March's Food Model Spotlight

In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, all the food models for March have been green. In order of their appearance:

The Funko Pop Godzilla is a huge, bulky guy. Like most of the Pop figures, he isn't very articulated. In fact, no part of him is movable at all. I was lucky to be able to balance a potato chip on his arm in one review. But, he looks adorable, and is scaled up from most of the Pop characters.

Playability: 2/10.   Displayability: 8/10.

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Next, the Kidrobot Morbo is a fun guy. I loved the series of Kidrobot Futurama blind boxes, and spent way too much trying to get all my favorite characters. (I ended up with three Frys, for example.) Morbo can turn his head, and rotate his arms. It's not a lot of articulation, but even those few points give him some personality. He even comes with a little accessory of Dr. Flimflam's Vein Cream.

Playability: 5/10. Displayability: 7/10.

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On to our loscannic friends. Naveen is just an accessory, really. He comes alongside the Funko Pop Tiana figure. He can't move or pose at all, really, just sit there. He's scaled just right to sit beside Tiana (and her costars Louis and Dr. Facilier). Still, I think the Funko Pop style works well for this tiny frog.

Playability: 2/10. Displayability: 6/10.

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Finally, Kermit and Robin.  I loved the old Palisades Muppet collection (speaking of toylines I spent far too much on), and was excited to see the new Diamond Select versions in person. They're ... different. I liked the option of the bases for the Palisades figures, which made the characters much more poseable. On the other hand, Diamond has made Kermit extremely articulated. By my count, he has 18 joints! (Robin has 5.) Unfortunately, he doesn't stand very well, so I had to lean him against things for all his photos. Even more unfortunately, his eyes aren't right. It's hard for toymakers to mass-produce Kermit and get the thickness of his pupil-slits correct. (That's also my main complaint about the current Pez design.)

Robin, however, is great. The Diamond Robin looks great, and he can pose well. (The old Palisades Robin was fine, but he could only sit.) But perhaps most importantly, you can get Kermit and Robin (and Bean, who will be showing up in this space next month, and a stool and a banjo -- the more expensive comic-shop version also has a log, a ukelele, and another chair) for like $23. The cheapest Palisades basic Kermit on eBay right this second is $25.00. 

Playability: 8/10. Displayability: 6/10.

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Tomorrow is April 1, but I promise there's no trick; just a salty food review. Oh, and another new food-modeling friend. See you then.

Saturday Salt: Lay's Beer 'n Brats

Greetings, puny earthlings! It is I, Morbo! Prepare to hear my review of these potato chips. They are flavored with hops and salted meats, for Morbo to devour with his mighty jaws. I gave them to Fawn and the kids, and they couldn't believe it. They were delicious! Pathetic human?

Thanks, Morbo. Hi, folks, it's Mark again. Morbo's right -- these chips are pretty good. The mixture is heavier on the beer than the brats (for some reason, it's real beer flavoring, which I didn't expect). But, these still have that unctuous hot-grease mouthfeel you get from a fresh-grilled sausage, which is a pretty good achievement. In fact, these are so rich that I don't think I'd eat these alongside a sandwich.  Back to you, Morbo.

Morbo has enjoyed this visit to Earth, and the tour of the tiny humans' snack foods. Now, humans, prepare for Morbo to destroy this entire bag of tiny potato slivers! 

While Morbo is finishing off the chips, I better sign off. He hasn't threatened me personally yet, but I know it's just a matter of time. Thanks for tuning in this week. Next week, another green friend (it's March, and all the food models are green) will help me try more snacks.

Tuesday Treat: Peeps Oreos

Today, Morbo and I are trying the new Peeps Oreos, a mad-science concoction that shouldn't work at all. I was all for them, though Morbo took some convincing. (He was worried that, at 70 calories apiece, the cookies would go straight to his gigantic forehead.)

The creme filling is supposedly the flavor of Peeps, though your basic Peep just tastes like sugar and a little vanilla. I don't know that these taste that different from a standard Golden Oreo, but the pink really pops, and as a whole they are just fine to me. When I asked him how he liked the cookies, Morbo would only shout "Morbo is PLEASED!" So there's that.

