Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Animated Christmas Specials!

Right up there with fat guys in red suits and piles of toys around a twinkling tree, animated Christmas specials are an integral part of the holiday season for me.

Of course, they were special when I was a kid because they came on exactly once a year and you had to be on top of that TV Guide to make sure you didn't miss any of them.

These days you can randomly turn to ABC Family channel or the Hub or Boomarang and pretty much guarantee that one is on at any given moment of any day in the month of December.

Still, there are a few that I make jolly well sure I see at least once a year, even if it is a DVD marathon all in one sitting.

Here they are...












With Honorable mention going to...

Top 5 Friday! The Top 5 Coolest Things I Saw at Universal Studios!

Before my wife and I took on the main course of 3 full days of Disneyland and California Adventure, we thought we'd make a bit of an appetizer out of Universal Studios/Universal Citywalk. So as soon as we got off the plane at LAX, we took a shuttle to the rental car place and took our newly rented wheels straight to the park.

All in all, it was... okay. It's no Disneyland. I actually had more fun shopping and eating (Pink's!) in the Citywalk section than I actually had in the park. If you go, take the Universal Backlot Tour. It's pretty cool and the King Kong 3D thing is beyond cool.

But as "okay" as the park was, I still got to see some cool stuff, and here are the top five in my book...

1. One of the original Back to the Future Deloreans. To a guy like me, who is koo-koo over movie and TV vehicles, this was like seeing boobies in real life for the first time. Great Scott!

2. Dracula waltzing with Daphne from Scooby Doo. This was the weirdest, yet most beautiful thing I saw the whole day. Drac just hypnotized poor Miss Blake and made her dance with him. And those both danced like they had had a lesson or two. Then she just snapped out of it and ran back to Scooby. Amazing moment!

3. The massive display of Para-Norman figures. These were the real deal used in the movie (which I still haven't seen, but am dying to), from armatures, to multiple mouth plates, to background scenes. The animation nerd in me did a little happy dance looking at it all.

4. A football signed by the season 1 Dillon Panthers from Friday Night Lights. I don't care what any of you say. I loved this show. Clear eyes, full hearts...

5. JAWS! He attacked the tram. Need I say more?

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite 2012 Macy's Parade Balloons!

Ugh. Is it me, or is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade getting a little too singy and dancey? I couldn't give a rotten cranberry who's got some new sappy single they need to promote or what Broadway musical is the new talk of the town. But every year, I sit through such insipid warbling just so I can see the two things I love the most about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; floats and balloons!

Every year I watch the parade, and I swear that I just don't feel like my Christmas holiday has started off right until I see the great and all-giving Santa Claus himself wrapping up the festivities.

I don't know what it is about the balloons that still hold a sense of wonder for me, as they have ever since I was a kid. Maybe they are a sort of helium-filled countdown timer for me, ticking away the morning of Thanksgiving day, leading to the official kick-off to th greatest timne of the year. Or maybe I just like giant, floating cartoon characters.

Either way, here are my top 5 favorites from this year...

1. Charlie Brown
Sadly, there was no Snoopy in this year's parade, but the inclusion of everyone's favorite blockhead, who is shown determined to finally kick that football, completely made up for it.

2. Kermit the Frog
When I was 6 years old, I got an amazing stuffed Kermit for Christmas and loved him dearly. Seeing this balloon reminded me of that.

3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
I don't know if any of you out there have read these books, but I have and I loooooooooooove them! Greg Heffley is one of the greatest characters ever written. I'm totally not joking. Congrats to him for making the big time.

4. Papa Smurf
I don't care who knows it. I have loved the Smurfs my whole life. Watched the cartoon every Saturday and collected tons of Smurf figurines as a kid. And Papa Smurf is the grand patriarch of it all.

5. Spider-Man
Do I really need to go into why he's on this list? Exceslior!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Garbage Pail Kids Cards!

Waaaayyyyyy back in 1985, when I was in 7th grade, my friends (well, the dudes I sat with in art class) and I started this sort of club called Cabbage Patch Killers, which was born out of distaste for Cabbage Patch Kids. This led to us spending an inordinate amount of class time drawing pictures of Cabbage Patch Kids in various forms of mutilation, like slashed to pieces by Freddy Krueger or flattened with tire marks across them where they had been run over in the street. We thought we were so clever. It also occurs to me that my art teacher in 7th grade really didn't pay any attention to us whatsoever.

