I live to be shocking, so here's a new article, exploring, recapping and reviewing the very first episode of the Pokémon cartoon series. Special care was taken to put that little squiggly line above the "e" over 200 times in this article, and I hope you appreciate that. The genesis of this one is that I got the first season on DVD and can't believe how well the series still holds up. It's written more or less for people who know nothing about Pokémon, so my apologies to anyone who really didn't need an explanation of what a Pokéball was. But you know what? You'll live.
Seems like as good a time as any to get this out of the way. I know it's old news by now, but it just didn't feel right to not archive the Doritos X-13D Flavor Experiment chips on the site. Basically, it's a wonderful promotion of an unnamed "mystery flavor," in which junk food lovers are supposed to suggest names for a chip that was clearly based on a cheeseburger.
It's pretty unbelievable…they taste just like McDonald's cheeseburgers. While "beef flavoring" is a listed ingredient, what you'll really take home from X-13D chips is the strong flavor of pickles, ketchup and mustard. Knowing that, they're pretty terrible once you take away their fancy clothes. I assume Doritos has no choice but to release the chips with whatever name is decided upon when the promotion ends, but I don't expect them to last much longer than that. They're putrid.
Putrid…like a fox. Twenty years from now, when the Internet comes in special edition colors and is capable of cooking steaks for you, upstart nostalgia websites will likely pay tribute to Doritos X-13D chips. These would've made an incredible impression as me as a child, but even as an adult, I can appreciate eating from a bag that looks like a leftover prop from Back To The Future Part II. Just wish they didn't taste like the asshole of a dead bear.
Oh God, oh God. Somebody give me the textual equivalent of an orgasm, because I need to type it out over and over again.
You've probably read about my fascination with Hostess Ninja Turtles Pies, those being the disgustingly awesome green pastries filled with vanilla mutagen pudding. If I had to draw up a short list of things that personify X-E, they'd be pretty close to the top. When I wrote the article, all I had to go on were my memories and a few old pie wrappers. Short of finding a Hostess bakery with zero regard for expiration dates, the only missing piece of the puzzle finally landed in my lap tonight.
Yes, finally, I have the Hostess Ninja Turtles Pies commercial. And I'll share it with you in just a minute.
On a conservative estimate, the ad is 16,000 kinds of awesome. The Ninja Turtles were absolutely serious about making these pies a success, evidenced by their willingness to throw away all pride and poise as they don baker hats and rap in unison about vanilla pudding.
"They're lime, they're delicious, you know that's true…because they're filled with MUTAGEN GOO!" Oh God, I am going to sing this jingle to every person and animal I come into contact with forever and ever. They totally should've released it as a single.
Wait, the pies weren't lime, were they? I know the pudding was vanilla. Maybe the crust was lime? I so don't need new questions at this stage…Matt craves closure on the Turtle Pie issue.
Most of the commercial features the Turtles baking the pies and serving them to random kids, but midway through, we finally get some live action money shots of the real deal. And because of that, some random M.C. Escher knockoff gets his ass ousted from my Windows wallpaper collection in favor of GRAINY PIE PICS OH GOD YES!
A lot of us have had our memories play tricks on us over the years, but these pictures put it all to rest: No, the pudding was never green. Just the crust. Though I was always more of a Ninja Turtle Pie fan in concept than in practice, they do look darn appetizing here.
I'm just ridiculously pleased with life in general right now. Click here to watch the commercial, and see if it can't turn your summertime blues green.
Gushing aside, I think I've stumbled onto something else pretty amazing here. During the spot, the Turtles take special care to serve their desserts to this kid. Take a good, long look at him. He seemed familiar, and sure enough, I'm like 84.7% certain that that's the very same kid who accidentally dropped the pre-mutated Ninja Turtles down the sewer drain in the very first episode of the cartoon series. Click here for a shot of that kid.
In the commercial, he looks a few years older…I'd say about three years older, which is the exact amount of years between the first episode and the stupid pie commercial. The Ninja Turtles were clearly rewarding their indirect creator in the only way they knew how: By providing free pies. Am I reaching? NO. I am RIGHT and I deserve prizes.
And by prizes I mean pieses.
UPDATE: They're not saying "they're lime, they're delicious" in the commercial. They're saying "they're mondo delicious." I spent six weeks trying to find Mondo Gecko in the sixth grade; you'd think "mondo" would've at least entered my permanent lexicon for it.
