In-between the times Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck wrestled as a tag-team (in one of the single unfunniest cartoons ever) and Ren & Stimpy did (in one of the funniest ever) -
I thought up a concept gathering various anthropomorphic characters (funny animals, in layman's terms) that would mimic and parody all of the many zany antics of professional wrestling and the "sports entertainment" business and industry overall...! Many (but certainly not all) of the spoofs I devised are to be found here and the gist of the project is here.
You can imagine my displeasure at finding out that, anxious to embark upon Beanie Babies territory, the WWE has launched a plethora of "funny animal versions" of their "sports entertainment superstars" all their own - each one meticulously based upon their very real 'rasslin' ring counterparts, "animals" of sorts that they are to begin with...
Let's have a closer look at those critters - right here and now!


Ric Flair Plush Bear
The most “stylin’ and profilin’” addition to the WWE Plush Bear family has arrived with “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair’s rendition of these lovable friends. From the expensive, glitter-covered entrance robe to the slick golden locks, this nearly foot-and-a-half tall collectible is a spitting-image of the 16-time World Champion. Bring the incomparable luster of this legendary sports-entertainer into your home and experience an endless amount of smiles while admiring it’s Flair-like attributes!! 17” tall. Cotton, polyester, and nylon. Imported. (Hmm? Imported? I thought Flair was just as all-American as... ah... that darn Hogan actually! Oh well...)

Hmm - nicely cut promo... I guess? Oh - that one doesn't count as kayfabe or anything...? Ok, sorry! But it should have been lustre not luster - the former has more, ah, flair to it! ;)
And there are other boo-boos there too...
But I digress... Whooooooo!

At $14.98 (25% worth of savings) it is a steal - and I cannot withhold from mentioning the pleasant discovery that the downright yucky "Hulk Hogan Plush Bear" is offered at 33% off (going for less than the Flair Bear hence, at only $13.40! Well-deserved putdown, I say! Shouldn't it have been a Hulk Hogan Hogwild Plush Hog anyway?!? *LOL* ;)

Quite frankly, if the Flair Bear is not available (they'll fly off the shelves, these collectors' items, I tell ya!) I'd get a Big Show Plush Bear (pictured on top of the heap here - even though he has got to be the most boring performer, in his category, of all-time) or a -yikes- John Cena CG Marine Plush Bear - if I were you! Even a hokey Undertaker Plush Bear (yikes!) is preferable to Hogan! ANYTHING BUT HOGAN! (Hmm - now THAT should have been the title of his reality-TV show! *ROTFLMBO" Have a peek at the ''Undertakerbear'' at the bottom of this piece right here; aye, it is NOT easy to tell what it is truly based upon! Looks like Wyatt Earp to me... Could have been one of those D.O.A. chumps or one of the Southern Justice guys - or even Outback Jack?!? *LOL*)
Note also: I advise all of you not to get the Shawn Michaels Plush Bear - way too tacky for my taste and yours! Trust me! And the same goes for the Randy Orton Plush Bear (his dad, Cowboy Bob Orton, made for the worst old WWF action figures too...! It must be an anti-merchandising gene they've got...?)
Kudos though, somehow, to the well done Batista Plush Bear (being the Animal, it helps being believable as a teddy bear I guess?!?) and Carlito Plush Bear too...! Have a Barbie keep him company (Barb will fill in for bimboesque Torrie Wilson...!)

Actually - getting an Eugene Plush Bear (seen below) will be almost something akin to putting out a poor beastling out of its misery - they're down to 40% off and, at $11.98, they're dirt cheap in the world of "WWESHOP" merchandise hawked at you ever so subtly...!


