Hey there, folks — it’s been forever! I’ll dispense with the excuses, but hopefully we’ll have more content for you before another month goes by. And if you find the wait in between updates to be too unbearable, here’s a reminder to stop by Random Action Hour. Ragey and Galvatron’s prolific updates put some news outlets to shame.

Okay, on to today’s update. First we’ve got A Crayon Haiku #83, which features my Alex custom figure at a very early stage. I’ve come quite a ways with the painting since I took this picture, but — since I’m very slow — there’s still much work to be done. Whenever I take more pictures and/or actually finish the thing (remember, Mallah’s been in WIP status for the last eight months), expect Alex to appear in another haiku or featurette somewhere on the site.

The main draw for this update, however, is our belated Halloween 2008 Snacks review. There’s not a ton of items reviewed in here, really — just reviews of two gummi snacks, Halloween-themed Oreo cookies, and a bonus non-food review of a Halloween Domo-kun plushie — but still. If nothing else, the Bacardi cameo makes the article worth a look. 🙂

Aaand that’s it for this update, then! Until next time…

As always, apologies for the site hiatus! I wish I had some more exciting excuses, but honestly? I’ve been quite distracted by the US Presidential race these days. Things are looking very good for Barack Obama at the moment — let’s hope his lead in the polls continues to hold!

Anyway, today’s a bit of a quickie update: it’s just Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #106 and A Crayon Haiku #82. In keeping with some of our comics from last season, expect more “Heroes” Hot Flashes in the future. And as for the haiku, can you believe it?! Figures without stuck joints?!?!? Even when I was ultimately able to free up the joints without breaking the toy, it feels like it’s been forever since I bought a fairly well-articulated figure (Transformers excluded) that didn’t need to be immersed in microwaved water or given a time out in the freezer before I could actually pose it. If we’re talking streaks, we’re only at two — Giles and Anders came later, but I got the White Ranger on the same day as Ann O’Brien of the Legendary Comic Book Heroes line, and she needed quite a bit of hot water fun to free up her joints and correct the warping of her left arm that took place in the package. Though technically I got the White Ranger after Ann O’Brien on that day, so maybe he should be counted in the streak! At any rate, I will definitely be pleased if my next figure purchase continues the trend.

And upon looking up some info on the White Ranger, I find it really odd and interesting that the only other “official” Power Ranger I own — the Black Dino Ranger, which was given to me by a friend — is the same guy. That’s so wild! I know very little about Power Rangers these days, but they’re among the best action figure buys around now with all of the other toy lines increasing in price. And whereas it’s nearly impossible to find the new Marvel Legends and DC Universe figures in this area, Jungle Fury Rangers are pretty much guaranteed to be in stock! I’m going to have to keep my eyes peeled for the Rhino Ranger.

And finally, my birthday was last Saturday — so while I feel less and less inclined to do stuff on Scary-Crayon proper for that sort of thing, feel free to swing by my blog and check out the birthday photo post containing various Wes baby and toddler pictures. I was adorable, was I not?

And oh! INTERROBANG STUDIOS is back in action, so go check it out! I actually have more links to plug, but I really think I should bring this entry to a close. I hope to have more updates soon, though! Until then. 🙂

NEW ARTICLE! I suppose that goes without saying, since it’s usually the case when I post entries to the Scary-Crayon blog, but yes. Today’s feature, a review of “In the Beginning” and other stuff in Lancaster County, PA, details my adventures and thoughts concerning a religious “retreat” that I attended last month. All of the salient details are in the article, though I must admit that, as I read up on related topics, I was shocked and appalled to learn just how many Americans accept the stories in the Bible as fact. If 60% of Americans believe that dinosaurs were here en masse 6000 years ago, it’s no wonder that the United States isn’t ranking so high in terms of science education and development. Bloody hell.

Well, not quite — but today’s features are connected to the current election coverage. First up, as promised, there’s the review of the Barack Obama action figure! I’ve linked to Jailbreak Toys in the article, but you can also find Obama at Urban Outfitters stores and order them from a number of online retailers. I got mine from Amazon.com.

