This generic knock off phenomena can be applied to movies as well, especially those that follow in the wake of a blockbuster fantasy or science fiction film. In the 80’s it was Star Wars and Conan the Barbarian, and I watched my fair share of derivative versions of both.

Recently I wrote about how fantasy author Robert E. Howard’s creation (Conan) inspired many, in bad ways as well as good. There are a lot of terrible, bizarre, hilarious and simply “just good enough” films that followed in the wake of Conan the Barbarian. Some carved out a place of their own in cult movie fandom, some are simply film equivalents to dollar store toys like the Tolkien-inspired King of the Magical Jewels.

You can’t blame Howard either. The man had been dead for about 50 years by the time the film adaptation of Conan the Barbarian released in 1982. It took place in the world of Hyboria, borrowed  elements from some of his stories and had the visual flair of Frank Frazetta’s Conan illustrations. Still, the film was its own creature. It was an introduction to Arnold Schwarzenegger with a vicious dose of Nietzsche philosophy, courtesy of director John Milius and then-unknown writer Oliver Stone.

The film had lots of bare skin, swords, gore and a wizard or two thrown in for good measure – the same ingredients for the knock offs that followed. Conan itself was basically an exploitation film in its own right, just not as exploitative as what was to come.

As a kid I remember the Beastmaster movies, WPIX channel 11 staple The Sword and The Sorcerer, an unintentionally hilarious Hercules film starring Lou Ferrigno (who fights a robot dragon and in one scene as well as throwing a bear into outer space), Red Sonja, starring future reality show mess Brigitte Nielsen and a non-Conan Arnold playing a different barbarian and of course Dolph Lundgren’s Masters of the Universe movie.

What I didn’t get around to until I started researching the topic were films like the Deathstalker series (with all of its sequels and spinoffs) and bottom of the barrel C-movies like Ator, The Fighting Eagle and Conquest, a fantasy film by Italian horror director Lucio Fulci.

This is probably due to the fact that most of these films were too gore and sex-ridden for me to watch in my pre-teens. Thanks to the internet, Netflix streaming, and limited edition DVDs I can finally “enjoy” them. They’re all fun to a degree, but unfortunately (due to a variety of factors like budget and lack of ideas) the bad ones tend to come to a grinding halt at some point halfway through. Fortunately when things start to lag the best of these movies will throw in gratuitous nudity or ridiculous puppets and gore.

That said, few things piss me off more than when fantasy movies would take the action to earth or the modern day due to a small budget. I saw Masters of the Universe back in the day and was so pissed when the action shifted from Eternia to Earth within the first ten minutes. For the rest of the movie He-Man and his crew were eating fried chicken and fighting stormtroopers in a keyboard shop.

Ditto Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time, which makes the earthbound adventures of He-Man seem like Blade Runner. At the time the concept of budget eluded me, so the forced scripting reasons for these changes were just silly, even if there is some hilarity to be taken from this scenario.

Ator and Conquest are Italian films meant specifically as cash-ins on Conan the Barbarian. There are many, many more, but that’s another topic entirely. Ridiculously slow pacing, bad voice overdubs and acting, low budget monsters and special effects, bad fight choreography and convoluted plots are the order of the day here.

In Conquest a very Link-like hero sets off on a quest with his big Italian barbarian friend to free their land from an evil sorceress. This sorceress is topless (wearing only underwear) and dons a Destro-like gold mask for the entire film. While Conquest is a fun novelty for Lucio Fulci fans, it can’t maintain its pacing throughout. (It picks up a little bit towards the end when a demon robot shows up ­– not kidding.) Like many Fulci horror films it features an ample supply of nudity and gore, which is unfortunately utilized in this case to distract from the lack of anything happening.

Ator fares much worse. It’s for fans of bad movies only – sluggish pacing, an anti-climax and a lack of abundant gore and nudity does it no favors. Nevertheless, the plot follows Ator (played by C-movie veteran Miles O’Keefe) must go on a quest to rescue his bride (and sorta sister) from the villainous High Priest of the Spider.

He is joined by an Amazon thief along the way and learns the martial arts. Despite this it remains surprisingly boring, with the sole highlight of the movie being Ator’s cute black bear cub sidekick that follows him around everywhere.

Ator managed to spin off into a series of sequels, although really just in name only. Ator III: The Hobgoblin is notable for featuring a companion for Ator who wears the laughably awful Troll costume from midnight movie “classic” Troll 2. In German Ator III is even called Troll 3, as Deutschland seems to have invested more value in the Troll franchise than Ator’s plodding adventures.

It’s interesting to note that Conan the Barbarian only has one official sequel with Arnie to date, Conan the Destroyer. This film manages to resemble the Conan knock-off movies more than the original film. (Meanwhile, due to lack of concern about budget, a lot of knock-offs themselves have about four or five sequels.)

This includes the Argentine-American Deathstalker series, produced by longtime b-and-c-movie collaborator Roger Corman. Out of these the first Deathstalker is legitimate trashy fun, with the first Beastmaster and Sword and the Sorcerer being the only movies to best It as far as budget fantasy films go. It’s not a great movie by any means, but manages to be escapist entertainment while embracing its identity rather than pretending to be anything better.

The giant blonde Deathstalker sets out on his quest and meets a puppet ghoul who he transforms into a guy who looks like Elliot Gould, another warrior who is going to a fighting tournament held by an evil wizard and an eternally topless woman warrior. It’s a mess of enjoyable cuts stuffed with naked people, blood, puppets, and a villain who looks like a character from Mortal Kombat. There’s even a pig man thrown in for good measure.

