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X-Entertainment’s 2006 Christmas Season.

I can't believe it's December already, but it is, and that means...X-EMAS! Christmas is my favorite time of year, and I'm really excited to get another X-E holiday season underway. Look up. The very first entry of the 2006 Advent Calendar is now active, kicking off 25 days of Yuletide terror as Mare, Knacks and Kuse protect the world from evil and save Christmas! Or something.

After giving it much thought, I've decided to not do an Advert Calendar along with the Advent this year. I've lucked into a bit more free time than I'm used to coming up in December, and I don't want to get boggled into "updating the what-must-be-updated" when I can use my powers for a greater good. Like, let's say, a December Megaparty. Yes, new blog posts every day in December -- it's the promise I can't keep and the one you'll hate me for breaking! Let's hope for the best. I'm excited you're excited he's excited she's excited and, really, it's fun for folks to share their holiday obsessions on a stage that won't get pelted with tomatoes.

More design tweaks are coming, along with a new and improved Christmas Jukebox with over thirty new songs. Look for the "finished" Christmas design with all the trimmings sometime this weekend.


There was a time when I kind of appreciated the Polly Pocket brand, if for no other reason than being the ultimate sister line to Mighty Max. The idea of a "playset-in-your-pocket," complete with tiny action figures that fit inside, was really original and totally made trips to even the most boring places on the planet palatable. Now Polly's grown up, and she's a big slut with her own theme park who's too tall to fit in any prop compacts.Mattel can't be happy right now, as millions of the newer Polly Pocket toys were recently recalled, because the toys included tiny magnets that kids were eating by the scoop. A problem that broad could be a permanent black eye, and as if making Polly say things like "OFF THE HOOK!!" wasn't going to alienate enough potential customers, surely the fact that kids have magnet fragments attracting in their stomachs will. Maybe she'll trade "OFF THE HOOK!!" for "HI I'M POLLY AND I'M GONNA INUNDATE YOUR STOMACH WITH MAGNETS!!" Fortunately, a new line of Polly Pocket stocking stuffer figures hit shelves before the big bag recall came down.


For those who haven't been introduced to the "new" Polly, now she wears rubber clothes that slip off and on and feel a lot like an inedible Fruit Roll-Up. It's a decent little gimmick, but the clothes don't really fit right, and everything Polly wears looks like Play-Doh.The stocking stuffer sets are around five bucks each. There are a few different figures available (Polly's friends manage to hit every major point of diversity!), each with a different outfit and a cool plastic snowflake-shaped tree ornament.

It's Christmas. All over. AGIN. YAR AGIN.

Posted by Matt on 12/01/2006. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 87 comments

Bill, I remember them too! There also female versions called Little Miss. I didn’t have all of them, but I had a lot of em. I got em at a garage sale well over 12 or so years ago, and I think I still have them.

Fun fact: There were also cartoon adaptations of many of the books, including Mr. Greedy (the fat purple guy), the Mister Man who was shaped like a Triangle, Mr. Muddle, and Little Miss Scatterbrain (“Looks like snow!”)

I’ve mentioned on here before, I had lots of the Mighty Max figures, including the cobra, the skull, the McDonald’s ones, and the Skull Island playset.

Chestnuts roasted by Invader Norbert @ 12/02/2006 1:20 AM

Yes, this is great! NOW the holidays can begin! While I loved the advert calendar, nothing beats the Advent calendar!

Chestnuts roasted by Larry @ 12/02/2006 1:36 AM

Invader Norbert: It seems that these books are begging to be spoofed but slipped by unnoticed. I love the origen of how he came to write these books. Apparently his son asked what a tickle looked like and he was stumped and it inspired the character Mr. Tickle. I guess that’s better than mr. Molester from Creepytown.

Chestnuts roasted by Bill @ 12/02/2006 1:53 AM

I loved, loved, loved those books when I was a kid. I can’t remember which ones I had, but I had a bunch of them. I also remember the cartoons. They were no Sweet Pickles as far as I’m concerned, but I loved them.

Chestnuts roasted by MissJess @ 12/02/2006 2:08 AM

Mr. Men and Little Miss briefly came back in 1997 on a syndicated program; the last thing 4Kids made before they translated Pokemon and became millionaires. They mixed MM&LM cartoons together with strange scattered sketches with live-action people acting hyperactive. I have a clip of this somewhere.

Chestnuts roasted by Mars @ 12/02/2006 2:35 AM

Nice call on Knack’s Myspace, and working it into the story. It makes me feel like I’m part of the action or something.

Chestnuts roasted by Sami @ 12/02/2006 3:31 AM

Off to a rousing start already, Matt. I’d be lying if I said I don’t really really look forward to the Advent Calendar every week.

Chestnuts roasted by Timmy @ 12/02/2006 3:31 AM

It’s official… I am the world’s saddest girl… I went to eight–count ‘em!–EIGHT different stores today looking for an Advent Calendar of my very own. Nada. Where is everyone else getting theirs?

Chestnuts roasted by Special K (fka broomstickjockey) @ 12/02/2006 3:58 AM

Luckily I was still able to enter your site, even after such a provocitive pic of Polly Pocket appeared above.

