C’mon Fwank

Every Monday, through the miracle of fiber optics, I guest on WPTS Radio’s morning show, where the hosts try very hard to stump me with a topic for a grandmother story. So far they have failed. But starting this week, immediately after finishing the interview, I’m gonna hop on here to give you an extended story based on the topic.

This week’s topic… PLAY-DOH.

My grandmother, like many well-meaning parents, bought me the Play-Doh Fun Factory… the kid-friendly guillotine that let you make many cool shapes and designs out of the dough. I would make her donuts–just like Maggie did for Homer–connecting several colors into a big ring. Speaking of rings, I also tried to make her what I had imagined would look like a diamond ring, but instead looked like moldy cauliflower. She wore it for an hour just to appease me.

Now for the bonus… My grandmother had a bad habit of buying me things I would easily ruin the carpet or the rest of the house with. Even some things she had no idea I would ruin her house with, I would ruin her house with. Scissors and glue were the two main culprits.

Every week when the Sunday paper would come out with all the ads for stores, she would give me the ads to gawk over while she read the rest. I would hurriedly go into my room and cut out all the logos from the grocery stores, department stores, and — unbeknownst to her — glue them to the walls of the main hallway. I was devising my own strip mall.

So, the time eventually came for us to move out of the house, and the day or so before she asked me to “close down my mall.” She came in to help me, and lo and behold the noise she made when she discovered I had been using glue and Scotch tape alternately.

“HUUUUUHHHH—-CHASEEDWARD!!!”

It’s always your middle name when the family’s angry with you.

It’s not really new news at this point. BUT, if you haven’t heard by now, 2009 is the 25th anniversary of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To celebrate, the powers who be are having a year-long “shell-ebration” to commemorate. Included in this, are rereleases of the original 1988 TMNT action figure line from Playmates toys.

Selected figures are being released on retro-style cards and for the most part, are pretty accurate. The cards are the most inaccurate part and it’s driving the die-hards crazy. You see, back in the day, each figure had its own unique card with only images of that character on it. Now, every figure has the same card with a collage of all the characters being released in this special anniversary edition on it. The character roster is as follows:

Wave 1
Leonardo
Raphael
Michaelangelo
Donatello

Wave 2
Bebop
Rocksteady
Splinter
April O’Neil

Wave 3
Shredder w/ Krang
Slash
Casey Jones
Foot Soldier

The figures are $8.99 each and at the time of me writing this at 11 pm on a random Saturday, the first two waves are out. I’m pretty happy with them. The uniform cards don’t bother me as much as having the TMNT 25th Anniversary logo on them does. And the fact that they come with DVDs, as if to say “HEY! This isn’t really from 1988 because it comes with a DVD.  A FREAKIN’ DVD!!”

Everything is pretty accurate when compared to the old ones. Truthfully, just seeing the old logo on the shelves again just makes me happy.  If you want ‘em though, get ‘em fast.  These things are FLYING off of the shelves.

For more information on Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles’ 25th Anniversary: www.tmnt25.com

Josh

PS - Happy 6 months Monica!
PSS - The Nick Studios Opening Day article is coming. Keep it real.