with a survival guide to the mansion. That's cool, I guess.

Eventually, all the floors would be secured and the game would end, whereas each player would have to tally up his or her score. As you could guess, the player with the highest score would win. There were variations the game gave, such as just going until someone had a score of 30 or something, but that’s even worse. “Okay Professor, we got all the evil mutants.” “All of them?” “Yeah, we got a few. Looks like Longshot was the winner for some reason.” “Then why do I see the Brood making sandwiches in the kitchen?” “I dunno. Smell ya later.”

Despite the silliness, I still want to give the full game a playthrough with a group that knows what they’re doing. It looks like a heck of a lot of fun when done right. The trick is actually getting that magical group together. Did anyone out there ever receive this game as a kid? And even better, did anyone ever get through an entire game before just breaking down and assuming Cyclops blasted Beast through the attic? Leave a comment and let me know about your childhood memories. I mean, mine are Xtra Special, but I’d rather hear about yours now.

Want more obscure board games? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

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If I had the money, I'd be a happy kid right now.

Of any line of super hero action figures, why am I going with the Marvel Legends line, specifically? Well, that all goes hand-in-hand with a few things. The first is that I have an affinity toward the Marvel Universe over any other comic-related worlds out there, though I can’t give you a perfect reason as to why that is (at least, not in a short bit here). The second is my need for figures to have good articulation, something the Marvel Legends line shines as a glorious example of. And lastly, Marvel Legends as a toy line is better than any line that has come since it. Should I qualify that hefty claim? I probably should.

Those paying attention to action figures will probably be aware that the DC Universe line of action figures and the Legendary Comic Book Heroes line have both come out since Marvel made such a splash with Legends, both lines with awesome figures featured here and there, but this all proves that Marvel Legends is the best of the best. Why is that? Take a look at the scale for the three action figure lines I just mentioned. You will notice that they all happen to be roughly the same height, something that an action figure fan such as myself goes nuts over, but it can’t just be pure coincidence. Rather, Marvel Legends picked the scale and all detailed comic-related action figures began appearing at that same scale. You don’t get to play “follow the leader” unless you’re the one leading the pack.

Legendary Comic Book Heroes. Look familiar?

Furthermore, every major comic-related action figure line (Marvel Legends, DC Universe, and LCBH) all have one thing else in common: Each wave of figures has a piece to a larger figure, requiring you to collect every figure in the wave to assemble the bigger, more awesome figure.

I want to stop on there for a second, because this is trend I both love and hate at the same time, partly for the same reason. The idea of collecting is just fine by itself and is typically enough to weed out the casual figure fan from the fanatic pretty easily, but being forced to collect every figure in a single wave to create the one larger figure is extremely bothersome, purely because it requires you to buy the figures no one would want otherwise, insuring that we all act as fanatical collectors rather than just casual fans. For instance, let’s say you have a perfectly cool line that features fan favorites such as Captain America, Iron Man, Magneto, and The Thing or something, but in order to assemble the Hulkbuster Ironman suit, you had to collect all of those plus Marrow and Dazzler, two figures you probably wouldn’t want otherwise. But snaps! Hulkbuster Ironman! Gotta have that! Therefore, you have no choice other than buying more figures than you’d like. Sneaky, especially since it works.

Be honest with yourself now, which of these figures would you have normally bought if Apocolypse wasn't a factor?

Still, what’s drawn me back to the Marvel Legends line time and time again is the sheer amount of articulation in each figure. I have a Beast figure that sits on my desk that consists of 37 points of articulation (according to my count), including his forefinger and thumb, duo-jointed knees, and even his mouth. I can spend hours just playing around, posing him without any real purpose, almost as a relaxing pastime, none of which involves physically playing with him in tandem with other action figures. However, this abundance of articulation can have a downside as well. I have a Daredevil action figure that I hate, even though it has just as much articulation as Beast, if not more. Part of my hang-up may be that I was never particularly invested in Daredevil, though the other half is Beast can be made to look cool in just about any pose, whereas Daredevil is too lanky to look good contorted into all manner of silliness.

My Beast doesn't have the coat or glasses though, which would be the only thing that'd make him a better action figure.

Part of me still regrets passing up a Captain America from one of the early lines. I’m still not entirely sure why I never bought him, as I had the money and more than once found myself walking through a Target store while carrying him loosely in my hands, but he isn’t standing on my shelf right now. In fact, the only Marvel Legends figures I have are Beast, Daredevil, and Thor, the last of which comes with a story. And here of course is that story.

Few years ago, before Ironman was cool in the mainstream and people knew that a Thor movie was on the way, I was Christmas shopping for my eight-year-old cousin along with my mom. I found a Marvel Legends Thor, complete with manly beard, battle-axe, and Mjolnir, and decided that this would be the coolest gift any eight-year-old could ever receive. We purchased the action figure and I anxiously waited to see his face as he opened it during our family Christmas exchange. For some reason, upon ripping the wrapping from Thor, he just stared down and grimaced, then looked up and said, “Can I take this back?” I could hardly think of anything to say other than “What?!” but he proceeded to say, “It doesn’t go with any of my other toys; can I return this?” I stood up at this point, grabbing the figure and explaining to him that this was Thor, the god of thunder reborn as a super hero, complete with manly beard, battle-axe, and Mjolnir. Did he care? No. It was still returned without even an apology from his parents.

I know the Odinson and thou art he!

I decided then and there that every single year he would get a Thor-related item as a gift, just out of spite. My first step was to find that same Marvel Legends Thor and buy it for myself, just to remind myself of my Thor-given task. Then, when Christmas arrived again, I was ready to shop for the stupidest item I could find with Thor on it. Thor slippers? Nah, not until the third year. Thor poster? Too simple. Eventually I settled on a Thor bobblehead, probably one of the dumbest gifts I’ve ever decided to give.

I wrapped it up, hardly able to wait for the blessed day when I could watch him unwrap it in confusion once again, sure that his childlike love of the world would begin crumbling under my wicked gaze. Instead, he opens it and screams out, “Cool!” “What?!” I exclaimed for a second year in a row. Somehow he thought this dopey Thor bobblehead was so cool in fact that he ignored every other gift he received that year, immediately opening his bobblehead and bobbling with it. My Marvel Legends Thor stands upon my desk forever reminding me of the time when I was brought to tears two years in a row by a stupid bobble-headed child.

Despite this setback, the Marvel Legends line speaks true to my heart. Given the money, I’d go out and buy every single figure I could get my hands on, but for now I have my few choices, both great and disappointing. But how about you? Are there any Marvel Legends fans among the readers? Let me know with a comment. In the meantime, I’ll just sit here and pose my Beast a few more times. That…that sounded dirtier than it should have.

Want more on action figures? Check these out:

-A Mighty Muggs wish list

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