Thursday, April 3, 2008

RipRollerz at Walgreens

One of the small amusements that I allow myself from time to time is a look at the toys in the toy aisle at the drugstore. They're mostly pretty cheap, and pretty garish, and I think it has been a long time since I was tempted to buy one. (I did buy a sticker activity book featuring the Hulk and the Abomination; I'll have to blog about that some time.)

The last time I was at the drugstore, I found one of the worst licensed Marvel superhero products I'd ever seen. It was so lame, and had such amusing mistakes, that I snapped a quick picture with my cameraphone. If I were a real pop-culture blogger, I probably would have bought the decorated plastic ball* to bring it home and make a proper scan of the packaging. As it is, I may have to do a little interpretation of this blurry closeup from the back of the package.


What you're looking at, there, are a handful of the characters available on the various individual balls. This one was Wolverine, I think. Notice that all of those fellows have been in Hollywood movies lately. Clockwise from lower left, there's Wolverine, that scrappy Canadian, and Spider-Man, one of the two times he appears in the dramatis personae. And then there's this famous guy...

You know, the, uh, ... something to do with fire.

And then you have this well-known hero, coming soon to a theater near you:

It's not easy to read, but I assure you, that drawing is labeled "Iron Man." (As played by Ben Affleck.)

Probably they're all just Skrulls anyway, right? Isn't that where this is heading?

* Yes, as far as I can tell, RipRollerz are balls with the image of a superhero decorating them and sort of puffing out from the sides. I think you play with them by pulling a ripcord that makes them spin. I'm not sure how that works, exactly.

1 comment:

Mike said...

Jeezaloo...I thought the packaging on my large-size action figure of the Scarlet Spider* was poor, but this is somewhere between egregious and laughable. No, wait: it's both!

I have to wonder if these are made by the same folks who brought us Snopply?**

*I hasten to add: it was a gift, and I have never read an actual issue of Spider-Man comics from the Clone Saga.

**Shout-out to my man Jon Lewis!