If you like Golden Oreos, junk-food mashups, and the color pink, then Peeps Oreos are made just for you.

(The Amazon link below makes you jump through a few hoops to buy the cookies, like being a Prime subscriber, and adding 5 more grocery items, so maybe just find them at a local store instead, if you prefer.)

MST3K #413: Manhunt In Space

Well, I caught a cold, and that put me behind schedule at the worst possible time -- the release date for the new season was finally announced. It all drops on April 14. That means I've got just 46 days to finish my pregame binge. And with twenty more episodes to watch, I need to aim for one every two days. Seems like I won't make it, but I'll sure enjoy the attempt.

Anyway, today we're looking at #413, with some soapy clips and some space-spies.

Featuring Nurse Feratu

In an excerpt from the first season of General Hospital, doctors and nurses and patients soap it up, with long expository monologues and melodramatic speeches. The electric organ, as you might expect, is too high in the mix. Afterwards, the bots want to play soap opera, but Joel refuses to go along.

I guess Bill Paxton was just glad he didn't have to work with Helen Hunt in space.

And next, another movie that isn't. It's more TV episodes cut together, though at least this story was conceived as a single piece (take that, Master Ninja!). Rocky Jones is another one of those square-headed, cowboy-style space heroes, who solves every conflict with a fistfight, the old American way. (I'm glad to know that we haven't had anything like that happen on the ISS.)

Space pirates are capturing ships, stealing the cargo, and killing the crews, AND they've infiltrated the base of the heroes. Rocky and his irritating sidekick Winky use their invisible space-technology to find the mole and catch the bad guys. They get captured a LOT (this was originally three TV episodes, and I think the heroes get captured at least four times), and each time they have to punch their way out. In the meantime, the tiresome sidekick brags about his notional love life, and sings a cloying lullaby. I've seen the other MST'd Rocky Jones movie, though I'll be danged if I can remember anything about it. I hope Winky doesn't sing in that one.

Crow isn't a Stratocaster; Tom isn't the Golden Throat.

The riffs are up to the usual standard -- two fairly obscure Star Trek jokes I had to look up, plus mentions of Ted Knight, Mr. Mooney, Roy Lichtenstein, and Bettie Page. I really enjoyed the Mr. Wizard/Police Squad! style joke: "And that's how cattle are inseminated." (Speaking of Police Squad!, how obscure a reference is "Hey, it's the 'Sucker' Brothers"?!?) 

We learn a few trivia facts about our friends in this one: not only is Tom color-blind, but Joel apparently has a sister. (In the SciFi era, we would've seen Mike's sister, and she would've been Mike in a wig. In fact, I'll wager one American dollar that did happen.)

It's rare in this binge for me to watch two consecutive episodes, so I appreciated that Crow calls back the "good-natured brawling" from #412, just a few minutes after the well-aged callback to Fugitive Alien. But since these two aired in order, there aren't many repeated jokes. This is my second episode in a row to reference Captain Crunch, and the third to mention The Flintstones.

A joke that didn't age well: "What is this, Radio AHHS?"
A joke I had to look up: "When in Duluth, visit the Lift Bridge."
My favorite joke: Once again, I enjoyed the variant "Sturgeon! In! Spaaaaaaaace!", but the winner is clearly "It's like a million-to-one shot that we'll ever be seen." "Oh, they're on Comedy Central."
Overall, I rate this episode 9/10. Rocky's a little dull, but otherwise it's perfect.

Up next, it's #505, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad.

MST3K #318: Star Force: Fugitive Alien II

And now, #318, as Ken the Starwolf fights more aliens, and keeps ripping off George Lucas.

Our "movie" is another compilation of TV episodes, following immediately after the events of the first film. Ken's girlfriend is still dead, and the (brainwashed, blue-faced) Colonel that just got rescued is still on board the Bacchus 3.

This movie is more-or-less the same in tone and quality as the previous entry (as evidenced by those high-quality instrument readouts there), except for one thing. The editing here is even sloppier -- the final episode story just slams into the rest of the movie, without even a note from the usually redundant narrator to answer Crow's plaintive "What the heck is going on??" Ken and Cap'n Joe's crew still bravely war in the stars, attempting to destroy two planet-killing weapons that are definitely NOT the Death Star. Also, the finale is definitely NOT the trench dogfight from Episode Four. (Reminds me of the marketplace from the first movie, which was definitely NOT a wretched hive of scum and villainy.) At the end, like an interstellar Shane, Ken decides he must return to his home planet, to bring justice and freedom to all the other Starwolves. Without, you know, the audience feeling anything about it either way.