So imagine the mind-blowing moment when another kid in class (not a member of the GPK) brought in a stack of garbage Pail Kids cards! We instantly decided that we were all geniuses and had our thumbs firmly upon the pulse of the American satirical zeitgeist.

Needless to say, I spent the next couple of years collecting Garbage Pail Kids cards like there was no tomorrow. And here's five of them that always stuck in my head...

1. Jay Decay - In many ways, this one was probably my number one favorite. Zombies are awesome and the artwork on this one is stunning.

2. Reese Pieces - This one will forever stick into my memory because this is the card most given to me by other people. So many kids in my school thought that they were the first person to put together the fact that my name (although spelled differently) was the same name on this card. Eventually I would end up with about a 3 inch tall stack of nothing but this card.

 3. Roy Bot - Part little kid doll, part transformer. All Awesome.

4. Savage Stuart - Even back in 7th grade, I was a massive Conan fan and this card always reminded me of my favorite Son of Cimmeria. Crom!

5. Charlotte Web - Sometimes known as "Didi T", this card was always one of my favorites due to the sheer horror I felt when I thought of a giant black widow spider with a human baby face. *shudder*
















That's it for this week! Another Top 5 list will be posted next Friday!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Halloween Treats!

There are certain treats that you only eat around Halloween. And that's mostly due to the fact that they're only available around Halloween. But that's what makes them so special. They're here for a limited time, so you better get your fill before the 31st rolls around. I, of course, have a few favorites and have gathered up the top 5 right here. Here we go...

1. Candy Corn

Despite some people's absurd feelings on this perennial treat (I'm lookin' at you, Shezcrafti), this candy is the king of all Halloween candies. Every year I buy a giant bag of candy corn and spend the entire month of October munching on the little sweet kernels. And at least once, I take two and stick them in my mouth like vampire fangs. You know you do it, too.

2. Halloween Oreo Cookies

Yes, yes... I know. They're basically regular Oreos with orange food coloring, but I don't care. They also have little bat, ghost and jack-o-lantern motifs on the cookies, so that counts. And yes, I have tried the new candy corn flavored Oreos and they are glorious, but the basic orange cremes are practically a tradition with me now.

3. Peanut Butter Kisses

Not everyone's favorite, I admit, but these little bundles of joy are like peanut butter flavored taffy with actual peanut butter in the middle, wrapped in orange and black wax paper. It doesn't get more Halloweeny than that for me.

4. Caramel Apples

I only eat one a year, but when I do, it's a rapturous moment. I like mine simple, a green apple in plain caramel. No nuts or sprinkles or chocolate for me. And I can't stress the green apple thing enough. Any time I see red apples dipped in caramel it's like a little mini crime against Halloween.

5. Popcorn Balls

These days, you just can't hand out home made treats to trick-or-treaters, despite all of those razor-blades-in-candy myths being nothing more than urban legend, but when I was a kid, there was one lady in our neighborhood who made killer popcorn balls wrapped in orange cellophane and we would always hit her house first, lest she run out early. Plus it's fun to giggle at the word "balls".

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favortie Football Toys from My Youth!

Well, I think I've made it pretty clear that I'm suffering from a major case of football-fever this year, despite the Dork Horde's last place standing in the Madball Football League.

As Fall just begins to set in this year, the cooler air and the smell of turning leaves causes me to be even more nostalgic than usual (if you can believe that), and with football on the brain, I started thinking back about all of my favorite football toys. So, let's get started with my top 5 favorite football toys of my youth.

And here goes the kickoff...

1. Nerf Football

You just weren't properly living life as a kid if you didn't have a Nerf football. I had a few over the years, but my favorite one was an all brown one with white pad-print over the "laces" that was actually a Nerf knock-off. The best thing about these were that if you were as bad as a wide receiver as I was, they didn't hurt so bad when you caught them with your face.





2. Electronic Football

I never actually own an electronic football set, which basically allowed you to spend a half hour carefully placing your players on the line of scrimmage and then flicking the on switch which made the little players vibrate into each other. My brother had one, though, and I have fond memories of busting it out once, only once, on a cold November afternoon and having a blast playing it. I wish we would have played it more.

3. Schaper Super Toe

I've written extensively on my fond memories of the Schaper Super Toe set, so I won't too into it here. But just the fact that this one toy keeps popping up in my posts should tell you how awesome it was.