And then there’s Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #105, which uses screencaps from “Angel” Season 3 to make fun of the actions that led up to the birth of VP candidate Sarah Palin’s latest child. Given that the details are pretty much all verifiable in online articles from the Anchorage Daily News (see the former article for more specific links), I refuse to believe that McCain’s campaign fully vetted this woman before offering her a spot on the ticket. Every medical article that I can find online indicates that a pregnant woman should go to the hospital immediately after her water breaks, yet Palin not only endangered her baby’s safety by waiting, but also got on a plane and flew all the way back to Alaska before doing so. Hell, she didn’t even alert the airline that she was pregnant! Given the possibility that she could have gone into labor in the air, not to mention all of the complications that can arise when one is giving birth to a baby with Down syndrome, it seems pretty clear to me that Palin’s poor judgment should disqualify her from holding any political office. Seriously, this shit doesn’t even make any sense.

And now my head is hurting again, so I guess I’ll end this here. Until next time, assuming President Palin doesn’t fuck things up so horrifically in an alternate future that the exploding carnage causes reverse temporal feedback and nukes us all in the present!

As always, Scary-Crayon readers, my apologies for the hiatus — things got kinda hectic over here for a while with the freelancing and the crazy political sitch and a couple of weeks of nonstop salivating over package arrivals. It’s left me with a glut of things to review (hopefully I’ll be quicker about getting to those in the coming weeks), but, as in so many other categories, Sarah Jane Smith had to take precedence!

So first up, Mickey is back with the third installment of Sarah Jane Smith Fashionista Fever! (which is also cross-posted over at her personal site)! As always, there’s tons of fashionista… fever to be found in Mick’s analyses — not to mention salivating over boots and pink! striped! socks! — so read and enjoy! And then, jumping ahead some 30+ years, Sarah Jane is also featured in Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #104 (which uses screencaps taken from the flipping awful “Journey’s End”). To borrow a phrase from a certain “fuckin’ redneck” and soon-to-be teenage father who shall remain nameless, she’ll kick ass if you fuck with her.

Okey-doke, that’s all for now. Next time — which I hope will be very soon, as in within the next couple of days (I really want to get this piece done with) — we’ll have a review of the Barack Obama action figure! And maybe another screencap Hot Flash, since I’m really liking the DessinImmortel 1.0 font and want to use it a bit more. We’ll see. 🙂

So I’d hoped to have this up sometime last week, but it’s finally here: our review of the Madballs sticker set currently making the rounds at Target! Except it’s not really a review of the stickers’ stickability — that would be painfully short — but rather a close-up look and discussion of the new Madballs depicted on the adhesives. Yes, you read that right. New Madballs! And by that I mean new-new Madballs, as opposed to more or less obvious derivatives of old school balls. Yay!

And then we’ve also got the conclusion of “The Doctor’s Demons” for your reading pleasure. I had quite a bit of fun with this one and learned a handful of tricks that make the comic creation process go a lot more smoothly, so expect more (but not too many more) toy comics in the future. Given that some of these tips involved the creation of dialogue bubbles, more screencap comics are also very likely. There may even be one in the next update! And barring the possibility of a quick Crayon Haiku update in the mix, the next update should contain the next installment of Mickey Glitter‘s Sarah Jane Smith Fashionista Fever as well. 🙂

And now it’s plug time! Ragey of Random Action Hour and Random Hoo Haas was kind enough to make a financial donation to the site, so the very least I can do is remind y’all how cool his websites are and encourage you to check them out. In fact, even I didn’t realize how wicked they were until I browsed them in greater detail for the purposes of this plug!

Yes, I knew about the engaging cartoon summaries on Random Action Hour, which — among many, many other shows — include recaps of all of the hilarious American “Street Fighter” and “Darkstalkers” ‘toons. But I had no idea about the in-depth looks of completely insane games like Diet Go Go. Heck, there’s even a fun review of Transformers Action Master Blaster that kinda makes me wish I had some of these little guys. And I couldn’t help but be impressed when I looked at Ragey’s update information on Random Action Hour! I so need to be that prolific with SC.