And if the movie is wall-to-wall Skywalking, the riffs and host segments are wall-to-wall singing. The final host spot is my second favorite so far in this binge, as our friends sing an extended medley of all the songs they made up for the film. I also really enjoyed the introductory scene, where Tom and Crow discuss the nature of puppets.

And speaking of this binge specifically, it's my first time hearing "Diarrhea is like a storm raging inside you." (Apparently, nobody's put that ad up on YouTube! Anybody got a copy?)  The riffs also include my second Tom Waits joke, a nifty Barton Fink joke, and 2 SCTV jokes. This is the second episode in a row to reference "You want to go faster?," "Hi-keeba!," "Billy Don't Be A Hero," Vidal Sassoon, Gymkata, Keith Richards, Paul Harvey, and Jerry Lewis. It's the THIRD to reference 1960's TV Batman (and that doesn't even count the jokes about Cesar Romero.)

Bonus feature alert: A career-spanning interview with Sandy Frank, where he namedrops ceaselessly, and almost pretends to be gracious about the reason for the interview. He doesn't seem to harbor much love for the MST3K gang, which is understandable given all the name-calling they did toward him personally. I did like knowing more about his history, though he talks very little about the movies (and "movies") featured on MST.

A joke I had to look up: "Another painting by Judy Chicago."
A joke that didn't age well: Tom's reference to Roseanne Barr's rendition of the National Anthem.
My favorite joke from this one: I feel dirty, but it's absolutely Crow's endless use of "Again?" (If only they'd come up with a proper ending, it would be one of my favorite running jokes of all time.)
Overall, I rate this one 7/10. It feels more boring, and more confusing, than the previous installment. The movie's worse, but I think the host spots are slightly better.

Up next, I'm watching another TV-sourced twofer, starting with #322, Master Ninja.

MST3K #310: Fugitive Alien

It's #310, with an alien helping Earth (and some other planets) fight his evil former rulers.

This week's movie is ... not a movie. Like a few other MST installments, it's a collection of TV episodes mashed together to form a movie-like product. The movie's alien hero, Ken, accidentally kills his best friend, in an attempt to keep him from killing an innocent earth kid, who's also named Ken. Since they were soldiers, Ken has to escape his evil government, and ends up recruited by Earth to fight his old comrades. (Ken's also on the run from his girlfriend Rita, whose brother was Ken's former best friend/victim - the alien government has ordered her to avenge her brother and kill the traitor.)

Ken works alongside a crew of brave Earth spacemen, led by Captain Joe (a mood-swinging heavy drinker and tragedy magnet) and piloted by hothead Rocky, who would of course try to kill Ken with a forklift. The crew also includes the lone woman, Tammy the "morale officer" (and speculation on her actual job duties gets icky and dark real fast for me) who naturally develops a crush on Ken.

Ken and Cap'n Joe's crew have a couple of random adventures (though this feels more like a movie than the two KTMA compilations I saw), and Rita gets gunned down right before our "To Be Continued" message.

Inspired by the huge success of Star Wars, the TV series used a lot of miniatures and special photo processes to tell universe-spanning stories of spacefighting.  (Does that M.O. sound a lot like Time of The Apes? It does to me, and in fact the two things share a screenwriter.) Sure, the production values aren't great, and Sandy Frank's ham-fisted editing (an omniscient narrator AND interior monologue?) does no favors to the material, but it's quick-moving and always easy to watch.

The DVD special feature is a nice history/contextualization from August Ragone, who seems to be Shout! Factory's go-to on these things. His encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for the original material is fun to watch, and I'm always happy to hear from him.

