Halloween Retro Lovin': Part 1!

Welcome to part one of a special 7 part series for one of my favorite times of the year, Halloween. I'm going to be heading back a few years to look at the 2 most iconic horror characters since Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster; Freddy Krueger & Jason Voorhees. I'll be looking at 3 Freddy figures followed by 3 Jason figures and capping it off with a look at the amazing Freddy vs Jason boxed set. So lets get this bitch started off with...


Freddy Krueger from Movie Maniacs Series 1!!!

In 1998 the collecting game was changed big time. Horror figures had been made before, and many different companies had done everything from old Universal monster toys to Jason statues, but no one had ever taken horror icons from several different films and put them in one line together. Thank God for McFarlane Toys. They came swinging out of the gates with a line of figures called Movie Maniacs. Horror geeks had found their nirvana. The first set had 5 figures: 2  from the Species films, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jason from Friday the 13th, and Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Action figures from Nightmare & Friday?!?! FUCK YEAH!

So I was actually a little reluctant to buy the figures due to the lack of articulation at first. It wasn't until McFarlane packaged Freddy and Jason together in a special boxed set that I decided to start collecting the line. I learned to live with the loss of articulation once I had finally had the figures in my hand. They were bloody and detailed and came with some damn good accessories (Leatherface had a bucket with a head in it!) so while I couldn't make Freddy and Jason battle like ninjas, they could at least stand on my shelf looking cool.

Freddy came with 6 points of articulation: he had a cut neck, cut shoulders, a cut bicep on his gloved arm, a cut wrist on his gloved hand, and a cut waist. Due to the articulation on his gloved arm you could get a few cool poses out of him, but with no leg articulation, he was stuck in one basic pose. Luckily, he had a fairly dynamic sculpt, so even with him just standing there, he looked cool.

Speaking of the sculpt, there was no doubt at all that this was Freddy. His pants were more red than any other color due to the blood sprinklers he must have just ran through (his shoes are muddy so you can tell he was playing outside), but his shirt was pure Freddy. The red and green stripes were quite prominent, even with blood and yellow mucus stuff all over him. And the gloved had looked damn good too. Unfortunately, his face sculpt was kinda weak. He had the unmistakable Freddy nose, but his skin was more wicker man than burn victim. Still, with the body and hat, it was definitely Freddy.

Freddy also came with a mini Freddy puppet from what my cruddy memory tells me was Nightmare on Elm Street 3. The puppet was pretty cool looking, and it even had cut shoulders on both arms. He also came with a neat stand that had a mini poster for A Nightmare on Elm Street with the Movie Maniacs logo on it. I've got all the posters packed up in the garage somewhere, so sorry, no pics.

Freddy was a great start to what would become one of the longest running series of horror figures ever. But it wasn't the only Freddy figure that would come from the line. In 2001, McFarlane would try again...

Webstor from MOTUC!

So far, every Masters of the Universe Classics' figure that has been released I owned as a child (if possible; He-Ro and Grayskull were never made in the 80's). Webstor, on the other hand, eluded me. I have no clue why I never had the spider-man when I was a kid. I'm guessing I just never found him in stores. My cousin had him, but we never really got to play with him due to his rope constantly getting knotted up. My aunt must have spent days getting the knots out of that thing. So Webby here didn't really have much of an impact on my childhood.

But now here he is, in all his dark blue skinned glory. And after all these years...his impact is still minimal. Sure, he's a nice addition to the line, but he's more on the level of Tri-Klops than Scareglow or Beastman. Several improvements have been made over his OG figure: they gave him a few extra eyes, like a spider should have, and they added some appendages to his backpack to make him more arachnid and less Skeletor with different armor and a new head. And honestly, that's exactly what he is, a Skeletor repaint. Is that a bad thing? Nah, there's so much re-use in this line that it's pretty much the norm right now.

Well, the backpack is pretty neat. They added a nice thick rope this time so no worry of knots. The grappling hook is there too, but it doesn't have the climbing feature that the old one had. The extra appendages really help make him look better, and for those wack jobs that don't want them, you can always bend them down or just remove the backpack completely. But if you're complaining about the fact that he looks more like a spider, then go choke on a black widow.

Well, that's Webstor. I think he should open a chain of Halloween themed stores on Eternia called WebStore. Eternians don't seem to have many retail stores, and it's about damn time that changed. MOTUC has some great figures coming up soon, so expect my enthusiam to grow faster than the winky on an old man after downing a case of Viagra while watching Showgirls.

And I made it through the whole article without mentioning Emmanuel Lewis once. Who's jokes are juvenile now bitches!!!

Darth Corleone!

"Fuck!"-Luke Skywalker's first and final word when he came across Darth Corleone.

The Emperor was a pussy. Vader was a bitch. The "Rule of Two" was tossed out the window years before little Annie's eyes ever turned yellow. You see, there was another sith. A sith so powerful he just sat back, waved his hands a little, and made shit happen. Darth Corleone was his name, and when the stupid rebels partied with the teddy bears, he just smirked. You see, Darth Corleone was behind everything. He knocked up Anakin's mom, just by glaring at her. He later had the sandpeople torture her, because they owed him a favor. Darth Corleone was responsible for just about everything that happened in the world of Star Wars.

Darth Corleone lived inside a black hole with his rare Yavin 3 kitty, Nubbers. Why did he live in a black hole? Cause he could. Darth Corleone used a lightsaber, but not to fight. He used it to light his cigars. Darth Corleone didn't need to Force Choke. He'd just stop time, walk over to you, and pop your head like a Scanner. Force Lightining was to flashy for Corleone. He'd rather just burst your cells, one at a time. That's how Corleone rolled.

