Second Hand Score: Indiana Trilogy

For a while now I have been wanting to watch the classic Indiana Jones trilogy of movies. I do not own them and just never pulled the trigger to purchase the set on DVD/Blu-Ray and Netflix does not have these movies on demand. So, I would just watch something else like Lethal Weapon or Beverly Hills Cop to get my 80s action fix. Then I found these 3 VHS beauties for $0.25 each! I dusted off the tape player and enjoyed these great movies.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981): This was not the first Indy movie I saw and it would be years after it's release before I watched it. This is how adventure movies should be done. Lucas and Speilberg at the top of their game.

The highlights are obviously the opening where Indy avoids the giant boulder and the end where the Nazi gets melted by the ark. Checking IMDB, I just found out that Dr. Octopus himself, Mr. Alfred Molina was in this movie!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984): This movie was my introduction to Dr. Jones, and what an intro it was.

From the opening where a guy gets a flaming skewer thrown into his chest, to Data from the Goonies, to still beating hearts being ripped out to bad guys being torn apart by alligators there is just so many memorable moments to this movie! I didn't even mention the cart race of good vs. evil in the mines! Amazing movie!

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989): As the alleged last movie in the Indiana Jones series, this movie did it right.

They introduced Indy's dad, played by the great Sean Connery which was a great addition and the adventure was just as exciting and dangerous as the previous installments. Even Hitler has a cameo! A nice way to send off the franchise. Let's not talk about that other movie. The less said, the better.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Comic Book Pick: 11/9/16

This week the comic book I am most excited to read is...
BATMAN/TMNT ADVENTURES #1

When villains start to mysteriously escape Arkham, Batman seeks to track them down. What happens when he discovers that they have left Gotham completely... and entered the TMNT's New York City?

•   The animated worlds of the current TMNT Nickelodeon cartoon and Batman: The Animated Series collide in this outstanding mini-series!
•   The greatest all-ages crossover of all-time!
•   Featuring villains and allies from both universes!
•   The influential Batman: The Animated Series returns to comics!

(W) Matthew K. Manning (A/CA) Jon Sommariva       

SRP: $3.99

Pop Culture Challenge: Red State/Blue State

Happy Election day! This week the Pop Culture League was tasked with snapping a red or blue themed photo. Here is what I came up with to celebrate this great day in America!

Red vs. Blue Battle Royale! Which side wins?

Blue Side: Captain America, Skeletor, Smooth Smurf, Army Ant Heave-Ho, Leonardo and Blue Trunk Bumble Boxer.

In this brawl for the ages the Blue team has the advantages of evil cheap shots with Skeletor on the team and skill, leadership and discipline with Ninjitsu Master Leo and hard hitting Bumble Boxer. The wild cards on this side are Smooth Smurf and Heave-Ho. They have the heart, but the size is an issue!

Red Side: Spider-Man, Cheetara, Super Mario, Raphael and Gizmo in Santa Hat.

The Red team has the brilliant speed of Cheetara, the flame throwing, Goomba stomping powers of Super Mario and the reckless savagery of Raphael. Once again the wild card here is Gizmo because of the size issue. But spray some water on this guy or feed him after midnight and you have a formidable opponent.

Mr. Men Fight For Freedom! Mr. Strong vs. Mr. Bump!

You may think Mr. Strong has the advantage here, but Mr. Bump can take quite a beating. I could see this fight lasting a long time with Mr. Bump pulling off a "Rope-A-Dope" on Mr. Strong. Wearing him down until he exhausts himself. Mr. Bump arrives victorious!

Let's see how the other League Bloggers handled this week's challenge:

 

Mr. Smith Transforms my idea of Red & Blue

Green Plastic Squirt Gun has some sweet pics of his collection

The Toy Box takes us to Smurf Village

Toy Break...I need to get me a Fridge GI Joe!

Alexis' Universe is feeling a little blue

Whatchamacallit?

In the late 80s/early 90s Whatchamacallit candy bars were on the upper echelon of chocolate offerings. To me they were good, but not great. I believe they had a boost in popularity at this time due to the AWESOME marketing campaign that blasted us kids every Saturday morning as we sat in front of the TV with our Cheerios to watch cartoons.

This ad was amazing! The visuals were eye candy, no pun intended and the music gets stuck in my head to this day. Hershey's had TV covered, but they also hit us in the comic books.

Whatchamacallit was everywhere...and then it wasn't. I hadn't seen a Whatchamacallit in years until I spotted a box of these babies at a little mom & pop candy store while recently on a weekend getaway with the family. Had to snap one up and relive the peanut/chocolate nostalgia.

How was it? It was not exactly like I remembered, but it was still very good. Later on I read that Hershey's changed the formula around 2008. According to the official Whatchamacallit Wikipedia page, "In 2008, the Hershey Company began to change the ingredients for some of its products, replacing the relatively expensive cocoa butter with cheaper oil substitutes. Such cost cutting was done to avoid price increases for the affected products." It still tasted okay to me!

Would I seek these out again? Probably not, but it's nice to know that Whatchamacallit is still around for another generation to enjoy!

Celebrating 80's Day 2016!

Last month my wife had to take a 4 day trip out of town for work. It was me and the kids for the better part of a week. To help them keep up some good behavior and listen to their father I put together a chart. The kids would get an "X" for a bad behavior and a check mark for a good behavior. At the end of the week if they had more checks than X marks, we would have an 80's Day!!! I am so glad they were able to do it!

