Year 10: July Update

The last update was in February, and not too much has happened since then. I'd meant to make at least one toy video this summer, but that hasn't happened. Life has gotten in the way and I've been a bit lazy I suppose. After building the new PC, I thought I'd play more games this year too, though I have not done that either. One thing I did do was visit Arizona, someplace I'd not been since 2014, and that gave me a little bit of time to sift through some boxes at my parent's home. They were boxes that were primarily my sister's things, however, I found some items that were mine, such as Mego Superman's cape, a Hot Wheels coloring book, and instructions to Tomy's Cosmic Clash game. Unfortunately, I didn't find what I was looking for, which would be the clothing to some 12" Star Wars figures. I want to make a video of those and I will if I ever find Obi-Wan and Luke's clothing, or at least some of it.

In the post before this one are magazine scans of the original Masters of the Universe movie, and this week I saw the new movie. I don't consider it to be good, maybe average. At nearly 2.5 hours long, I'd expect more character development, more locations, and more Battle-Cat. I'll pick a few things apart, and there will be some minor spoilers here. The movie begins with a young Adam and then he is suddenly in his 20s, and we don't know what happened when he got to Earth; who raised him? Of course, everyone's development got fast-forwarded, and we don't see what happened to Man-At Arms and Teela after a battle, and the next time we do see Man-At-Arms, he is an alcoholic. Also, Adam is very dumb, which I think is the worst part of the film. In the cartoon he acted clumsy and clueless at times to hide his identity, but he wasn't stupid. Here he makes Skeletor look like a genius by comparison. Good or bad, there is an android that, if you're a Star Wars fan, will keep reminding you of Rogue One's K-2SO. Obviously, the movie is not meant to be serious, and the writers do have fun with the silly character names, but the story could have been much better.

Speaking of movies, Hasbro is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Transformers: The Movie with a 4K theatrical release September 17th. That had been announced earlier this year, and more details have come out for it and many, many other things this weekend at San Diego Comic Con. There is plenty of news about Marvel movies, like a Ghost Rider film coming in 2028 that will star Ryan Gosling, and confirmation that Deadpool and Peggy Carter will appear in Avengers: Doomsday. Marvel will be publishing a new Indiana Jones comic book too, with the first issue coming in December. Last year, DC had announced an animated film trilogy based on the 1993/94 Batman comic book story Knightfall, and that will be available digitally on August 25th, and a physical release will follow shortly thereafter. 

It may seem way too early for Christmas, but Hallmark has already released new ornaments for the holiday season. I always mention these because they usually feature licenses related to what I talk about and are cool miniatures, and some can be displayed nicely year round. A few of the newest highlights include a PlayStation that plays the start-up sound, X-Men '97 Blackbird that plays music, and a Batcomputer from the classic TV series, with lights and sound.

And last but not least, it's LEGO time. I write the blog updates so infrequently that there is always a new LEGO set, or two, worth mentioning. One of the best video game consoles of all time got the brick treatment: Sega Genesis! You can even choose to make it a Mega Drive instead. It was announced in May and released in June at a price of $39.99. For Nintendo fans, LEGO is releasing a Donkey Kong Arcade with playable level on August 1st for $199.99.

By the way, you might notice some sort of links (blue text in a white bubble) on posts. I have no control over those, they are automatically being added by Blogger.

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Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan

The Masters of the Universe Movie (He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Magazine - Spring/Summer 1987)

Earlier this month, a new live-action Masters of the Universe movie was released. I've not seen it, so I cannot give my opinion, but I will say that I thought it looked terrible after viewing the first trailer. However, many reviews are above average and although I don't typically agree with my sister, she liked it a lot. As I write this, Rotten Tomatoes has a 68% consensus from critics and 86% from audiences. Not too bad, though this post isn't about that movie, it's simply a reason to take a quick look back at the 1987 film starring Dolph Lundgren as He-Man. I did see that movie, however, not in a very long time. It was silly, of course, with the heroes traveling through a portal to Earth, and the majority of both critics and fans didn't enjoy it. 

I've scanned a couple short articles from two issues of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe magazine. Surprisingly, there isn't a lot of movie coverage in the Summer 1987 issue featuring Dolph on the cover. There are two pages, one of which is only photos of the characters, and it does include a poster I never removed. I also scanned two pages from the Spring 1987 issue; one is a very small preview before the film's August 9th release, and the other is about a contest winner.

