Captain Pollution is the best thing that ever came out of the Captain Planet universe. Fight me.

There’s my dude. Captain Planet’s evil double, which is pretty much my all-time favorite trope. Powered by pollution and sounding like a dickhead version of Michelangelo, Captain Pollution didn’t appear often, but when he did, OH MAN. Lights off, volume up, popcorn popped.

If Captain Pollution is news to you, below are five facts that will help you feign expertise. Remember, the polluting power is yours. Read More…

To keep this edition of Five Random Action Figures on-brand for Cruel Summer, I will only feature figures that have some tangential tie to the season. Enjoy!

Mike, The Sewer Surfer!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990)

This screwball Michelangelo was from a set of TMNT figures that gave our heroes intense new costumes, and even new occupations. (Raph became an astronaut, Don became a sneaky detective… you get the picture.)

Since every kid who collected TMNT toys started with the original Turtles, it made sense for Playmates to keep redressing them. To their credit, these “extra” Turtles weren’t cheap cash-grabs with rudimentary facelifts. Each had a mold all its own, and they were littered with so many details that the first wave of figures seemed positively antique by comparison.

Just look at all of the little touches on Mikey. Seaweed! Baby sharks! Gnarly crabs! Hell, I’ve had this guy for 30 years, and I’m only now noticing the octopus on his foot. Read More…

I love popcorn! I love popcorn so much that I get extraordinarily excited when it turns up in movies. Especially horror movies, where it often becomes a prop in bizarre murders involving alien clowns or unreasonably toxic spiders.

Below: Five scenes from horror movies that feature popcorn. I know what you like to read about.

Scream! (1996)

During Scream’s perfect opening scene, Casey (Drew Barrymore) plays along with a “harmless” prank call that soon leads to her death. That’s the too-simple summary, because it’s hard to me to go into particulars when all I wanna talk about is THAT JIFFY POP.

While on the phone, Casey’s shakes an adorable Jiffy Pop pan over the stove. You know, the one that creates a big tinfoil “brain” of popcorn. I’ve cooked Jiffy Pop a hundred times, and it never ceases to amaze me. I can’t blame Casey for her poor sense of foreboding during that call, because when I’m making Jiffy Pop, it’s all I’m able to focus on, too.

Jiffy Pop has been around since 1959 and certainly didn’t need pub from Scream to survive, but I’m still convinced that it’s this scene that made Jiffy Pop such a thing with people of my generation. Hell, even 20+ years later, it’s still cashing residuals. Read More…