The Things That I See (continued)

 We haven't done one of these in quite a while, and, well, even in Virus World, I keep seeing things.  So, let's jump right in.

First off, here is a cool dollhouse-scale miniature of the vintage Ideal Godzilla board game, which I bought from an Ebay seller who crafts these things.  It's very well-detailed, down to the tiny playing pieces in the opening. [Note that, when you start buying the same collectibles that you already own in a different scale, you are then in need of two things:  1)more storage space, and 2)therapy.]

Some gold old thrift-store Engrish.  What strikes me about this photo now is the weird and slightly cool globe thingy in front of the, er, lamp.  Now I wish I'd picked it up and examined it further.

Here is a cool sticker that was actually on a Kingston Trio album that I saw somewhere.  The fortune teller amuses me. "Wait, I see...regret.  No--you'll actually hate this; save your money!"

While we are talking about thrift-store LPs, here is one of those Stereo demonstration records.  These were really popular in the early 1960's, when hi-fi systems were being pushed on the hipsters of the day.  The pseudo-art deco-ness of the cover caught me eye.  I figured it would be fun to experience jet planes and thunderstorms indoors in my own home.  It wasn't.  At all.  The record was completely fried, which, as it turns out, really interferes with your enjoyment of horses randomly neighing.  I was about to toss it, when I saw the listing for side two, which contained disappointing horrors:

Firstly, track one was pigeons.  "In A Hayloft," but whatever, it's pigeons.  That's your lead track. You can open a widow in any large city and hear that.

Now, let your eye drop to track #6.  What was wrong with people back then? "Hey, you know what would be fun for all the groovy hep hi-fi bachelor pad swingin' sound systems? Pigs being massacred." (If you're morbidly curious, like I was:  it's a short track, that sounds exactly like a barn full of pigs, with some voices calling out numbers, followed by one or two ear-piercing squealing shrieks.)

And, for the youth of America, Amazon wants to sell you a wig that commemorates President Ben Franklin.  I mean, he's on money, so that's how you get the title, right?

Here's a sign that was in the restroom at my own work.  Okay, fine, I made this...

This is a colorfully-labeled package of hardware from a furniture kit.  I should've give you some sense of scale, but it was about the size of a burrito.  It's not just that the label looked like it was yelling at me...it's just that I don't like being told what to do.

A photo from an Ebay auction for vintage Mego dolls.  So, it strikes me that this was a, I don't know, mischievous way to pose them, by the seller?  Maybe it's just the nature of my own depraved mind, but it certainly doesn't help Batman's image any. 

So, you know those cheap portable video game systems, that they sell in drugstores, that are made to look like smaller versions of an old Game Gear, or a Wii U gamepad? They advertise hundreds of full-color games, and show photos of delightful clones of early NES games on their packaging.

  

News flash: they are terrible.  I got so desperate and bored on a trip last year, that I bought one, and I figured hey, at the very least, it would be good for a laugh.  Turns out, the laughing was done at my expense, because everything included was mind-numbingly stupid.  

Nothing pictured was included, and, to give you a critical review:  the gameplay fell slightly short of "LED watch game," while game design was slightly worse than that of, oh, "Nokia phone." Most were really weak shooting-type or matching games, but there were one or two fake platformers, such as this gem:  MAGIC JONY (no, it's not "Magic Tony;" that's the guy in the alley behind the drugstore.)  JONY was a flawed, wonky not-quite-platformer...but, why am I trying to describe it to you, when you can just read its gripping story?

Really, though...still better than the Sequel Trilogy.

Finally, in this age of ubiquitous and unrelenting video-conferencing, I leave you with one that will resonate with many of us.  I present to you, Thanos' most embarrassing moment, where he didn't quite end the meeting in time:

FAIL Friday: Hilarious Bootleg Action Figures

Here are two amusing bootleg action figures that I have recently encountered.  This one got away:

Remember that time when Spider-Man, Batman, and Zorro fought a dinosaur in the desert that is in front of the Capitol Building?

This one, however, did not:

It's called BATMAN & SUPER HERO, but it's just Batman. Having a fashion crisis.  What's unfortunate is that we can't read the complete text behind him:

We can see THE STORY OF BANMAN BEYOND, and a paragraph that ends with something about "the Neural..." but we can't be completely sure of the Engrish content behind the sword-thing.

