I think I discovered The Romantic Gift Shop sometime in the 90s by pure accident while wandering around Chinatown. Located at 151 Mott Street in New York City this little shop was an amazing oasis of everything Sanrio! Frankly the store was designed for the more youthful residents of Chinatown who were looking for stationery goodies, but if you were a Hello Kitty fiend this little gem was one of the best kept secrets in all of the city. Read more…
Temple7e has made my fanboy heart happy again with these wonderful Battlestar Galactica Kokeshi dolls! For those not in the know Kokeshi are traditional Japanese wooden dolls, however in this case artist Craig Galentine has updated the themes of the dolls with a sci fi touch: Read more…
I could be wrong but I think this amazing 1986 ad for milk may have been done by Colossal Pictures, which was a San Francisco production company that did a great deal of amazing work back in the day (tons of work for MTV and the like which would always feature a collage of live action and animation). Read more…
Fashion is ever changing and Hello Kitty understands this! This adorable Hello Kitty Optical Mouse features three changeable face plates so you can alter the look of of our mouse every day: Read more…
This vintage 1986 commercial shows off the education values of the then new Teddy Ruxpin Adventure Series. Teddy was first produced just a year before this spot aired and was a marketing powerhouse: Created by Ken Forsse the bear would move his mouth while reading stories which were recorded on audio cassette tapes. The toy would do so well that by 1987 an animated series The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin would run for another two years: Read more…
This fall Dark Horse will be bringing out a line of toys based on the 1997 Tim Burton book The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories. Shown above is Toxic Boy and below is Oyster Boy, these two go on sale on December 9th and better yet the original sculptures for these figures will go on display at Museum of Modern Art in New York City come November! Read more…
Marketed by Parker Brothers in 1970 the original Nerf was designed to be the first “indoor safe” ball, and years later millions of them are still be sold much to the delight of children and board office dwellers. But in the 80s they couldn’t leave well enough alone: In 1984 the animated series Muppet Babies took the world by storms, and suddenly everything needed to be cute. And thus in the 80s Parker Brothers introduced Nerfuls — which have since become a cult collectors item. Read more…
Beasts of Burden got started as a collaboration between Evan Dorkin (Milk & Cheese) and Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother) for the anthologies The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings, Witchcraft, the Dead, and Monsters. The result? They won the Eisner Awards for Best Short Story and Best Painter categories. So I’m pleased to see that Dark Horse is working to publish an mini-series based on this initial appearance which is due to debut on September 16, 2009. Read more…
This rather well produced 1984 commercial showcases the then new AT&T Merlin system — which finally was discontinued in 2006. Today this technology doesn’t look like much, but back then it was a breakthrough, in fact I remember being lectured once in the early 90s that what was on my desk “was not a phone, but a voice terminal!” What made the Merlin unique was that it had a central control unit, and also that a small business could now afford all those nifty features like conference calling and speed dialing. Read more…
Recently I’ve seen tech fanboys Jason Calacanis and Michael Arrington raging at Apple for having the nerve to not let Google put Google Voice into the Apple app store. Frankly not only should Apple have every right to do this — but they should be doing this. The reason? Not only is Google their direct competition, but the reality is that they’re the only company in this environment that you could call a true monopoly.Read more…
As a magazine publisher Warren Publishing was born out as a result of the infamous comic book code of the 50s which made the genre a bit too family friendly: Along with sister publications like Eerie and Vampirella, Creepy magazine kept alive the tradition of horror comics from 1964 until 1983. Next year on January 27th, 2010 Dark Horse will be publishing a set of trading cards based upon covers of the magazine. Read more…
Nothing could be more cute than a well deserving Pound Puppy toy in the 80s looking a caring child to be an owner: But what if your child is a cat person? Well that’s where the spin off Pound Purries came in (as shown in this advert from 1986). While not as a popular as their dog friends from the other side of the pound these little wonders featured and for just $3.50 more you could get a name tag, stickers and an owners certificate! Read more…
These Robo-Q Transformers toys from Japan are ultra cute! They’re each just a bit over an inch high and come with a radio controller. Manufactured by Takara Tomy there’s an Optimus Prime and a Bumblebee model available: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 20, 2009 in Comic Books
At the end of the silver age of comic books (which was sometime the early 70s) there was a well known cigarette ad campaign which would proudly proclaim to the ladies “You’ve come a long way, baby.” But sadly while the wider world of publishing started to open up to women, the comic book biz was — and still today largely a boys club. Now I can already hear the indignation from my fellow fanboys, but here’s the evidence: Read more…
