1. Nausicaa remake – In the 1980s, New World Pictures (owned by B-movie guru Roger Corman) released a heavily-edited version of the now-classic Miyazaki film, Nausciaa of the Valley of the Wind. This “remake”, called Warriors of the Wind, is a pretty amazingly ugly attempt at rebranding a movie with no respect for the culture or art behind it. Here’s the cover:
And here’s the trailer:
U-S-A! U-S-A!
2. Parker Brothers catalog – Retrospace has a great post featuring a Parker Brothers catalog from 1972. What’s “Birthday Cake”? What’s “Screech”? It’s interesting to see the games that have stood the test of time, those that only kind of half-stood the test of time (Pit), and those that have just fallen by the wayside (The Uncle Wiggly Game).
3. M.U.S.C.L.E. commercial – One of my favorite toys as a kid, M.U.S.C.L.E. men were tiny pink wrestlers that came in hundreds of different shapes and builds. There was a wrestling ring that you could buy (which I had) that let you push two M.U.S.C.L.E. men together until one, the loser, popped out. Kind of like Rock’em Sock’em Robots, but without the satisfaction of a disabling victory. After playing with the wrestling ring a bit, I went back to my usual ways of playing with M.U.S.C.L.E. men, which were either leaving them in the pool until the chlorine bleached them white or putting dozens of them on a turned-off ceiling fan and then turning the fan on so that they would fly all over the room.
Here’s a commercial for these guys:
4. Johnny Horizon – I discovered Johnny Horizon through the Parker Brothers catalog mentioned earlier. Parker Brothers offered a Johnny Horizon Environmental Test Kit, which struck me as an odd sort of board game. Turns out, it’s a kit that let kids test for water or air pollution. How dystopic is that?! After looking into it a bit, I learned that Johnny Horizon was a mascot used by the Bureau of Land Management in the 70’s.
Looks like Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl beat poor Johnny out of contention for memorable BLM mascots.
5. EPCOT concept art – Here’s an amazing, Blade-Runner-esque concept design of EPCOT the city, as Walt Disney originally intended. I can’t tell you the amount of time I’ve spent wondering what things might be like now if Walt’s true vision for EPCOT had actually happened.
Beautiful.
-ds