Anyway, there’s so much stuff on Ragey’s sites that I could single out articles for particular praise all day — just get over there and check ’em out for yourself already.

Aaaand finally, speaking of plugs, here’s another one for Superarticulated, where I’ve got another brief guest review up: this time of the Series 1 Kroenen in the greater Hellboy movie figures review. Don’t expect this renewed action figure kick to end anytime soon, folks. 😉

Okay, that’s all for now. See you next time, minna-san!

Okay, I know I said the Madballs would return next time… but I meant the next time we had a full article. Yep. That’s what I meant, exactly…

Anyway, as you can see, we’ve got no Madballs for you this Sunday morning — but in what is arguably appropriate (considering that the Doctor is Jesus and defeated Satan and all) or isn’t at all (given the name of the feature and what happens in the strip!) for a Sabbath, we’ve got a new episode of Dusty Plastic HELL for you! Or rather, the first part of one, since I’ve decided to split this one into two parts. The total number of panels still exceeds, six, though, which is why I’m not calling this a Hot Flash. It’s been a while since we had one of those, hasn’t it?

Anyway, this is a test of sorts — if you swing by the latest entry (at the moment, anyway) in my personal blog, you’ll see that I’ve been doing blue screen tests of sorts with figures in the light tent. Given my success here, I think I can confidently say that Krang’s saga will finally be continued in the near future! It seems like every time I think I’m ready to continue that I get spent on the test runs, but hopefully that won’t be the case this time.

Anyway, all for now — ideally we’ll have that Madballs article and the exciting conclusion to “The Doctor’s Demons” when next we meet! Ja. 🙂

Yes! First up, A Crayon Haiku #81 — which features a figure from a set that I bought waaaay back during my stint at KB Toys (I think that was in 2000?) and just got around to opening. Kinda crazy, isn’t it? This was from the period just prior to the advent of Marvel Legends, where ToyBiz seemed a bit pressed for ideas and started releasing all kinds of wacky versions of characters. I don’t have any of the Monster Armor X-Men, but those were also pretty insane.

So the main feature of the day is a review of the “Transformers Animated” McDonald’s Happy Meal Lugnut… which also contains brief reviews of three of the other TFA figurines as well as a healthy heap of speculation concerning these guys’ obvious inferiority when compared to other Happy Meal toys. Hasbro is sinister indeed!

With this article, you might also notice that I’m trying out yet another javascript image viewer thingy: Shadowbox. It’s definitely got more features than Lightbox, and I love that it displays a list of numbers that’ll let you skip to images in a given set, but as always your input will be appreciated. It might be a little difficult to assess the value of the gallery list given that the sets in the Lugnut piece are limited to two images (though if you think I should start having the galleries consist of all images in an article, let me know), so I’ve implemented Shadowbox on the Mai & Chun-Li review given its larger galleries in places. Assuming there are no strong objections, I’ll probably end up going back and replacing Lightbox with Shadowbox in all of the previous Lightbox articles!

In other news, if you’re interested in reading my work elsewhere, I’ve got two guest reviews up on Superarticulated: one of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Aslan figure and another of the Target exclusive Marvel Legends Movie Hulk. Not that you should only visit SA to read my stuff, though, as the site has all kinds of fantastic action figure news and reviews! So yes, do check it out.

Next time, the MADBALLS return to Scary-Crayon. Stay tuned!

…and pink pachyderm power in A Crayon Haiku #80! I got my Chalice of Guudenuph figure from the Four Horsemen a while ago and I have to say he is pretty doggone awesome. I may give him a more thorough review in the near future, but suffice it to say that he is a fantastic exclusive indeed!

Now that we’ve gotten that appetizer out of the way, let’s talk about the more substantial content. First among these, Mickey of Strange Cousin Susan is back with Sarah Jane Smith Fashionista Fever! Part Two (which is also crossposted on her site)! So do be sure to keep the love coming and check out her continued analysis of Sarah Jane’s sundry wardrobe selections — which, as Mickey notes, have much improved compared to the fashion atrocities we saw in the previous installment. And there are boots! We love boots.