And speaking of film comment, it's the very first appearance of Mike as Jack Perkins! Jack went on to bigger and better things (and the DVD also features him in the MST Hour wraps), but he's spot-on, right from the start. Also, Joel gets violent in character twice here -- as a bumpkin farmer, he tips over Cow-Gypsy, and as Cap'n Joe he punches Tom and Crow. It's out-of-character, and along with Jack's repeated punishments, this might be the most cartoonishly violent episode I've ever seen.

The riffs, though, are just what they should be. We get a lot of coincidental groupings - an early George of the Jungle joke has nothing to do with the later Rocky and Bullwinkle joke, and the three Monty Python jokes aren't related. There are FOUR Rolling Stones jokes, in four different contexts. This is my second episode in a row to reference Jack Benny, Dairy Queen, "The white zone is for loading and unloading only," 60's TV Batman, and The Deer Hunter. And, it's the third in a row with a callback to Robot Holocaust.

A joke that didn't age well: "He’s in more trouble than Hudson Hawk at the box office!”
My favorite joke: I loved "Monks! In! SPAAAAAACE!" and even "Heckraiser," but they were neatly edged out by Joel's impression of Frank during the hat party.
Overall, I rate this: 9/10. It's not in my ten favorite episodes, but I can't name a single thing wrong with it. The movie is just the right level of silly and cheesy, and the riffs are perfection.

Up next, #318, Star Force: Fugitive Alien II.

MST3K K02: Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars

Like Invaders From The Deep, this is a compilation of 4 TV episodes edited into a feature. And like that one, this movie didn't try to disguise its episodic nature. Neither film has much in the way of dramatic structure, and they didn't even bother to cut out reused model shots. Also, the formulaic procedural elements of each episode repeat themselves throughout -- Tom points out that we have at least five "dramatic" countdowns in this 90-minute film.

This movie feels more serious and grown-up to me than Invaders From The Deep, with a lot more attention to the actual science of planetary motion and geography. I guess that credit goes to the writer, Tony Barwick, for putting some research into his scripts. (For example, we learn a little about Phobos, one of Mars' moons, including its orbital period.) The unseen Mysterons are a community on Mars, and in a flashback we see their first interaction with Earthlings -- as usual, the trigger-happy humans assume the Martian settlement is a threat, and blow it up almost immediately, causing a war that went on for 32 episodes, two film compilations, and even an aughties reboot. And that's an interesting, serious contemporary idea, though it's mostly ignored in this collection of episodes.

The puppets are also more realistically sculpted, though their motion is a lot less fluid. We'll call that a draw. (Plus, there are a few puppets of color included. A small step forward from last movie's WASPS.)

MST3K has always had a special relationship with Thanksgiving, and that started right here. Every single host segment hinges on the holiday (I especially love the one where Joel and all the bots make hand turkeys). Only one other episode would set itself at Thanksgiving officially (Season Seven's Night of the Blood Beast), though most of us have had a marathon on the last 26 Turkey Days, official or no.

There are a lot of other firsts in this episode. Tom shows up in a speaking role, and they put food in his head twice! Crow's first good joke in this episode is MST's earliest Python reference. ("It's only a model.") The riffing speed also picked up a lot, and it's nice to have all three of our main characters in the theater, all making jokes and interacting with each other.

The show is still pretty rough -- someone in the theater is still wearing their digital wristwatch, which we can hear beep three times (around six minutes, around 45 minutes, and around 1:12). Not exactly professional TV behavior, but they had no idea thousands of people would be watching this in the next century. (Was it Trace? We didn't hear that in the first episode, and he didn't get to work on that one. Of course, that's pretty circumstantial.) As with the previous episode, this was lost until earlier this year, and Joel has some thoughts he'd like to share.

My favorite joke in this episode is Tom's love for the repeated countdowns.
A joke I had to look up: "Looks like Carol Merrill."
A joke that didn't age well: "Dr. Breck, the shampoo genius." (Breck shampoo has been exclusively available at Dollar Tree stores for the last decade.)

Odds I'll watch this one again: 1/10. The movie is less silly than K01, but that actually makes the show less fun overall.
I rate this episode: 2/10. The joke speed picked up, though the quality isn't what we came to expect later on.

You can't buy this episode outright, though Kickstarter supporters should be able to watch it on vhx.tv. If you're late to the whole thing but still want to join in, you can spend $40 and get the two lost KTMA eps here.