Why exactly did Darth Corleone mastermind all this? Well, he was bored. He was born a poor immigrant on a tiny planet called It-Al-E where he made sarlaac cannolis. At the age of 12, he sneezed and blew up the entire planet. It was then that he decided to learn some sith stuff. Years later, he came across Anakin's mom during a rare trip outside of his black hole to visit Jabba's Winery on Tatooine. He felt something that he didn't know he could anymore...love. So he looked at her and knocked her up. Not big for shelling out child support, he headed straight back to his black hole to drink some fine Corellian Whiskey. When Anakin's mom began attempting to gather unpaid child support, he called up Larry, the head of the Sand People.

Not many people knew of Darth Corleone. The Emperor did, but Palps was pretty freaked out by him, so he tried to stay as far away from him as possible. During the construction of the first Death Star, Palpatine wanted to call it "The Evil Sphere o' Death", but Corleone was adimit about calling it the Death Star. When Palpatine refused, he woke up one morning with a rancor head under his bed sheets. Palpy never argued with Corleone again.

Several years after Return of the Jedi, Luke had very little to do. So he and Han began an illegal spice operation that netted then billions. Darth Corleone wasn't all that pleased with drugs in his galaxy, so he had a guy have a guy who had a guy have a guy tell Luke to knock it off. Luke just laughed and plunged his face into a mountain of spice. Darth Corleone was none too pleased. So Corleone left his black hole once again to deal with the issue. He headed to Luke's current location on the newly dubbed Planet Skywalker (formerly Coruscant) and saw the situation was worse than he could have imagined. The entire planet was high on spice. Leia was riding Chewbacca around butt naked. Han had gotten so many STD's from all the Twi'Lek hookers he could get his hands on, that his privates actually became sentient. And Luke was producing Hutt on Jawa porn while using the force to constantly stream spice up his nose. Darth Corleone just shook his head, walked up to Luke, and off his cranium went, just as easy as being cold on Hoth. Darth Corleone then sneezed. It is estimated that 17 billion people lost their lives when Planet Sywalker exploded.

Darth Corleone's whereabouts are currently unkown. He may have been spotted in a Naboo orange grove, but reports are unconfirmed.

Head over to Podcaust.com to see more photo outtakes!

Admiral Piett from Sideshow Collectibles!

Gaunt. Weak. Frail. Sure, you could use these terms to describe good ol' Admiral Piett. But you'd be more wrong than marrying you sister. Piett was seriously one fucking badass Imperial sunuvabitch. In fact, he was such a fucking badass that he actually appeared in both Empire and Return. No other Imperial Officer could make such a claim. But what is it exactly that makes Piett such a hardcore Galactic Pimp? Read on to find out.

Piett was a lowly Captain on Vader's ship, The Executor, serving under Admiral Ozzel. Fortunately  for Piett, Ozzel royally fucked up and Vader was like, "Ish don't think so." and BLAMMO, Ozzel = deceased. Vader then gave the job to Piett, which offered an awesome 401k and much better benefits. Also, The Executor was no pussy Star Destroyer. Nope, The Executor was a massive, mind fucking, SUPER Star Destroyer. To gauge the size of a Super Star Destroyer all you need to do is look at North America. Then multiply North America's size by roughly 70 trillion and there you go: Super Star Destroyer.

So how exactly did Piett get through Return of the Jedi without suffering a force choke from Vader? Well, I've been thinking long and hard about this, and the only answer I can come up with is that Piett had a bootleg copy of Vader slaughtering the younglings from Revenge of the Sith. Imagine if that shit leaked on Galactic Youtube; Darth Vader murders children, chokes out his pregnant wife, and has asthma. Why was anyone scared of him again? Well Piett sure wasn't. Piett was scared of no man. It is, however, well known that he was very pussy whipped by his wife. What's not so well known? His wife was Yarna D'Al'Gargan.

Piett was fighting at the Battle of Endor (more likely he was on on the phone asking his wife what he needed to pick up at the grocery store) when an A-Wing fighter flew into his head. Seriously, what a fucking way to go.

Tri-Klops!

Ahhh Tri-Klops. The man with one eye...TIMES 3! Yup, that pretty much sums up ol' Triky. Oh, he's got some killer fashion sense too, making sure to leave the sides of his shirt open for tickley fun time in Snake Mountain. Also, he has 2 belts: an orange and a green one. Only Mr. Klops here could pull off that fashion combo.

But, alas, Tres-Eyes isn't all perfection. He has 3 different viewing receptacles : a green one to highlight the plant life in the spring, a blue one to better gaze at the sky and make animal shapes out of the clouds, and a brown eye (pictured red here because he was blazed off his fucking rocker). Unfortunately, with a twist of a few centimeters, Klops is rendered blind as Helen Keller locked in a suitcase which was tossed in a cave right before it collapsed. I guess that's why his sword is so long; so if he gets blinded (and lets face it, a gust of wind could do the trick) he can slash like a madman and hope he hits something. Kloppy-McKlopkins also comes with a featherless green robotic chicken head for secret poultry missions. The chicken head also has like 4 exhaust pipes. I call overkill. Lastly, Tri-Tri comes with an awesome glow in the dark ring, but it ain't gonna fit on him. Nope, that ring is for real people fingers. Damn straight I'm replacing my wedding ring with this delightful plastic one. Glow in the dark>platinum.
Added bonus: the ring opens up for easy coke storage.








Meh to Tri-Kloptocus. He's not as lame as Zodac (who can't even chose what side he's on), but he ain't no Hordak. Also, his real name is Trydor Esooniux Scope. I did not make that up.