4. Mattel Electronics Football

Again, this was one of those things owned by my brother, but I remember getting my grubby little mitts on it several times and playing it for hours. It's amazing how some flashing lights and few bleeps and boops could keep us mesmerized back in the day.

5. Paper Football

This. Game. Was. King. It is scientifically impossible to have more fun with a single sheet of notebook paper. I learned how to play paper football in 2nd grade, but it wasn't until 3rd grade that we got crazy into it. I would gain a modicum of cool points one Fall day in school when I made our school's very first paper football out of brown construction paper with stripes and laces painted on with White-Out. I would eventually take several sheets of green construction paper, some tape and some white chalk and make and entire field that covered two desks face-to-face, that we would fold up and store when we were done, only to unfurl once again the time time too much rain or snow kept our recesses inside. One of my best friends made a pair of goal posts out of some taped-together pencils and our little lunch-time/recess gang was the paper football hub every football season.

Just writing about it makes me want to play right now. I think I have some brown and green construction paper around here somewhere.

That's it for this week's Top 5 list! Tune in next week for another episode!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Scratch-n-Sniff Stickers!

Yeah, I admit it, I was a sticker collector when I was a kid. It may not have been the manliest of pursuits, but when I was in grade school, it was practically mandatory that you had a sticker book. Everyone had one, boys, girls, teachers... everyone. The best thing you could do to maintain some sort of level of toughness was to avoid those glittery unicorn stickers that girls kept trying to give us and to stick to ones that possessed an aspect of life that little boys truly hold dear in their hearts... stinkiness.

And the best stinky stickers came from a company called Trend (not that I knew that then), and those were the ones you cherished. And if you collected enough of the effluvial patches in your sticker book, the various noxious fumes would stir together into a greenish cloud powerful enough to keep away even the most persistent sparkly unicorn sticker lover.

Here are five of my favorites...

1. DILL-IGHTFUL!

When you were a kid, pickles were not only stinky, but just plain funny. They're sort of a mix between a poop and a giant booger. Just sayin'. Plus, all the girls I know hated this one, which meant I got enough extras from kids who didn't want hem to make my sticker book smell like a bucket of Chicago style relish.

2. A WINNER!

You know who's a winner? This sticker is, that's who. It's got a hot rod car on it and smells like gasoline, fer cryin' out loud. It doesn't get any manlier than that!

3. YOU'RE TOPS!

This one wasn't exactly many, but it smelled just like a pine tree. I remember getting this one from my 3rd grade teacher on a drawing I did in class and sitting at home, by our fake Christmas tree sniffing this one like crazy.

4. HOT STUFF

Just one whiff of this pizza-smelling sticker was enough to set our child-sized stomachs growling with pizza fever. I had several of these in my sticker book, every one of them scratched to the point of illegibility. If I could have shoved one permanently up my nose, I would have.

5. SCENT-SATIONAL!

Ahhh yes... the sticker no teacher would ever give us. This one, which growing up in rural Michigan has taught me, smells just like the spray of the common skunk. These became contraband in 4th grade and thus morphed into a sort of underground currency. We'd carry them around all day, hidden in our pockets, with our jeans smelling like we'd just gotten back from an unfortunate camping trip.





That's it for this week's Top 5 list! Tune in next week for more!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Schoolhouse Rock Episodes!

I'm gonna get right down to it. I have always loved Schoolhouse Rock, those little catchy educational vignettes that were often wedged in between my favorite Saturday morning cartoons. I found myself going through a bunch of them the other night on YouTube and decided to pick my 5 favorites for this week's list. So here we go...

My top 5 favorite Schoolhouse Rock episodes!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Childhood Breakfast Cereals!

Who doesn't love cereal? It's probably the very first food/meal we are ever allowed to make for ourselves. And I've got oodles of warm, fuzzy memories of pouring a giant bowl of one of my beloved cereals and plopping myself down for my weekly ritual of Saturday morning marathon cartoon watching.

So, I thought it would be fun to list my top 5 favorite "parts of a nutritious breakfast". And this time, I'm doing them in order, from 5th to 1st. Here we go!

5. Frosted Flakes
They're Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! Seriously, they are. Frosted Flakes were never the most colorful of cereals, nor didi it come with fancy little marshmallows or whatever, but it was completely coated in pure, unadulterated sugar. And that was enoguh for me. Also, Tony the Tiger is one of my all-time favorite product mascots, so that helps, too.