The Jim Henson Hour #1a: Science Fiction

So the new Muppet show has found its groove, and the last three episodes have been uniformly good, in my opinion. But what about that time Jim Henson tried a new Muppet show? It wasn't perfect either, and it suffered as much from its unevenness as it did from the mixed digest format. I haven't seen these shows as a whole since they aired, and most of them not even then. As a devoted Henson and Muppet fan, I was constitutionally required to buy all the official DVDs that came from this show (The Storyteller , Dog City , even The Song of the Cloud Forest ), but I haven't seen the MuppeTelevision segments in forever.

So I'll be watching, and writing about, The Jim Henson Hour this month.

It's a little jarring, at first, to see Kermit and his all-new friends (Gonzo and Link pop up, but not till the last two minutes) in a futuristic TV studio, but then Jim Henson himself comes on to remind us he still has his hand on the tiller.

Sidebar: I remember from Brian Jay Jones' outstanding Jim Henson: The Biography that Jim was extremely uncomfortable hosting on camera, and I think it certainly shows during this first appearance. He tries for the casual avuncularity that Walt Disney also strived for as a TV host, and it feels similarly staged to me. (I just rewatched, for example, the old Wonderful World of Color segment where Walt is interacting with a Carousel of Progress animatronic, and even that late into his TV-hosting career, he still feels awkward and stagey.)

We head back, after one last look at that gorgeous lion puppet, to Kermit's studio, and spend a few minutes with our newest Muppet friend, Digit. Digit is mostly a robot, kind of, but his voice is more Reverend Jim than C3PO. He's watching intergalactic TV, but guest star Louie Anderson is worried he'll be displaced by the alien programming.

We have a musical number, "Neutron Dance" in a perfectly late-80s spacey setting, complete with overdone late-80s music video effects. Then, it's the first independent sketch, Louie Anderson in ...

The Muppets, as a genre unto themselves, have always trafficked in commingling seemingly unrelated things. It's a kid's show, with adult jokes. It's the same characters singing 30's songs and current hits of the day in a 19th-century vaudeville theater. It's a frog dating a pig. This works on a smaller level too -- one of my favorite Muppet things from recent years is the barbershop quartet version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the 2011 movie, and more classic Muppet Show songs than I can count reinterpret songs in a different style. This is a perfect example of that, and even if it's obvious that Louie and the Codzilla puppet were never in the same room at the same time, that doesn't affect how I watch this sketch.

Now Digit is watching an alien beauty pageant, hosted by Chris Langham. (If you don't know him, I'll thumbnail it for you: he was a friend of Spike Milligan and John Cleese -- you can see him in Life of Brian -- and Cleese recommended him to Jim Henson as a funny writer. Langham joined the Muppet Show writing room, and guested on one of my favorite episodes. He also did a lot of other British comedy stuff, including my friend's favorite thing, People Like Us. He had, um, a career setback, and I don't wanna believe the charges against him, and we'll leave it at that.)

Digit needs more power, so he ends up overdoing it and blacks out. As they try to help him, Kermit watches the "Heavy Culture" channel (along with Clifford! Hi, Clifford!), and we see my favorite sketch from this episode. It's so lightweight, it'll almost blow away, but it's a very silly Pythonesque minute.

Digit's still not well -- he's quoting Sesame Street, Dragnet, and presidential debates -- so Waldo flies into his head, and we end up there too, along with Kermit. As they try to Fantastic Voyage their way out, we see a "Fashion Dolls" sketch...

...which I don't mind. The costumes are creepy, sure, and I seem to recall the writing went off the rails, but this first version of the concept is ok. I like the gender role reversal expressed in it, long before the official Barbie and Ken got their own version in the Toy Story movies.

Oh, and then Louie's back, and he's playing a Space Guy being held in a tractor beam of cuteness by Bean Bunny, who transforms him from a mean action hero into Pink-A-Boo, "the cutest, cuddliest, most pinkaliciously wonderful person in the universe!"

And now it's time for the closing number! What closing number? Digit's finally fixed (kinda) and he's found an alternate universe where The Teppums put on a familiar-looking variety show. So the casts of both shows sing "Chattanooga Choo-Choo," and we learn that Louie's stuck in Pink-A-Boo's body (Kermit: "We've merchandised you to sixteen toy companies!") and the show's over.

