The Junk Food of the Gods series was last seen in July, before taking an extended break for the holidays. Now it’s back and it’s tanned and it can handle anything you want to throw at it.

Below: Five of the most interesting junk foods currently on the market. Most of them will only be around for a limited time, so if you know you’re gonna wanna binge on super-green Lucky Charms or pasta shaped like Darth Vader, delaying is dumb.

Hostess Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cupcakes!

Mixed feelings on these special Valentine’s Day cupcakes. They taste exactly as I assume they were intended to, uncannily reminiscent of those raspberry-filled chocolates you’d find dotted across a heart-shaped box.

Problem is, those are my absolute least favorite chocolates from those boxes. They’re like fucking landmines. I understand that millions of people love those particular chocolates, but to me they’re only to be eaten on double dares when there’s money involved.

That Hostess so perfectly mimicked a classic Valentine’s Day candy isn’t something I feel right in classifying as a “con.” Instead I’ll just say that these aren’t for me. If Hostess did anything objectively wrong, it was the false promise of cupcake creme that resembled psychomagnotheric slime. Read More…

The previous edition of Five Retro TV Commercials was an all ‘80s affair, and given the responses, I may have gone back a bit too far. Way to make me feel old, people. Like it’s my fault you were too lazy to get born before Good Humor retired Colossal Fossil ice pops.

Anyway, here’s my mutant mea culpa. Commercials that you were almost definitely around to see.

In one of my dusty bins, I found a video full of Pokemon episodes taped off of the WB Network in mid 2000. I believe I scored it from a yard sale, and that couldn’t have been later than 2003.

At the time, the commercials hiding within those Pikachu cartoons were too new to have any nostalgic appeal, so I never bothered to encode the tape during the X-E era. Now around fifteen years later, everything on this video feels totally ancient. And so do I.

Here are five of the more interesting ones, many of which are batshit:

Comet Pops! (2000)

These lollipops had special handles that worked like a cross between switchblades and lightsabers. It was one of those candies that doubled as a toy, and that’s how they were able to charge four bucks for 50 cents’ worth of lollipop.

While I’d concede that a space theme was right for this promotion, this ad went way too far. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but it’s so obviously a commercial that spent the better part of its run causing four-year-olds to never sleep.

The ad featured multiple aliens sucking lollipops, including one that looked like the perfect midpoint between Jim Carrey’s Grinch and the girl from Species. Complete nightmare fuel.

Paired with ominous music and a menacing voice-over, I just can’t see “I want a lollipop” being anyone’s takeaway, irrespective of their age, gender or predisposition to love TV commercials starring candy-sucking aliens. Read More…

Below are five of the most interesting Masters of the Universe collectibles currently on eBay. I can afford none of them.

Argentinian Modulok Figure!
Asking Price: $1200

The Argentinian version of the Masters of the Universe line — produced by Top Toys but still officially licensed — took many of our favorite heroes and villains and tried to recreate the original Mattel versions as faithfully as possible.

These figures were cruder but generally on-point, looking reasonably similar to the Mattel originals. One the few major aberrations was Modulok (or “Modulock,” in this case), which was such a departure from Mattel’s version that it’s arguably now the most sought-after piece from the whole series.

Mattel never intended Modulok to be sold on a standard blister card, so Top Toys needed to cut a few corners to make the beast fit. Look close and you’ll notice some spare body parts behind the figure. There were enough of them to recreate the original figure’s mutant Lego gimmick, but still far less than Mattel’s version.

The most striking difference is the figure’s coloring. The original’s body parts were completely red, but this one mixes in a huge dose of green. It’s the special Christmas edition of Modulok, and that’s all kinds of awesome. Maybe not 1200 dollars’ worth of awesome, but hey, it’s not like you’re gonna easily find another for sale. Read More…