And speaking of different outfits and boots (!), our two-page review of the SDCC 2005 Exclusive Capcom vs SNK 2 Mai & Chun-Li 2-pack has both, given Chun’s choice footwear and the fact that the exclusive set features the girls wearing non-traditional colors. The review features a lot of unchecked gushing and lots of screencaps (another similarity to Fashionista Fever!) and even potentially redundant articulation tables (do let me know if those are a bit much, won’t you?), but yeah. Quality control issues notwithstanding, I really like these figures.

Oh, and there are plenty of sprites with altered colors throughout the piece — I initially made these because I needed to convince myself that Chun-Li and Mai could actually look good in these alternate schemes before ordering them. (Yes, I know… I’m very strange.) Most of the original sprites came from The Fighter’s Generation, though I did grab some from Kikouken.com as well. That latter website is a particularly awesome resource for Chun-Li fans (and I’ve known about it for a while, so I’m surprised I haven’t linked to it in the context of our earlier SF-related articles), so you’ll definitely want to visit if you fall into that demographic. And while I’m plugging SF sites, there’s also FightingStreet.com, which I may or may not have mentioned before. The site owner liked our SF crossover article, so you know he/she has good taste! 😉

I guess that’ll do it for now, but here’s a reminder that “Turn Left” is airing tonight on the SciFi Channel — so if you’ve been avoiding our review of the episode because of potential spoilers, do remember to check out our piece once you’ve watched it. Even if you do enjoy the episode, hopefully you’ll find some of the criticisms therein to be valid.

Until next time!

UPDATE: I just saw that our pal SAG over at SuperArticulated recently posted reviews of the SOTA Street Fighter Round 1 and Round 2 figures, so fighting game aficionados with a thing for action figures should probably check those out as well. I still think CvS2 Chun-Li gets the win in terms of the sculpt — and you’ll see what I mean about how lovely these ladies look when you compare Mai’s backside to the SOTA Cammy’s droopy posterior — but the superiority of the SOTA figures’ articulation simply cannot be denied.

That’s right — today we’ve got two new Doctor Who features to add to the Spectare section! Perhaps you recall our friend Mickey of Strange Cousin Susan, who partnered with us for the drinking game based on “The Sarah Jane Adventures”? Well, we’re glad to feature her writing once again on the site in Sarah Jane Smith Fashionista Fever! Note also that this is only the first part, so look forward to seeing more of Mickey’s work on SC in the future. The article is also crossposted at her site — along with her blog-style musings and several other projects, including a growing Sarah Jane sound file archive and a collection of LOL capshunz (many of which are Doctor Who-themed) — so be sure to swing by and give her some encouragement in her own backyard as well. 🙂

And whereas Mickey’s piece sees her criticizing Sarah Jane’s wardrobe choices of yesteryear, my review of “Turn Left” sees me criticizing a recent episode from the current “Doctor Who” series. And yes, I have no doubt that forthcoming events will do more to explain Donna’s surpassing importance in the grander scheme of things, but lines like “You’re the most important woman in the whole of creation!” are still unjustifiable and just plain bloody awful. And you know what else is awful? Billie Piper without makeup. I still heart you, Billie, but damn.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot — I made the logo of that piece with an image from this page. It’s a great resource for all of you creative Doctor Who fans out there! This Doctor Who fonts page is also quite useful.

Anywho — get it? anywho?! — that’ll do it for this update. Until next time!

Eventually we’ll get off this toy kick and get back to slightly more diversified content (more old video game reviews are in the works, not to mention multiple food pieces that have been on the back burner for quite sometime), but for now it continues. This latest article isn’t a review, though — as you’ll see, What Happened to Quality Control? is more of a rant slash observation slash nostalgia piece in the vein of some of our older articles. And like many of those, it began as a Wesoteric blog entry before I decided to add a few images and give it to Scary-Crayon. 🙂