4. Super Sugar Crisp
Not Super Golden Crisp. No, I grew up in a time when they plastered the word sugar right on the front of the box. This cereal was like toasted oat crack. Also, Sugar Bear was one of the coolest dudes in TV commercials. He was so cool and laid back. Not like some spastic rabbits or paranoid leprechauns I could mention.

3. Count Chocula
These days, Count Chocula (like Frankenberry and Boo Berry) is only released around Halloween, but when I was a kid, it was available year round. But for some reason, I only ate it around Halloween. That doesn't mean it wasn't one of my most loved cereals ever. I also bought a box last Halloween and am pleased to report that it still holds up.

2. Froot Loops
For years, this was my number one favorite cereal. I ate this cereal by the ton. But it would be forever dethroned by the next one on the list when I was in 5th grade...

1. Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch
Awwwwwwwwww YEAH! I still eat this cereal on a regular basis. There has never been a more flavorful cereal in the history of things that get poured into bowls. Granted, I have to go a week or so without it every now and then just to give the roof of my mouth a chance to heal. As a kid, I remember all of the Cap'n Crunch cereals having the best toys inside, and no matter what parents say, that little marketing scam often tilted your weekly choice of cereal in the favor of one cereal over another. Luckily, the best toys came in the best tasting cereal as far as I was concerned.

Honorable Mention: Apple Jacks
No cartoon mascot. No funny commercial. But these close cousins to Froot Loops would be my go-to cereal on those rare occasions that my mom's guilt over feeding me garbage got the better of her and she'd attempt to force me to pick a "healthier" cereal. I guess because it said "apples" in the name, it was a healthier cereal. Oh, how wrong she was.












Let's here from you all! What was your favorite cereals?

Top 5 Friday! The Top 5 Coolest Things in My New Office at Funko!

It's time once again for another Top 5 list, and since I've spent the week getting used to my new gig at Funko, I thought it would be fun to show you all some of the cool stuff I've seen, or work near, or whatever. I don't mean to be all braggity-brag-brag about my new job, but please humor me. I'm still pretty jazzed.

Anyway, here's the top 5 things that got my attention right away. Enjoy...

1. Giant Frankenberry

This mammoth General Mills monster cereals mascot greets you when you walk into the front lobby. And I do mean mammoth. Frankie is as tall as I am. It was all I had in me not to run up and hug it when I first saw it.

2. My Co-worker Amos' MOTU Collection

When I discovered that this was the kind of place that you can set up your Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain, I knew I was going to fit right in. Also, I knew I was going to get along with Amos like we were long lost brothers.

3. The Giant Wall Graphics

There are three of these in the main hallway leading to the art department; Secret Squirrel, Hong Kong Phooey and Captain America. Each one stand at least a foot over my head, if not more. It's like walking through a Hanna Barbera animation cel.

4. The Funko Library

Ever wanted to see a room filled with every single Funko product ever made? Well, now you have. This picture only captures one small section of it. It's beyond impressive.

5. My New Workstation

Okay, this is probably cool only to me, but after years of working at home, all alone, on my crappy home PC, it's a breath of fresh air to be in an art department again, surrounded by like-minded creative types, cranking out new artwork on a brand new Mac.








Okay, I'll stop bragging now. Tune in next week for another Top 5 list (that I promise won't be so self indulgent)!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite Non-Toy Pieces of Vintage Star Wars Merchandise!

We all know that I love me some vintage Star Wars action figures, vehicles and playsets. But there was (and still is) such a vast world of non-toy merch that celebrates one of the greatest movies ever made. As a kid, I imagine that my parents had a pretty easy time picking things out for me. He needs a winter hat? Here's one with Star Wars on it. He needs a pencil case? Here's one with Star Wars on it. Yeah, I had Star Wars everything. And a few of those pieces of swag stand out in my memory even to this day.

So let's take a look at my Top 5 Favorite Non-Toy Pieces of Vintage Star Wars Merchandise!

