Toys R Us Christmas Commercials from ’86!
This’ll take a minute to explain. Exactly a minute. Time me.
During the 1986 holiday season, Toys “R” Us unveiled a series of commercials hosted by giant anthropomorphized toys, like that amazing robot shown above.
Each spot featured a different batch of 1986’s hottest playthings. That December, it wasn’t uncommon to see four or five of these commercials over the course of one thirty-minute Christmas special.
The ads played out like a live-action version of the 1986 Sears Wish Book. I concede that they won’t be of much value to readers many years younger than me, but if you’re somewhere around my age, these are going to kill you in the best way.
Below are five of the spots from that campaign. Enjoy!
Spot #1: Birds & Bots!
While this commercial gave StoryMagic Big Bird top billing, I’m more interested in that Transformers Battlin’ Robots set. It was an obvious riff on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, and MAN was it great.
Here we had Optimus and Megatron settling their differences in a boxing ring, which in of itself was worthy of fanfic. The designs were based on their action figures, but given the bulkier builds, these boxers actually resembled the cartoon characters more than Hasbro’s figures did!
It’s wild to think about, but “boxing Megatron” spent years as the most TV-accurate Megatron available. Read More…
The Best of the 2018 Halloween Season!
What did you guys think of the 2018 Halloween season? Were you happy with all of the candies, movies, events and nonsense?
What are some of the things that you will forever associate with this specific Halloween season?
…those were the questions we asked ourselves for a special Halloween edition of The Purple Stuff Podcast.
This week, me and Jay from The Sexy Armpit talk about the very best parts of the 2018 Halloween season, from strange cheeseburgers to scary movies.
Halloween falls on a Wednesday this year, so I’m guessing that you guys don’t have many big to-dos left on your list. Let our 90 minute Halloween special be one last way to celebrate the best time of the year!
Click here to listen to the new episode!
We really dig the way this ep came out, and we hope you will too! Thanks as always for listening, and for sharing the show around!
Couple of notes:
1) Expect more podcasts real soon, as we’re aiming to make Purple Stuff a big focus in the months ahead!
2) And, yeah, I know… the Halloween Countdown puttered out on Dino Drac. For various reasons, the season just got away from me. I can’t change the past, so I’ll just work toward rebuilding my cred in the months ahead. Sorry there wasn’t more stuff on the site this month!
If you don’t hear from me tomorrow — and I’m hoping you will, but we’ll see — have a wonderful Halloween!
Burger King’s NIGHTMARE KING Burger!
Burger King saved Halloween again:
In what must be considered the sequel to 2015’s Halloween Whopper, Burger King has unleashed THE NIGHTMARE KING, a “burger” that’s more like a buffet. Pair that with their dark-as-night Scary Black Cherry Frozen Fanta, and you pretty much have to dine at Burger King before October 31st.
So off I went. THE NIGHTMARE KING cost almost nine bucks, which seemed ridiculous until they handed it over. That sandwich is heavy. Like, not heavy enough to bowl with, but heavy enough to hurl at a control panel in a last-ditch effort to kill the Rancor.
The Frozen Fanta was somewhere in the area of three dollars, which I suppose was reasonable enough for a drink that resembled twelve ounces’ worth of black masago.
I’d forgotten my debit card and only had $10 on me, so when you envision this trip to Burger King, make sure you include the part where I run back to the car to fish dirty coins out from under the seat, and eventually return cradling 3 quarters, a bunch of dimes and enough cellophane Twizzler wrappers to insulate a 3-BR ranch. Read More…
Purple Stuff: Halloween Movie Review!
I saw the new Halloween movie on Thursday night, with Jay from The Sexy Armpit. We hadn’t planned on doing a podcast about it, but why not?
We spent an hour aimlessly running through the stuff we loved, the stuff we liked and the stuff we were maybe not totally sure about, but the non-spoiler summary is that we both really dug it.
Warning: This episode is LOADED with spoilers. We didn’t even go through the motions of avoiding them. If you haven’t seen the movie, please don’t listen to this show until you have!
But if you have seen the film and wanna compare notes…
Click here to listen to the new episode!
The more I think about it, the more I realize how hard it must be to “pull off” a movie like this, where so many people have so many opinions about what it “should” be. With that in mind, they did a great job of delivering on what a Halloween film “needs” to be, while still executing a fresh story that we hadn’t seen before.
The film had a LOT to live up to — so much buzz, so much hype. All in, I’d say that it delivered. It “felt” like a Halloween movie, if that makes sense. I’ll definitely be seeing it in theaters again, hopefully with an audience that’s a little less obsessed with their phones. Thumbs up to all involved — this couldn’t have been a cakewalk.
PS: I’ve been mostly-absent from the site as of late, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Yes, it’s been that kind of month. I wish “that kind of month” didn’t also happen to be October, but, yeah. There’s still over a week left before October 31st, so I’ll do my best to make the Countdown’s finale stronger than its middle.