Deathstalker II and Barbarian Queen, on the other hand, are just bad movies. Deathstalker II is basically a poor man’s version of Kevin Sorbo’s infamous Hercules tv series, with boobs and somehow worse special effects (it literally recycles scenes from the first film). While the unintentional humor of Deathstalker is priceless, this film tries to wink at you the entire time (with two leads that look like teenagers who were plucked from the local arcade). If there’s anything I can say in its favor it at least manages to be light, the lead actors are charismatic, making it less offensive than Barbarian Queen.

A movie that manages to lose steam like its Italian counterparts – even sooner, no less – Barbarian Queen features Lana Clarkson (that’d be the eternally topless woman warrior from the original Deathstalker) as, you guessed it, a barbarian queen. Together with her sister and two friends, the queen must save their fellow imprisoned villagers from an evil guy. (For once he’s not a wizard.)

That’s about the only thing I can get excited about in regards to this movie. There’s not even a barely charismatic actor or actress to latch onto, so you’re basically just watching a bunch of random people wearing reused costumes and running around on the reused sets from the first Deathstalker. That Roger Corman knew how to save a buck or two!

Though the idea of watching a lot of ridiculous low-budget fantasy movies I missed as a kid seemed exciting at first, I’ve now watched enough dollar store knock-offs that I can stand to take a break. While I would not recommend most of these to the average viewer, I would say that genre fans and fans of bad movies will love Deathstalker. Even Deathstalker II will entertain some.  Fans of Lucio Fulci and Italian exploitation should check out Conquest.  Unless you’re a completist or a glutton for punishment like myself then stay away from the other films.

There is a rise in fantasy and Sword and Sandal shows on TV. Despite being based on books, mythology, and historical sources there’s no denying a borrowing of the aesthetic of some of Conan the Barbarian and its bastard offspring in shows like Game of Thrones, Spartacus, and Vikings to name a few. Not to mention the continuing influence on books, comics, video games, and movies.

It will be interesting to see how the influence of outside-of-the-box films – rented based on the outrageous and totally misleading covers of various VHS boxes by kids of the ‘70s and ‘80s – will influence all media in the years to come. If anything they will always exist to be marveled and laughed at, like that random Spader-Man figure you find in a box in the attic.

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This time of year – every year – the winter doldrums stalk me like a hideous monster, pawing and clawing at me till I’m battered, bruised and bloody.

While I do everything I can to ward it off, from Broadway shows to Vitamin D pills, few things actually work.

But I do have two steadfast allies: a disembodied neon orange bear head – and eBay.

The disembodied neon orange bear head is from the cover of my favorite record of all time, R.E.M.’s unfairly maligned 1994 fuzzed-out rock album Monster, and eBay is the bidding site I use to get every last bit of Warner Bros. promotional material that features it.

To date, I have collected:

• Two sets of Monster bear head cardboard drink coasters.

• A Monster bear head vinyl record store sticker, which is affixed to my front window and is the first thing you see when you approach my apartment.

• A Monster bear head tie pin.

• A hockey jersey with a Monster bear head on it.

• Not one, but two four-foot-tall blow-up Monster punching bags. (These prized possessions not only feature the bear head – originally designed, incidentally, by the Tilly Balloon Company before being lovingly repurposed by R.E.M. via a blurry photograph by artist Chris Bilheimer – but also a computer-generated bear body that the band created to fit the head. I spied one of these “bop bags” at Wuxtry Records in Athens, Ga., the record store where Michael Stipe first met Peter Buck, and for a time it became my holy grail.)

• A purple Monster bear head balloon, complete with orange cartoon feet intended to serve as a stand.

• A poorly Photoshopped copy of the album cover with MATTSTER keyed in where MONSTER should be. Hint to Unwinnable eds.: Make a better one – or wow me with something even more creative – and you will once again earn my undying devotion (and upstage my writing).

• Various other Monster bear head-related items, from Monster on vinyl, LP singles and special editions, Monster tour programs, T-shirts, magnets, calendars and bootlegs, and even multiple copies of Monster on CD. I dream of one day turning a thousand Monster CDs into a coffee table, or some similar furniture item, when I am knee-deep in a midlife crisis and am granted a Man Cave by my future significant other.

• At least one other Monster bear head-related item I’m embarrassed to admit to owning in this column.

• And my latest acquisition, an actual Monster bear head mask, which I wore last week to freak out my little sister on a Skype chat.

Just about the only thing I don’t have? A Monster bear head tattoo, something I’ve been debating with myself about getting since I was 16 years old.

I am not a tattoo guy. I am not a pain guy, either. And I’ve seen far too many tattoo nightmares and misspellings at Lamebook.com to trust any tattoo artist, with even the most glowing of Yelp reviews.

And yet part of me believes that one winter, as another dark, dreary, endless tundra spreads itself before me, I will walk into a tattooist’s with one of my Monster bear head promo items, perhaps the largest and brightest to provide the best possible example, and demand to have it stamped somewhere on my body, permanently.

Until that day comes, there is eBay, and that long-ago era when record companies actually promoted music with collectible swag. Ensuring that, someday, people could buy it, decorate their apartments with it, and try to remember a time when the sun was shining a little bit brighter.

———

In 2011, Matt Marrone threw R.E.M. a funeral. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.

[Editor's Note: Ask and ye shall receive, Mattster.]