Summer 1987

Spring 1987

Year 10: February Update

The blog reached its 10th year! I don't update often, but I'll try to keep it going for as long as I can. Since my last update I built a new computer, as my video card was more than seven years old and I think the rest of my PC was at least 12 years old. Unfortunately, RAM prices took off just as I was beginning my parts research, so it wasn't a great time to build a new one, but necessary. Although I'm not doing too many videos here of late, the upgrades will definitely help with the speed of video and photo editing. Now I have this great computer for games and instead of putting it to the test, the first gaming I did was stream Indiana Jones and the Great Circle through Amazon Prime. I don't normally subscribe to anything, but I had an offer for a year of Amazon Prime and signed up primarily for TV streaming without even realizing it included games. The only graphics option when streaming Indiana Jones was 720p or 1080p, and I expect the game would look better if played locally. Still, it was more or less free, and it ran well, only freezing one time. Most of the levels are open areas to explore, and I enjoyed the story, as well as playing as Indiana Jones. Surprisingly, the puzzles are all rather simple, especially compared to the Uncharted and Tomb Raider games. It's not as action-oriented as those games either; Indy can whip, shoot, and use his fists, but he can also wear disguises to avoid conflict and most of the game plays like a first-person adventure.

One game I was hoping to play on this new PC eventually was Ghost of Yōtei. Now I'm uncertain that will ever happen, as recent news reports have stated that Sony is moving away from porting its PlayStation exclusives to PC and I don't want to purchase a PlayStation 5. Maybe Sony will change its mind when console sales slow due to the higher hardware costs, a result of the data centers buying up electronics parts and driving up prices, like the aforementioned RAM. In other gaming news, Sonic the Hedgehog turns 35 this year, a new C64 system is on the way, new Star Wars games were unveiled in December, and a new Masters of the Universe game is coming soon. The $349.99 (more for Starlight and Founders editions) Commodore 64 Ultimate is like an original C64 rebuilt and can connect to old C64 hardware, while running games from a USB drive. 

At The Game Awards back in December we got a look at Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Fate of the Old Republic. From developer Fuse Games, Galactic Racer features pod racing and speeder bikes. Fate of the Old Republic is a spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic in development at Arcanaut Studios. He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: Dragon Pearl of Destruction is a side-scrolling combat game coming April 28, 2026 from Bitmap Bureau and Limited Run Games.

Of course, I cannot write a blog update without LEGO news. In January, LEGO unveiled its SMART Play System, which adds technology to bricks and minifigures to create sound effects when users move objects. Star Wars sets featuring SMART Play actually release tomorrow and because you are paying for the tech, you get less pieces than traditional LEGO sets at a higher price. Thus far seven sets have been announced, ranging from $39.99 for Luke's Landspeeder to $159.99 for Throne Room Duel & A-wing.

Thanks for visiting,

Jonathan

Gaming Ads: Backfilling #21

It's been one year and two days since my last ads update. Browsing comic books from the 1980s has led to the acquisition of some good retro game ads, and for this post I'm adding five from Atari and three from Mattel Electronics.

[YouTube] 1970s/80s Character Cups

https://youtu.be/2nZm2kSBS2U

As I mentioned in the previous glassware post, I've got a bunch of similar plastic cups too. I know the Child World cup has appeared on the blog previously in the post about toy stores and maybe the G.I. Joe cup has but I can't seem to find a post with it, so maybe not. There are quite a few Disney cups here, many likely purchased at Walt Disney World, however, they could have been available at other stores as well and none have copyrights on them. In the event that you don't watch the video, the western-themed cup with Donald Duck came with a blue hat topper which I couldn't find so I used the mouse ears which is meant for another Disney cup I don't have. Also, many of these were used and went through the dishwasher numerous times. 

Hanna-Barbera's Grape Ape & Snagglepuss (Cookie Crisp, 1979)

Camp Snoopy Collection (McDonald's, 1983)

Kool-Aid (Kraft Foods, 1980s/90s)

Disney

SpaghettiOs (Franco-American)

G.I. Joe - Cobra Commander (Maramor Candy Co., 1988)

Masters of the Universe (Burger King/Pepsi, 1985)

Child World/Children's Palace