Saturday, April 11, 2015

UNBOX-KING #11 KING DEDEDE AMIIBO!


This week, against all odds, I broke down and paid about as much as I would ever want to pay for an Amiibo ($25 with free shipping) so that I could get an NFC figure of my favorite and main Smash Bros. character, King Dedede.


A small note on collecting Amiibo's (a defense and a warning):

To those of you that might not get what all the hubbub is about around these pieces of Nintendo plastic, I would start by defending collecting figures and figurines, in general, by pointing out that, one way or another, a lot of us wind up spending money on small pieces of plastic.

Whether or not a piece of plastic has value is pretty much dependent on one's personal taste. It might be odd to clutter up my room with figures, to some, but value in an item can, to paraphrase "tidying consultant" Marie Kondo from her book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing", when de-cluttering one's house simply pick up an item and ask yourself, "Does this item spark joy?" If they do, keep it. If not, ditch it.

I'll be keeping this in mind if I ever need to tidy up my space but at the moment, I can assure you, that holding Dedede in my hand inspires joy. Why?

Ever since I saw the introductory cut scene of Super Smash Bros. Melee, in which a Mario figurine comes to life, and, enjoying the collection of figurine trophies in the game series, I have always wanted to own real Nintendo character figures. There have never been products of the quality widely advertised by Nintendo and, with the added benefit of being compatible with several games by unlocking DLC and other bonus features, these figures caught my interest. Ever since I saw that Skylanders and Disney Infinity were clearly a big success and here to stay, I knew Nintendo should take a risk and try it themselves. And, with the toys seeing such high demands from Nintendo fans, old and new, it is clear that the product was something many of us had been waiting to buy.

But, like anything with high demand and low numbers (the latter is something I blame Nintendo for not doing a better job at), scalpers have made collecting Amiibos a lot less fun. At first, it was just very difficult to acquire some of the early Amiibos but you could find them with some diligence. But, by the third wave of figures, the less common figures sold out within minutes online and store exclusives made it even harder to collect them all. Scalpers, by buying up large numbers of the figures to sell later for a profit (that I'll point out Nintendo is missing out on and that I know stores let them buy in bulk because they often have retail boxes in their ebay photos), are driving demand even higher but the number are still low. Some of the rarest figures sell for over $50 and so, if you wanna collect them all, it goes from a casual collector's hobby to something really only reserved for the hardcore and, while I would love to have all the Amiibos, I'm not paying $50 for a immobile figure when I could pay the same for a Nendoroid.

In conclusion (ooh, way to get high school essay on us), if you want to collect Amiibos, have at it, but I wouldn't recommend trying to collect them all until Nintendo does something about their low supply.

And that's all in this week's collector's rant.

Friday, April 10, 2015

FTW FRIDAY! DAN WILSON, OMELETTE DAUGHTER, AND SPONGEBOB AGREE: WE GOTTA GET SPONGEBOB BACK!


RED LETTER MEDIA is one of my go-to sources for finding the next "hidden gem" or should I say "buried turd" that has been left behind in the age of "shot on shit-eo" films and straight-to-home-video VHS. One of the highlights on their Best of the Worst series has been the series of prank phone calls for performed by Rich Evans whenever they find a working number on the back of one of these old VHS tapes.

The video begs the question, "Why not make a VHS to entertain dogs?"

Rich trumps this question with "Why not make a VHS to entertain giraffes?"

Priceless.


Priceless like a father's love for his daughter, even if his daughter is actually just an egg or three egg-daughters combined into some sort of delicious but terrible abomination of an omelette daughter being raised by four sketch comedians.

This is the sitcom 90's America didn't want but would've ate up.


"We GOTTA get SPONGEBOB back!" -Ukinojoe, 2015

Now, for a palate cleanser.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

WORD OF THE DAY! 4/9/15!



dead pool [ded-pool]
noun
1. A game of prediction which involves guessing when and/or how someone will die.


EX. I like Dead Pool.

I think we all hate how X-Men Origins: Wolverine managed to fill every scene with as many fan and audience disappointing bull*** as they could. The story was garbage, the action was non-sense and not even in a good way, and they butchered/mutilated so many interesting Marvel characters in their first on-screen appearance.

The only good part of the movie was the introduction of Wolverine's paramilitary mutant group and the highlight of that scene was Ryan Reynolds cracking jokes like out of an over-the-top 80's action movie (Predator anyone?) and stealing the show as a samurai sword-wielding wise ass. It was a pretty promising introduction for Deadpool's early days before he got completely Unfortunately, like everything in that film, Deadpool came out of it with absolutely no dignity. How little dignity is that? This much:

They literally took Deadpool, "The Merc with a Mouth", and grafted his mouth shut to turn him into a stupid video game end boss for Wolverine and Sabertooth to fight.

And the next few years we saw growing fan hype for character (which, I hate to say, nothing turns me off a character more than over-saturation) and Deadpool became one of those films in production hell but, as I sit here typing this bull crap, they're filming a new movie. Hollywood, amirite?

Here's to Fox pulling off a film that I can enjoy as much, if not more, than Days of Future Past.

Monday, April 6, 2015

MUSIC MON! DON'T HUG ME I'M SCARED 4!


"What is the biggest thing in the world?"

That's a good question.

In the latest episode of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, we learn that even the best questions can have the worst answers imaginable. Or beyond imagination. Or just don't imagine anything. Or ask questions. Or answer questions. Or do anything.

It is best to just eat your oatmeal and not give any inanimate objects a cue to self-animate into an eldritch horror symbolizing a vague concept under the pretense of "edu-tainment".