Quick List: Michael Jackson Video Countdown
Like the rest of the world, we good people of OMGJ were shocked to the core at the passing of Michael Jackson. We have thrown away all of our projects, we have turned a blind eye to all other news items, and we have just been sitting here, talking about that strange man, speaking of anecdotes, listening to his music, and watching his videos.
Mr HolidayEsq: I was more saddened by the passing of Billy Mays, but Michael Jackson is the only celebrity that makes for an easy Top 5 list.
Amanda: Oh come on, we could have done a Top 5 of the bizarre products he tried to force into our homes. It just would not have been as fun to watch thousands of hours of his advertisements on the youtube.
Mr Holiday: Yes, and his commercials also don’t have enough Home Alone kid in them, a favorite of yours. (more…)
During my time in the retail world, I’d have to say the strangest store I’ve worked at would be Another Universe. For a while, it seemed all we stocked was polystyrene statues of Pirates, Skeletons, and Pirate Skeletons. I’m not sure what the people running the company were smoking, and frankly, I don’t care. That store never ceased to blow my mind during the whole time I worked there. My favorite time period in that store had to be when Pokemon were HUGE, and we couldn’t get any authentic toys, so they bought these horrendous korean knock-offs. I’m talking figures where they obviously made molds off of the real figures, and then gave a paintbrush to a chimp, and Wham! Figure! I wish I would have bought some of these shitty things, just so I could have pictures of what they looked like… just horrendous. 
Each week, Chris and Amanda take on the Internet sensation of list making by mostly talking about making a list. Once they realize they’ll never get a full article written, they give up and just send me their chat logs. This is the result.
This generic toy is a staple in the places where generic toys are sold. It is not a rip off of a popular character in cartoons or history. It is not a hugely embarassing play off of what the manufacturers may believe is “cool” or “hip” with the kids.. from some other decade, usually. No, this is just a rip off of an actual animal, just as shoddy and crappy as all the OTHER kinds of rip offs that we can see.
In a constant search for games that I can play and then hate myself for playing later, I have ended up in some strange places. If you would have told me yesterday that I would have ended up on the Wikipedia page for PF Magic, makers of smash (s)hit Ballz, I would have probably slapped you. But yet here I am, reading about all of the accomplishments that good ol’ PF Magic has done for us, the gamer public. Apparently the PF stood for “Pure Fucking.” I’m not arguing with that as a pretty accurate part of the companies name, but I just don’t think “Magic” should follow. PF Shit, or PF Untalented Douches, or maybe even PF Ass… though that one might be copyrighted by one of many adult film companies. In my readings I learned that Andrew Stern (designer and programmer for PF Shitty Games) set out and worked alongside some other folks on a project for FIVE years. 
As if combat wasn’t actiony enough, we now have a large red word to prove it even moreso for these two figures. Showing that they’re here for ACTION and PLENTY OF IT. Who could not be a part of action when you come equipped with about 8 semi-automatic guns, and a dog that is there most certainly to KILL. Kill with ACTION. Well, besides your basic trailor park resident anyway. And I’ll bet they don’t have cool shaven faces like these guys do. 
There are tons of toys you may gloss over while walking the aisles of a flea market or local dollar store. The ones that just seem too generic to even pay attention to at all. Like the obligatory generic G.I. Joe with attack dog, or some knock-off Transformer that looks like it was molded out of a piece of wall plaster. Sometimes though, it might be worth your time to examine things a bit closer. Case in point; This shockingly awesome (bad) Space Defender toy. Looking as if it has seemingly conquered the impossibility of time travel to beam itself straight from an 80′s era K-Mart clearance rack, right to your local Big Lots.
I have written about a few stupid products before on this site. You may remember the amazing Bug Gun, and the sheer excitement you felt when you finally realized you could eat candy dog food. But after going back and looking through a vast collection of stupid things, I came away with the feeling that I had barely scratched the surface with the depths of what humans could come up with after ingesting lethal dosages of pipe cleaner foam. And after seeing some of the things you are about to see, you will realize that I am probably not too far off from the truth, because I simply cannot imagine these “things” being made by anyone who has not been dipped in a vat of stupid sauce. So without any further space-filler writing, let’s take a look at some of the finest examples of human ingenuity on the market today. 
I think there must be a point where kids like to think they’re cool, but are so far from it that it almost becomes some sort of “backwards” movement from cool. Like an “anti-cool”. The very REVERSAL of cool, if you will. We’ve all went through this phase, I think. It’s not like we were attuned to be 100% cool the day we got shot out of a uterus. It’s something that comes with time. Something that can only be learned with as much trial and error as pitiful laughter from your friends. Unfortunately, at a young age we generally lack the judgement of our peers, as our peers are busy learning the finer points of bathing without clothes on. With no direction, toy companies easily prey on the younger generation with toys that they may THINK is cool because it has big crazy catchphrases all over, but in fact are incredibly far from it. 
I absolutely loved Street Fighter II. Long ago, I recall playing it at the arcade as a youth. You could tell they knew it was going to be one of those big games, because it was the game they put right in the front of the arcade. This wasn’t just so people could see it, but it was mainly so the line of 30-40 kids (no exaggeration) waiting to play could empty out into the mall and not keep looping around the inside of the already-too-small arcade. So Street Fighter II hit, and fighting games were great. 
I have always enjoyed Pro-Wrestling, with its fantastical characters and high-flying antics that seem to never fail for solid entertainment. I also like side-scrolling beat-em-ups, like Final Fight, and the approximately 6,987,6343 Final Fight clones that was seemingly produced in a span of three days after Final Fight was released into the arcades. So you would automatically figure that if someone took those two things, gave a few developers a budget, a couple of 40 ounces, and enough cocaine to persuade them into working 12 hours a day, that the game they would produce would be nothing short of Godly. That’s what I thought as well, but it seems my hopes and dreams have once again been shot down like so many other times, because after this game was over I found myself not only weeping silently while eating a gallon of chocolate ice cream, but also wondering just what the hell happened to make this incredible idea go so very, very wrong. 
Why, hello boys and girls! Having a good day? Enjoying your time on the vast and mighty Internet? Out for a stroll along through the wastelands of Cyberspace, were we? Looking for a little porn, eh? Searching for something to pass your time and somehow you ended up here, eh? Here in our lovely, fuzzy little warm ball of bitterness, in search of some good old-fashioned Tentacle Rape Hentai reviews? Maybe a few crazy maniac freakjob video game articles? Perhaps you’re here for one of Amanda’s comics, or one of Jeremy’s stories, or maybe you were hoping for a profanity-laced rant about shit I can’t stand? JUST KIDDING! Nobody actually reads those. 
