Below are five ridiculous movie-themed junk foods that I’ve collected over the years. They were pulled from storage bins that I wish were airtight, but definitely aren’t.

Hostess Snoballimus and Chocwave Cakes!
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)

I still rate these as the weirdest snacks Hostess has ever produced, and also the most beautiful. They’re out there by today’s standards, but they were impossibly strange in 2011. I’d say they were some of the first junk foods that seemed designed for hyperbolic reactions on social media.

The “Chocwave” cupcakes were severe, but nothing beat those “Snoballimus” monsters, with their blue coconut capes and blood red filling. They were admittedly more fun to look at than eat, because while many artificial food dyes are technically flavorless, using THAT MUCH DYE was gonna impart something. As I recall, the flavors seemed chalkier than usual, while the texture was oddly mealy.

Even so, they were gorgeous, and I will never knock an attempt to transform a Hostess Sno Ball into Optimus Prime. Even if said Sno Ball looked more like Man-At-Arms chewing Bubblicious.

Nabisco Royal Ooze!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (1991)

It was no big leap to go from mutagen ooze to Jell-O, or even Nabisco’s underachieving version of Jell-O. A tie-in with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, Nabisco’s Royal Ooze came in an assortment of colors and flavors.

The lime green and strawberry red versions were canonical enough, but once you got up to the orange ooze, you had to start thinking about offshoot mutagens with alternative properties. Like maybe orange was the antidote? Mikey could help transform Splinter back into Hamato, and follow it up with some “orange ya glad” joke? No?

The best thing about Royal Ooze was the packaging. Each box featured a different Ninja Turtle, and none of them wore expressions that were in any way suitable for product shots. In particular, Leonardo seemed to suggest that Royal Ooze was loaded with tryptophan. Read More…

Ohhh, man. Gonna be honest, I can’t get a feel for how this month’s Funpack looks on paper, but I can promise you that it’s one of my ultimate favorites in all of the years that I’ve been doing this. When you get these babies in the mail, your socks will be rocked.

AVAILABLE FOR THREE DAYS ONLY! UNITED STATES ONLY!

By now you’ve all seen me gush about old school geek magazines, and how important they were in nurturing (if not outright shaping) our hobbies during pre-internet times. I’ve even worked geek mags into a few older Funpacks, but never quite like this.

This month, you’ll each receive FOUR different vintage geek magazines, each individually bagged and boarded. I’ll tell you more about this in a minute, but first, here’s the usual Funpack spiel:

Funpack subscriptions are $25 per month, and that price includes shipping. For as long as you remain subscribed, you’ll keep getting new boxes filled with old awesome nonsense each and every month. (Well, boxes or envelopes, as the case is this month!)

Scroll to the bottom for ordering info, or keep reading to learn about everything you’ll receive in this month’s Funpack! Read More…

I admit that I’ve been slacking on the regular Dino Drac content lately. Would you believe that I’ve gotten really into playing horseshoes? I mean, I haven’t, but I feel like it’s an excuse you’d accept. Picture me out there, wiping dirt on my jeans after every bad toss. Isn’t all forgiven?

Here’s the latest edition of Five Retro TV Commercials, with ads rescued from thirty-year-old recordings of Mr. Belvedere.

Matchbox Parasites! (1985)

I was ecstatic to find this on one of my tapes, as I’ve been trying to work Matchbox’s Parasites onto Dino Drac since Day 1. Few remember this line and even fewer ever bring it up, and I’m here to tell you that that’s WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Parasites was a collection of hollowed-out Matchbox cars with ALIEN ROBOTS stuffed inside. The robot figures worked like collapsible luggage, starting as rectangular “bricks” that fit snugly inside each car. When you pulled ‘em out, they expanded into techno-monsters with stilt-like legs and terrible attitudes.

It was a neat concept made ten times better by the extraterrestrial theatrics. Parasites figures are pretty expensive nowadays, though you may occasionally be able to find ‘em cheap if you search eBay at just the right time. Good luck — they’re worth tracking down!

Aliens love Almond Joy! (1980s)

I’ve watched this commercial ten times, and while I won’t pretend that I don’t “get it,” I’m still amazed that SPACE ALIENS FROM VENUS was how they chose to illustrate the point.

The idea was that one’s inclination towards Almond Joy bars spoke well of them. In fact, it spoke so well that no actual words were necessary. Just hold up an Almond Joy, and everyone instinctively knew that you were the shit.

That’s how one astronaut got chosen as ambassador for a trip to Venus, and also how one blue-skinned Venusian was picked for a vacation to Earth. If you’re reading this and nothing makes sense, I assure you that I’m merely describing the commercial and adding virtually no color.

I guess this was a way to do the E.T./Reese’s Pieces thing, but for Almond Joy? I love how so much 1980s candy advertising hinged on the idea that we’d want certain candies more after watching space aliens eat them. Really, they weren’t wrong.

PS: I was way into Almond Joy bars as a kid, despite hating almonds and being ambivalent-at-best about coconut. Honestly, I just liked that shade of blue on the wrappers. Very Caribbean! Read More…