We started the day off with a healthy and nutritious breakfast of Boo Berry Cereal and Ecto Cooler as we watched some 80s cartoons.

The cartoon playlist included Heathcliff, Jayce & The Wheeled Warriors, Kissyfur, Pink Panther & Sons, Rubik the Amazing Cube and their favorite Popples.

Of course all of the classic 80s toy commercials were included in the breaks between shows!

After cartoons, I gave the girls side ponies and we dressed in our finest 80s T-shirts that included characters from Star Wars, Thundercats, Mr. Men/Little Miss and Ghostbusters. While at the mall we stopped at Build-A-Bear and played in the kids play area. As if it was a sign, the mall was playing 80s tunes over the PA system including "Whip It" by Devo!

All that mall walking built up an appetite, so we all decided to have lunch at McDonalds! The kids all got McNugget Happy Meals which had DC Superhero toys as the prize. My boy got a Batman that throws Batarangs and the girls got Katana and Batgirl. I chose the Big Mac meal with a Hi-C Orange Lava Burst drink!

It was time to work off all those calories, so we hit up some 18 holes of Mini-golf. No one fell into the water traps and everyone had fun, I call that a win! The mini-golf course had an arcade attached to the venue and we played games for about 2 hours and earned enough tickets to win a Pez Dispenser with candy, a couple wacky wall crawlers and some bootleg Koosh Balls! Nice!

My wife's plane was coming in soon after we left the arcade, but we still had some time to kill. I found a park on the way to the airport and we stopped to play for a little while.

We picked up my wife and it was getting late, so we headed off to Pizza Hut for dinner. We ordered a Meat Lover's Stuffed Crust pizza for me and my wife and a large Pepperoni Pizza for the kids.

Once we got home it was time to unwind with the iconic classic 80s movie Labyrinth. This is one of my kids favorite movies and I'm okay with that. We rolled out the sleeping bags, got our footie jammies on and enjoyed some David Bowie as the Goblin King!

Once the kids were asleep me and the misses popped in one of those 20 horror movies on one disc collections and watched the 80s horror gem "Chopping Mall". The story was about a mall that needed security so badly that it purchased 3 robots to patrol the area after night. Of course the robots go crazy and kill everyone...including the guy who played Mr. Futterman in the Gremlins movies!

That's it for this year. Can't wait to see what we do in 2017 to represent those great days that were my childhood living in the 80s!

Comic Book Pick: 11/2/16

This week the comic book I am most excited to read is...
CEREBUS IN HELL #0

The first new Cerebus comic since 2004! Where has Cerebus been since he died twelve years ago? Is he in hell? Purgatory? Limbo? Some strange 1980 disco with links to Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Henry Kissinger? Some ancient Greek disco with links to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle? Some 1990s disco with links to The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, and Oasis? Is he stuck inside his own Cerebus Online Disco Twitter-feed? Well, wherever he is, he deserves it, so feel free to laugh at his misfortune! This one shot leads into the Cerebus In Hell? 4-issue mini-series in 2017 celebrating Cerebus' 40th-anniversary!

(W) Dave Sim (A) Sandeep Atwal, Gustave Dore (A/CA) Dave Sim, Hieronymus Bosch

SRP: $4.00

Pop Culture Challenge: Pop Culture Presidents

Halloween 2016 is now over. Another year filled with scares, crazy clowns and horror...No I'm not talking about Halloween, I'm talking about the 2016 Presidential Election. As of now, I am still undecided as we head down the homestretch. This brings me to this week's Pop Culture League Challenge, Cast Your Ballot: Pop Culture Presidents! I haven't been this interested in a Presidential race since Barack Obama won in 2008.

I would like to say it was because I was interested in his foreign policies or because this was history in the making as our first black President took office, but it was none of those things or anything political at all! It was because of the special edition of The Amazing Spider-Man #583 that featured a 5 page backup story featuring our new president!

In the comic (SPOILER ALERT) the villain Chameleon attempts to replace the real Obama during his Innauguration, but Spidey stops him by asking a question only the real President would know! "What was your college nick name?" The real Obama got it right, Spidey captured the bad guy and the rest is history. I wanted this comic so bad! I was a big Spider-Man reader around this time and also as a collector I selfishly wanted this limited edition collectible in my collection...Dammit! I wasn't quick enough to grab one!

This is what I got instead. Major let down! No Obama on the cover, just a picture of Peter Parker mackin on 2 hotties! Of course there were subsequent printings that featured the famous Obama shot with Spider-Man taking his pic. Four more printings!

 

I'm sad to admit that I do own most of these printings. I liked how Marvel didn't just reuse the same cover each time. Each new printing changed the phrase Spider-Man was saying and put Mr. Obama on a new background. You can find these issues online fairly cheap. I just checked and a NM first print copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #583 will run you around $38 and other printings for as low as $4. Maybe one day I'll treat myself to a copy, but there are other things I would rather spend my money on right now.

Visit the other Member's pages to see their candidates for Pop Culture President:

The Toy Box casts a vote for Count Chocula

Green Plastic Squirt Gun goes Adams/Venture in 2016!

Alexis' Universe sticks with Spidey