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Mt Dew Pitch Black’s Glorious Return to Store Shelves

Posted in Mountain Dew, Pepsi, pop culture, soda with tags Mountain Dew, Pepsi, pop culture, soda, sodapalooza on May 23, 2011 by Paxton

Back in March I mentioned that Pepsi was re-releasing the original Mt Dew Pitch Black to store shelves this Memorial Day. I was surprised they weren’t going to do it for Halloween, but whatever, that means we get Pitch Black back into our lives and there’s nothing more important than having that Black Grapey goodness back inside me.

Well, you may have heard the girlish screams coming from Jacksonville this weekend, because I found brand new 12 packs of the 2011 Pitch Black.

As a matter of fact, I’m drinking one of them right now. And it’s delicious. It tastes exactly as I remember. Mt Dew citrus + black grape = toe curling awesomeness. And the design of the 12 pack/cans are nearly identical to the original release. Pepsi really only updated the logo. Check it out compared to the original Pitch Blacks I and II (left to right).

I love that they kept the design of the can so close to the original. Even including the silver Limited Edition label.

I thought I would let another, possibly more impartial, person taste the new drink to see if it is, in fact, still tasty. In a bid for parent of the year, I decided the impartial judge will be my 8 month old son, PJ. He was certainly up to the task and tore into the can like he was Teen Wolf and Pitch Black was a can of beer.

I’m sure Pepsi will be thrilled that they passed the “8 month old boy” taste test with flying colors.

Like I said, it tastes awesome and I look forward to finishing my 12 pack. I’m going to stock up on these like a case of fine French Bordeaux because I don’t know how long they’ll be around. Maybe Pepsi plans on re-releasing Pitch Black II later in the year? We’ll see. Hopefully Pitch Black can be an annual release every year much like Cranberry Sierra Mist (which is also awesome).

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Video Games in movies that I totally thought were fake…but aren’t

Posted in Atari, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, video games with tags Cavalcade Arcade, movies, pop culture, video games on May 18, 2011 by Paxton

So, the other day, I was watching one of my favorite movies, Midnight Madness.

In case you didn’t know, it’s about a group of college kids that take part in a city-wide game of chase. They are given clues that lead to specific destinations which eventually end up at the finish line. It’s a great movie and is one of Michael J Fox’s earliest roles. Anyway, about 3/4 of the way through the movie there is a great scene that takes place in a video arcade. It’s always been one of my favorite scenes, especially now, because you can see a bunch of old school video games as the camera changes perspective.

So, after arriving at the video arcade (which is run by a young Paul Reubens in a cowboy costume), the players discover they must play the game Star Fire, and beat it, in order to get the final clue. They gather around the machine with like a million quarters and start playing.

Star Fire 1 Star Fire 2

For years, I thought this game was a creation of the movie. The logo was obviously a rip off of Star Wars and the game play was disjointed and just looked manufactured. You could even see images of TIE Fighters in the game.

Star Fire 3 Star Fire 4

How could this crappy ass game be real? Am I right? However, just recently, while searching around the Internet I discovered that Star Fire was an actual video game. It was manufactured in 1980 by a company called Exidy. The graphics, game play and cabinet were slightly altered in the movie for the purposes of the script (which explains why it felt fake), but the game was most definitely real. Not only that, it is considered a ground breaking shoot ’em up. It was the first arcade game to use the sit down cockpit (however the movie used the stand up version) and was also the first game to keep track of player initials and high scores. Here’s a flyer from 1979 advertising the Star Fire arcade game.

(Via the Arcade Flyer Archive)

I was blown away. I couldn’t believe this was real. I’d seen Midnight Madness thousands of times and I just assumed Star Fire was fake. For me, this is nearly akin to finding out Mattel actually made hoverboards back in 1989. Earth. Shattering. I’ll have to see if I can download an emulator ROM for it.

This got me thinking about other movies with awesome video game machines that I assumed were fake but are, in fact, real.

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Looking at some movie branded food stuffs

Posted in advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags advertising, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, movies, pop culture, Transformers, Twilight on May 12, 2011 by Paxton

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding. Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted. See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product. I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.

Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging. Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product. The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding. There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton. These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top. Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.

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A closer look at the Shadows of the Empire art by the Hildebrandt Brothers

Posted in Boba Fett, Empire Strikes Back, movies, Star Wars with tags movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 28, 2011 by Paxton

I discussed the 15th anniversary of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on Tuesday. In that article I mentioned that a set of trading cards was created for that event featuring awesome artwork by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I want to look at the paintings that made up this set.

You get a great look at the creation of these paintings in this book:

The above book goes into a fair amount of detail about the Hildebrandt creative process. It’s fascinating. The book mostly covers the creation of the paintings for the Shadows of the Empire card set. But it provides a lot of information about that set. It’s a really good read.

Now let’s take a look at some of my favorite of these Shadows of the Empire paintings.

These are the heroes of the book; Luke, Leia, Lando and Chewie. I created a custom Jedi Luke figure based on the Shadows of the Empire book cover. See that figure and card here.

This is Boba Fett going toe-to-toe with Dengar and Bossk over the frozen Capt Solo. This actually happened in the comic book, not the novel.

Here’s a new character created for the book, Guri. She’s the android bodyguard of Prince Xizor, ruler of Black Sun, who is also a new character.

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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire turns 15 years old

Posted in books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags anniversary, books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on April 26, 2011 by Paxton

This month is the 15th anniversary of the release of the Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire multimedia event.

Shadows of the Empire was a huge undertaking by LucasFilm and LucasArts in the Summer 1996. It was essentially the release of a new Star Wars movie, but without the actual movie. The events of Shadows of the Empire take place in the years between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Up to this point, no other expanded universe material had ever taken place within the timeline of the original movies. This event would also serve as a springboard into the release of the Special Edition trilogy in theaters the following February. To give the whole event a more “theatrical” feel, LucasFilm released a trailer featuring footage from the movies and a voiceover. It was played in front of audiences at comic conventions across the US. LucasFilm decided to pull the trailer, however, fearing that people would think there was an actual movie being released.

The trailer was added to the official Star Wars website for the Shadows of the Empire 10th anniversary. Click here to watch the trailer on StarWars.com.

The Shadows event consisted of the release of a novel, a comic book, a video game and a symphonic soundtrack. You could get one or more of these things and get a complete story, but you had to get everything to get the full Shadows of the Empire story.

Released first and foremost was the Shadows of the Empire novel by Steve Perry. You would get most of the story from this book. All other media in the Shadows event was based in some way off this book. The events take place several months after The Empire Strikes Back. I bought and read this book when it was released in 1996. I then bought the paperback and read it again a few years after that. I think I even read it a third time after that. The book is good. REALLY good. I read it again last summer and it still holds up. The story is solid, the characters are written fantastically and it’s just a lot of fun. Prince Xizor is a fun villain and great foil for Vader. It’s really fun to see Vader being vexed by Xizor in their constant tug-of-war for Palpatine’s approval. It’s also fun to read the budding Jedi Luke before he becomes the supremely confident Jedi. Han is out, obviously, because he’s in carbonite on Boba’s ship, but we get a new character, Dash Rendar, to supposedly take the smuggler role. However, I hate Rendar as a character. He serves little to no purpose. First of all, he isn’t in Return of the Jedi so you know he can’t stick around. Second, he’s ridiculously immature and and a braggart. Thirdly, the novel also includes Lando Calrissian. Rather effectively, I might add. There was no need whatsoever to even have Dash. I think Perry was forced to use Dash because they needed a new character for the video game. That one gripe aside, I love this book and really wish Perry could have expanded the story a little bit more in a prequel or sequel novel.