When The Wolves Were Running
December 9, 2007 | 1 Comment
Time for a Christmas confession…
I’m a snow junkie.
It could be Christmas Eve night, you could be wrapping presents with the tree alight, surrounded by loved ones, hell, even Santa Claus himself could be there, but without snow falling outside, it just doesn’t feel like Christmas. The white stuff is one of two things ESSENTIAL for coaxing out the warm, fuzzy, egg nog-infused holiday feelings in me. I know I’m not alone in this.
Last night half of my holiday prayers were answered when we got an uncharacteristic truck-full of snow dropped on us, must be at least two feet. Now, it’s time for me to nab some rum and dust off the other half of my Christmas criteria. A scratched old VHS tape with “The Box Of Delights” scrawled across it’s yellowing label. My Dad recorded this tape when I was young, and every Christmas it was traditional to watch it putting the tree up (we watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when the tree came down). This oftentimes bizarre series of six episodes comprise the best Christmas movie I’ve ever watched, and best captures that ethereal warmth you get during the holidays… or after eight glasses of Chardonnay.
Based on a children’s novel published in 1935 by British author and poet John Masefield, this mystical adventure was turned into a six-episode BBC mini-series in 1984, just in time for Christmas. Starring Devin Stanfield as the young (filthy rich) English lad Kay Harker who’s coming home from a private school for Christmas. Kay befriends an old Punch ‘n Judy man (basically a very old form of puppet show theatre) named Cole Hawlings (Patrick Troughton… Doctor Who himself baby!), who entrusts him with protecting a magical box from some nasty wolves who walk as men. Led by the lugubrious Abner Brown (Robert Stephens) these evil wolves masquerade as clergymen and “Scrobble” anyone between them and the wonders that the box contains.
Confused…? Don’t worry, so was I when I first saw it. Not being well-versed in either the British culture or language can somewhat hamper your ability to follow the plot, but stick with it and you’ll be rewarded with not only a great movie experience, but an educational one as well. I was the only kid on the block who knew what a Cloister, a Poultice, and Punch ‘n Judy were. From the moment the effervescent violins of Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s orchestral arrangement of “The First Noël” begins during the opening sequence, you know this is going to be a very different brand of Christmas movie. The entire series has an old-world European feel. A place and time where people decorate trees with candles instead of electric lights, go to midnight mass, live in ancient stone cathedrals, and where magic seems a heck of a lot more likely to actually exist.
Youtube has got the opening sequence featuring “The First Noel” here.
The series blended live action with a variety of animation styles to bring the magic of the Box (and of the evil Abner Brown) to life. Hand-drawn demons and phoenixes would jump to life alongside the actors (something that had rarely been seen on TV at that time), and a scene where Cole Hawlings brings a painting of a mountain down from the wall and expands it into a whole room to escape from the bad guys was a revelation in budget special effects. Of course it can’t all be good… Limited funds, and too much experimental animation leads to a hilariously bad scene where Kay goes back in time to find Arnold of Toady (my fav character) in a warp speed flying wooden canoe.
Good versus evil, life and death, the ultimate showdown with Abner and the rescue of his hostages (like any clergymen, he kidnaps alter boys… ouch) doesn’t disappoint and everyone makes it back to Tatchester Abbey in time to have a merry Christmas.
I would absolutely recommend this jolly piece of BBC history to anyone who can find a copy that will work in North American DVD players (watch out for UK or Region 2 DVDs, they won’t work). Despite some frightening dream sequences that may or may not scar young children for a lifetime, it’s fine to get the whole family together, plug in the tree, get some hot chocolate bubbling away, and press play. I promise it’ll be a completely unique Christmas movie experience, one you’ll come back to again and again. That is until the ‘ol VHS tape can take no more repeated viewing abuse… like mine.
Oh c’mon ! It can take one more for the team… besides, it’s snowing like crazy outside, what else am I going to do ?
Much Love…
Kick To Reset
December 6, 2007 | 1 Comment
I can remember back to a blistering Ontario summer, when a whatever-year-old me and my buddy Matt were hunkered down in his room playing MagMax for the original Nintendo Entertainment System (It’s called an NES… Duuuuuh). He had the kind of room everyone had as a pre-teen in the eighties; bookshelf of fantasy books, collectable figures, pennies, and un-popped popcorn kernels strewn everywhere, and a bumpy, spackeled ceiling covered with those glow in the dark stars and planets… yeah, you know the ones. The light from the late afternoon sun meandered it’s way through his open window, calling to us, tempting us back outside for another cannonball into the pool (yep, my friend had a pool…word). But we weren’t heeding the siren’s call of sunstroke today, we’d been outside plenty already… and the game never seemed to end…
You see, back in the days before Super Mario Bros. 3 united the video game world in a golden age of quality graphics and comprehensible gameplay, video games were all pretty much like Space Invaders. Fly, shoot, fly, shoot, more enemies, different background, fly, shoot… ad infinitum. Galaga, Gyruss, Abadox, this game was no different.