My favorite of the Power Records series was Batman: Stacked Cards. It’s a Batman story in which the Joker steals a Picasso painting and it’s up to Batman and Robin to get it back. I would study the comic and follow along with the record for what seemed like years. I pored over every panel once I’d memorized the story. Sure, I’d seen the reruns of the 1966 Batman TV series, but this was the first time, in my conscious memory at least, that Batman captured my imagination.

And thus began my love affair with comics.

Growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s was one of the best times to be a kid. Of course, I’m a wee bit biased. However, we had all that came before (Dennis The Menace reruns, Planet of the Apes on TV, the aforementioned Batman ’66 reruns) and we had some of the best new stuff ­– the 1980s was the decade that gave us the Star Wars sequels, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, G.I. Joe, Jem, Spider-Man & His Amazing Friends, Super Powers toys, Secret Wars toys, Pac-Man, Alf, Ghostbusters, the good Back To The Future movie and a whole mess of other fun stuff. All of it was akin to the kids of the 1970s getting Shogun Warriors, ROM, Mego dolls and Star Trek phasers. However, there was one item that built a rift between American kids growing up before 1985 and those born after. It was a box that often didn’t work so well after about six months of use. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The NES was something of a playtime dynamo for my generation. Before its release, we ’80s indoor kids, like the generation before us, were raised on a steady diet of movies, cartoons and comic books. We’d play card games or board games like Clue or Hungry, Hungry Hippos. In the nicer weather, we’d venture outside and play games like kickball or hide-and-go-seek. Heck, I played baseball in my town’s Little League. My favorite hobby was reading comic books, though.

While the NES revolution was beginning, my parents were hesitant to spend so much money ($100.00) on what they thought was a fad. I was, however, allowed to read copious amounts of comic books. The first books I’d convince my parents to buy me were Batman, G.I. Joe and Transformers comics. I’d also get the occasional Marvel Team-Up as it tended to feature Spider-Man and another Marvel superhero. This eventually led to me getting old Conan The Barbarian, Amazing Spider-Man, Justice League of America, Incredible Hulk and Uncanny X-Men comics from the flea market quarter bins. While my peers (and some friends) were looking for Warp Zones, shooting ducks and collecting equilateral triangles, I was learning about the Hyborian Age, Multiple Earths and a group of strange teenagers tasked with protecting a world that fears and hates them.

As much as I loved comics, I did enjoy going to a friend’s house and playing Super Mario Brothers, Duck Hunt and Contra. Time went on and my parents were less and less opposed to owning an NES, but it still cost a hundred beans and the games were fifty bucks a pop. Also, they still thought, once I had it, I’d lose interest in a few months anyway. I mean, I was lobbying them to buy me a VHS of Transformers The Movie at the time too, and that thing cost $90.00!

So, they decided to teach me a lesson in finance. If I could save up $100.00, they would pay the sales tax and buy me any game I wanted. Over the course of a year, I saved up a dollar or two a week of allowance money (5 bucks a week). I’d collect loose change I found in couch cushions and behind dressers. I saved up birthday money. And then finally, I got money when I made my first communion. The following weekend, we went to Crazy Eddie and I was the proud owner of a Nintendo Entertainment System. The game my folks bought me? Top Gun (Crazy Eddie had an abysmal game selection).

I played Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt like a crack fiend in an unguarded police evidence locker. Top Gun sucked. I could never get the hang of refueling the damn plane in midair. I tried for weeks though. But, as the months passed, it turned out my parents were at least partially right. When it came to playing videogames solo, I lost interest pretty quickly. I’d play the NES whenever friends came over. RBI Baseball and RC Pro Am were great to play with friends. But playing solo? The only two NES games that caught my attention were Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest and Maniac Mansion. Every other single player game bored me to tears (literally, in the case of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?).

About a year after I got the NES, I picked two comics at the local 7-11 that furthered my love of superhero comics – The Mighty Thor # 390 and Uncanny X-Men # 227. In Thor, Seth invades Asgard and it’s up to Thor and his Avengers pals (who guest-starred) to put the kibosh on his plans. A battle ensues and Seth is able to separate Thor from his hammer, Mjolnir. As Seth beats on the thunder god, Steve Rogers, The Captain (he was stripped of the Captain America mantle at the time in favor of an ultraconservative nut job named Superpatriot), dove towards the hammer only to be attacked by dozens of Seth’s soldiers. And like the inscription on the mighty Mjolnir says, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” And oh boy, was the once and future Captain America worthy! The splash page where Cap lifts Mjolnir and smashes all of Seth’s soldiers into the air is still one of my all-time favorite comic pages.

Uncanny X-Men # 227 is a gut-wrenching comic. The X-Men are in Dallas, fighting to save a weird-alien-magic-something or other woman named Roma from a near-omnipotent enemy known as The Adversary. The X-Men, realizing they had no hope of physically besting the monster, go metaphysical and beat the agent of chaos with their combined life forces. After supposedly sacrificing themselves, Roma resurrects the X-Men. But what really struck me was when Havok says that as far as the world is concerned, the X-Men should stay dead; that they should work behind the scenes, taking the fight to their enemies while simultaneously protecting their loved ones from any retribution. The concept blew my 8-year-old mind.

Storytelling in Nintendo’s 1980s games was pretty thin. The way I saw it (and still see it, now that I think about it), if I was going to devote hours of solo time to a hobby, I wanted to be able to learn from it, to study it, to be challenged beyond simply timing a jump. I guess that’s why I dug Castlevania II and Maniac Mansion so much – they had inherently strong stories. I didn’t have a lot of friends in those days, so I subconsciously assigned the fun I had with games to the times I got to play them with the few friends I had. I loved (and still love) playing games with friends (OK, friends in the same room as me), but sitting alone and spending hours crawling through dungeons and trying to assemble the Tri-Force? Honestly, that was supremely boring.