Longtime readers know of my love affair with Wildwood, New Jersey. Everything about that place warms me, but people don't go to Wildwood for anything other than its famous 2.5 mile long boardwalk, home to hundreds of shops, arcades, carnival games and rides. Realizing that those unfamilar will have a hard time envisioning what I'm about to describe, I drew up a handy diagram:
Speaking generally, the long boardwalk is where all of the games, restaurants and arcades are. If you're looking for 99 cent stores or an Orange Julius, that's where you go. The piers are where the rides are kept, and most of the piers run by different companies, each with different rides and a distinct flavor. Some of the piers have had different owners through the years, each bringing new ideas and visions for what Jersey shore vacationers would be willing to blow money on. Over the course of the last half of a century, this setup has meant that Wildwood has cycled through hundreds upon hundreds of rides — probably ten times as many as Disney World has ever hosted.
Trying to sum up decades of history as quickly as I can, a company purchased a flailing pier in the 1990s, hoping to reinvent it and reinvigorate profits. Up until that point, the boardwalk's piers were just areas with random rides that didn't fall under any set "theme." This particular mystery company had something different in mind. Riding the popularity wave of hot dinosaur action set by Jurassic Park and its sequel, a new pier sprung from the abyss and promised to put thrill-seekers face to face with terra cotta dinosaur statues.
Yes, in 1996, the doors opened to Wildwood's newest pier…Dinosaur Beach! The pier only lasted for two years and never managed to become much more than a point-and-laugh-at business venture, but as an eternal dinosaur lover, I was down to party. [more]
We hit up Long Beach Island yesterday, one of my family's favorite vacation towns from years ago. Everything I loved about LBI was still intact. From the weird antique stores to the Tiki-themed custard shops, it was the same town I'd spent ten consecutive summers swimming, playing, watching and wasting at. The only difference was an increase in traffic lights.
LBI isn't as glitzy as most of the other Jersey shore vacation spots, if we can define "glitzy" as a series of blinking, neon signs directing your attention towards the nearest funnel cake. There's no giant boardwalk and there are no big roller coasters. It's more quaint and subdued, and nothing better evidences that fact than one of Long Beach's biggest entertainment venues — a strip mall.
It's called "Bay Village," home to countless tiny shops selling everything from ice cream to sand sculptures. I loved this place as a kid. With money to burn and a passing interest in everything, I don't doubt that I've purchased at least one thing from every single store in Bay Village at some point in my life. Even at the ones that only sold women's clothes, I managed. My favorite store was always this little shithole called "Shell Shanty," and I was elated to find it still running strong.
What can one buy at the Shell Shanty? Well, shells, for the most part. But there's more than that — everything from shark-themed shot glasses to dead-and-now-decorative shellacked blowfish. There's enough awesome sea-themed crap in there to get anyone to rethink their living room's motif. It's the kind of place that has just the right amount of homegrown charm to persuade even the coldest browser to buy a $300 statue of a lighthouse.
And since it's been there forever, it's one of those stores that has 2,000 times more inventory on display than it can really support. Most stores have walking room; at Shell Shanty, you kind of have to just hop around on one foot. This is part of its charm. You'll find everything from twenty-year-old squeak frogs to two-year-old Pirates of the Caribbean knockoff toys. If only they sold tacos and bottled water, I'd never have to buy anything from anyplace else, ever. It'd be like Wal-Mart, only with an aisle full of plastic lobsters instead of Dyson vacuums. I'd rather do little lobster puppet shows than vacuum cat hair, anyway. [more]
Just got back from a little vacation with my extended family to Atlantic City and Long Beach Island. Atlantic City was more of the same, but Long Beach was loads of fun. We used to rent a house there every year, back before the prices skyrocketed. Haven't explored the town in almost a decade, and totally forgot how cool it is. You'll see an example in tomorrow's entry. Tonight, with time running short before my midnight Megaparty deadline, we'll have to settle for reviews of five different Bubblicious flavors.
Savage Sour Apple: Despite its name, I got more of a "cherry Jolly Rancher" vibe. Definitely had the strongest flavor of the bunch, which means it's better as surrogate caffeine than for casual chewing. It's really sour. Not the kind of gum you'd offer to Grandma, and probably my least favorite of the five.