Other notes regarding today’s piece? I’ve been wanting to write about Spider-Man’s extended outdoor adventure for quite some time, so I particularly appreciated the opportunity to work it into this feature. (Heck, I’m even tempted to write a short story about the things he might have seen and done during his six-month stint in the gutter. Hmmm…) And I’m totally serious about Treasure Island Sports, Inc. — the customer service rocks. Well, at least if you contact them by e-mail. I didn’t have much luck calling the phone number (if I can, I tend to call online stores first rather than e-mail them when I have complaints and/or problems, if only because it assures me that someone was made aware of the issue), but when that didn’t work out I went ahead and sent an e-mail. Not only did I receive a response within an hour, but they shipped me a replacement the very next day at no additional cost. Really fantastic, completely unexpected, and certainly enough to get me to recommend TISInc to anyone in the market for some toys. Check ’em out and tell ’em Scary-Crayon sent you! They won’t have any idea what you’re talking about, but still. 😉

Alrighty, that’s it for now — hopefully I’ll have the review of that Mai and Chun-Li 2-pack ready before too much longer. Until next time!

And a month and a half later, the second part of the King Kong discounted action figure review is finally up! And to reward you for waiting so patiently, I’ve even included a bonus review of a dollar store gorilla toy. 😉

Speaking of dollar store toy reviews, you might want to check out the Dollar Store Toy Box. I believe the author of the site lives in Canada, so it’s particularly neat to see what items are making the rounds in the northern counterparts of our own dollar stores here in the States. For example, the Transformatrix bootleg Optimus Prime (remember him?) was a Dollar Tree regular back during the 2006 winter holiday season, but apparently he’s just arrived in Canada’s Dollarama locations. Neat!

And while we’re plugging things, Review the World returned this weekend after posting its “final” article on December 31, 2007. Sometimes things just don’t stay dead, eh? Anyway, I look forward to seeing how RtW progresses in its resurrected incarnation.

Until next time, minna-san!

That’s right — at long last, we have another article! But first, two new Crayon Haiku (three if you’re counting): A Crayon Haiku #78 and A Crayon Haiku #79. #78 shows the continued growth of our action figure Legion of Doom and an unfortunate incident with Batzarro (at least the arm sticks back in there, eh? 😐 ), and #79 is just… ugh. I’ve actually had that advert around here since the site began — it really should have been A Crayon Haiku #8 or something — but every time I saw it I shuddered and decided to postpone the scanning. Well, here it is. Isn’t that the worst ad photo ever? I mean, the woman might not look too bad with makeup and clothing and a less awkward pose, but as it stands she just looks skanky and gross. And stinky. Yuck.

So now that we’ve gotten the appetizers out of the way, here’s the main course: a review of DC Direct’s New Gods Darkseid figure. The review says it all, but I quite like this guy! I mean, he’s freaking Darkseid — what’s not to like? Oh, and if you click on the smaller images in this feature, you’ll see that I’ve decided to swallow my hatred of javascript and try something new… that something being Lightbox 2. Barring any unforeseen problems, I think I’ll keep it around, but of course your input is always welcome and appreciated. Let me know if you love it, despise it, et cetera. At the very least, it eliminated the need to press back and/or switch tabs and windows to look at the larger versions of images, eh?

And that’s all for today’s update! Until next time, then…

Hey all! It’s been a while since the last update, but I wanted to make absolutely sure that y’all didn’t miss The Sarah Jane Adventures Drinking Game and had ample time to get your drink on with Miss Smith. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. 😉

Anyway, to kick May off, we’ve got A Crayon Haiku #77… which actually has two 5-7-5 poems. The first is nothing new to you if you’ve read my personal blog lately, but I finally got a Scarecrow figure to bring my Legion of Doom membership count to five. (Though I guess this is the first time Lex Luthor and Black Manta have appeared on SC as well, huh?) And I’d been sort of sitting on the second haiku for some time — ever since I read Salvation Run #4 a couple of months ago, actually. Originally I was going to make it a Hot Flash, but then I decided to make it a quick haiku… and then I decided to reshoot it with the Batman/Superman Series 5 Joker after I got that figure. (I’d previously used one from the “The Batman” figure line.) And then I forgot about it again. Anyway, lest I put it off any longer, I decided to lump it in and make this one of those rare two-haiku installments. Enjoy. 🙂

More substantial fare coming soon — after all, I do have that Kong review to finish! And I did come across a Supreme Kong at a decent price, so I may even have to expand the Kong review to three parts. We’ll see.