And so, I became the comic book kid in a sea of budding gamers. In grammar school, that made me an outcast among the outcasts.

To be continued…

———

Ian Gonzales is quoted as saying the Internet was a fad in 1995. See what else he has to say on Twitter at @IanGonzales.

Best Super Hero in Four Inches
In a scale ruled by G.I. Joe, Hasbro shrunk the heroes and villains of Marvel Universe to four inches and has put out a ton of great figures over the last few years. This honor can go to Ghost Rider or Thanos or even some of the two packs, but it’s difficult to pick just one. I have to give a special mention to their play sets. Year 1 had a talking Sentinel that was huge in comparison to the regular figures, year 2 gave us a large Galactus who almost nabbed Toy of the Year and year 3 brought the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier from The Avengers. This is  the next best thing to a modern equivalent of the G.I. Joe aircraft carrier as it measures 3 feet long!

Best Reanimated Robot in Six Inches
As much as I would have picked The Walking Dead again, their figures, while they look great, didn’t seem as groundbreaking as the first run, so this goes to the Transformer Cliffjumper. As Ian said to me in an email, “They may have killed him in the show, but you can’t keep a bot voiced by Casey Kasem and the Rock down.” So true. Cliffjumper the toy is modeled after a 1970 Dodge Challenger and, when transformed, looks closer to his cartoon counterpart than I’ve ever seen on a Transformer figure.

Best Judge, Jury and Executioner in Eight Inches
I really liked NECA’s Jason from Friday the 13th. They produced a number of different versions this year like The Final Chapter version complete with machete gash, but in the end, I agree with Ian’s pick. He chose NECA’s RoboCop figure and for good reason. Not only is this possibly the best looking RoboCop figure to date but it has a special feature that can’t be overlooked. His right thigh actually opens to reveal his Auto 9. How cool is that?

Best Mad Scientist in 12 Inches
Over the vast array of 1/6th scale figures released over the year, there is one standout. Ian made a valiant fight for Hot Toys Jack Nicholson Joker. Between the likeness and all the accessories, its hard not to pick it, but I chose another Hot Toy release: Iron Monger. It’s not the coolest character in the world, but the massive size, light up effects and detail forced my hand. This beast is 17.5 inches tall, has light up repulsers, ARC reactor and eyes and has an opening chest that reveals Obadiah Stane. It wasn’t a photo with all his weapons blaring that got me, it was a photo of the Monger holding up an Iron Man figure by the head that sold me on the sheer awesomeness of this monster.

Best MacGuffin Device Prop/Replica
NECA wins again with the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. While I am not a Portal fan, I know many a member of Team Unwinnable is. If nothing else, most of us would love to have one of these at home or the office so that they can open up a portal and be gone. NECA did an outstanding job ripping this device right out of the game and into our hands.

Best SDCC/NYCC Exclusive
It’s no surprise that Ian and I would both vote for the Shockwave deco H.I.S.S. with Constructicon colored B.A.T. as the best convention exclusive. We both voted for the Starscream Skystriker last year and we are both fans of G.I. Joe and Transformers. I think both toys are the best examples of a toy based on a crossover. Like the Skystriker, it comes in a comic book box and also includes Destro, Energon cubes and a boom box with 3 cassettes (Soundwave anyone?).

Toy of the Year 2012
Up until a few days ago I didn’t have a Toy of the Year. That is, until I logged into Instagram and saw something amazing: some of Team Uwinnable ventured out to at midnight on Christmas Eve to see the shopping chaos and discovered the Toys R Us exclusive Millennium Falcon (creepily modeled by Chuck Moran on the right). It is wrapped in the vintage Kenner packaging but is much different than the one my brother and I got on Christmas in 1979. The modern version is ridiculously loaded with details, lights and sounds: light-up cockpit, medical bay, secret compartments, auto-opening ramp, light-up Dejarik table, missile firing weapons and a mini fighter. Whew, its chock loaded with features to explore and, at $249.99, it better be.

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Follow @Kursse for Toy Fair 2013 updates and a look out his new video series, “It Came From the Vault.” Special thanks to Ian Gonzales for some last minute inspiration. For comic and toy talk, find him @IanGonzales on Twitter. Photo of Chuck by Stu Horvath.

Last year, we picked up a board game called Heroica, by Lego. You probably knew that Lego has gotten its hooks into videogames, such as Lego Star Wars or Lego Batman. They also have a line of board games, which are much more creative. First you need to assemble the board and the pieces and then you play – and once you’ve played, you’re encouraged to change the game by rearranging the board, making up new rule and rebalancing the scoring. The manual even gives you practical tips: Take chances. Fail fast. Change one thing, test it out and see if it makes the game more fun. As a graduate of Marc LeBlanc’s two-day game design workshop, I admired how the team at Lego had pared down an entire practice into language that small kids could understand.

The Heroica games (so far there are five) are very, very simple tabletop dungeon crawls. A genre that can spawn months-long campaigns with marked-up character sheets and half a dozen sizes of dice is boiled down to something that you can finish in ten minutes with a second-grader. In the basic rules, your only job is to get from the start of the board to the end, working through obstacles like gates and rock slides that block your way, meanwhile snagging items (gold, potions) that will help you. You can battle monsters, but even if they kill you, you can just roll yourself back to life in two or three turns, and then you’re back in the game ­­– which means you’re now chasing your friends as they try to get to the goal.

