Hello Kitty Ekinaka

Shown above is the Hello Kitty Ekinaka phone strap collection. Ekinaka literally means ‘inside train stations’ and refers to retail shops inside rail stations where you can buy lunch or a snack. In fact to eat local Ekiden can be one of the most enjoyable things about your trip. Shown above are Kitty phone mascots which feature a boxed lunch, ice cream, and course green tea.

Schwarzenegger Shills for Cup o’ Noodles

Shown above is an old Nissin Foods commercial featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger enjoying a healthy helping of instant ramen after a musical work out. It’s funny no matter how much ramen I eat I never get muscles that look like that…

Christopher Lee’s Dracula Cape Found

It’s funny to think that people may have rented the cape in the past without knowing it’s cinematic history:

Lee’s Dracula cape found in store

“The original cape which was worn by actor Christopher Lee in the 1958 vampire film, Dracula, has been found in a London fancy dress store. The memorabilia, which has been missing for 30 years, is thought to be worth $50,000 (£24,410). Lee, who played the Count, was called upon to verify the cape was authentic after Angel’s staff discovered it.

Manager Emma Angel said she was “delighted” to have found the cloak during their annual stock take. “In the run-up to Halloween we are frantically checking our other costumes, so that we do not inadvertently let a party-goer show up to a raucous fancy dress party in any another precious pieces of film history,” she said.”

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An Interview with Leonard Maltin

There’s a great interview with author and film critic Leonard Maltin that’s worth checking out for anyone who loves cinema:

Tech Nation: Interview with Leonard Maltin

“Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with movie critic Leonard Maltin, who explains how movies have changed over the years, and how they’re changing today, all thanks to technology.”

…I’ve always admired Maltin as he’s very much an animation fanboy at heart, if you haven’t read it his book “Of Mice and Magic” is well worth checking out.

Toy2R Rolitoland Safari

The above photo (taken by Michael Rouah of artoyz.com) shows off the Toy2R Rolitoland Safari collection. The toys were designed by Rolito who is a French character designer who graduated from the School of Beautiful Arts then worked with Teamchman and Toy2R before starting Semper-Fi, a French design group with some friends.

Cable & Deadpool #46

Skott Young does it again! Every month I see the latest batch of cover art coming out and every month it seems I spot more great Skott art. This cover features a Roy Lichtenstein dot technique with a very cute drawing of the Fantastic Four hanging out with Spiderman.

Shatner: “I Don’t Do Cameos!”

This is heartbreaking! William Shatner has gone on record in the above video to state that he hasn’t been offered a role in the upcomig Star Trek film. If this was the good old days Star Trek fanboys (and fangurls) would flood Paramount with letters, petitions and even a few death threats demanding screen time for Shat. How can we go where no man has gone before without Shat on board the Enterprise?

I blame Star Trek: TNG for ruining the rabid nature of Trek fandom, I mean how can you care about anything when the Captain of the Enterprise is up there on the small screen sipping tea and singing Gilbert and Sullivan ditties? Sadly people care more about Ellen’s dog being snatched than poor old seadog Kirk. It just isn’t right! And don’t even get me started on those bastards not including Lindsey Wagner in the Bionic Woman remake, they deserve to have their ratings tank.

Catching Up With Logan’s Run!

It’s funny as a child of the 70s I remember the above cover of Dynamite magazine pretty well. Of course my favorite issue (which I left out in the rain by accident) was the one that featured a Space:1999 cover (but alas that’s a tale for another day).

This cover caught my eye as right now Hollywood is doing a remake of Logan’s Run. Now usually even the mention of the word “remake” would set me on edge as it would bring visions of some unoriginal Hollywood hack mining my childhood for ideas. However this cover made me take off my rose colored glasses and realize that how back in the day if a film that did well it might be followed up by a very bad TV show based upon on it. And the Logan’s Run TV show was about as bad as it got!

Just looking at those actors above and you can taste the cheesy flavor in your mouth. For starters they break the golden 70s rule that if you have one guy with black hair the other guy has to have blond hair. Every show from Starsky and Hutch to the Dukes of Hazzard followed this winning formula. And then you have the lady in the middle, it’s like they knew they couldn’t get Jessica Lang or Farrah Fawcett (who had a minor role in the film) so they figured “well let’s just give her a Farrah Fawcett haircut and maybe nobody will notice”. And what’s sad about the show is that while I can remember this magazine cover perfectly, I can’t recall even the slightest plot detail of a single episode — althought my bet is that I must have watched the entire series back in the day.

Yukan Club

Shown above are the opening titles to Yukan Club, a new Japanese comedy revolving around six wealthy high school students who solve mysteries and in their free time, and amuse themselves lavishly while doing it. The live action show is based on a manga that dates back to 1983 by Yukari Ichijo, which was then turned into an anime OVA title in 1991.

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Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space

I love the sense of scale in the illustration above cover for Tom Swift and His Outpost in Space from 1955 which I found thanks to the Flickr site of digital archivist Paula Wirth. The illustrator who did the cover is (it may be Graham Kaye who also did quite a bit of work for the Saturday Evening Post. I also come across this gem of a description of the book from the dust jacket:

“A space station 22,300 miles above the earth is Tom Swift Jr.’s latest project! Tom’s plans for his gigantic hub-and-spoke outpost of the universe calls for twelve laboratories. Solar batteries will be produced in one laboratory, another will be a celestial observatory, and another a radio broadcasting and TV station relaying programs over one third of the earth. But the project is beset from the start by a fiendish enemy, and also that weird phantom of outer space, Zero Gravity.”