“A highly civilized group of aliens has conquered earth and put the human beings under the control of the Computer Babylon which has begun to kill the human beings. In order to stop the aliens, the people developed a transformable mechanical robot named MagMax. They also chose a brave man for their rescue.The brave man is about to depart to the ultimate battle with the aliens in order to save the human race.”
- Taken from the MagMax Instruction manual
Sounds interesting eh ? Interesting enough to merit a rental from the local MadJack Video store ? Definitely ! And even though the graphics were pathetic, the enemies all looked the same, the music was annoying, and the controls were frustrating, we were still hooked ’till dinner.
MagMax, released in 1988 for the NES, but originally released during the bronze age for arcade machines had a kind of morbid, hypnotizing charm. A giggly trance that comes from playing a pointless game while knowing full well you could be doing better things with your time. Heck, we could have taken a step up simply by playing any of the much better NES games that were out at the time. But what other game had the option of turning your shooting ship into a robot-man, thereby turning yourself into a bigger, easily destroyable target ?
Absolutely the best, I mean worst, feature of MagMax was the evil three-headed boss of every other level named Babylon. When you destroyed this big mutha (and you really couldn’t die, he’s pretty lame), he just stops moving, and you fly right by him. No explosions, not even a groan of defeat. It seems the programmers used up all the memory in the game on…. ummmmm….
The game never ended, level after level, boss after boss, no real goal in sight. It was during this marathon of silliness that Matt and I discovered what his Nintendo’s hidden quirk was. Of course anyone who ever played NES had to do the “blow into the cartridge man, it makes ‘em work better” thing, but this was cooler. Turns out when you gave the worn formica-topped table upon which the NES was perched a kick, the system would not only reset itself, but it caused the newly-reset game’s colours to be reversed like a photo-negative. Now the game was elevated from stupid fun to stupid TRIPPY fun !
It didn’t take much to amuse us back then…
Much love…
M.U.S.C.L.E. Mania
December 3, 2007 | 1 Comment
…A view from the bathtub…
It’s about 8:30pm on a Tuesday night lost long ago. Mom and dad are in the living room watching the news and an eight year old me is upstairs having my bath before bedtime. I’m shivering with cold because the water has gone tepid an hour ago, but I don’t even feel it. I’ve been busy concocting stories and battles for the hundreds of little plastic figures littering the bathroom floor, and floating around with me in the tub. Tiny, brightly-coloured Superheroes, pro-wrestlers, and space aliens are perched on every inch of available tub-space !
POW !!! The Lizard-Man just got blasted by the Robot-Wrestler. BLAM !!! The Walking monolith just got flying kicked by the Ninja Assassin. Pretty soon my mom’s at the door, wondering why it’s taking me so long to scrub behind my ears. How can she possibly understand the Universe is at stake !!!???
It’s now 9:00pm and serious hypothermia is in danger of setting in, so I collect up all the figures, deciding that the ultimate super-wrestling championship finals can wait till tomorrow night’s bath-time. I pop them all into a big tupperware container, towel off, trek back to my room (past my mom’s quizzical looks) and hop into bed. Tonight, I’ll dream the next chapter of my imaginary epic saga.
Almost twenty years later, I’ve still got that tupperware container full of little figures.
The legion of colourful little 1 1/2″ figurines that captured my imagination so vividly were called M.U.S.C.L.E. Men (An acronym for Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere). During the early 1980s these little dudes (and I think they were ALL dudes) were sold by the ton to rabid North American pre-teen collectors in packs of four, ten, and thirty. The ten packs being one of the coolest packaging jobs on toys I’ve ever seen !!! (miniature plastic garbage cans of love)
The packs of figures, which sold for pennies, seemed to contain an endless assortment of characters, both righteous “Thug Busters”, and evil “Cosmic Crunchers”. The only way to tell if one of your tiny un-opposable figures was a good guy or not was to study it’s facial features, it’s pose, and it’s clothing (little tip : guys that stoop to using weapons are evil). The packaging literally came with no indication of what the M.U.S.C.L.E. Men’s story was, or where you could find out who or what your characters were. So, without missing a beat, a whole generation of children with hyper-active imaginations just thought up their own stories for these little guys to play a part in. I did some of my best work in the tub… but you already know about that…
So imagine my surprise when, after a little research, I found out that M.U.S.C.L.E. Men were in fact a Japanese franchise with a very colourful and in-depth storyline !!! (I should have known, first Transformers, now this)
Originally known as Kinnikuman in Japan, the whole shebang started as a weekly comic book in the 70s created by two guys named Yoshinori Nakai and Shimada Takashi under the combined pen-name of “Yudetamago” (which means “boiled egg”). The comic focused on the exploits of Kinnikuman (translates to “Muscleman”) who was kind of slow, but determined to protect the world from a wide array of bizarre villains. These supremely powerful beings called “Chojin” always decided to settle their differences with pro-wrestling matches for some reason. As weird as the premise seemed, the comic had a rabid Japanese fan base, who routinely mailed the creators ideas for new cosmic wrestling villains, and were rewarded by seeing their creations get suplexed to bits in black and white.