Paradise Punch: This was my #1 gum of choice during middle school. The flavor isn't as overpowering as I'd remembered, but maybe my taste buds were just screwy from the Savage Sour Apple mess. Sort of the gum equivalent of a Hawaiian Punch, which was probably what Bubblicious was going for considering the flavor's name.
Watermelon Wave:Really mellow. You've gotta jab the gum wad with your tongue pretty hard to get any kind of flavor burst deserving of a sourpuss face. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most brands of Bubblicious gum are really sour or sweet, and it's impossible to chew them without contorting your face in ways that let everyone around you know that you're chewing gum. Watermelon Wave is great for those occasions when you want to chew gum, but really shouldn't.
LeBron's Lightning Lemonade: It's times like these that I wish I knew more about sports. Is LeBron James cool? I mean, is he really cool? He should be, because this flavor is AMAZING. It's not at all just some everyday "lemonade gum," tasting much more like Minute Maid's new "Cherry Limeade" juice. Best of the bunch. Paraphrasing a testimonial from an old Cats Broadway promo, "I'd chew it twice more."
Blue Blowout: I'm happy that Bubblicious found a happy medium for their requisite "blue" flavor. Candy companies tend to overdo blue. This one's pretty mellow, all things considered, tasting like a cross between cotton candy and a snowcone. A cotton candy flavored snowcone? A cotton candy flavored snowcone flavored bubble gum? When it takes that many words and that much confusion to properly describe the taste nuances of bubble gum, you know you've got a winner.
On a final note, never buy gum from the gift shops in an Atlantic City casino resort. These were $1.98 a pack.
I just came across a bag of souvenirs we bought at Disney World last year and promptly forgot about, I guess proving once and for all that people really don't "need" stuffed Ewok dolls or packages of Stitch-brand astronaut ice cream. On the other hand, it's nice to rub out a blog entry using nothing but an old Disney souvenir and the July issue of Cosmo.
I Dig Dinosaurs is a little kit meant to introduce children to the world of dinosaur fossils, and how scientists go about excavating said fossils. You might consider this a strange artifact to find in Disney World; actually, I picked it up in the gift shop exclusive to the "Dinosaur" ride, preferring to spend five bucks on an I Dig Dinosaurs kit to spending ten times that amount for a raptor-themed marionette.
Whether due to all those old book fair books or maybe just Calvin & Hobbes comics, my friends and I often dug for dinosaur bones during our youth. Well, "often" may be a little strong…I remember doing it at least once, when we found this skull that I now recognize as a raccoon skull. Of course, back then, it was clearly the skull of an infant Tyrannosaurus. I only really remember this as the catalyst to a much more prominent and legendary memory: The fight between three young boys who all wanted to keep the baby T-Rex skull in their house. I didn't win. Truth be told, I was afraid to touch it.
The kit consists of a fairly large, egg-shaped mound of sand and rock pebbles, drenched in some kind of weird substance that holds them together like glue without all the messy gooeyness of real glue. There's also a plastic "digging tool," which you're supposed to use like a scalpel to carefully chip away all of the rocks and pebbles on your way to excavating a dinosaur fossil.
For today only, "dinosaur fossil" is defined as "small rubber dinosaur figure."
The kit is cheap and knows it, so it's not coming to you without a few flaws. Number one, the digging tool wears down like an eraser as you use it, going from a serrated super weapon to one of those plastic butterknives you'd get at an outdoor barbecue. This leaves you with no choice but to smash the entire egg against the nearest hard surface, which works approximately 742,000 times better than trying to dismantle it with a two-ounce piece of pliable plastic.
After repeated throws to the floor, I finally started seeing some dino. It wasn't the kind of cathartic moment that I was hoping for, but then, I'm not three-years-old. On the upside, I can use all of that chopped up pebbly sand to start a wicked bowl motif for my solitary fighting fish. You know, the ones pet shops torture?
Soon, my dinosaur was freed, and he was ALIVE. I think I know the exact species on which the figure was based, but it's the kind of thing where I'd have to Google around to make sure I'm right, and then I'll get all caught up in reading about various dinosaurs and about how big the mosquitos were in prehistoric times. This happens every time I try to safety check a dinosaur-related identity guess. I've had it. I'm just not going to say it.
All told, there are worse things to blow five bucks on than I Dig Dinosaurs kits. Gruyere cheese, for example. No reason for Gruyere to cost so much more than Swiss. It's the same shit.
Saturday, June 30th, 2007
Posted by Matt @ 6:20 pm [Link] [133 Comments]