There is also an axe-thing:

Is that a giant fist that holds the axe-thing? What in the world are you supposed to do with it?

Absolutely Bonkers Bootleg EMPIRE STRIKES BACK Cover Description!

In honor of tonight's premiere of THE LAST JEDI (I don't know if people realize this, but this is the real turning point for Disney.  Everything else up to this point, opinions aside, has been based on nostalgia, and was pretty "safe".  This is them taking the reins, completely, for the first time.  I read that there were no co-writers, even, this time....it better be good, Disney, or you are dead to me.).

[EDIT: Disney, you are dead to me.]

You will have to click and enlarge the above photo, but you are in for a treat.  We have looked at a lot of "Engrish" from time to time on this blog, but I think the above better qualifies as "complete gobbledegook."

This is from the cardboard cover to a bootleg EMPIRE STRIKES BACK DVD that was in my local Goodwill the other day.  Just the cover, because that's all there was.  No DVD, no insides that would even hold a DVD.  Just the cover.  Luckily, I snapped this photo of it.

Here is a summary of the three sections:
1) A review of EPISODE I, that was typed with someone's toes, underwater, and in complete darkness.
2) A block of Chinese characters...that could say anything.
3) A cut-and-paste of a forum post, or perhaps a relative's e-mail, stolen from somewhere...apparently to fill space.

Recent E-bay Auction Description Says It All

Taken from an Ebay auction from a couple of weeks ago, the seller's description (from Japan) made my day, and he wasn't even trying to:

"I'm a Godzilla fan, not a fighter!"

Some of My Personal FAILs... (part nine)

It's that time again.  And by "that time," I mean time to clean out my camera and hard drive, and share some of the bizarreness I see on a regular basis:

First, a leftover from the "Engrish With Ultraman Ace" series, that somehow I overlooked (so the FAIL in this one is on me).

Secondly, I was in Dallas last year on business, and there were huge blow-ups of vintage newspaper pages in the hotel (doesn't make any sense to me, either).  I happened to notice this 1892 FAIL...but once again, didn't notice my own reflection...so that's two FAILS for me so far...if you are keeping score, that's Universe: 2, Me: 0.

And now we move on to a couple of thrift store FAILs...the longer I stare at this picture, the more things there are that are just plain WRONG about it.  I pity the family who not only had to sew the entirety of their Halloween costumes, as there are complete STORES devoted to keeping you from doing that now, but who also went out all looking exactly the same. And the sad thing is, none of these costumes are even technically "correct," in a classic Universal sort of way...I don't know what they were going for, unless it's ridicule.  Oh, and Mozart called:  he wants his shirt back.

This is one of those "I don't make the news; I just report it" moments.  Apparently you can fail on different levels simultaneously.  Unless I am hallucinating, I see a statue of a rooster.  It is wearing pants, some sort of shirt I guess, and maybe, boots.  It also has breasts.  There's not much more I can say about it, except that somebody bought it, so dwell on that for a moment.  This is as close as I would let myself get to it. 

And finally, a Food FAIL.  I am sure I really shouldn't comment on what people eat, as I'm also sure I have eaten a lot of foods of questionable origin in my own life, but since I am a hypocrite: WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE???!?!?!

"Variable UNCANNY EMBRYO Horrible" (Woy Wes, 1990s?)

I talked about this before, in a series of articles on bizarro Ebay items, because I really never thought I would end up with one.  Most opening bids are ridiculous, which is true throughout Ebay these days.  However, I recently bought an interesting lot of Godzilla items, and this was included, so Godzilla item + bootleg + Engrish = score!

One thing we can say about this item is that it was made to try and capitalize on the ALIEN(S) craze, which the box art clearly tells us.  After that, things start to get confusing.  Surely this was molded from an existing, motorized Mothra toy? But the question is begged...why?

And another thing:  the seller thought it was produced in the mid-to-late 1980's, presumably to line up with ALIENS, but I am thinking it's really from the 1990's.  Note all of the warnings and CE symbols, above.  Those make me think it's a bit later than first thought.

This thing is about a foot long, and, not surprisingly, is made of the cheapest materials imaginable.  The rubber body is very thin, like an inexpensive Halloween mask.  In fact, the plastic button on the left side of the picture (which I suppose anchors the body to the frame) crumbled when I was adding batteries, so there you go.

