I've gotten a few e-mails from readers wondering if I was slowly abandoning the site. Well, duh, I thought not posting for weeks on end would make that pretty obvious. ALL KIDDING ASIDE, this will be my last post ever. ALL KIDDING ASIDE AGAIN, no, not abandoning, probably will never abandon, even when I'm in my sixties. Unless I'm dead, though I admit to finding some secret joy in the notion of being the first to blog from the grave. I don't know if the site's best days are behind it or still ahead, but I don't particularly care either way. After doing this ten years and evolving past the point of it being a personal necessity, I enjoy knowing that I will not be empty inside if I'm not on here for a week here and a week there.

But no, not stopping. Why would I? In a strange way, I actually enjoy writing for the site more now than I ever have. I always did this because I wanted to, but I definitely don't "need" to now. And not "needing" to means that I can write garbage about my socks and not have to worry about it being Digg-worthy. Right now, it's just for kicks, and that's the way I want it to be.

Ertl, the toy company chiefly known for rhyming with "Squirtle"

Ertl, the toy company chiefly known for producing toy cars made of the kind of metal that can dent a football helmet if you throw it right, has rarely ventured into the "true" action figure market. Still, they managed to nab at least a few home runs, even if those home runs didn't exactly translate to huge sales. Socket Poppers, an extremely quirky collection of action figures from 1991, was one of the best toy lines you've absolutely never heard of.

The dude shown above is actually just a mutant made up from four different Socket Poppers figures, and that was the gimmick: The figures' limbs could be mixed and matched to create wholly unique characters. Having spent most of my childhood yearning for the opportunity to make Swamp Thing wear Dracula's leg and a pterodactyl wing, Socket Poppers provided both catharsis and full-blown permission to tear apart my toys like a deranged murderer. In some circles, they might call this a twofer.

Incredibly, Socket Poppers didn't even need the mix-and-match body part gimmick to hold my interest, because even when left with their original limbs intact, they were among the greatest action figures I've ever chewed on when nobody was looking. Check out the diversity, featuring everything from a "Monster Fly" to a ripoff Terminator to an especially leggy Mr. T. It was akin to M.U.S.C.L.E. figures being brought to life in glorious, four-inch posable color, with the added bonus of switchable heads! Or so said the description in the 1991 JC Penney Christmas catalog. Drunks.

The line's relative obscurity makes collecting Socket Poppers both really easy and insanely difficult. You'll rarely find them on eBay, but when you do, they'll cost pennies. Figurative pennies, at least. Dollars, if you want to get literal. I hate you.

The back of the package contains an interesting fact, and one so wordy that I'm not even gonna attempt to paraphrase it: "Assuming there were no duplications in their work, one trillion people each working continuously for one trillion years could complete less than one one-billionth of the possible combinations offered by all 16 Socket Poppers characters."

Sounds a little fishy to me, but I guess I can't disprove it. I can't afford to spend the next trillion years creating Socket Poppers characters. Not when there are Doritos that taste like Mountain Dew to eat.

Okay, these are such old news by now, but new Doritos "The Quest" tortilla chips provide both a clunky product name and the chance to eat chips patterned after the fruity flavors of Mountain Dew. Without delving too deeply into the corresponding viral campaign (mainly because I cannot resonate tortilla chips having viral campaigns), chip-eaters from around the globe were invited to some wacky website to enter guesses as to "The Quest's" mystery flavor. Lo and behold, it's Mountain Dew.

I say with all confidence that those responsible for the campaign leaked the correct answer, because nobody --absolutely nobody-- would've ever guessed Mountain Fucking Dew as the flavor. These chips DO NOT taste like Mountain Dew, and I believe that to such a degree that I'm actually sitting here all preemptively appalled at any forthcoming comments from those of you ready to swear that you thought they did without already knowing that they were supposed to. YOU ARE LYING; we both know it.

If you want a truer sense of the flavor, picture mashing a box of Froot Loops up into dusty grains and pouring said grains into a bag of salty Doritos. Doesn't sound appetizing? Well, good, because these are decidedly repulsive, eaten more for the thrill of knowing that you're eating something inherently wrong than for, I dunno, underscoring network television with the steady crunching sounds of Dorito chewing. While I concede that the initial flavor shock quickly wears off and they end up being only a minor offense to society at large, I can't say that "The Quest" Doritos are any good.

And besides, didn't they just do this same exact concept with those X-13D cheeseburger chips? Et tu, Frito Lay?

I don't know why Dew-flavored Doritos are making me write so crankily. I suppose we all have our buttons.

When it comes to music, I'm an asshole. It's why you'll rarely find me writing about it. I have the worst taste in music in the entire history of people listening to other people making noises. Dead serious. Aside from having absolutely no knowledge, insight or opinion about the current music industry at large, what I do listen to is so heinous and embarrassing that I find myself shielding my iTouch screen from view whenever I'm flipping through playlists during my morning bus commute. Case in point: I don't think a day has gone by for over a year now that I haven't listened to the Freddy's Greatest Hits album...in full.

I'm not joking. I actually like the songs. And not in some harebrained "novelty" way. While it's true that I got a good laugh the first time I heard Robert Englund mixed in with a bunch of stock pop singers doing altered covers, I've come to honestly enjoy the album, much in the same way normal people enjoy normal music.

Freddy's Greatest Hits consists of nine songs performed by The Elm Street Group, which is really just a bunch of studio musicians competent enough to make songs with titles like "Do The Freddy" and "Down In The Boiler Room" not sound like the musical equivalent of frog ass. Englund is all over the album too, but he doesn't exactly "sing" -- he kinda just adds minute-long cackles here and there. Somehow, what should've been hilariously bad is actually hilariously decent, and though I don't expect to convert anyone since it takes about 80 listens to get to the point where you'll accept that this isn't complete and total shit, you can click here to hear the whole album and decide for yourself.

Uhhh, I was going to go a little longer on this entry, but I think that's enough for today. Back tomorrow. No, really, I will be.

Posted by Matt on 06/06/2008. E-mail me!