LEGO Monster Fighters - Coffin Car 30200

I picked up this polybag set awhile ago but with Halloween, Christmas and everything between I hadn't had a chance to post it yet. The Coffin Car is a Toys R Us exclusive set that was offered for free if you spent X amount on LEGOs or you could just buy it for $5.49.
It's a little pricey for a 32 piece set but worth it. If it were sold anywhere else, I figure it would have been around $4.

I gave up trying to photograph the bag and scanned it, still didn't come out great but you can see it. The body of the car is made from a coffin-shaped piece which is what makes the vehicle worth getting. There's also flame-spitting exhaust pipes in the back.

Here you have a better look at the Coffin Car's driver: a zombie chauffeur! Most of his skin is grey. His right hand is brown so I'm guessing he must have had it replaced at some point. It would have been great if the hat was the same color as his uniform.

There was a similar exclusive set only available from the LEGO Store which was Zombie Car #40076. I'm not sure if they let you buy these sets without the minimum purchase you'd need to make though. It has the same zombie figure and the minifigs are the only reason I get these small sets anyway so I'm not too worried about missing out on this one.

Since this zombie has a shovel, I imagine the buggy ramping over hills in a cemetery while he's looking for graves to dig up. It also came with a glow-in-the-dark spider which is pretty neat.

Toon Alert - SheZow

Here's a neat new cartoon I found out about this week.
I don't know if we'll get to see it here in the US but here's a little history on it.

In 2007, Disney aired a series of shorts called "Shorty McShorts' Shorts," one of those shorts was called "SheZow." It's about a boy named Guy that becomes a superhero when he puts on a magic ring he finds in his basement. The twist is that it turns Guy into a female superhero when danger is near and he can't remove the ring.

Fast forward to December 15, 2012. SheZow is now an Australian cartoon series, airing on Network Ten and is planned to run for 26 episodes. Here's the opening...

SheZow! Opening Sequence by lordmmx

I've seen the original short and I liked what they did with the concept. It's an interesting idea and a bold step to take a kids cartoon. I don't know how this would fly in the US and frankly I'm a bit surprised it originally aired on Disney. With such specific, but changing, gender marketing here I don't know that studio bigwigs would be able to figure out how to market this to kids...or parents! And which aisle would the toys go in?

WAWProductionsAU has put episode 6 on their YouTube channel. It didn't seem as much fun as the older one I watched but I'm always willing to give cartoons a couple episodes before deciding to stay tuned or not.

Someone has been posting episodes on Dailymotion so you can check out more there! Almost every episode has Guy's friend suit up as some crazy sidekick like Shaverine. Also, if you have an odd aversion to the word "she" do not watch this. At every conceivable turn, they work it in like shemergency. The lair's computer is even named Sheila.

One final word, if you go searching the internets for images of SheZow, make sure your safe filtering is fully on. Otherwise, be ready for some dirty toon images!

Christmas Past & Present

I hope everyone had a great couple of days no matter what you were doing or celebrating. Christmas Eve we visited with my brother-in-law's family and my 3 year old nephew and 6 year old niece. They both got early gifts in the form of kid-friendly Nabi tablets.
Let me tell you, for a "kid's" tablet, it looks pretty good under the hood!
My niece and I had fun playing Vs. Fruit Ninja.

Back in my day (pipe down old man!), the equivalent gift of the time would have been an Atari 2600. It's crazy to think how tech savvy today's kids will group up to be. Speaking of Christmases long, long ago, here's a Polaroid from 1980 of me opening a still mint in box 12" IG-88 action figure. If you squint really hard, there's an Atari 2600 under the TV back there.

Here's a little visual rundown of the goodies from this year...

An Adventure Time calendar to replace my 2012 one and lots of magnets! I have the large Finn and Jake ones on my car now but they're sun faded so I think I'm going to replace them with the one of them together.

A very cool Doctor Who calendar and pen. As you can see, this calendar is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Doctor in 2013. Each month features a large head silhouette of a Doctor containing images related to him. The month of December is a TARDIS silhouette with all the Doctors in it.

The Halloween Kid dons a mask to keep Trick or Treaters safe from monsters.
I talked back in February about Liō and I can't wait to go through his latest book.
The subtitle of The Stupidest Angel reads "A heartwarming tale of Christmas terror."
That Halloween book is a monstrous anthology weighing in around 520 pages.

Yay! I'm so excited to finally get to see Cartoon Lagoon! From everything I've heard it's supposed to be a great tribute to all things Saturday morning.
I'm equally thrilled (and chilled) to be able to dive into Spine Tingler! The William Castle story. If you follow my monthly movie recaps, you know I'm a fan of Castle's films. This guy was the P.T. Barnum of movies. There's also some footage from the premier of Vincent Price's The Tingler which should be interesting as well.
I've seen American Graffiti more than a few times and I love it. I have a crazy love of 50s/60s hot rod culture and music.

Ghost Castle is the newest in a long line of remakes of the game Which Witch? from 1970. I've had a thing for board games with traps since I picked up Superstition as a kid at a yard sale. I have a copy of the 1985 European release of this, also called Ghost Castle. You can read a history of the game's incarnations over at Monsterfink's blog. I'm sure I'll do a post in the future about this game and if I'm feeling ambitious, compare the two Ghost Castles.

EDIT: I just realized I forgot to post the stuff I got from my parents! Oops! 

The Tales of the Red Panda books are based on the podcast of the same name from Decoder Ring Theater. If you enjoy old time radio shows of pulp heroes and hard boiled noir detectives, check out their shows. They're all free!
Zombie Pulp is an anthology.
The Logan's Run tv series will be interesting to check out after all this time. I'll have to see if I can snag the movie BluRay for $10 at Target now.