Chestnuts roasted by Lammy742 @ 12/04/2006 5:35 PM

Where did you get the little grey computer from, Matt?

Chestnuts roasted by JEM @ 12/05/2006 1:33 AM

Im a little bit worried, all i want to do is talk about christmas, in broad terms il be boring and say christmas 1918 until 2011 (the autobots are so last year) to narrow things down a bit il say xmas 1993 (which would make me 8 at the time im boasting about) its at this time that my obsession with 6′ articulated G.I JOE action figures reached its height, and when i say height i literally mean 6′MAX. Picture the scene, 8 year old boy scared of my local toy shop’s “virtual reality” station, but (looking back) strangely drawn to transparent micro machines (still got an articulated 911) its around here that i really should mention that im a first time poster from the north of England and i have several action figure (hereby referred to as actfigs… yeah actfigs) related anecdotes, to begin with i have to say im just too young to have ever gotten he-man actfigs as a legitimate packaged gift for xmas, but imagine the dilema i faced when coming downstairs on xmas morning 1993 to discover… 1;- a SEGA GAMEGEAR, comically wrapped by my sister (21 at the time), the GG was brand new and boxed, but to throw my surprisingly astute, sleuth-like xmas deduction skills off (i always knew when i was getting headphones) the GG was enveloped in a purple “HI-TEC” shell-suit, then wrapped again in an even vaster supermarket “mccain oven chips” box (for 6 seconds in ’93 i thought i had a giant purple shellsuit for xmas, zero actfigs in sight, booooooo!)

2;- a POGO stick with non-brand name goalkeepers gloves…

and;- 3

… around 30 assorted He-Man actfigs (which as it turns out were bought from an adin the local paper for £25 “for a quick sale”) guess what my fave was?

Thats right the ‘keeper gloves, erm i mean the actfigs :) there were a lot of doubles in the group but they became my “gang” whom helped me to destroy my arch enemy “safe-combination-backpack -he-man” as this bugger was preowned he was unopenable but i made it my actfigs and myselfs mission to crack him assunder, we tried this by means of me dropping various things on “S.C.B.P.H.M” ‘s backpack (which i later found out you could put CAPS in! Alas, my luitenant (the eye poppin’ Egon actfig from Ghostbusters) and i were frankly gutted, recruitment was in order so i harassed my sister into taking me back to the afore mentioned toy shop to get reinforcements (im starting to think this happened over several years rather than months as i previously thought) now a wonderful thing happened, i feigned paralitic fear (still due to the same virtual reality station) until made my sister bought me several “street fighter 2″ 6′ GI JOE actfigs, my cousin had RYU and KEN so i thought fuck it and got M.BISON and SAGAT so i could tiger uppercut his tits off, which is possibly my first nod to satan… ever.

I aslo cried ’til i got transport (some kind of missile firing, half-track, COBRA decal replaced cash-in vehicle) this evil-spewing extravaganza plainly wasnt enough to satisfy my troop replacement urges so i continued to sift through the GI.JOE wall (thats right, wall) until i came across an australian gent with a huge moustache/sideburn combo and a bandolier of hand grenades, standard GI JOE’NESS i hear you say, but what made him stand out was the massive “IM FREE IF YOU SPEND MORE THAN £15 ON GI.JOE PRODUCTS” sticker, he looked rubbish but free is free and the renamed half-track was apparently £400 on its own. The toy shop manager told us (sagat, m.bison, my sister and me) that the particular offer mentioned on “murphys” packaging was no longer running, but as you’re 8 and look like your gonna whine all day and your sister is 22 and female, that “on this occasion i can let you have the actfig* for free) i grinned, my sister grinned, we all went home. It turns out i’d picked the rubbish M.BISON in the turquoise outfit so he was demoted to “GRUNT WITH HAT” immediately, and SAGAT (although he has gnarly scars and an eye patch) was also to demoted because he was wearing shorts and had no shoes, even though i knew his name he became known simply as “MAAAAAAAAAATE” and was only ever refered to by name if he was dead/dying/falling off something/getting beat down by my cousins ken or driving the M.A.S.K motorbike into a wall.
Murphy became the boss of all my actfigs after a brief head to head with the “JEAN LUC-PICARD actfig i got the following summer, (i put them both in my VISIONARIES X-RAY-Y-WING THING and murphy came out on top, (i think it was the grenades that did it)

*he actually said “army men**”

**possibly imagined as thats what id say as “actfig” is crapo

Between us, murphy and me eventually got C.B.P.H.M’s B.P open, of course there was nothing in it, murphy and i have since had “creative differences” and i used an industrial staple gun to nail him to my subbuteo board, it made his wrists snap,i was 14, i really, really wish i hadn’t, but ive now based my sideburns/moustache combo on his in honour of a fallen comrade…i sold out to puberty angst and you paid the price murphy, you will always be the boss of my men!

(if anyone knows the actfig i speak and would like to send me an ebay page please do so as i now have a son of my own and i think it would be kinda cool if i whipped murphy’s son out on my kids 8th xmas and forced him to accept his leadership over his puny “super atriculated spider-man” don’t get me wrong, he’s alright,its just that murphys better.

jimmyomens@hotmail.com

Chestnuts roasted by pearl @ 12/14/2006 1:18 AM

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 12:45 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.