So now the question is, does it CREEP IN DARK? Well, yes, actually, but if you let this thing creep up on you, you are quite deaf.  I added two batteries, (which was very difficult to do because the battery chamber is undersized) and switched it on.  Not only did the eyes light up (green, which Mothra larvae eyes never have been), but it zoomed across the table about two feet, and then stopped, emitted a high-pitched groaning sound, and then folded in half, with its front half raised up (you know, like a Mothra larva about to spray silk), and then repeated the process.  The box art would have you believe that it flops erratically...?

This is cool, and all, but once again, it's nothing like anything from ALIENS.  But, after all, I suppose that's not the point of bootlegs anyhow, and I wanted a Mothra larva anyway. 

As a side note, apparently this item was also available in green, which I guess is a step closer to being "Alien," but I'm glad I got the, uh, taupe(?) one.

Random Ebay photo

Engrish With Ultraman Ace (part three)

I have about a dozen more episodes of Ace, and Taro is beckoning, so let's get caught up on our moments of Engrish:

 I am pretty tired of learning words from what is supposed to be entertaining Engrish, but once again, they even used it correctly! "Abnegate" means, "to refuse or deny; to relinquish; to give up."  Fortunately, this ends our vocabulary lesson, and we can get back to the matter at hand...

I would be lying if I said that the above statement isn't pretty much the entire plot (and monster) of a very infamous Ace episode.  It must be seen to be believed; that's all I can say.

And finally, the payoff:  what is probably my favorite example of any screenshot since I have been watching these episodes:

Engrish With Ultraman Ace (part two)

The Malaysian subtitlers continue to beguile us with entertaining structure, daringly-misused tenses, and vocabulary lessons:

Some context: a mother has grown extremely weary of her son raising pigeons. (Reminds me of the old Tom Lehrer joke, "he practiced animal husbandry...until they caught him at it one day...")

The alien is taunting Ace and the team, telling them their efforts are futile.  This is either a proverb or just bizarre translating.

It's not what? Once again, I had to consult the dictionary.  This French word is a noun meaning:

"(in the French Revolutionary calendar) the fifth month of the year, extending from January 20 to February 18,"

so my guess is that Hokuto is telling his teammates that their current discussion has nothing to do with the weather in Revolutionary France, when people had messed-up calendars. 

This was a bit more confusing to figure out, but the word means "the object, itself

inaccessible to experience, to which a phenomenon is referred for the basis or cause of its sense content."  I think the point here is that the alien is projecting an image of itself, but the alien is, in reality, somewhere else. (They could have just said that.)

I don't know if I explained this last time, but in ACE, a "choju" is a special kind of kaiju.  Also they are filled with delicious meat, apparently.

Once again, the Malaysians have taught me a word that at first glance looked like it simply couldn't be real.  The word "oppugn" (pronounced like the word "impugn") means "to assail by criticism, argument, or action; to call in question; dispute," and comes from the same Latin root as the word "pugnacious."  You can even be an "oppugner."

Engrish With Ultraman Ace (part one)

I'm afraid I've been slow in my progress through the new Ultraman Ace boxed set...in fact, I'm not quite 1/3 of the way through.  But let's get right to what's important here.

This set doesn't seem to have as many "bwa-haaa!" moments as Jack, so far anyway, which means one of two things:  the subtitles are getting more coherent, or my brain is just finally accepting the mangled English and substituting a meaning.  (I'm leaning toward the second possibility.)

While this is still an amusing sentence, once again we have Malaysian Engrish teaching us an archaic word.  "Complot" is indeed a real word, from the 1500's, although today we would say "conspiracy."  As a side note, one can even be a "complotter" or participate in a "complotment."

Nothing to see here, just a long-lost father coming home and tucking his son in to their floor-pallet-bed....then leaning over and asking him nicely to, in the name of all that's holy, please control his bladder.

You can figure this one out, but the lady was just asked how she was feeling about her important job launching a missile.

Supposedly, girls will distract our hero from his work....I couldn't find a definition for "deliquium" and instead got, "Did you mean DELIRIUM?"

This is quite simply the funniest sentence you've seen this week.  What's even funnier is that it is exactly, precisely, and perfectly accurate with regard to the episode's plot.  I kid you not.  Also, if MST3K taught me anything, it's that there's always a Kenny.

While this....just makes no sense whatsoever.