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Archive for February, 2010

Mt Dew begins voting again for three new flavors

Posted in Mountain Dew, Pepsi, soda with tags Mountain Dew, Pepsi, soda, sodapalooza on February 8, 2010 by Paxton

Back in 2008, Mountain Dew held a promotion called Dewmocracy. People would visit the Dewmocracy website, play games, choose different flavors to be mixed into Mt Dew, and the hordes would then vote on the best sounding Mt Dew mix. After the top three flavor combinations were tallied, logo and packaging designs were developed. Then, all three sodas were revealed to the public in April 2008. People bought the three sodas, tasted them, then went back to the Dewmocracy website to vote on their favorite.

The three flavors everyone was voting on were Mt Dew Supernova (Strawberry-Melon), Mt Dew Revolution (Wild Berry) and Mt Dew Voltage (Raspberry-Citrus).

Then, the winner of the contest was revealed in August 2008 to be Mt Dew Voltage. Not my favorite of the three, but it wasn’t my least favorite.

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Cavalcade of Awesome looks at the 2009 Oscar Nominations

Posted in Academy Awards, movies, Oscars with tags Academy Awards, movies, Oscars, Oscars Wild on February 3, 2010 by Paxton

The Academy Awards are almost upon us. This year the Oscars will be broadcast on Sun, March 7 at 8pm EST. The ceremony will be co-hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin.

The Oscar nominations for this year were released on Tuesday, Feb 2. I do this every year, I go through the nominations for the biggest categories and see how much I agree with the Academy. More often than not, I don’t agree at all.

See my thoughts on last year’s Oscar nominations here.

See the Oscar noms for 2007 here.

You can see all the nominations on the official Oscar website. So, without further ado, here are the nominations.

BEST PICTURE
Avatar – I can see this in Visual Effects, but not Best Picture. It’s a good movie, it’s just not a great movie. And by that I mean it’s not the best written movie in the world and it’s AT LEAST 30 minutes too long. The mineral the corporation is mining in the movie is called Unobtainium. They actually say it in the movie. COME ON!
The Blind Side – Think about this: The Blind Side has a shot at being the BEST PICTURE OF 2009. Don’t get me wrong, I like this movie, but BEST PICTURE OF THE YEAR?! No.
District 9 – On my list of top 5 movies of 2009. Of course, there’s no way in Hell this is going to win, but it’s good to see it here.
An Education – Yeah, didn’t see it. Nor have I heard of it. Well, played, Academy. Well. Played.
The Hurt Locker – I don’t normally like war movies. I hear great things about this, so I may have to suck it up and give it a watch.
Inglourious Basterds – An exception to my war movie rule. In my top 5 movies of 2009.
Precious – I see why this is nominated. I really do. I just never want to watch it.
A Serious Man – The Coen’s are weird, dude. I’ve only enjoyed 3 of their movies. EVER. And I’ve only watched one of those three movies more than once. I’m not exactly itching to see this.
Up – I really did enjoy this movie, but, again, I’m not sure it deserved a BEST PICTURE OF 2009 nomination.
Up In The Air – I love George Clooney. I knew this was going to be high on Academy voters’ lists. And I still have no desire to watch it.

District 9 Inglorious Basterds

BEST ACTOR
Jeff Bridges, CRAZY HEART – Bridges wasn’t nominated for The Men Who Stare At Goats? RIGGED! I’m kidding. Of course, I’ve never even heard of this movie.
George Clooney, UP IN THE AIR – Another missed opportunity for The Men Who Stare At Goats.
Colin Firth, A SINGLE MAN – Love Colin Firth. Unless this is a sequel to Love Actually, then I’m not interested.
Morgan Freeman, INVICTUS – I have a man-crush on Matt Damon and I love Morgan Freeman. That still does not make me want to see a movie about rugby…and apartheid.
Jeremy Renner, THE HURT LOCKER – Again, I hear Renner is great in this.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Matt Damon, INVICTUS – Yay, Matt! I’m still not going to see this movie.
Woody Harrelson, THE MESSENGER – WTF is The Messenger?! Harrelson should have been nominated for Zombieland. There, I said it.
Christopher Plummer, THE LAST STATION – What?
Stanley Tucci, THE LOVELY BONES – Nice nom for Tucci. He was good in this sequel to What Dreams May Come.
Christoph Waltz, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS – Waltz better win this. From what I see here, he PWNS this category.

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A look back at the awesome swag from the Kool-Aid Wacky Warehouse

Posted in Kool Aid, pop culture with tags Kool Aid, pop culture on February 2, 2010 by Paxton

KA Man

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, mail away premiums were all the rage. Being a comic book reader, I saw ads for thousands of mail away products amid the pages of my favorite books like The Flash and X-Men. One of the more prominent mail away deals was for the Kool-Aid Wacky Warehouse. You would collect points off the labels of Kool-Aid packets and cans and submit them for free stuff (paying postage, of course). It’s much like the rewards programs for hotels and airlines today. The more you use or buy their services, the more points you get and the more stuff that translates into.

Seeing the ads in comic books, I was amazed at all the cool stuff. T-shirts, cassette players, hats, nerf basketball sets, etc. These awesome items were dancing across the page with giant words screaming FREE STUFF!!!! Here are two full page ads advertising the Wacky Warehouse (click images to make bigger).

The ad on the left is themed towards the Kool-Aid flavor, Sharkleberry Fin (Greatest. Kool-Aid. Name. EVER.). You can see the awesome shark mascot (with sunglasses!) for Sharkleberry Fin in the upper right. In the ad to the right, the items are themed more for the Purplesaurus Rex flavor. As you can see, there are tons of cool swag to be had just for drinking your favorite Kool-Aid flavors, clipping the points and sending them in with like 5 bucks in postage. Here’s the Wacky Warehouse order form that goes with the above ads.

Being a Kool-Aid enthusiast, I have come across a bunch of this swag so I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of this cool stuff the Wacky Warehouse was offering. Some of it is, in fact, cool. Some of it, not so much. Here are some of the fun items kids could send away for with Kool-Aid points.

Super Jump Rope – I’m not entirely sure what makes this jump rope so “super”. It actually looks like a pair of Kool-Aid themed nunchuks. The red handles would mask the blood stains of your Kool-Aid Death Match victims.

Wacky Kid’s Canteen – Very goofy looking canteen that kids could carry around with them on their “adventures”. I’m assuming “The Warehouse” wanted it to be filled with Kool-Aid. When did Kool-Aid Man start wearing glasses?

Pitcher and cup sets – Kool-Aid offered these items throughout the Wacky Warehouse promotion. Plastic cups and a pitcher with the Kool-Aid Man face on them. The set would be colored differently depending on what Kool-Aid flavor they would currently be promoting. This particular set is red for Rock-A-Dile Red. If you look in the Wacky Warehouse forms at the top of this article you can see pitcher and cup sets colored blue for Berry Blue and purple for Purplesaurus Rex.