Random Rant: My Love/Hate Relationship with Ice Age

All right... the time has come. I am officially getting ready to delete the content from Really Rather Random Guy (dot blogspot dot com) and in preparing for that, I wanted to import a bunch of the content that I know will then be lost forever, by bringing the posts over here to Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks (dot blogspot dot com). So, with that in mind, I thought I would preface these entries with the fact that they are indeed OLD blog posts from an OLD, now DEFUNCT blog, and cross my fingers and hope that folks will still want to read them.

This post was originally published online back on March 9th of 2014.

I love the movie Ice Age. I have since it came out. I think I watched it about 200 times with my daughter when she was young, and I have since watched it a few MORE times with my sons as they are getting bigger. It's a Blue Sky Studios picture, not Dreamworks as many folks seem to get it confused. Blue Sky studios has also done movies like Rio, Epic, and Robots... so they've had a pretty mixed bag. But Ice Age is definitely the cream of the crop.

The first Ice Age movie was simply structured, had a small cast of characters, and was focused on a clear objective. The story was set somewhere around or in the Ice Age, so the color palettes are fairly muted but not drab, and the character designs are sort of angular-yet-organic and lumpy-yet-endearing. And because of all of this, the story had lots of room for themes and subtext, and space for the comedians playing the lead roles to riff and have fun with each other. Portions of the movie feel improvised, and there's a nice natural rhythm to most scenes that doesn't feel too rushed or too desperate to move on to the next big thing.

The story also manages some semi-sort-of-realism... which, yes, is hard for me to justify when we're talking about anthropomorphic prehistoric animals... but there's an internal logic at work, and some rules are followed about what animals are, and are not, allowed to be included. The consultants they used for the "science" of the film all pretty much agreed on one major point: Just don't use any dinosaurs. Any prehistoric mammals were fine because they were still fairly fuzzy on the timelines for when some of those lived... but dinosaurs are a big no-no.

This guy doesn't count because he's frozen solid.

There is a real story with actual character development for all of the three lead characters. We have Manny the mammoth, who has gruff, humorless and despondent after losing his herd tragically, who by film's end is able to let others in emotionally, and form bonds with others in a way he thought he was no incapable of. Sid the sloth, who is a bumbling, needy, useless, clingy imbecile at the beginning of the film finally finds motivation and purpose, and in doing so develops a little bit of backbone and self-respect, and to a lesser degree the respect of his peers. And finally we have Diego the sabretooth tiger, who has never known respect or friendship or honor in any form who then bonds with animals he would have looked down on as "lesser" before his experiences in the film. 

What we have is "Three Men and a Baby" starring Tallahassee from "Zombieland", Derek Vineyard from "American History X", and... Pestario Vargas from "The Pest" (I guess...?) all on a "Road-Trip" where they become dude-bros forever. It's actually way better than that... but this is what we're going with. Through the film we have fun. Not ridiculous, over-the-top, non-stop gimmicks, but legit fun. From the campfire scenes where the characters nettle each other, to the travel montage set to the rousing, made-a-classic-by-this-movie song "On My Way" by Rusted Root, to the scenes of both tragedy and intense action peppered throughout... we have a really well balanced and fun-loving film. 

And then we have this guy. Scrat. Quite possibly one of the most brilliant pieces of modern animation this side of Tex Avery or Chuck Jones. He is a perfect homage to the classic Merry Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts where you have one hapless protagonist with one very clear and desperate goal... and an entire world fraught with danger and misfortune working against him. The Scrat sequences woven in throughout the film are nothing short of pure genius. 

But now...? Now we have SEQUELS. And the sequels are NOTHING compared to the original. 

In the second movie we are introduced to Manny's new love interest, Ellie, and her uninteresting otter-or-possum-or-whatever-they-are twin adoptive brothers. Hungry, freshly-thawed aquatic dinosaurs show up in this one, and the whole movie looks like a technicolor acid trip. This movie doesn't feel like it could possibly have taken place in the same world as the first film. Plus the additional characters just make the movie feel hyper and cluttered. I don't even really remember the goal or objective for the group in this one. Build a boat to escape a flood maybe? 