I'm going to break the show into two parts, so we'll talk about that Storyteller episode later, but this is a good place for me to mention my immediate desire for this show. When I was 11 in 1989, I was in the second era of my strong Muppet fandom, and I was taping The Muppet Show on TNT every day, and watching Muppet Babies each week, and when my family first saw a promo for The Jim Henson Hour one night on NBC, I remember a strong sense of anticipation. I don't remember any of our responses to the show, but I have a strong memory of purple Timrek The Gorf up there (no relation to Kermit The Gorf).

This show premiered just over a year before Jim's death, and in the long run it's not a lasting tribute. Around the same time, Jim was working on Muppet Vision 3D for Walt Disney World (featuring Bean and Waldo from TJHH), and that has certainly been seen by more people than all the episodes of this show put together. I know MV3D is possibly going away, and I'm okay with that if there's some Muppety replacement, but I like to think of that attraction as Jim's last completed project. It's the final thing Jim was working on, the thing he was thinking about during the last week he shared with us here. It's technologically ambitious, but less complex in its storytelling than The Jim Henson Hour. It's friendlier, and funnier, and has more staying power.

I know there were times Jim felt shackled by the popularity of The Muppets, but people loved Jim because they loved Kermit and his family. Sure, the nonMuppet things Jim did were mostly good, occasionally great, but like TJHH they were inconsistent. Ambitious people, no matter their talent level, will sometimes fall short of their goals. Jim followed his own advice from the end of The Muppet Movie, though:

Life's like a movie, write your own ending
Keep believing, keep pretending
We've done just what we set out to do
Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you.

25 Days of Christmas #11: MST3K "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians"

Here's one of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes: "Santa Claus Conquers The Martians."

First off, a bit about this movie: it's weird. It's weird, and goofy, and seems like someone pulled two kids' movies out of a hat and mixed them up together. There's about ten dry, sad minutes on Mars, where the kids never laugh and the nearly-dead oracle proclaims "We need a Santa Claus on Mars." So, naturally, the King of Mars decides to come to Earth and kidnap Santa.

And they do it too, and kidnap two all-American Earth kids in the bargain. Along the way, the kids encounter an unconvincing polar bear, and the Martians' cardboard-box robot. Santa turns the robot into a giant toy with unexplained magic, but once the Martians use their freezey-guns on a few elves and Mrs. Claus, Santa goes along with them.

On the trip back to Mars, the evil Martian underling tries to eject Santa and the kids into space, only for Santa to escape using his chimney skills. The Earth kids meet the depressed Martian kids, who have to eat pills for dinner and learn all their lessons in a sleep-pyramid... I think. Santa cheers up the Martian kids, and recruits the film's annoying comic relief to be the Martian Santa.

This is a truly strange movie, in the way that no studio-released film could be -- nothing in this film was focus-grouped or done by committee, and in a weird way I respect that kind of integrity. On the other hand, it's pretty bad, so there's that. This isn't even the weirdest Christmas movie made. We'll be looking at that in the next Christmas MST3K...

This is from the third season of MST3K, by which point the show was going full-bore, and this episode just cracks along. The joke/minute ratio is really high, and most of them land well. (I also feel like the percentage of then-topical jokes which haven't survived the ensuing decades are fewer than usual.) If you'd care to read annotations for all the jokes, please feel free to do so here. I feel like the host segments, as usual, are hit-or-miss; my favorite one is Tom's soulful take on A Child's Christmas in Wales which quickly descends into screaming worry about Santa exploding in the vaccuum of space.

This is the only MST3K film which has been redone by both Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic. I've seen the CT version (once, a while ago) but not the Rifftrax version. Maybe next Christmas, instead of this MST version I've seen so often, I'll watch those two back-to-back. While the film proper is public domain, this episode is currently out-of-print, so the buy link below is a little pricey. But, for that price, you also get Manos: Hands of Fate, so it's all relative. OR, a quick websearch will just take you to the full video online, and you can watch for free. Your choice.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection - The Essentials (Manos, the Hands of Fate / Santa Claus Conquers the Martians)