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New Article: Book Reports. Plus Turtle Comms!

If you can believe the rumors, there might be a new, normal, regular X-E article up. Book Reports is its name, and its game is reviewing five different children's books that for one reason or another manage to make me turn glee into a verb and glee my way to Happyland. Everything from the Berenstain Bears to the Jolly Green Giant to God and dinosaurs, all in one space, with yummy parchment background. Enjoy.

In other news, I received a package the other day from my editor at Box Office Magazine, and assumed it was just another in a long line of "generic" gifts companies send to their clients and cohorts. This would've been fine by me: A gift is a gift. But something tells me that vintage TMNT Turtle Comms aren't something companies send in mass to their contacts...

As it turns out, my editor had this baby and figured I might like it, and I figure she's right, because I somehow never landed myself a Turtle Comm toy in all my years of Turtleing. It's neat. Comes with all of these character cards with specific Morse codes that let you contact them, or at least, let you pretend you're in contact with 'em. I can't believe I now have the means to play Walkie Talkie with Usagi Yojimbo, and this is definitely the kind of gift that'll get me to lower my rate on articles written at 3 AM the night before a 9 AM deadline. Thanks, C!

She even included a note saying that she liked the 2005 Advent Calendar, which is my perfect segue into answering the question of a few who asked: Yes, it's been archived, and it can be found here. Will put the archive on the headlines list on the main page as soon as I write up the descriptions.

3 Stupid Things I'm Currently Into:
1) King Kong lore. Bit by the bug after seeing the remake (which was excellent), I've been immersing myself in All Things Kong. I'm really fascinated with the many interpretations of what goes on on Skull Island, and that's reason enough to see virtually all Kong-related films ever made. Next on my list is Son of Kong, and from what I've read, I think this will be one to review on the site.

2) Metroid Prime Pinball, for the Nintendo DS. Bought this baby with a Christmas gift certificate, because the holidays are the only time my video game library ever grows. This is one addictive little bitch. I'm a sucker for virtually every pinball game I've ever played, and this one doesn't disappoint. The Metroid theme is in more than just music and graphics, too. Heck, you don't shoot a ball, you shoot a rolled-up Samus who occassionally spreads out ot shoot demon bats with high energy beams. Between this and Mario Kart, I have found my offerings to the gods of procrastination.

3) The Secret Life of Lobsters. I'm really not sure where this book is going yet. It's obstensibly about the lobsters of Maine, but I may have been tricked into reading a novel about fisherman and scientists trying to find common ground. Not really sure yet, but they dangle the big claws often enough to keep me interested.

Posted by Matt on 01/04/2006. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 194 comments
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I had one of these as a kid. My god I had forgotten all about it… um… I wonder where I put it…

Chestnuts roasted by Greg @ 01/04/2006 8:50 PM

Holy hell, that Turtle Comm brings back memories.

I found a few of the character cards at the bottom of a drawer while cleaning recently and I couldn’t remember what they were a part of. Now I remember.

Chestnuts roasted by Dylan N. Madly @ 01/04/2006 9:05 PM

I want that Turtle Comm. My brother and I always played with Ninja Turtles at a young and innocent age (we wereeither 6 or 7 the year they were unleashed on the world). Yeah!!! Remember the talking ones with the cord you put through the slots on the shell, and when you pulled the cord through really quickly, they would talk, but it wasn’t really clear, but kind of cool to hear the Turtles talk outside of voices you made up…ok, so maybe you weren’t me and my brother. Or maybe you were. Then again, we used to act like Wayne and Garth when we were 9.

On one last note–Leonardo looks like he’s constipated in that picture. “Must…squeeze…harder…stomach…tied…in…knots…must go…to…bathroom…”

Chestnuts roasted by Allison @ 01/04/2006 9:14 PM

Wow- very jealous- a REAL Turtle Com! Good stuff. Speaking of addictive video games…

I got a NAMCO Plug N Play for Xmas- the Mrs. Pacman one, that comes with 4 other games, including Mappy.

I originally wanted it for the ability to plug a controller directly into the TV and then be able to play Mrs. PacMan…then I got addicted to MAPPY! I used to HATE that f**king little mouse when I was a kid, and now my hands resemble the lobster claws Matt has been reading about!