When I found out Simon Pegg would be in the third film my hopes went up... but unfortunately this movie was just one giant wow-scene after another. The dinosaurs, the environments in the ridiculous subterranean tropical world... it all suffered from ADHD and there were no real moments to breathe and let the characters be characters. Oh, and we meet Manny's kid in this one. Peaches. Plus cute T-Rex babies. Ugh.

Still haven't actually watched this one. Glacier pirates... even MORE characters... I mean come on already. And don't even get me STARTED on the Ice Age Christmas special!!! 

Since the first movie became a franchise, the creators have done everything in their power to excise what made it such a great film. The ONLY element in the first three movies that feels consistently great are the Scrat sequences. They introduce a female antagonist/potential love-interest in the third film, "Scratte", that was simply BRILLIANT... but let's be honest, the Scrat shorts and sequences are a bit of a gimme. 

GIMME!

The first Ice Age film felt like an introspective indie-flick, free of expectations and formula (for the most part... I mean it's a kid's film so... formula is sort of the standard shorthand... but still) it had real tragic moments that felt free of melodrama and actually asked the viewers to confront some hard truths. It had genuinely menacing villains that made the movie feel like there was something at stake. It didn't pander to the business-executive's idea of a vat-grown child. The fun scenes were fun and the emotional scenes were emotional and the tense action scenes were... well... tense and full of action. The first movie is accurately described as a "darker" film... and it's funny how they've spent the rest of the franchise back-pedalling from that darkness as much as they can. But darkness mixed with sweetness mixed with substance can give you chocolate fudge, where sweetness and brightness and hyperactivity just tends to make rainbow-crunch funfetti with nothing to sprinkle it on. 

Some of you will choose the funfetti. I don't care.
There is only one RIGHT answer.

I choose FUDGE!!! The movie holds a lot of good memories for me as a dad, but it genuinely holds up as a quality film as well. This isn't me looking back with rose-colored glasses, this is a true animated classic in my estimation. That's really all I have to say about it.... except to shake my head sadly at what has become of the sequels. But of course, this wouldn't be one of my blog posts if I didn't tie toys or other merchandising in somehow, right? So here are some Ice age toys I've managed to accumulate: 

First up, a couple of random miscellaneous pieces. The Dodos were a hilarious part of the first film, and this Burger King premium was actually a part of a set that could hook together with other sets and trigger off a series of events. The Scrat roller is a Kellog's Cereal premium promoting Ice Age 2. 

These three came from an Ice Age 2 DVD board game set. The scale is slightly off between the three characters, but I don't really mind. As I've mentioned in the past, I love mini-figures, (as long as they're well done) and these are right up my alley. 

I think style-wise these are my absolute favorites in my collection right now, to the point where I have a Sid the Sloth on his way here as I write these words. I like stacking these guys up totem-pole style and once Sid gets here I'll probably poster-putty them all together. I love the urban-vinyl vibe to these, as they are obviously NOT urban vinyl toys, but are very similar to in style to lines like Dunnies or Munnies. 

Finally, I have these four toys that my daughter and I used to play Ice Age when she was a little girl. The mammoth and tiger are obviously not licensed items, but to me they will always be Manny and Diego. The other two figures are actually pieces to other toys and were not designed to stand on their own feet. Scrat there was actually inside of a squishy water ball toy that popped... and I just cannot remember what Sid used to be inside of. A snowball or something maybe? I think he was supposed to roll at one point. ANYWAY, these toys are some of the most special to me because I remember many a tub-time with my daughter playing Ice Age in the bubbles. 

So that's it kids, that's all I got. Keep your peepers peeled here for more rants, ramblings, and random ravings! 

Liberace, The Frighteners, and Ice Age, Ice Age, ICE AGE

Not a huge one tonight kids, but some fun finds nonetheless. Only one major toy find, and the rest is all cassettes and books. But let's take a look and see what we shall see, shall we? 