I am just perplexed not to see a "Triple H Plush Bear" included in there...
What - no fluffy stuff for the son-in-law of the empire? Why not? Is he afraid to see the fans beat the stuffing out of his replica the next time he goes overboard (like, I dunno, let's randomly pick an example here; oh yeah, got it - the time when he planted a screwdriver into the forehead of his IDOL, legendary ROLE-MODEL and MENTOR even! New lows for ingrates everywhere to "aspire" to...? I guess that is part of the "WWE attitude" - or is that passé too? Never mind that now...)
A teddy bear carrying around a sledge hammer (not to mention a bloodied screwdriver) is a bit of a hard sell too - that is, if I understand anything at all about the toy and collectibles family-friendly business...!
Maybe a Great Khali plush atrocity is to be expected next... And don't forget the Little Bastard... I mean, "Hornswoggle" McMahon, of course! (What a nice P.C. name - well, it was up until it got affixed the McMahon family name! Joking! ;)

My toyline (since, for starters, diversification of the merchandising can potentially know no bounds with a good concept; such as mine, that is) and, hence, my concept has an edge to it, still... One that this latest bit of WWE merchandizing cannot match!
In my project, there are true characters WITH character! Characters with a RAISON D'ÊTRE...! Characters meant to make you think, not just laugh from the corner of your mouth.
They are all fun, educational, fully fleshed-out characters in their own right; not mere cutesy-wootsy fluffy derivatives of mere shadows of characterization made out of clichés and lame humor pieced together with all the style and finesse of a butcher wrapping up your sirloin steaks...!
But that is -mercifully- another story, yes...! For another blog...

Rest assured of that!