Chestnuts roasted by Muppet Baby @ 01/04/2006 9:18 PM

That Berenstain Bears book always made the junk food look so shiny and appealing. Out of curiousity, isn’t it Choco Chums?

Chestnuts roasted by Jessica Marie @ 01/04/2006 9:21 PM

Just saw the article- THE BERENSTEIN BEARS AND TOO MUCH JUNK FOOD?!! My absolute favorite of them all! Yes! Thank you, Matt- and yeah, the junk food in that book looked so damn GOOD.
JessicaMarie- I think is IS Choco Chums…I remember because I always wanted to find them in stores.

Chestnuts roasted by Muppet Baby @ 01/04/2006 9:26 PM

I still have my turtle comm and I ocasionally find the little pictures in boxes of junk and uderneath various items in the basement. I never really played with mine though. If it wasn’t an action figure then I wouldn’t bother wasting my time.

Chestnuts roasted by Darth Poop @ 01/04/2006 9:35 PM

I can’t remember if it was myself or my friends that had a ShellCell, but I certainly don’t remember the character cards. I had to make up Morse code addresses for the Turtles, and lemme tell ya, that Baxter Stockman does not like it when you call him looking for Ralph at three in the morning.

Chestnuts roasted by Tougi @ 01/04/2006 9:37 PM

…And Raph doesn’t like when you add an "L" to his abbrieviated name.

Chestnuts roasted by Tougi @ 01/04/2006 9:39 PM

Metroid Prime Pinball is so freaking fun. I got it for Christmas and I’ve been playing non-stop. Now if only I could figure out how to beat Meta-Ridley. :/

Chestnuts roasted by Darren! @ 01/04/2006 10:04 PM

<3 <3 <3 Berenstein bears. Me and my cousin used to take 10 of them, stick them all within each other, and make a super-long book. Yeah we were stupid.

I think the Tarzan guy is probably one of Noah’s sons.

Chestnuts roasted by Piscez @ 01/04/2006 10:40 PM

Too Much Junk Food was not just one of the Berenstain Bears books I owned. It was the first one I ever owned. The books were good though I didn’t like it how the way Papa Bear was depicted, he made Homer Simpson look like a Mensa member.

Besides the pink popcorn, I myself wondered about those green and orange striped cubes pictured in the title to make up the word "junk food". What were those? Hard candies? Bubble gum? Expired Jello cubes? Anyone out there know?

By the way, one of the two creators of the Bears died last month.

Chestnuts roasted by Bert Raccoon @ 01/04/2006 10:42 PM

Noooo!

*kills messenger, sorry Bert.

Chestnuts roasted by Warx @ 01/04/2006 10:55 PM

I like the one where Sister Bear goes all rebel-without-a-cause and starts wearing a green jumper instead of pink. I also like Berenstain Bear Land, which was torn down some years ago and replaced with Camp Snoopy. :P

I am confused about one thing. If you love Dinosaurs and Berenstein Bears wouldn’t the logical book selection have been Berenstein Bears and the Missing Dinosaur Bone?

Chestnuts roasted by Mystie @ 01/04/2006 11:31 PM

Wow, I totally forgot about Berenstein Bear’s Too Much Junk Food! It was definitely one of my favorites…along with the one where they get the Gimme Gimmes. I was obsessed with the food pictures too. I’m so glad you reviewed it.

Chestnuts roasted by Sami @ 01/05/2006 12:03 PM

mmm, I had a whole bunch of Berenstein Bears books, and I remember the candy, and the Gimme Gimme’s.

It’s sad that one of them died, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know they were alive at all!

Allison:
Shingles is actually an illness common of the elderly and those w/compromised immune systems (due to cancer or various illnesses).
just off the top of your head, how common is it for immuno-suppressed people? Because that doesn’t sound like something I would enjoy at all.

Chestnuts roasted by kidneyboy @ 01/05/2006 12:40 PM

MATT! Thank you!

I had one of those ninja turtle comm things when i was a kid but never knew what it was because i had gotten it at a neighborhood garage sale, and the morse code sticker was ripped off. To me it was just a turtle shaped ball that made a dieing baby seal noise and lit up some dim lights when you pressed a button. Thank you oh so much! Everything in the world has come together now.