Here's the pile of loot that I brought home. A few details may jump out to begin with, but let us take a closer look.

First up, the cassettes. We'll probably take a closer look at the Halloween Songs and Sounds from Walt Disney Records when October hits. Likewise, I'l probably wait until December to dissect Liberace: A Christmas Medley. So that leaves the one in the middle: the "Working Girl" soundtrack. It's really most significant for Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" which is a pretty great song if I'm being honest. Chris de Burgh's "The Lady In Red" is on here too, which I absolutely adore. I really need to go watch Working Girl again sometime.

Speaking of movies I want to revisit soon, I found this novelization of Peter Jackson's "The Frighteners" I think I may add this movie to my Halloween watch-pile for this year, since it's been years since I've seen it.

Or maybe I should just add this novelization to the ever-growing Halloween read-pile? I dunno. I always felt like this movie was a bit of an underrated gem. Seeing some great horror/genre vets like John Astin and Jeffrey Combs hamming it up always does my hear good. "I like it when they lay still like that..." and "My body is a road-map of pain!" are lines I quote to my wife on a regular basis to this day. Classic.

I feel like I overpaid slightly for this Ray Bradbury collection of short stories, by Goodwill standards anyway. I would have paid waaay more in a used book store I guess, so thanks for small favors. I buy Bradbury books as "collectible" now without hesitation.

The grab-bag you saw above is really what had me most interested honestly. It was packed with a huge variety of Ice Age Burger King Kids Meal toys from 2002, based off the first movie in the franchise. I'm a complete nut for the first film, and don't really care for the others in the series AT ALL as  I may have mentioned in a post on another blog, a long.. long... time ago.

What's funny is that if you read that post from my other (now defunct) blog, at the very end you'll see me struggle with trying to remember what is is that the tiny Sid the Sloth toy was originally encased in at one point. This find answered that question! It was one of the ice-block toys you can see on the bottom left of the picture above.

This picture, by the way, shows that the grab-bag contained almost 15 whole sets of toys from that series of Burger King Toys. Funny thing is these are all duplicates of 5 toys out of a set of 10 different ones. So even though I have 15 sets here, I still only have half the set!!! It's kind of interesting looking back at the toys they were putting out 13 years ago compared the toys they do nowadays.These things are elaborate in and of themselves:

I won't go into great detail about every single toy, but I will take a moment to say how excited I was to finally track down a "Pinky" toy (the human baby, who is technically named "Roshan") to go with my other Ice Age Toys.

Each set has several pieces to put together and features a character from the movie, doing something from the movie. It's pretty awesome. If I had room to set these up somewhere all the time, I totally would.

But here's the REALLY excellent part: They connect together! I know this is nothing new but back in 2002 it was still a kind-of/sort-of relatively new concept in Happy Meal toys. The Inspector Gadget set from 1999 really kind of revolutionized the idea of collectible/connectable sets, and they were still refining the concept with this one. 

So not only do each of the toys have a cause-and-effect pay-off, you can connect them all in one glorious chain of chaos. It works with mixed results, but for the most part I got this thing to trigger off flawlessly 3 out of 5 times. I dabbled with the idea of taking a video of the whole Rube Goldberg affair... but it was too unpredictable and quick moving to even attempt it. Again, keep in mind, this is only half of the Ice Age set BK was offering that year. So if I had all 10 can you imagine!?

Well that' it for tonight kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!

A Random Handful of Goodwill Goodies: The BIG Toy Post

Hey everybody! Welcome back! This time here on Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks I'm going to show off a random handful of toys I've recently found at Goodwill. 

