Rainbow Dash and Blaise

As I took Blaise around the town in her pram today, I stopped by The Entertainer and bought her another My Little Pony toy to display in her room.

This will be Blaise's 4th Pony

Blaise watches Youtube uploads of the colourful Friendship is Magic TV show on Saturdays. She reacts happily to it and waves about. I recognised the Rainbow Dash character (as seen in the show) on the shelf and showed it to her before purchasing. She was happy to see it (even if MISB) when we got home.

Given that Blaise is only just 3 months old, it will be a while before she can properly play with this kind of stuff, but as you can see from the photos - she can't wait already!

Shredder VS Chromedome

One of my latest peices of toy art consists of TMNT characters and not a single Turtle in sight. This homage is based on the popular 1994 Konami title TMNT: Tournament Fighters (SNES version).

The Shredder picture is a custom built figure by Wes of Scary Crayon, a figure that is familiar with most TMNT fan communities. Wes produced most of the photography whilst I stuck down and glued together the rest. The end result being a real corker!

Battle Cat and Cringer

How cool is Battle Cat? The green and yellow tiger companion of He-Man.
Or on the flipside - Cringer the cowardly green and yellow pet of Prince Adam.

By chance I caught up with the original Filmation He Man episode 'Battlecat' to have a sneaky peak at Battle Cat/Cringer's origin story. A great tale of friendship, an ingredient I feel that a lot of todays shows and cartoons greatly lack.

I owned the original Mattel toy back in 1984 and even though it was a limited representation of the big-bad kitty it was still a cool toy to display all the same. It completed owning a He-Man figure.

Battle Cat was awesome to watch on screen whether he was baddie bashing as the big cat or scared of his own shadow as the kitten. I must admit that I liked the non-talking 2002 take on the character a bit better.

I've always wondered how much of a disguise Battle Cat is to Cringer. Surely green and yellow tigers on Eternia are not that common. Even with the cool saddle and mask, Battle Cat still looks like a roided up version of his other identity. They certainly are two different personalities in a Jekyll and Hyde kind of way. Hopefully if a newer He-Man series arises there will be more exploration regarding He-Man's colour-clashing steed.

Tony, Tigger and Raja have nothing on this king of the Tigers. He's Grrrreaat!

Gozo Tat 2005

6 years ago I went away to the island of Gozo for a week. Gozo is a very hot island offshoot from Malta that has lots of lizards, stray dogs and statues of Mary.

One of the best things about going abroad is exploring the shops for whatever tat may be around.

A souvenir I recently uncovered was a small but amusing item of obscurity. In fact this item was a product range. Sold in packets of double attached sachets was the Pop Rocks Surprise!

Pop Rocks Surprise, the “Action Candy” was plain and simple. One sachet was filled with Pop Rocks and the other had a small surprise toy or trinket.

I bought a few of these and received an Alien Keychain, Some Tattoos with ‘Sexy’, ‘Heartbreaker’ and an eyeball amongst the designs and most notably of all a keychain of a ladies bottom in jeans.

Judging by the packet illustration, the ‘bum’ keyring had another design variant. Also amongst the advertised surprise toys appeared to be an Ultraman bootleg and a robotic Brontosaurus looking like a fruity pebble version of Dinobots Sludge.

It is strange to see a children’s candy toy item range presented this way. It goes to show what Newsagents on opposite sides of the globe can cheekily get away with. No pun intended .

Click on the pictures to see up close.