Home › Forums › Ganymede & Titan Forum › PLUG: A new podcast about movies about toys Search for: This topic has 38 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 6 years ago by Ben Paddon. Scroll to bottom Viewing 39 posts - 1 through 39 (of 39 total) Author Posts January 23, 2018 at 10:16 pm #226946 Ben PaddonParticipant My friend Molly and I have launched a new podcast, The Life Toyetic with Ben and Molly, wherein we watch a movie based on a toy and then talk about. What’s the fastest way to launch toys off of shelves and into the hands of eager, impressionable young consumers? Turning your toy franchise into a major motion picture, of course! Join Ben Paddon and Molly Alice Hoy as they boldly venture into the realm of “toyetic” cinema — movies that were conceived and produced solely to promote toys — and subject these glorified, feature-length commercials to a level of critical analysis that they were never intended to withstand. For our first episode we watched the 2016 Dreamsworks kink factory Trolls, which you can listen to here. Upcoming episodes include Masters of the Universe, Super Mario Bros.: The Movie, Transformers, and (eventually) every Barbie movie ever made. Yeah. We’re doing that. January 23, 2018 at 10:18 pm #226947 Ben PaddonParticipant Oh, the show is already listed on iTunes and Stitcher. We’re currently awaiting approval from Google Play. A sub and a review would really go a long way if you find this sort of thing interesting. January 24, 2018 at 12:01 am #226948 bloodtellerParticipant but Super Mario Bros: The Movie is based off video games and not toys January 24, 2018 at 12:47 am #226949 HamishParticipant > but Super Mario Bros: The Movie is based off video games and not toys And it ran on an “Entertainment System” rather than a video game console. What’s your point? ;-) January 24, 2018 at 11:16 pm #226960 PhilParticipant I think his point is that Super Mario Bros.: The Movie is based off video games and not toys. January 25, 2018 at 12:23 am #226961 HamishParticipant “More specifically, they did not market their new console, the NES (or Famicom in Japan) as a tech item or a computer. Rather, they marketed it as a toy, the next big plastic doohickey that your kid is going to want this holiday season. ” https://www.gamecrate.com/nes-classic-proves-nintendo-still-makes-toys-not-tech/15269 January 25, 2018 at 7:04 am #226966 DaveParticipant It is a computer, though. They could have marketed it as a tin of peas and it still would have been a computer. January 25, 2018 at 7:34 am #226968 Ben PaddonParticipant Well, this is fun. January 25, 2018 at 10:26 am #226973 bloodtellerParticipant >I think his point is that Super Mario Bros.: The Movie is based off video games and not toys. that was indeed my point January 25, 2018 at 12:48 pm #226975 DaveParticipant Still, though, if it’s your podcast you get to choose what you talk about. January 25, 2018 at 7:19 pm #226980 HamishParticipant > They could have marketed it as a tin of peas and it still would have been a computer. Yes, but it was marketed as a toy, and Ben’s project is about films that were made to market toys, so there is a certain symmetry there. January 25, 2018 at 7:33 pm #226982 DaveParticipant It’s interesting, I always thought of the Mario Bros movie as being one of the first of the videogame movies (maybe *the* first) that was made because someone thought they could make a good movie out of the property and gain an audience from the existing videogame fanbase, rather than being conceived as a glorified promotional tool for the videogame itself. I may be wrong there, but I never had the impression it was something initially driven by Nintendo as a marketing thing. January 25, 2018 at 9:38 pm #226984 ori-STUDFARMParticipant Really? I thought it was the first time they deliberately tried to make a turd out of a video game. January 25, 2018 at 9:40 pm #226985 ori-STUDFARMParticipant Oh, and thanks Ben! Now I’ve got to try find time to listen to another podcast! :) January 25, 2018 at 9:46 pm #226987 bloodtellerParticipant >Really? I thought it was the first time they deliberately tried to make a turd out of a video game. bit mean, imo the Super Mario Bros. movie was actually really good. yes it’s nothing like the games but it’s built around an interesting sci-fi idea that feels well thought-out and is a pretty fun watch if you view it as its own thing. plus the exterior sets look really good. that one of the big city is really impressive even now also it has better dinosaurs than Pete Part 2 January 25, 2018 at 9:59 pm #226988 ori-STUDFARMParticipant Yeah, I suppose it was a well polished turd… …Oh God! I’ve got to do a rewatch and reassessment now, don’t I? January 26, 2018 at 12:23 am #226990 Ben PaddonParticipant Having rewatched the Mario movie very recently, and having come into it remember it being quite good, I have to say… it isn’t. January 26, 2018 at 8:26 am #226991 (deleted)Participant The documentary on the recent reissue is excellent. Also, the NES was a toy. A toy that played video games, but a toy. It was never sold as anything else, no TV consoles were until all the wanky Playstation ad campaigns arrived later on. Ben’s categorisation is correct. January 26, 2018 at 8:32 am #226992 RidleyParticipant I am Mrs NESbitt!! January 26, 2018 at 9:31 am #226994 bloodtellerParticipant >Also, the NES was a toy. A toy that played video