First up is this sandwich baggy full of little plastic Indians. I apologize if this use of the term Indians is considered offensive to any of you out there, but "little plastic Native Americans" just doesn't have the same ring... and is probably way more PC than these little figures probably warrant. Do they even make these any more? These figures don't look too old, but I have no real way of telling. I almost didn't buy these little guys, but I have a weakness for mini-figs of any kind, and the classic plastic-playset variety especially hold a warm and snuggly place in my heart. As you may be able to see in the picture, I paid .99 cents for these guys. They come in six different sculpts and 4 different colors. And I love them. 

These are the only toys in this post that I did not in fact buy at a Goodwill. I got them at a thrift store called Nice Twice in Ellsworth, ME that I have mentioned here on the blog before. Specifically, the post featuring the 80's/90's comic books and ads on here not long ago. Anyway, these are two Tiny Toons Adventures Happy Meal toys and one 101 Dalmation toy (that I am going to only look at pig-side up so I can pretend it is a Tiny Toon toy). The gimmick to these is that they flip over to reveal a second character in a different vehicle. I didn't match my pictures up well at all, so I'll just let you know, the first car from the first picture is the bottom of the second car in the second picture, and vice versa. The third car in both pictures is a match. Easy! I find it bizarre that the exact same gimmick was used for two different properties from two opposing animation houses. These three cars were .50 cents apiece. 

These three toys were in a grab-bag together for .99 cents at the Bangor, ME Goodwill. I have a pseudo-collection of those translucent Ben 10 Happy Meal toys packed away somewhere and I liked the look of this guy so I decided I'd keep it going. I do wish that you couldn't see Ben in the middle of the alien. I really just like pretending these big clear-plastic aliens are Ben-free.The snake from Kung Fu Panda I already own so I gave this one to my kids to play with. The long, brown, segmented dragon I just really liked the look of... until I got home and realized it was from the live-action Last Airbender movie. I still like the toy... but it feels tainted somehow. He was the real reason I picked up the grab-bag in the first place, honestly. The Ben 10 toy was just a butter on the bread. Ah, well. 

These next two items I paid .99 cents apiece for. The first is a little Tic-Tac-Toe game that reminded me of a doll's version of Toss-Across. It's Tic-Tac-Toe, so you can't really go wrong. I'm keeping it in the random-toys-and-boredom-busters drawer (which I've blogged about. Click on the picture below) of my desk:

 

Because it's the sort of thing I can grab and play with for 10 minutes when I need a distraction (because I am SO short on distractions in the Goodwill Geek Cave) and some time to kill. The other toy next to the Tic-Tac-Toe game is a Nickelodeon Applause-gun-toy-thing. Pull the trigger and the yellow plastic hands clap together, while an applause sign simultaneously pops up. This went in my distraction drawer as well.

I found this little green Cyclops guy for .99 cents. He looks like he's a collectible urban vinyl mini-figure... but is actually a toy from the "Children's Place". That pricey kid's clothing store at the mall. I haven't been able to find any other information other than the stamp on the back of his head. I don't know if they made others in a series or what. The little green plastic Indian was included for scale purposes only... no cyclopes (or Indians) were injured in the making of this blog entry. 

I found this set of magnets in a sandwich bag for .99 cents. No idea what they originally came with, but no searches have turned anything up yet. I thought maybe one of those Klutz sets... but no. The paper-clips and the little metal rod to the bottom left are definitely pieces of the set, because the paper-clips are way too heavy-gauge to be used as actual paper-clips. Their like little tiny paper-weight paper-clips.

Next are some Happy Meal toys that were all together in a Grab-Bag for 2.99. It was a weird but pretty awesome assortment of items. First up is this "magic box" Star Wars thing, which gives the illusion that if you look in the left side of the box, it is full of Darth Vader's floating, disembodied head, and if you look in the right side, it is Yoda's floating, disembodied head. The whole thing is done with mirrors and half-heads, but I'll never give away that secret. Shhh. It's magic. 

I found the effing thing incredibly hard to photograph as well. These were the best out of something like 20 shots I took of each side. After that, I just picked the best two from each lot and ran with them. You guys already know what Vader and Yoda look like. Just deal with this.

