1.29.2023

Manglors from Toyfinity!!!

Head over to Toyfinity.com tonight, January 29th at 9:30PM EST for the debut of the reimagined classic Manglors figure line! 

First released 40 years ago by the Ideal Toy Company, the original Manglors were "made of the strangest stuff on earth" and promised kids across the country an action figure that you could "tear apart and stick back together again". Suffice to say, the stuff that they were made of turned out to be less than cooperative once you attempted to "mangle your action alien figure" into new forms. Even the incredible artwork by the legendary Ken Kelly on the boxes couldn't hide the fact that the figures simply didn't work. 

After being notoriously maligned by parent groups of the 80s for failing to deliver on the basic tagline of their property, Ideal put the Manglors back in their eggs after just a couple years at retail, marching forward instead with their all new Robo Force rollout.

Thanks to Toyfinity, Manglors finally gets another chance to shine! Now fully Glyos compatible and redeveloped behind the scenes for over 10 years, Manglors emerges from the Toyfinity family of regenerated Ideal properties, finally ready to deliver on that 40-year-old promise to "create your own creatures"! 

We'll dive more into the Manglors in the months to come, including some behind the scenes action.

Massive congratulations to John Kent and Toyfinity! Long live the new Manglors!


1.16.2023

Yukihiro Takahashi (1952 - 2023)

Quick post to honor the late, great Yukihiro Takahashi. Yellow Magic Orchestra has been the go-to soundtrack for countless late night sessions at Onell HQ dating back to Wave 1. For a few years Matt and I had our own band, Indoor Recess, where we would play YMO-esque improv jams every week (shame we never recorded anything, but maybe for the best). The combined synth wizardry and iconic melodies of YMO have provided endless inspiration.

Takahashi brought a warm pulse and steady heartbeat to the best electronic trio in music, and his solo work stands just as tall. His recently reissued debut LP is "the missing link between the City Pop scene of the late 70s and the synth sound of YMO which was about to revolutionize the world" (via We Want Sounds). Highly recommend checking out / revisiting the self-titled debut, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and Solid State Survivor, plus Takahashi's Murdered by the Music, Neuromantic, and What, Me Worry? or just work your way through their collective catalogs. RIP to a true master.

1.14.2023

The Jagged Age

The exciting and ever-expanding Toy Pizza universe once again returns to the Jagged Age, with just the right amount of madness and a brand new Card Slicer expansion deck! 

Prolific as always, our brother and creative architect of all things Knights of the Slice and Toy Pizza, Jesse DeStasio, began his foray into the world of Card Slicers last year and has steadily constructed yet another fresh new way to enjoy the unpredictably magnetic worlds of his now classic characters. With his new Kickstarter project, The Jagged Age: Fantasy Card Combat, Jesse shifts gears to travel back to the land of Nosvera and the latest adventures of relic hunter, Crae Drake. 

Though I've never personally been much of card "player" outside of UNO (thanks to many visits with my maternal grandmother growing up), I still always liked the imagery that was the foundation of any major card system. Starting with old Star Wars and Pac Man card sets back in the late 70s and early 80s, the genre reached its true crescendo for me with Digimon in the early aughts. Even though I never played the Digimon card "game", I was crazy about hunting down the different characters simply to see the artwork. It was a quick, cheap and easy way to explore a pretty vast range of exotic designs with the hope of discovering a hidden treasure buried within any given pull. The original "blind bag" DNA, dating all the way back to the baseball card packs that our fathers would stick in their bike tires while riding down dirt roads to go pick off metal army men with their BB guns. In many ways, the collectible card is a true American classic that went on to influence creators from around the world. 

Fast forward to Jesse D's Card Slicers. Partially due to the pandemic born difficulties that the last few years of action figure manufacturing overseas has brought on, Jesse decided to pivot and not let fate alone decide the future of his ventures. To this end, he constructed, through an ongoing process of trial and error, his own tabletop card game system called Card Slicers. Quite the endeavor to see through, but one that Jesse has proven more than capable of pulling off.   

In support of his Jagged Age expansion, Marcus (who is a legit tabletop gamer and enthusiast) and I have created a few special cards to add to Jesse's campaign, featuring our resident Dungeon Traveler, Skeleden. Of note, Skeleden was actually born through the old Skeleton Warriors Kickstarter campaign, so this marks his second appearance on the platform (with another one coming later this year). We thought it appropriate to send Skeleden into the Jagged Age to assist Crae Drake and maybe finally give Hob a hand. 

Even if you're not into playing the game itself, you can still catch some really amazing artwork that Jesse has assembled for the card set. It's like an entire figure assortment that you can fit right into your pocket, packed with great art, imagination and originality. 

The Jagged Age Kickstarter
(ends tonight!)