What you have, in other words, is Candyland with monsters. My kid and I grew bored with it, so we took the next step: we started changing the rules. First came the simple tweaks. We gave the boss more health, and we decided that killing a monster would earn you a piece of gold (that’s how basic this game is: it has no concept of “loot”). This gave us a risk-reward system, where taking a chance against the monsters gave you the opportunity to earn money toward a cool new weapon. Now the game was a little less primitive, but it didn’t make it more fun, so we turned it into a co-operative game, where we were both on the same team ­­­– defending each other, healing each other, and fighting together against the board.

But the board didn’t fight back very hard. So we kept adding rules to spice it up. At this point, my design veered wildly away from my kid’s. I started introducing concepts like “permadeath,” and working out random monster movements, and juicing the loot, and rethinking the boss fights. I was making the game more and more complicated as I tried to find a way to make it satisfying.

Meanwhile, he came up with a series of goofy and impractical ideas, and about one out of three was really good. For example, he suggested that instead of just fighting the monsters that roam the board, players might get attacked by the bushes and the trees.  He also recruited his bonkers Ninjago ice dragon as a final boss, placing it at the end of the trail where it could loom over the rest of the set.

Over time, as the sets get mixed in with the rest of his Legos, they’ve devolved from a game to a toy. The kid breaks up the paths and rearranges them for epic toy wars. The goblins pile onto a lunar rover. The heroes tell stories without any dice, but the remnants of the game – the idea of bosses and treasures and character progression, and loot – still hang around, and I overhear them as he plays out one scenario after another.

I can’t expect him to stay in this middle ground between toys and games for long – where he’s happy to take or leave the rules so long as he gets to play. But there is one profession where that kind of thinking pays off – where changing, reinventing, and dropping the rules is an actual, pay-the-bills skill. That job, naturally, is game designer, and I’m really tempted to steer him into it. That way, he’ll never have to grow up.

———Chris Dahlen has lots of adventures with his kid on Twitter @savetherobot.

In 1964, a Canadian scholar named Marshall McLuhan came up with the idea that “the media is the message” – simply put, it’s just as important to study the way content is delivered, and not just the content itself, to get the whole picture. He also came up with the theory of hot and cold media: all media can be ranked on a scale, from hot to cold, based on the amount of interaction required to take in its content. (Cooler media are considered lower resolution, and require more than one sense to process. Hotter media have a higher resolution, and require fewer senses to enjoy.)

Take a radio program, considered a hot medium, compared to a novel, which is decidedly cool. When you read a novel, you have to parse the text, visualize the content, and voice the characters internally in order to get the full experience. A radio program delivers the text to you audibly and gives the characters voice, leaving you with the sole task of letting the words enter your ear holes while your brain weaves the tapestry of events.

Of course, the hot/cool scale is relative and dynamic. A radio program is hotter than a novel, but a movie is much hotter than both of them, as it removes the visualization aspect entirely and requires even less effort from the viewer.

I once posited that this hot/cool scale could also apply to different pieces of content within a specific medium. Take videogames as an example. You could argue that movies are hotter than videogames, as players have to take an active role in progressing the story and action as opposed to passively letting a movie do the work for them. Regardless, games are still hotter than most media. But within the realm of videogames, there’s a drastic temperature range, from text-based adventures that require as much, if not more effort than a novel to enjoy, to QT-laden titles like Asura’s Wrath that require little player input to advance.

Every medium, including toys, has its own internal scale. Back in the early 1900s, when dinosaurs and great-grandfathers roamed the earth, toys were simple. A wooden horse came with no personality or poseability. It was up to you, the participating child, to move the horse around, make neighing sounds, and decide what kind of horse it was. In the 1960s, Action Man figures, though lacking backstory, were detailed enough to take some of the load off of children’s imaginations.

Then came Star Wars, and from there, everything changed. Star Wars provided us with figures that required less imagination than ever. Kid, this isn’t a random soldier you’re holding. This is Luke Skywalker. He comes with a whole backstory, a voice provided by the films, and lots of awkward feelings towards his sister. All you need to do is decide what crazy adventure to send Luke on. From G.I. Joe to today’s movie and television tie-in figure lines, all modern toy lines now come with their own prepackaged personalities. Imagine a setting, and off you go. The character development is already handled.

Skylanders takes the trend a step further. Not only do these little guys come with their own histories, voices, and mannerisms, you don’t even have to physically interact with them aside from placing them on a glowing surface. No more banging two figures together to simulate fighting. Place them on the table and mash on A to watch them stream fire and hurl rocks at their enemies. Want them to move? Don’t pick them up! Use the controller to guide their fully animated forms across a vividly colored landscape that you didn’t even have to imagine as you’re taken through a story that you didn’t have to create with your own lobes.

Essentially, Skylanders figures remove visualization and direct contact from the experience of playing with toys altogether. As I stated earlier, this could have an effect on the development of our next generation’s imaginations. Nobody would blame you for thinking that Skylanders is lazy, requiring no interaction, and could lead to lazy minds. Your brain is a muscle. If you don’t exercise it, it atrophies over time. Hot media, then, wouldn’t push the mind as hard as cold media, and since Skylanders is hot, it must be killing our children, right?

But what if removing visualization from the act of playing with toys by blending them with games could actually benefit a developing child’s imagination? Based on my personal experiences growing up with games and hot toys, it definitely seems possible.

