It's amazing how much less inviting snow seems once the holidays pass. Before Christmas, we're all "yay snow" and "snow yay." If it snows after Christmas, we curse the clouds. It snowed a lot here yesterday. Motherfucking piece of shit cloud cocksuckers. I'm pretty sure they'll be time to have another article up either late tonight or sometime during the weekend -- probably a movie review, unless I get sick of writing about it again and move back to Chia plots. Here's some reader mail from the past week, with replies...

Tommy: "Can you start a petition to bring back: Madballs, My Pet Monster,  Suckerman, Manglors, MASK, MUSCLE, Super Naturals, Inhumanoids, Battle Beasts and Boglins. I'm a kid, and I want to be able to play with these toys without paying through the nose. So can ya try to do it?"

God I get some strange e-mail. "My Pet Monster" and "Suckerman" have already been brought back -- I've done articles on both. Suckerman's priced at around ten bucks, though I'd imagine he's much tougher to find than when I bought him several months back. My Pet Monster is already living on the clearance racks in most toy stores -- if you can find him, he'll be between 10-20 bucks. "Boglins" have been brought back, too, though I'm not sure if they're available in the States. As for the rest: Super Naturals...boy, I'll be doing a big article on those guys pretty soon, but no, they'll never be back. "Inhumanoids" has a better chance cause of the old cartoon and all, but I really doubt it. I don't think the retro revival will go on long enough for us to pull Tendril and Metlar out from the caves. I wouldn't be too surprised if "Battle Beasts" made a comeback, mostly because they were so huge in Japan, and they're much more thorough in these sorts of revivals than we are. "Manglors" won't be back, but I'd give things like "MASK" and "Madballs" a 25% chance. "MUSCLE," of course, is already sorta back with the "Ultimate Muscle" series.

Garrick: (re: Pop Qwiz) "Sweet Christ... I forgot about that nasty shit. Just to let you know, Nickelodeon had a quiz show around the same time that this shit was on the market, and before commercial breaks, the host went way out of his way to point out that the kids were going to be eating the cancer catalyst during the break, and it showed the contestants eating the stuff straight from the bags with nervous looks on their faces. I would be nervous too if I had a bag of that crap slapped in front of me on national TV and was told to eat it. I saw a show five or six years ago about 80's one hit wonders and where they are now. They were interviewing the lead singer from the group Madness (Our house, in the middle of our street). He was sitting on a patio, and there was some random kid next to him eating a bag of that crap. I remember seeing this and thinking 'Christ, they still make that?' There really isn't any way of telling how old the footage was, but still."

Pop Qwiz is one of those things that you just don't remember till you actually see it again. Something having to do with the color patterns, I guess. Oh, as others mentioned in the comments, I too remember just how often the crap burned to a crisp. It was especially interesting with the blue variety -- the black ball swarming with only moderately scorched blue popcorn looked like some kind of space anomaly.

Wayne: "I was shown your July 25th 2002 article on the Transformers Power cycle and was curious if there is any way I could get a copy of that commercial? It would make a rather interesting addition to my collection of Transformers stuff."

I love easy ones. The Power Cycle commercial is online -- in fact, it's linked right off of the main page.

Russ: "I was reading your article about Ecto cooler, and I’m glad you found out the truth.  I’m having an 80’s party this weekend, and was wondering if you know when ecto cooler came out.  I remember it from the 80’s, but some of my friends say it was a 90’s thing.  Please get back to me if you know.  Thanks."

Hm. I'm drunk with non-sleep so I don't feel like searching around for the true date, but you could definitely get away with the stuff for an 80s party. Even if you consider Ecto Cooler as a "Real Ghostbusters" thing, that show debuted in '88. Besides, the old commercial was thoroughly 80s. Go for it.

Louisa: "I used to read X-Entertainment daily, then I kind of got away from it and lost track... but I live in Newark, Delaware and the other day I picked up a copy of the News Journal, only to find an X-E article. Clearly, fate kicked me in the ass. I'll read again."

I rarely bring up the print column on the site, but it's been a major blessing and a great time for me. To be honest, I had no idea that it'd go on for this long. Now that I check, I've been doing three articles a week for the paper since last May. That's a lot of shit. Hopefully, I'll make good on my resolution to shop it around, and the older articles can be funneled towards a new audience. Maybe even you! But yeah, if you're in Delaware, pick up the News Journal on Weds, Thurs, and Happy Saturdays.

Mike: "My girlfriend found your page and I have to say we both find it thoroughly entertaining.  I have a question for you about something I had as a kid, which I thought you might be able to answer. It was probably 1986 or so, a local TV station (I believe channel 21 in CT, might be Fox affiliate) had a giveaway of a light gun toy.  I thought it was cool (I was 7 years old) so I sent them a postcard, and I actually won!  The box showed up at my house a few weeks later. The gun itself was a huge plastic thing, (my memory of this is vague) that I think looked like a space ship with a handle and trigger on it.  It came with a few reflective targets that you could shoot at, and if you hit them the gun made a sound effect. However, the coolest part of this gun was that it worked with a TV show that was on early in the morning.  I have vague memories of this show being live action, and having guys wearing suits that had shiny reflective 'targets' on them.  I think it was set in outer space or something.  Anyway, if you shot the guys on the show, it also made the same sound effect, which was really cool.  So you could play along with the characters on the show, shooting the bad guys. Do you have any idea what this is?  I can't remember the name of the show."

The toy you speak of was from "Captain Power," which I'll be covering in-depth soon enough. I had both the hero and villain ships, plus most of the figures. I could never get the damn thing to work correctly, but it was still pretty fun. Show was a lot better than it's given credit for, too.

Kay: "Hi,  I emailed you earlier today asking if your blog was available for syndication.  Well, I did a little searching, and it turns out that someone has set up an RSS feed for you! It's located here: click! Other than the fact that it's a little delayed (the last entry posted is your second to last), it seems to work!"

Thanks, Kay! I don't know anything about RSS or RSS feeds or feeding RSSes, but a few have asked, so there's the answer.