Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 19, 2010 in Comic Books
Sky Doll Space Ship isn’t actually a new series — it was first published in France. And it looks like Marvel is set to release this three part series by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa starting in May. I’d encourage everyone who loves comics to spread the word about this series for two reasons: Firstly I’d love to see more international comics imported into America, and secondly it’s refreshing to see comics escape from the typical superhero clichés that dominate the market. I’m glad that Marvel is getting behind this — it’s also nice to see that they got Pierre-Mony Chan to do a variant cover: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 18, 2010 in Japanese TV
What’s not in the Pocky commercial? We have dancing salarymen, cosplay clad maid cafe maids, pram pushing mums and a fleet of taxi drivers who all feel the need to express their enthusiasm for their favorite snack! Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 18, 2010 in Japanese TV
American tampon ads can have that “not fresh feeling” feel sometimes — however these two ads for unicharm are much more out there. The first one features a typical absorption theme but then ends with a zero gravity special effect. However the next advert doesn’t look like anything you’d see here in the States: Our protagonist is sleeping away happily while not being distracting by her stuffed doll collection which then animates to life and dances around her while she is asleep: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 18, 2010 in Comic Books
This variant zombie cover illustration by Darwyn Cooke captured my eyes pretty quickly. The artwork is for the comic book I, Zombie #1 which will come out on May 5th and features the exploits of a gravedigger in an eco-friendly cemetery who is also a zombie detective on the side. It seems that DC Comics is working hard to push this Vertigo title, so the book will be priced at only $1 which makes it more than worthwhile to check out. I, Zombie is a “mature title” and features the writing of Chris Roberson along with the artwork of Michael Allred who won an Eisner Award. Here’s the standard cover which is also fun: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 17, 2010 in Animation
This is the teaser trailer for the next Studio Ghibli film which will be titled Karigurashi no Arrietty (借りぐらしのアリエッティ). The name of the film translates to The Borrower Arrietty and is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s novel The Borrowers. The film will be directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi who worked on previous Ghibli films as a key animator. The plot of the film will cenrer around tiny people who “borrow” things from normal humans in 1950s England. Here is a preview poster and a screenshot of the website: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 17, 2010 in Fandom, Star Trek
In attempt to get publicity for the online Star Trek game Namco Bandai (see you knew there was going to be an anime connection) attempted to organize the biggest gathering of Star Trek fans attired in proper Federation gear. This took place on London on Valentine’s Day, and while the quality of cosplay shown could be slightly dodgy at points the scale of this event impressed me! Although there’s no word on if they succeeded: Read more…
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 17, 2010 in Comic Books
Jane Austen (1775 – 1817)
Back in the good old days (1941 until 1972 to be exact) Classics Illustrated brought the world of literature to comic books — so it does my heart good to see the classics making a comeback into sequential art! In May Marvel will start publishing their take on Sense & Sensibility, but instead of resorting to improving the title with the zombies or vampires they’re going to go old school and stick to the basics. The series will feature writing by Nancy Butler and illustrator Sonny Liew. I already love the chan figures at the bottom of the cover — so it should be fun to see what Nancy and Sonny come up with.