I’ve taken aptitude tests my entire life. Sometimes they came from my teachers; others I performed independently out of curiosity. No matter what, the results always came back the same. On a general one-to-ten scale, I always found that I ranked nine or ten out of ten in every single aptitude category save one: spatial relations, and by extension visualization, are my kryptonite.

Tell me to walk five feet, and I’ll have to think hard about how far that actually is. Tell me to picture a cube, and I’ll construct a shaky, hard-to-maintain outline in my mind that I can’t adjust in my mind’s eye without destroying it. Even failing to concentrate causes it to vanish. It’s been an issue my whole life, and it makes playing Professor Layton games something of a personal embarrassment.

Growing up, I had a hard time developing my imagination during play, not because my toys were too hot, but because I couldn’t visualize things for them that weren’t physically there. All of their voices were mine. Their battlegrounds were always my bed and floor, because I just couldn’t picture a pile of blankets as a mountain the way my friends could. I started to think that I would never develop my own sense of creativity and imagination.

When I was in the first grade, we had the opportunity to use our newfound writing skills to craft our own stories, and some of the really cool sixth graders would illustrate them for us. This is where I first found my knack for writing, and while most of my classmates got their token tale bound with cardboard for their shelves at home, I ended up with about half a dozen stories. My parents still have them. (Parents love hoarding embarrassing reminders of their children’s formative years.)

The trick with those stories was taking concepts and places I had seen in movies and video games and shaping them to my needs. My first story was about a turtle travelling to see his relatives; it followed the basic plot and structure of Pitfall. Later, I wrote a story inspired loosely by Pac-Man. It was about a brave armadillo with a sword, shredding ghosts for his somnambulist spider roommate. With that story, I threw in a little Swordquest for good measure ­– it was my first attempt to blend my game experiences together into a unique story.

The tales were a bit derivative, but this is where my imagination began to grow. Games and movies served as visual, concrete examples of places, people, and things that could exist, and helped to kick-start my little mind. These were things I could see and study and commit to memory, so that when it came time to create my own worlds and characters, I could use what I had seen as a framework. Like a sculptor using scaffolding to surround and gain access to a large piece of marble, these tropes elevated me. Once the work was done, the scaffolding fell away, leaving me with unique creations that, over time, resembled their inspirations less and less.

Skylanders figures may not provoke use of imagination directly, but they have every opportunity to inspire a new generation of thinkers by giving them worlds to draw on when creating their own fiction. Not everyone can start their lives reading War and Peace. Think of Skylanders as training wheels. Kids will (hopefully) end up creating their own worlds around them; when an entertainment property becomes this successful, it’s inevitable. Over time, as they become more comfortable riding on their own, they just might discard those training wheels, taking the balance and confidence they gained from having them to help them pedal towards their own creative ideas.

The only real danger that Skylanders poses, aside from wallet drain, is if the training wheels never come off. If the figures, and whatever follows them, fail to inspire young minds in the way I was inspired by the media I explored in the ‘80s, they may become attached to them and never grow.

That may not become an issue. Even as a cynical 30-year old gamer, I’m still charmed by the personalities and range of environments that Skylanders offers. The design is rudimentary, sure, but there are some genuinely creative character designs at play here, and some great messages within each figure’s unique story. If I had Skylanders when I was a kid, my own stories would have developed quite differently. There’s a greater well for children to draw upon in creating their own fiction than there ever was before, and those waters are only going to run deeper. So long as we encourage our youth to dig their own wells, and not stay in stagnant waters, I don’t believe that there’s any harm in letting our toys play with us.

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Visualize Mike Rousseau’s tweets @mikerousseau.

I’m going to go alphabetically and start with AFX or Action Figure Xpress. They have a few statues and Minimates, but two of their exclusives caught my eye. I mentioned earlier this year that Peavey was in attendance at Toy Fair, showing off their Marvel deco guitars featuring superheroes. AFX will have a limited Peavey Spider-Man Rockmaster guitar with artwork that hearkens back to the McFarlane days. Also of interest is the Masters of the Universe Power Sword letter opener.

DKE Toys, which seems to produce a lot of art vinyl, has a special SDCC Slender Man that could appeal to Unwinnable’s very own Matt Marrone. They also have a figure named “The Toy Whose Name We Cannot Speak” by Suckadelic, which resembles WCW wrestler the Shockmaster. It looks like a He-Man body with what appears to be a stormtrooper head cast in pink plastic. He is going for $150 and only nine are available. DKE will be releasing different figures every day, so be sure to stop by their booth.

Entertainment Earth is one of the largest online toy and collectible distributors. They have quite a number of exclusives that can be ordered through their website should you not be in San Diego for the event. I’m digging the Six Million Dollar Man‘s Dr. Rudy Wells, which comes with a tin briefcase that is painted to look like Oscar Goldman’s exploding briefcase. A favorite amongst Unwinnable and our friends has to be the Doctor Who TARDIS Tin Tote Gift Set, which will sell for $24.99. It’s a tin lunchbox with travel mug and coaster set. Every time traveler on the go is going to need one of these.

Gentle Giant has some nice offerings as well, with a rad Mars Attacks! bust, McQuarrie Stormtrooper mini bust and a large-scale, vintage Kenner mold Blue Snaggletooth.