Until next time, then!

Hey all! I’m a bit late with tonight’s feature — the show’s already started on the East Coast — but hopefully you folks out West will have time to check out the rules and drink along to “The Sarah Jane Adventures”, premiering tonight at 7:30 PM on Sci Fi. And this is also the debut of my friend Mickey of Strange Cousin Susan as a contributor to the site, so do welcome her! I’ve been eager to have her write for us for some time — and few people love Sarah Jane Smith (and her boots) more — so it was really fantastic to have her along for this piece. 🙂

Anyway, if you miss that initial airing — or, on the EC, want to check it out with the drinking game — it’ll be on again at 11:00 PM. After this week, TSJA will be airing at 8:00 PM on Fridays. So if you’re at all interested in “Doctor Who” (which, starting next week, will begin airing directly after TSJA) or Sarah Jane (or just want to watch solely for the excuse to drink along 😉 ), be sure to check that out! If you’re going to play our game, though, remember to drink responsibly and remain aware of your limits while doing so.

One more thing about the game — don’t be confused by the frequent mentions of Clyde in the rules, since he does not appear in the pilot episode airing tonight. Apparently test audiences found Kelsey to be as annoying as we did, so she was axed and replaced by the very likable Clyde. To make up for the sips missed in his absence, though, you’re welcome to take a sip every time you find Kelsey grating on your soul. If you choose to do so, please remember our warnings. Scary-Crayon and Strange Cousin Susan are not responsible for any embarrassment and/or injury that result from participating in this activity. 😛

ALSO! For Sarah Jane fans with access to the classic “Doctor Who” episodes, you might want to give The Sarah Jane Smith Drinking Game at The Sarah Jane Smith Wardrobe Appreciation Society a try. I haven’t played, so I can’t vouch for it — but considering how incompetent Sarah Jane could be in the older episodes (I still liked her, but give me Leela, Romana, or Ace any day), I suspect that you’d be sipping an awful lot.

Until next time, minna-san!

But first, another Crayon Haiku! Seriously, this is pretty much the only reason I went for this Jimmy Olsen — if I can’t have a Chloe figure, I’ll at least have someone to rag on Clark for letting Chloe get away. I mean, Superman losing to Jimmy Olsen is way worse than losing to Brainiac or Lex Luthor, especially when it’s entirely his fault! Pathetic.

And now, what I really meant to post last week but have just now finished: the first part of a King Kong action figure review! Playmates released a whole line of Kong figures in conjunction with Peter Jackson’s remake back in 2005, but it’s 2008 and most of these Kongs are still sitting on the shelves in KB Toys locations across America. In this installment, I look at three of the 6″ Kongs as well as the larger 11″ Roaring Kong figure. Next time, we’ll look at two more of the smaller figures and the 15″ deluxe Kong from Mezco. Sure, Kong’s no longer exactly current — not that he has to be for a Scary-Crayon review, but still 😉 — but these figures weren’t worth the original prices anyway. Discounted, however, they are awesome.

I’d like to say that the second part of this review will be up soon, but who knows considering that I still haven’t finished the Quick Change Dinobot piece! That said, whereas the QC Dinobots have all but disappeared since the 2007 winter holidays, not even Christmas (or the previous Christmas, for that matter) managed to dwindle the Kong armies manning the pegs at KB. I’m confident that you’ll have your chance to make an informed decision before they disappear altogether. 🙂

Hope y’all enjoyed today’s prank! Or, if you missed it because you came directly to the blog or are a day late, you can check it out here. At first I was planning to do a mock layout littered with Daleks and entitled Skaro-Crayon, but then it completely slipped my mind and I found myself with nada as of Monday morning. But then, as I finished up a late night photo shoot for the next article, I came upstairs and found Bacardi happily chomping away and decided to film him enjoying his breakfast. Cartoon lightbulbs flared, resulting in today’s quick April Fool’s Day gag.