Labels: TV, Whoooooooo

Angels that are mere "soldiers/warriors of God" and that DIE on the Field... A Lilith that has too much free time on her hands, looks too much like a Clueless tart and/or an escapee from Buffy The Vampire Slayer's supporting cast - if not outright a Xena toughie - AND goes around like a headless chicken would... A guy who's seen IT ALL, such as Dean Winchester, uttering such foolish, idiotic lines such as "I don't believe in angels... or in a God" - WHEN HE'S SEEN ALL THE EVIL THAT EXISTS, AND FOUGHT IT OFF, OFTENTIMES, WITH SACRED OBJECTS, PRAYERS, INCANTATIONS AND TIME-HONORED "TRICKS" THAT COME STRAIGHT OUT OF... A HIGHER POWER! Because, without this Higher Power, there would be no way (in hell...?) to fight back all these unholy powers on a weekly basis...! Didn't daddy-o teach you THAT much, Dean-o?!? Oh, but then again this is the show that has you two studs SHOOTING GHOSTS - sure, that makes sense...! (They got all the bogus mythos for vampires right, and went with that crap "by the book" too - but when it comes to Biblical or more reliable (than Bram Stoker) folkloric references and traditions, they reinterpret, "reimagine" and reinvent them, in order to modernize and improve them - make it "cool" eh - rrrrrrrrrrright.) Such silly notions, freely distributed each and every episode these days, such as Lucifer only being freed to roam the earth NOW and Heaven's Angels (or is it soldiers) having only come back just recently too, to walk among man again - "for the first time in 2000 years...!" sayeth the second-rate actor chosen to portray this alleged angel - and he said it with a straight face too (maybe he's a better actor than I first thought after all - probably a better thespian than the entire regular Supercraptular cast too! But that is another story...) And the capper - 66 seals instead of just seven to crack open in order to ring in the Apocalypse! WHAT IS THIS SHIT?!? We are obviously hoping to milk this for all it's worth - and prolong the series' sustainable potential lifespan for the maximum number of seasons - eh? (This from a show that wasn't even sure it would last ONE season nor come back for a second one...!) We are taking A LOT of liberties with THE GOOD BOOK there, pallies - and yes, of course, the end result pales in comparison (as it always will) but that is not my point right now... When one decides to make up a sort of "appendix" to the BIBLE - one better make sure one knows the Source Material first! To begin with, it is written, WOE TO HE WHO ADDS OR SUBSTRACTS FROM THIS...! That means that the Winchester Brothers and crew are twice as cursed as before now - at least! Now, I know it is just TOO DAMN TEMPTING to "add to this..." - "this" being the Bible Prophecies for the End Times, in particular! I say "in particular" because it is not exclusively, quite obviously; Anne Rice is writing sort of "untold chapters" about Jesus-Christ's Life and Times - sort of his "secret years" being "reimagined" Hollywood-style? She thinks she is redeeming herself this way - it can go either way, really... She may be only digging herself into a new or deeper hole than she was in back when she cavorted with Memnoch and Lestat... Time will tell which it is; I wash my hands of this...! The brain trust behind "Supernatural" only succumbed to the exact same temptation as countless other scribes did before them - as I myself felt compelled to do, on MANY occasions too...! It is simply too tempting and flattering as well as self-serving to select oneself to be that one scribe who adds a chapter to the Eternal Struggle of Good Versus Evil - to become one of those SELECT ones that reveal to the world at large a so-called "secret chapter" of the Struggle...! Only to try and imagine what makes the first she-devil tick - what the rules of this conflict between Heaven and Hell really are - how things truly function between these realms, including ours, which is always the battleground and caught in-between... Ahh, to try and ADD (or indeed substract in a way that is dear to all "creators" these days - the "everything you thought you knew is wrong; here's how it really happened" way - which is clearly the Supernatural way too, by the way...) - while we are only able to interpret the Grand Scheme of Things with our very flawed eyes and comprehension... It is very edifying to merely ATTEMPT this, sure - I know it well for, in my own fiction, I've done it as well (and better, in truth!) and this despite fearing that I was infringing indeed the RULE mentioned here above... "THOU SHALL NOT ADD NOR SUBSTRACT FROM THIS" - that is rather very clear. I tried to get around that ever since, not adding nor substracting but merely writing in parallel, respectful of all the rules and only supplying "a bystander tale" type of thing, in all of my writing projects. I see no such efforts from any of those I lambaste here today (and many more I will not give any free publicity to, this day nor ever...!) hence, I shall ram into them with full force! It is downright pitiful for a tiny TV show to have the gall to try and tell us that the Bible needs rewriting - and here it is!? The scope is there but presented with such minimalistic means that it becomes a very small affair indeed; and that is very bad when we're dealing with Something that affects ALL of humanity - regardless of what religion you adhere to! I always thought that the future of all mankind would be poorly served by two redneck brothers on Route 666 - and I was right all along, as per usual. If these Winchester brothers really existed, they'd be no more than smalltime ghost-buster wannabees (in a real-life Smallville, perhaps...?) They would NOT be fighting major league opposition from Hades - especially not when they don't even believe in Everything...!!! Their weapons would NOT be guns either... One fights on with something else entirely when one faces off with the Ultimate Adversary and its legions; not ammo nor one's own two fists either (no matter how tempting it is, again...) All in all, I'm really disappointed in Supernatural - to the point that I say that, maybe, it would have been better if the show had never come back for a second season at all. Much less a third, fourth, etc...! That final episode of season one, in which the demons are taking over bodies EVERYWHERE and EVERYONE can be an enemy - and the two brothers and their dad have nowhere to hide, winding up seemingly dead when a demon takes over a trucker in order to crash into them on the highway; now THAT was plausible, logical and a fitting end too! Supernatural, just like all preceding, current and future efforts of the kind, have not and will never deliver convincingly in this sort of field - NOT EVEN WHEN THEY RESOLUTELY TAKE THE PRO-CHRISTIAN APPROACH (such as, per example, fighting off neo-folkloric vampires with crucifixes and holy water instead of karate kicks and stakes through the heart!) As for the Winchesters - they are not credible at all as "privileged ones who know things 99% of the population are in the dark about" - at all. Those who know too much are never allowed to roam free for too long; and who has more means and "contacts" that can shut up permanently anyone who spouts off too many "unspeakable truths" left and right, than the devil, huh? Truly the show should have ended then, in season one - and for me, henceforth, that is exactly where and how it ended. REST IN PEACE, SUPERNATURAL. Say hello to Shadow Chasers for me. (They, at least, knew better than to augment the scope; and then lose focus and credibility completely!) +++

Labels: Les démons de Minuit, SUCKS, TV