1. My First Star Wars Iron-on T-shirt

I would go on to own an absurd amount of Star Wars t-shirts over the years. In fact, I probably have at least 12 in my closet right now. But none of them would be as awesome as the first one I had. It was a mall kiosk iron-on of the design shown to the left, on a banana yellow t-shirt, given to me by my babysitter Lisa Klocki when I was 5. And I loved her with all my heart for that. I wore that shirt until is was practically threads, and I've been buying other Star Wars shirts just like ever since to fill its shoes.

2. My Star Wars Bed Sheets

Kids don't get too excited about sheets, as a rule, unless they are covered in images of X-wing Fighters, Wookies and Death Stars. The best thing about this set of sheets was the pillow case, because that would go with you on backyard camp-outs and sleepovers, thus declaring to your fellow sleep-over-ists that you are a man of good taste, with a penchant for space adventure.

3. My Star Wars Drinking Glasses

I can't remember how many of these I had. They were the sort of thing that you picked up whenever you got the chance. Most often found at Burger King (if I remember correctly), these fragile beauties were a blast to collect and somehow made a glass of cherry-red Kool-Aid all that much sweeter.

4. My Star Wars Trading Cards

Do I really need to go into how and why these are on the list? Yeah, I didn't think so.

5. My Star Wars Lunch Box

My very first lunch box was a Peanuts one, which I believe may have been a hand-me-down from my brother. But by Christmas of 1st grade, I was the proud owner of my first (of an eventual three) Star Wars lunch box. To this day I have a hard time seeing the whole "you don't need to see his identification" scene without catching a phantasmal whiff of peanut-butter and jelly.





Tune in next Friday for another Top 5 list!

Top 5 Friday! My Top 5 Favorite G.I. Joe Vehicles!

I've gone on at length about how I discovered G.I. Joe (A Real American Hero) all on my own as a kid and then went crazy for the toy line, cartoon and comic books. So I won't re-hash it, but you can see me waxing poetically about G.I. Joe HERE and HERE.

Half the fun of action figures (especially 3 3/4" action figures) is that you get some truly killer vehicles and playsets for them. Some of my all-time favorite toy vehicles come from the first three years of G.I. Joe's second coming in the early '80s. So i thought that would make a good theme for this week's Top 5 list.

So, buckle in as I take you on a ride though my Top 5 Favorite G.I. Joe Vehicles!

1. The Rapid Fire Motorcycle (RAM)
How they got RAM out of Rapid Fire Mototrcylce is beyond me (shouldn't it be RFM?), but since this was my very first G.I. Joe vehicle, it get's the number one spot (not that these are really in any order). For some reason, the only Joe I ever let drive this two-wheeled terror was Rock-n-Roll. No idea why. There was just something about that bearded dude with the giant m-60 machine gun that scream "biker" to me. And yes, I took this baby off some sweet jumps.

2. The Cobra H.I.S.S.
Much like the RAM above, the HISS was my very first Cobra vehicle. Its innate awesomeness is apparent, with its jet black hull and ground-crushing tread, but the thing that makes this one extra special to me is that, due to a shopping list snafu on my mom's part, I got two of these one Christmas. BAM! Double the trouble!

3. The Sky Hawk
Now, I know what you're thinking; "But Reis, there are far cooler G.I. Joe flying vehicles that this one!" And you're right, to an extent. But when I was a kid, I never went in for the giant vehicles. They were always hard to hold up in the air and go "vroooom!" with. Instead, I dug these little one or two-man vehicles. Something sleek and compact that can 180 on a dime. Besides, this baby had vertical take off. That's just pimp.

4. The Snow Cat
Growing up in small town Michigan, before the onset of global warming, I had an intimate knowledge of snow. So snow related toys were of a particular interest to me, and the Snow Cat took the cake. Missiles, rear tank tread, spare skis and even a friggin windshield wiper! The funny this is, I never let the included driver Frostbite, drive the dang thing. This was Snowjob's vehicle as far as I was concerned. Also, this vehicle marks one of the very last G.I. Joe toys I would ever own. Growing up was just around the corner.

5. The Cobra Stinger
This... is... one... bad... ass... vehicle. The Joe's had their awesome Jeep/Hummer, and this is basically an updated version of it (using many of the same exact molds), but this one just oozes terror. Stealth black, blood red missiles on top and throw in a gray version of the regular Cobra trooper and this has win written all over it. Well, not a win for Cobra, naturally. Because the Joes are gonna kick their butts.





That's it for this week's Top 5 list! Tune in next time and I'll dredge up five other things that I get all misty-eyed over.