Too Much Awesome

Bells and whistles can be a lot of fun but nothing beats the basics. It’s too bad the basics are hard to come by these days.

I always wanted to make my own Hot Wheels. The closest I got as a kid was dipping my cars in paint, but as an adult you can go all out.

When I think back on all the toys I had growing up as a kid and even the toys I still have as an adult, many of them were little more than fads. They were hot and popular and every kid wanted them, but ultimately they didn’t hang around for long. Looking at the world [...]

Back in 1983, Hallmark Cards busted out Rainbow Brite to counter Muriel Fahrion’s older Strawberry Shortcake line from American Greetings. The character had been in development at Hallmark for about two years prior, starting in 1981. Beginning as a greeting card line, the Rainbow quickly stretched into various forms of character merchandise, licensed products, dolls, [...]

At the risk of infuriating Mattel’s ever-present swarm of high-circling legal eagles, this week we’re going to talk about Barbie. Specifically, two pretty significant and even, dare I say, bizarre milestones in the history of the line have emerged this week. As I’ve mentioned before, the Mattel, Inc. v. MGA Entertainment battle for custody over [...]

2010 is almost outta here! As the New Year gets closer, let’s steal a glimpse at the year to come. We’re looking at a massive amount of line revivals this year- the 80’s are coming home to roost with major remakes of almost every definitive toy line you remember, and a couple you might not. [...]

If you haven’t been paying attention, I’m a boy. Shocking, yes? I was born a boy, grew up a boy, and am currently still a boy. This is relevant because today I’m going to talk about Barbies. What could a boy possibly say about Barbies? Plenty, because while I grew up as a boy, all [...]

Little known fact about me: I grew up as a little boy. What this generally meant is that Barbies weren’t typically in my play-cycle and Hot Wheels dominated most of my free time in between Ninja Turtles. I’m happy to say that even though I’ve taken a long hiatus from the small die-cast cars of [...]

I’m taking another day off video games to go into one of my favorite things from my childhood: Die-cast cars. The term can be applied to a lot of things, such as Hot Wheels and the like, but I actually won’t be bringing Hot Wheels into this since, well, that makes for an article in [...]

In an interesting turn of events, Isaac Larian, the CEO of MGA, denies that they will be sharing revenue with Mattel to end the infringement case over the popular Bratz dolls.  We reported two weeks ago that the Bratz dolls were subject to heavy pay-outs, but according to Reuters, the matter is still to be [...]