On the face of it Inglourious Basterds looks like a clear cut “World War II guys film” if there ever was one, but the inclusion of the character Shosanna Dreyfus made me realize that there was a bit more going on here. In fact in interviews Quentin Tarantino states that Shosanna was “always a main character”. Which made me reflect on the wealth and diversity of ladies that Tarantino has always featured in his films — in fact it’s something that makes his films into something much more interesting than what you see out of Hollywood. Of course part of his magic is that often Tarantino will write a role with a particular actress in mind. Here are my favorites characters that he’s conjured up over the years: Read more…
Snout Spout: His knock out nose knocks evil out! You can tell the design department of Mattel was bored to death of Masters of the Universe by 1986 when this commercial came out. I can just see some poor child at Christmas yelping “Mommy why did you get me an elephant? I wanted He-Man!” Don’t get me wrong as a toy it looks very clever but our pachyderm friend seems somewhat out of place with the other members of the Masters of the Universe. In fact the character wasn’t even shown in the series until after the toy came out (you can tell that merchandising was more important than story telling). Read more…
This video shows two things: The first is how a show like Jem can come out of nowhere and give a well established brand like a Barbie a run for the money — and the second thing is just how much cultural mindspace MTV owned back in the 80s when it was new. Inspired by MTVJem and the Holograms went on the air in 1985 and suddenly Barbie who had been around since 1959 seemed slightly old fashioned. Read more…
It was one of the low points of my life: After breaking my ass to build a business for about a dozen years I watched everything go down the drain in just a few short months during the dot.bomb crash of 2001 until 2003. My entire world fell apart on both a meta level (watching 9/11 and then seeing Silicon Alley 1.0 fade away) and on a personal level (seeing friends I worked with for years move on). But in the aftermath I vowed to rebuild, and along the way I learned a few valuable lessons. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 18, 2009 in Comic Books
I don’t have the slightest clue how Citizen Rex escaped my attention, but now I feel that makes it my job to draw attention to this wonderful sci fi themed comic book mini series. But first we need to go back a few decades in time to the 80s: Back then a bit of a revolution was going on in the comic book field, lead by RAW Magazine some very talented artists shook up the field and decided to show that it could be a real art firm. Out were the typical superhero comics that owned newsstands and in came graphic novels and interesting illustrational techniques. Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 18, 2009 in Videogames
Everyone knows about the classic game Perfection, but what I love about this commercial is that it mentions the very rare follow up game Superfection. This spot was broadcast in 1986 but clearly dates from a few years earlier: Both Perfection and Superfection were created by Lakeside Games. Superfection which came out in 1975 is harder to find that Perfection which has become a time honored classic. Here’s a video of Superfection in action: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 17, 2009 in Comic Books
I’m so happy to see Marvel taking chances for once! With the first issue of Punisher Noir #1 which hits comic book shops on Wednesday, August 19th we’ll see an entire Punisher series that is set in the 1920’s. The minute I came across the cover for this book (illustrated by Tim Bradstreet and Denis Calero) I liked the little touches like the Flatiron building in the background and the vintage firearms show as decorative graphics. Looking at the inside of the book I like what artist Paul Azaceta and writer Frank Tieri have done with this book: Read more…
Both of these spots are from 1986 and solve the unique challenge that while toy ads sell to kids, toy store ads must sell to adults. The Toys R Us ad does a nice job of this as it’s appealing to the kid inside all of us, I especially the oversized robot which comes in about 5 seconds into the spot. The Lionel Playworld spot takes more of a Footlose approach to the problem, but for all the shoulder pads and singing you don’t get the feeling that they’re really having a good time of it: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Aug 16, 2009 in Videogames
I loved this obsessive fan made video which is a montage of nothing but death scenes from old school video games set to the music of the Misfits! Part I above features the song Skulls while Part II below uses Night of the Living Dead as the soundtrack: Read more…
Both of these spots come from a local TV station in Florida from 1988 — and they both share the theme of needing to know computer skills (or blue collar “technology” skills like in the spot below) to survive in the marketplace. Most people think of the 80s as a prosperous time but in fact even during the high points there were many layoffs due to mergers and acquisitions. In fact when these commercials were shot it was right after the stock market crash of 1987, so people would have had their eyes on keeping their jobs. Read more…
On the face of it Inglourious Basterds looks like a clear cut “World War II guys film” if there ever was one, but the inclusion of the character Shosanna Dreyfus made me realize that there was a bit more going on here. In fact in interviews Quentin Tarantino states that Shosanna was “always a main character”. Which made me reflect on the wealth and diversity of ladies that Tarantino has always featured in his films — in fact it’s something that makes his films into something much more interesting than what you see out of Hollywood. Of course part of his magic is that often Tarantino will write a role with a particular actress in mind. Here are my favorites characters that he’s conjured up over the years: 