Hasbro has some real showstoppers this time around and gets the nod from me for best exclusives of the show. First off is the Star Wars 7-Pack that comes in Kenner’s “lost” line packaging. The set is boxed in a carbonite chamber and features a carded Jar Jar Binks in carbonite that rises from its center. They also have the Derpy Hooves figure from My Little Pony, Hollywood Jem from the defunct Jem line and a zombie Cliffjumper and deluxe Bruticus combiner from Transformers. Representing The Avengers is the special edition 4′ Helicarrier. This piece looks pretty awesome, and I would have given this toy of the show had I not seen the next item. Hasbro is following up last year’s awesome G.I. Joe exclusive with a Shockwave-Deco HISS Tank featuring a purple Destro, dayglo Bat, accessories and a mini Soundwave with cassettes. What an impressive set next to last year’s crossover.

Mattel will have some Batman: The Dark Knight Rises figures, a He-Man exclusive and even a Hot Wheels K.I.T.T.

Sideshow Collectibles has two members of the Bith Band from their Star Wars line, as well as Commander Fox. They are also releasing Lt. Falcon from their G.I. Joe line. While it’s not a groundbreaking character, I think it’s much better than last year’s reclothed ninja figure. Their standout has to be the Hot Toys’ Rescue Captain America, who dons his WWII outfit and has his original shield.

Toys “R” Us will be in the house (available at the Entertainment Earth booth) with an Adventure Time Finn and Fiona set, all four 10 1/2″ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (which will be sold individually for $30 or $100 as a set), My Little Pony Zecora and a Marvel Universe X-Factor box set.

There are plenty more exclusives available. Check out the SDCC site for more information.

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What’s your favorite SDCC exclusive? Let the Toy Hunter know on Twitter @Kursse.

My first pick is one that I personally used in many childhood battles. In 1981, we were treated to a movie of mythological proportions named Clash of the Titans, which resulted in a basic toy line complete with an articulated Kraken. While the Kraken is a beautiful specimen, my choice for mythological gangsta has to be Calibos. Early in the movie, he is transformed into a goat-like man beast and, after losing a hand, he mounts a trident to his arm. Although the action figure doesn’t feature the trident, it does have a demonic look to him which seals the deal for me. Who wouldn’t want him to lead their army into battle?

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Before the Transformers rolled around, there were the Micronauts. Ranging in size from 3 3/4 to 20 inches high, they were clear plastic androids that had a great deal of articulation for a toy of the 1970s. Some of the crazy Micronauts vehicles had interchangeable parts, which truly made it a toy line ahead of its time. This brings me to the menacing Baron Karza. The figure is about 6 inches tall and has magnetic points at the shoulders, hips and neck, which allow one to reposition his limbs or insert weapons into the sockets. He also had a deadly action feature that would be abandoned in the ’80s – a chokingly hazardous abdomen firing rocket! Baron Karza came packed with a black steed that also had magnetic joints, which enabled one to concoct a hellish robotic centaur.

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Marvel and DC have been at war for a long time, even when it comes to toys. I loved my Secret Wars action figures back in the day, but I also had most of the DC Super Powers action figures. I really want to give the honor to Darkseid. He is blue, mean and is a bigger badass than Marvel’s Apocalypse, Thanos and Mister Sinister combined. But my main pick is actually Brainiac. In a relatively colorful line, the figure features a plain metallic finish and is the first robotic version of the character. Plus, his brain is exposed! This line had some great villains, but Brainiac went from a green Martian to a Terminator-inspiring beastly robot.

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Since my brother is seven years older than me, I got to play with many toys from the ’60s, like Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, Evel Knievel and many more. While digging for old figures online, I remembered a freaky villain called Maskatron. This villain from The Six Million Dollar Man toy line looks quite evil. If you’ve ever seen the movie Westworld, then you might understand where the inspiration for this figure comes from. The toy itself has three masks: one of Oscar Goldman, one of Steve Austin and a face for Maskatron. The figure also has two arm attachments: grip and suction. The weirdest part has to be that all his limbs are removable. The face is pretty frightening without his mask, but if you braved Yule Brynner’s robotic Westworld look, then Maskatron’s is actually pretty cool.

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The concept of Transformers alone was amazing to witness as a kid, but my standout villain from the line is Megatron. Everybody else is a vehicle, but this guy gets to be a gun (and not just any gun, but a Walther P-38 with stock, scope and barrel extension – a direct homage to The Man from U.N.C.L.E). I like the Microman Generation 1 version a little better, for he looked closer to his cel-colored counterpart. Megatron’s transformed body was much boxier and had beefed-up legs. The Hasbro G1 Megatron has a wider torso with thin, flimsy legs, thus making it extremely hard to pose. However, they made up for that with the look and detail of the gun mode. Also, the Microman Megatron fires pellets – a feature that was removed from the American version.

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Of course, I have to mention G.I. Joe. The 25th Anniversary/Modern Edition line is especially chock-full of Cobras. The honor of best villain toy, however, goes to Cobra Commander. I don’t think any character in any toy line has so many versions available. The Commander’s 3 3/4 inch figures top off at 50 versions, not to mention the 2 inch, 3 inch, 8 inch and 12 inch versions. I bet there are at least 70 Cobra Commander figures available (and the number is rising).

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I’m sure some people will freak out if I don’t mention Darth Vader. There, I mentioned him. Actually I didn’t want to pick Vader for the fact that he is one of the most iconic villains in the history of media. His Kenner version doesn’t do the justice of the modern interpretations, and most of my list is compiled of toy villains rather than a villain from a movie – aside of Calibos. At this stage of the game, there are way too many Darth Vader toys to choose from and even if I had to choose one from yesteryear, I would still have a hard time narrowing it down. So my pick for villain toy from the original Star Wars trilogy is Bossk. He’s a mean-looking, lizardman bounty hunter who has been both a friend and enemy of Boba Fett. He appeared in The Empire Strikes Back and was dressed in his trademark X-Wing fighter pilot attire. The Kenner figures were a bit stiff, and some characters didn’t cross over well into plastic space, but Bossk is one of those figures in the line that looked great from the get-go.