Also, we skipped last year, but feel free to check out our April Fool’s Day pieces for 2005 and 2006. This year’s is definitely less involved, but I think it wins out in terms of cuteness.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll have that article (the first part of a two-parter — one that I hope to actually finish in a timely fashion!) ready sometime this week. Until then, minna-san! 🙂

Hey all! Hope you’re keeping warm during these final days of winter. If not, we regrettably lack the ability to provide you with a steaming cup o’ cocoa via the web. We do, however, have a different treat for you tonight: our first article submission of 2008! In what will hopefully be the first of more knockoff Kabaya Transformers reviews from our esteemed guest reviewer, Tresob Yr of the Star Wars Action Figure Theater (SWAFT) gives us a firsthand look at the miniature model of Metroplex. He’s even included an awesome mini-comic — which really isn’t all that mini considering that it’s eight pages and has several panels per page — that manages to be both humorous and informative despite starring those adorable Robot Heroes that I despise so much. So do enjoy these pieces and make Tresob feel welcome, and be sure to check out his site once you’ve finished reading the piece and commenting! 🙂

On the other hand, don’t go just yet, as A Crayon Haiku #75 still demands your attention. Yes, demands, because Gorilla Grodd is back and he doesn’t ask nicely — you either submit to his will or you GET IN HIS BELLEAH. This’ll probably be the last time (or at least the second to last time) that Grodd appears in a haiku, though, as I think I’m finally finished with him. While the obvious additions are the custom made “poseable” cape and necklace combo (not perfect, but I think it turned out well enough) and the painted spear that formerly belonged to Karai (note: painting soft plastic — or whatever that spear is made of — is not advised), he’s also gotten more paint touch ups (the teeth have been completely redone) and a coat or two of brush-on matte sealer on his fur since the last time you saw him.

It’s kind of difficult to make out in the photo, but I also hit up his eyes, teeth, tongue, and lower lip with a brush-on gloss sealer to give them a somewhat more “realistic” wet look. So yes, this Grodd even has drool! Beat that, 4Horsemen BAF Grodd that I will unfortunately never own because I dislike DCUC wave 2 and have no interest in shelling out $50 for it. Yes, I’m still bitter about that — expect me to detail my frustrations more fully in an upcoming article. 😐

And before we go, let me draw your attention to the links block. In addition to checking out SWAFT and our other entertaining links, I specifically recommend that you visit our latest six additions (in no particular order): Cool Toy Review (which has toy news as well as fabulous photo archives — some of which even highlight the articulation — so you can get a good look at what you’re buying), Superarticulated (an excellent source of new toy information and reviews, not to mention featured custom figures), Heroine Addict (awesome reviews and perusals of heroine-related media and products; also reminds me of a very funny discussion that resulted from a typo I once made), Online Action Figure Entertainment (OAFE for short; the site title’s kinda self-explanatory 😉 ), xkcd (a very funny and random webcomic), and Bogleech (wacky spookiness that’s very much in keeping with Scary-Crayon’s aesthetic inclinations).

You might also have noticed that clicking these links and the ones on the sidebar — as well as the ones in Tresob’s submission — no longer causes outside pages to open in new windows. Not too long ago I was reading some web designers’ blogs and I came across a rather angry screed against pages that open in new windows, the rationale being that if users wanted them to open in new windows and/or tabs they’d use the right click and select the appropriate feature. Now, I’ve never been especially bothered by pages that open things elsewhere (popup advertisements notwithstanding), but I couldn’t argue with the logic — so from now on I’ll be discontinuing the target attribute when it comes to links. I don’t feel strongly enough about the issue to go back and remove the targets from the four years’ worth of articles and entries in which I’ve already employed them, but yeah. Hopefully no one will be too inconvenienced either way.

I think that’s all for now, crayon fans. Special thanks to Tresob for the article submission! And remember, if you’d like to follow his awesome example, you know where to look. Until next time, then — which will ideally be sooner than later!