Chestnuts roasted by gib @ 01/05/2006 12:53 PM

The only thing cooler than owning a Turtle Comunicator toy would be modding a cell phone into one.

Chestnuts roasted by JDavis @ 01/05/2006 1:02 AM

I once had a Turtle Comm. It died the most tragic of deaths.

You see, my friend and I were going to play Ninja Turtles. Not with action figures, for when we said "play Ninja Turtles" we meant we would beat the holy hell out of each other with whatever wooden sticks we could find, until one of us got pissed or started bleeding.

This was par for the course. My Turtle Comm was fairly new, and I decided that since I had just gotten it, I got to be the Turtle, and my friend was going to be Krang.

This did not sit well with him.

We argued, we shoved, and ultimately we fell to the ground and wrestled on concrete. And in the fight…My shiny Turtle Comm was crushed beyond repair.

Curse you, long forgotten friend. You owe me a damn Turtle Comm.

Chestnuts roasted by The Wukong Effect @ 01/05/2006 1:24 AM

"there might be a new, normal, regular X-E article up." Right? I knew some one who had one of those Turtle Comms and I did not have one so of course to this day I hate him.

Chestnuts roasted by dohopoki @ 01/05/2006 2:16 AM

Mother Brain living parasitically inside Brother Bear is the most frightening image I have ever seen on the entire internet.

Chestnuts roasted by Fireball @ 01/05/2006 4:12 AM

Out of all the Berenstain bears books out there, I just happened to buy my niece the junk food book for Christmas, due to her diet consisting of nothing but cookies. It makes for a good read for adults as well. Good choice there, Matt.

Chestnuts roasted by flygrl358 @ 01/05/2006 5:13 AM

Never saw those books before. However, I have driven by the "real" Jolly Green Giant several times on road trips in Minnesota. It’s just kinda sitting there in the middle of a field, where he belongs.
I’m glad there’s others out there who had a daily appointment with The Price is Right. I loved plinko. I have a garage door that has no auto-opener, so I get out of the car and shut it. When I do, it helps to imagine it’s The Big Wheel.

Chestnuts roasted by kb @ 01/05/2006 8:06 AM

I loved that Junk Food book as a kid, and like you I spent most of the time dreaming of how delicious those candy items looked, and how cooley packaged they were. I mean, WE never have nondescript multicolored ball candies in large acrylic boxes.

Chestnuts roasted by James @ 01/05/2006 8:59 AM

Ah, there’s nothing to take the stress out of an upcoming long and hellish weekend like coming to X-E and finding an update. Starting tomorrow, I cart 23 years’ worth of junk out of my parents’ house and into my very first apartment. Here’s hoping I don’t kill the boyfriend or any family members in the process. At least I’ll have a computer available to me on weekends that I don’t need to kill my little brother to use for five minutes.

Matt, I’m 23 and I still pick up children’s books all the time. And my favorite place to get any books is at thrift stores. From the time I was a small child, my mother would drag me along with her in her quest to find cheap clothes and whatever other crap she could, and I’d be just fine being left at the book section for as many hours as it took. I still go there these days, usually with my mom, and browse for forgoten Gothic novels and mostly for old children’s books I had as a kid. Recently I picked up several picture books about kittens, the Pink Panther and Lamb Chops. And you’re totally right about books there being cheap…about the only time I have to shell out more than a buck is if I fall in love with a hardcover book. Though everything else has indeed gone up. My best thrift store find was a Rio (of Jem fame) outfit still on the card, granted missing a shoe and on a rather destroyed card, for 99 cents. I sold it on ebay for about $20, I think. Dammit, now I’m pining to make a trip to some of the thrift stores around here and see what I can dig up…

I LOVED the Berenstein Bears ever so much. I had Too Much Junk Food and I too was completely hypnotized by all the pretty yummies. I’ve got to find all the old books I had as a kid…they’ve got to be lying around in storage somewhere.

Oh, and Matt…I bet you Pop Qwiz (sp?) had pink popcorn. I miss that stuff.

Chestnuts roasted by Nicole @ 01/05/2006 9:52 AM

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 at 8:41 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.