Posted by Michael Pinto on Feb 16, 2010 in Science
Watching this video on the history of the Space Shuttle Endeavour is very depressing to me. For starters the shuttle was rolled out during the Bush administration: No I don’t mean George W. Bush Jr. but his father! That’s right Endeavour came out the first year that Nirvana scored a hit with Nevermind about 19 years ago, a time before any living high school was born. Of course the construction of Endeavour was kicked off in 1987: This means the last time America was serious about NASA was when the film Dirty Dancing came out. Read more…
While I haven’t played with it yet the screenshots I’m seeing of the Windows Phone 7 look great. I’m an Apple fanboy at heart but it’s a wonderful surprise to see that Microsoft didn’t just do an iPhone clone. This isn’t enough to make me switch from my iPhone, however it is enough to make me have second thoughts about switching to Android and it also convinces me now more than ever that Palm won’t live to see the end of the year. From what I’ve read the Windows team has been working on this for 18 months and they decided to focus on the app side of the phone which is their core strength: Read more…
Editor’s Gold Award Pick: As much as I love toys I live with the guilt that so many of them are filling the landfills of the world with toxic plastics and who knows what else. So when I met the robot shown above it was love at first sight. Now what’s interesting about this robot is that most of the parts that you see aren’t included! In fact 90% of what you’re looking at in this toy is made out of recycled items that we throw away every day — which is what makes this hobby kit so ingenious. The Makedo Find & Make a Robot Kit includes a easy-to-use cutting device to hack cardboard and a series of fasteners to hold objects together — and thus by applying the age old toy concepts that you see in Tinker Toys or Lego combined with the idea of recycling you get an amazingly creative activity for your kids. Read more…
Editor’s Silver Award Pick: When I was first shown this crafts kit I have to admit that on the face of it I was unimpressed — it was just a collection of beads on a string made into a bracelet. But that’s what makes this crafts kit so brilliant! It turns out that every bead in this kit is assigned a secret letter — so kids can put secret messages on the bracelets to give to their friends who can then decode them. Essentially this is a crafters version of a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring! In a show filled with slick gimmicks and dazzling packaging I was impressed with how something so simple could be so engaging. And thus the Bead the Message crafts kit earns my silver award for Toy Fait 2010. Read more…
At this year’s Toy Fair I noticed a great deal of Halo merchandise but not too many toys based upon other videogames — so it was nice to see NECA with a line of action figures based upon BioShock and Gears of War: Read more…
I usually avoid the holiday focused booths at the Toy Fair, but Rubie’s had these adorable Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock Halloween which captured my heart. The manufacturer also has a full line of Watchmen costumes for adults who like to cosplay. Read more…
The Tin Box Company may claim that these lunch boxes are just for kids, but I know better! As any art student can tell you a lunch box makes a fashionable accessory that can be used as a mini-briefcase. Shown here are lunchboxes from Star Wars, Hello Kitty and Toy Story — however Tin Box’s full line up also includes Bakugan, Strawberry Shortcake, Disney characters, Sesame Street and Spider-man. Read more…
Underground Toys had a killer selection of Dr. Who goodies on the showroom floor. Shown above is a Tardis which isn’t quite full scale but pretty darn close! Below is a smaller version for those of us fanboys and fangurls who live in small apartments: Read more…
If you’re a Lost in Space fanboy you’re going to like what Moebius Models: A fully finished and lit Jupiter II 1/35th scale metal prop replica. That’s right: If you’ve always wanted one of these amazing model kits but know that you’ll never ever have the time to build one Moebius Models will build it for you! Sadly you’ll have to wait until the 4th quarter of this year, but having seen the model up close I was drooling. Read more…
Mezco showed off an ultra cute line of toys called Mez-itzs which are mini eformed action figures. Shown above is a full line of Family Guy figures — below are Hellboy, Beetle Juice and Rorschach: Read more…
Funko had amusing line of Star Wars goodies — shown above is a stromtrooper and Darth Vader that plug into your iPod and act as speakers. Shown below are just a few of the many Star Wars bobbleheads they had on display: Read more…
Square Enix Products had on display three beautifully crafted Bleach figurine prototypes. The figures weren’t painted, but I was impressed with how true they stayed to the character designs. Read more…
Lego embraced The Force with a full line of Star Wars kits. The variety of the kits is quite wonderful — above is the Hoth Wampa set and below is Boba Fett: Read more…
So much of the toy fair is really aimed at kids, and while there are fanboy friendly booths here and there Diamond is always a pleasure to visit with the variety of cool goodies that they have. Shown above is a Qee Bear Spock — and below you can see a wide range of toys from Alice in Wonderland to Mickey Mouse: Read more…
The devil is in the details, and this imported line of Star Wars miniatures were simply amazing to look at. This line of minitaures is imported into the United States by bcmini.com , here’s the catalog page: Read more…
The Japanese are crazy about the Gerry Anderson show Thunderbirds. This line of minitaures is imported into the United States by bcmini.com and I’ve got to say that the quality and beauty of these were amazing.
There’s always been something very haunting about the eyes of Blythe dolls so it’s highly appropriate that we’d see a vampire Blythe sooner or later. Although what I didn’t expect to see were these two Disney Blythes which celebrate the classic films Dumbo and Pinocchio: Read more…