Here is a cute little Bernard toy from either the Rescuers or the Rescuers Down Under. Not sure which. Look at him! This might just get made into a Christmas ornament... I don't know if it was a Happy Meal toy or what. He's hollow plastic, and there's a great big hole in the bottom of that cheese... making me wonder if he was the cap to something... I just don't know. 

Here is a cute little Bartok toy! Remember him? He's the little albino bat who sidekicks for Rasputin the Mad Monk in the Don Bluth Anastasia film. I don't remember liking that movie all that much, but I can't remember why. Apparently it did very well. I do however, happen to be one of about 3 people in the world who enjoy the utterly weird direct-to-dvd spin-off/sequel: Bartok The Magnificent! At first I assumed this might be a toy from that sequel, but upon examining the packaging (This also turned out to be a Burger King Kid's club toy) I realized this must be Rasputin's eye that Bartok is hugging. Pull it out of his paws and a string causes Bartok to shake violently until the eye reels itself back in. Bizarre. I'm going to have to go back and re-watch both movies at some point soon I think. 

Next in the bag was this Peanuts toy from a Wendy's Kid's Meal! It's pretty basic... but pretty awesome in all the right ways. I'm a casual Peanuts fan in that I like the Holiday specials, and I like Snoopy. This dog-house toy has three little sliders on the back end that let you slide up three different, iconic images of Snoopy into view. The first is Snoopy asleep on top of the house. 

The second is Snoopy in his classic Flying Ace get-up and the third shows Snoopy and Woodstock sharing a care-free dance together. The real struggle here was deciding which picture to put on display. I went with the Fling Ace since I like him from the Great Pumpkin special... but then it hit me... I CAN CHANGE IT AT ANY TIME!!! I did a little Snoopy dance myself I was so excited. 

 

The last toy in the bag was another Burger King's Kid's club premium. And it may just be one of the weirdest toys I now own. It is a Nickelodeon 1999 Kid's Choice Awards toy featuring Rosie O'Donell under what is supposed to be a tank of Nick's trademark slime. I own a Rosie O'Donell toy you guys. And I kind of adore it. The slime in the tank above her has dried up in the 14 years since it was put in there... so that's a little disappointing. What I ended up with is a Rosie O'Donnell perpetually staring up at the sky, as if paranoid a low-flying sea-gull is going to "gel" her hair. 

Inside the Grab-Bag, the Snoopy, Rosie, and Bartok toys were all in their original Fast Food Packaging. I shucked and saved the baggies and inserts though. Take a look. 

Moving swiftly on, I paid .99 cents for this alien that I know for a fact originally came from a Dollar store. Why buy it then? Because I haven't seen them in the Dollar Store for a very long time now, and I always meant to pick one up. So instead I got it from goodwill. No prob, Bob. He's about as tall as a GI Joe figure. And he's sort of adorrifying. That's adorable and horrifying squished together. I thought I just made it up but a quick Google search proves me completely wrong.

Here's a Diego toy from one of the Ice Age sets. I haven't looked to see which one. But it's pretty faithful to his appearance in the first one, and that's all I really care about, as that first film is the only one I've ever really enjoyed. I got him for .99 cents. 

Here's a bobble-headed Chewie after he's just taken over a wind-up AT-ST in the battle of Toy Endor. I actually bought this one for my son, but thought I'd show it off on here before letting him have it. Got it for .99 cents. 

Why what's this thing all secretively sealed and ominous looking? Is it full of gold? Is it full of severed human ears? (I really suck at playing What's-The-MacGuffin?) Let's look shall we? 

Well let me show you! It's a 1985 Playskool Poppon' Pals Sesame Street toy! Sort of an activity toy with different latches, buttons, levers and dials used to make the characters pop out of hiding. 5 of my favorite Sesame Street Muppets are waiting to be discovered! 1.99 for this little piece of history!

So there. A TON of toys featured today, all bought at different Goodwills on different days, all gathered together for one big post! 

That's it for me tonight guys! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!