As popularity for the action/comedy comic grew from a cult following to a mainstream phenomenon, it was translated into a weekly Japanese television cartoon than ran from April 1983 to October 1986. The Kinnikuman machine was unstoppable, pumping out merchandise of all kinds : dolls, stickers, games, and a peculiar brand of small figures called “Kinkeshi” which were prized for their collectabillity. These 1 1/2″ foreskin-coloured figures were molded from a tough plastic that kinda resembled one of those old pink erasers that got forgotten in the bottom of your locker and calcified over the summer break. Japanese kids were crazy for the little guys !!! Soon the figures were being distributed in various colours from simple reds, oranges and purples, to eighties tube-sock neon green !!!
Soon the big, international toy company Bandai came to see what all the fuss was about. Buying the rights to distribute Kinnikuman in N. America, Bandai decided to release the Kinkeshi figures only and see how American children responded. Re-dubbed M.U.S.C.L.E. Men, and packaged with only the names of two characters (”Muscleman”, the hero and “Terri-Bull”, the villain) the strange, collectible toy line hit American and Canadian shelves in 1985. The timing could not have been more perfect.
Kids in north America were beyond ready to embrace a kitschy Japanese sci-fi/wrestling sensation. It was the year of Hulk Hogan and the first Wrestlemania, the year of the Droids TV show, Back to the Future, and Mad Max. Body Slams and lazer beams were already part of our genetic make-up !
Each character was inscribed with the mysterious Y/S.N.T. code on it’s back, indicating that it was one of the 233 original series M.U.S.C.L.E. Man figures. How do I know there were 233 ? Because you could send away for a poster that proudly displayed ALL the figures, and your collecting obsession, to all your friends and family. There was also a life-size Championship belt you could buy to store your figures, and a miniature wrestling ring for them to fight in (of course we ALL know the proper place to play with M.U.S.C.L.E. Men is in the bathtub). Nintendo even got in on the action, and paired-up with Bandai to release M.U.S.C.L.E. for the NES in 1986. Probably one of the silliest and most pointless Nintendo games ever made, M.U.S.C.L.E. did succeed in revealing absolutely NOTHING about our beloved characters, or the world they inhabit. But hey, I still bought it…
By 1987 the magic of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men had pretty much dispersed from the collective ADD-riddled American attention span, but in Japan the series continued to have a huge fan base. The cartoon wrapped up with 137 episodes, plus a spin-off show dedicated to the character Ramenman (think Bruce Lee meets a Butternut Squash).
The comic continued to be published, and seven more video games were produced for various systems for the next couple years. Bandai tried to market the Kinkeshi toy line to Europe (Italy especially) by releasing the multi-coloured series of figures under the name of “Exogini” (which I think roughly translates to “I can’t speak Italian, so don’t ask me“).
The popularity of Kinnikuman continued through the 90s to this very day in Japan. Good ‘ol Yudetamago struck gold again in 1998 with a new series entitled, appropriately enough Ultimate Muscle : The Kinnikuman Legacy. Focusing on a new bunch of Chojin (led by Muscleman’s son… er… little MuscleMan…?) and their battles against new and even more silly villains. This series became just as huge a hit as the original, spawning cartoons, video games, trading cards, and yes… hundreds of tiny Kinkeshi figures to inspire a whole new generation.
I, along with most N. Americans, had moved on to bigger and flashier toys by the end of the 80s. Even so, I still kept my M.U.S.C..L.E. men in that worn tupperware container in my closet. Every once in a while my family would hit a local garage sale and I’d find the obligatory shoe-box filled with 5-cent buttons and figures containing one or two M.U.S.C.L.E. Men (it’s usually by the kiddie table at the back, next to the Barbie dolls that are missing limbs). Slowly, my inactive collection of figures grew right through my teenage years into adulthood. Every so often I crack the box open and sort through the little guys, rubbing dust and dried bits of soap out of their faces from my bathtub adventures so long ago. I try to remember the names I gave them, and the stories they were a part of… I had so much more imagination then.
For anyone interested in dusting off their M.U.S.C.L.E. collection and getting back into the collecting game, there is a passionate and hard working group of websites dedicated to all things Kinnikuman which can provide much more info than I.
- The M.U.S.C.L.E. Preservation Society is THE authority on all things… errr… M.U.S.C.-ular.
- Nathan’s M.U.S.C.L.E. Page not only has peerless info and treats for Kinnikuman fans, but a whole lotta love for all kinds of other toy lines as well.
- The M.U.S.C.L.E. Dojo will pump you up !
- The Exogini Page can help you figure out if that strangely-coloured M.U.S.C.L.E. Man is actually an Italian spy.
So get up into that attic, dust off your old shoebox fulla toys and start EBay-ing to finish that near-perfect M.U.S.C.L.E. Man collection. Or, just have a look at the little guys for Nostalgia’s sake… It’s okay to play with ‘em too, and make those Mortal Kombat sound effects when no-one is around… I won’t tell…
Much Love…