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Finally, the one figure that outshines everyone else is Warduke from the Dungeons & Dragons toy line. I played D&D for many years during its infantile stages. My friends and I convened many Saturdays, creating characters and taking on daunting quests that seemed to last forever. We created our own post-apocalyptic offshoot and eventually progressed to tabletop gaming and finally card-based games. I have my history with the line and was a little disillusioned by the cartoon, which was a noble attempt at marketing a cult game for the masses. At least it included some monsters right from the same universe many of us frequented. While the cartoon made some of the characters from the game seem goofy, Warduke rose above them all and remains one bad mutha. He looks like a war-torn veteran that turned to the dark side and like Baron Karza, he rides a menacing looking-steed that completes the package. Warduke still looks awesome by today’s standards and is often the subject of custom figures and sculptures.

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Unwinnable’s Toy Hunter is the baddest villain of them all. Follow his evil plans on Twitter @Kursse.

Yes, I did abandon my Toy Hunter Twitter account for a number of reasons, but mostly because I just couldn’t handle two Twitter accounts. I really don’t tweet much as it is, so it made no sense to have the second account. I will forever be known as the Unwinnable Toy Hunter and despite the fact that other people are using the moniker, I’m the original. I always like to say, “Often imitated, never duplicated.”

I don’t hunt down rare or vintage toys to turn a profit, I do it for the sheer enjoyment of loving toys. Most of what I currently buy – it’s not much – is a reflection of what I loved and played with as a kid – lines like G.I. Joe and Star Wars. They bring me back to a time in my life where I only had to worry about school and having fun. It’s a nice escape from the rigors of adult life. The Toy Hunter name for me has some history. It’s actually the name of a startup business I had with a former friend back in 2003. We already scoured the tri-state area’s brick-and-mortar toy emporiums for discounted and rare figures, so it made sense to form a business and find cool stuff for other people. Sadly, we disbanded but the name lives on. Now on to the good stuff!

The jabroni-beating, pie-eating, trailblazing, eyebrow-raising, electrifying entertainer known as The Rock makes his debut as the fourth sports star to be immortalized in plastic as a G.I. Joe character (it probably helps that he’s in the movie). The Rock joins wrestlers Sgt. Slaughter and Rowdy Roddy Piper and football star William “The Refrigerator” Perry in a truly elite class of figures in the series. That is, if you want to count the never-produced Rocky Balboa action figure. The Cobra Commander looks especially badass and is more in line with the comics and toys. They need to make up for the horrible squid mask and “doctor” persona from the first movie. I wouldn’t be surprised if Hasbro stepped in and laid down the law with the second film.

The Avengers are a hot topic right now and Hot Toys recently leaked a teaser photo of a true 1/6 scale Hulk figure. It looks like it features a modified version of their muscle body and should have a massive amount of articulation. For those that think this might be a statue, think again – an articulated body sits under that rubber skin. I like that his scale is in proportion to a 12-inch Iron Man. I’m sure this figure will easily be over the $250 mark.

Recent episodes of the Discovery channel’s Sons of Guns and American Guns featured a zombie theme. They each created custom builds for a zombie reducer or end-of-days weapon. Since we don’t have zombies wandering around to shoot, what do you do for a target? Well, ThinkGeek is now selling Bleeding Zombie Target Dummies similar to the ones that were used on both shows. The dummy splatters paint in the area that is shot, which makes for instant hit detection. Now who’s going to make the bleeding human target dummy?

On the weird gadget end, I came across a website named Japan Trend Shop that houses an interesting variety of electronic oddities and lifestyle apparatus pulled straight out of Tokyo. For all you cosplayers out there, here’s a replica outfit of Ulala from Sega’s dance music game, Space Channel 5.

Also from Japan Trend Shop is something that can appeal to everyone – the Noiseless USB Karaoke Microphone with Wii support. This is every parent’s dream. Now you can tune out the offbeat vocal stylings of an 11-year-old or the drunken pig squeals of worn-out-their-welcome house guests. There are many interesting items on this site that need to be seen! I was just looking for a Gakken Mini Electric Guitar and I stumbled across this treasure trove of Japanese goodness.

Speaking of electric guitars, next up is the U-Rock Mini Guitar MP3 Player. It looks to be close to 1/6 scale and can be a perfect accessory to that custom rock god you’ve been working on. The guitar has 1GB of memory and the amp contains a speaker, so you can rock out in your cubicle or have your 1/6 Terminator figure jam to “You Could Be Mine.”

I love customizing action figures, and years ago I made the switch from 3 3/4 to 12 inch or 1/6 scale. The larger scale allows for better sculpting and finer detailing of equipment and accessories. I’m always looking for toy dealers that sell loose 1/6 gear. Most dealers prefer to sell boxed figures, but a number sell loose items, from weapons to clothing to body parts – it’s the Army/Navy store of Barbies. I found a 1/6 iPhone and iPad set and realized I can finally start work on that Matt Marrone inaction figure.

I also received a certain figure in the mail recently but have yet to find him as he is known to blend in with his surroundings. Stay tuned for a full review once I locate him. I might have to use my ninja skills on this one.

Toy Hunter out!

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Ken can only handle one Twitter account. Hit him up @Kursse.