games, but a toy. but the mario bros. movie isn’t based off the NES, it was not a NES movie although they did use nintendo super scopes as guns in it i think so i guess you could count that January 26, 2018 at 10:10 am #226995 DaveParticipant I love that people are having a sincere argument about whether Mario Bros is a videogame or not. I mean, clearly it’s not because you put it in a console that lies on a table, and you sit on chairs while you play it. So clearly Mario Bros is a piece of furniture. January 26, 2018 at 2:09 pm #226998 flanl3Participant I am Mrs NESbitt!! I had a geography teacher called that January 26, 2018 at 5:14 pm #227001 HamishParticipant I have it on reasonably good authority that all NES cartridges were in fact flutes, since people blew on them. January 29, 2018 at 5:19 pm #227049 Ben PaddonParticipant Episode 2 has dropped. We watched Masters of the Universe, and became masters of making terrible choices as a result. February 2, 2018 at 11:41 pm #227168 ManbirdParticipant I’m looking forward to the BBC’s upcoming range of Classic Drama action figures. The Cathy Come Home set features a fully poseable Cathy with pram accessory, and the Social Services figurines come with authentic child-nets and scale paperwork. The Singing Detective one features two Michael Gambon toys (one psoriatic and bedbound, the other a ’40s gumshoe complete with microphone), and at least three Mark Binney/Finney variants. Sorry, got side-tracked there. We were talking about toys-? February 5, 2018 at 6:58 pm #227303 Ben PaddonParticipant We watched Super Mario Bros. for this week’s episode, which… yeah. February 6, 2018 at 3:05 pm #227331 bloodtellerParticipant so i started listening to the podcast and already you say “they’re meant to be be brothers in this and they do not look like brothers” which is inaccurate because they are father and son in the movie- there’s a scene where luigi explicitly states that mario adopted him and brought him up. dunno if you cover that later in the podcast because i haven’t listened to it all but it was something i noticed February 6, 2018 at 3:17 pm #227332 bloodtellerParticipant okay i am 16 minutes into this podcast and i have given up watching because it’s just descended into nitpicking about paleontologists not changing their outfits and various other arbitrary complaints February 6, 2018 at 7:20 pm #227347 RidleyParticipant Ear cataracts? February 7, 2018 at 4:19 pm #227378 Ben PaddonParticipant Luigi says Mario raised him, it’s never stated that Mario adopted Luigi. February 7, 2018 at 4:19 pm #227379 Ben PaddonParticipant See also: The name of their plumbing company, and the name of the movie. February 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm #227385 bloodtellerParticipant >Luigi says Mario raised him, it’s never stated that Mario adopted Luigi. well sure but you could arguably infer from this and the fact that they don’t resemble one another that they’re not actual brothers- they just have that kind of relationship.it’s like having a younger niece who calls you “big brother” even though you’re not her actual brother.. either way, i felt it was a bit of an arbitary complaint to make, along with the other ones i heard during the 16 minutes i listened to. maybe it’s just because i have a huge soft spot for the movie (it’s one of my favourites), but making complaints about the “Brooklyn: Now” caption and various other trivial things didn’t really build a strong case towards disliking the movie, it just felt a bit like nitpicking. maybe that’s just the way i see it, i dunno February 7, 2018 at 7:36 pm #227395 Ben PaddonParticipant You seem to be mistaking making a joke about an aspect of the film with complaining about it, which… yeah, I can’t help you there. Poking fun at “Brooklyn: Now” and Daisy not changing out of her paleontology duds for a date is patently ridiculous and we pointed those things out, but they weren’t complaints. But hey, y’know, to each their own. February 13, 2018 at 7:11 pm #227588 Ben PaddonParticipant Episode 4 is here! We watched Pokémon: The First Movie, a film which has no fewer than four subtitles. February 28, 2018 at 8:01 am #228628 Ben PaddonParticipant And here’s episode 5, which looks at a pair of long-forgotten Barbie animated specials from the 80s. March 22, 2018 at 9:06 am #229780 DaveParticipant The Guardian has just posted this entertaining feature on the making of the Mario Bros movie. https://www.theguardian.com/games/2018/mar/22/super-mario-bros-movie-killing-fields-chariots-fire-video-game This extract pretty much sums up the whole thing: On set, there was also a sense that nothing was certain. The production designers and special FX people didn’t know what they were building, the actors had arrived and they didn’t know what they were playing. There was just a general sense of ‘What the fuck is going on?’” March 22, 2018 at 12:19 pm #229786 Ben SaundersParticipant Are you sure that isn’t the writeup for Red Dwarf VIII? March 25, 2018 at 5:57 pm #229888 Me Own StuntsParticipant The Joel Schumacher ‘Batman and Robin’ movie is essentially a toy commercial. March 26, 2018 at 8:51 am #229915 Ben PaddonParticipant Yep, and it’s on our list. Author Posts Viewing 39 posts - 1 through 39 (of 39 total) Scroll to top • Scroll to Recent Forum Posts You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Log In Username: Password: Keep me signed in Log In