Chris loves Mega Bloks Super Tech Heroes
Robots + Mega Bloks + Spider-Man = Chris being a very happy camper. In the last few years, Mega Bloks has really stepped up and given Lego a run for their money. Pound for pound, and especially dollar for dollar, these things deliver far more fun than any Lego product I've ever owned. Click the pic to check out Chris's new best friend, Super Tech Heroes Spider-Man!
Remember that big Mega Bloks sale I told you about? These were marked down to $7 for a two-pack, but they're easily worth twice the price. Maybe more. I'm not kidding, these things are great. I found three different flavas of Spidey-Bloks, and not a one of them has anything at all to do with the movie. But I don't care. I don't worry 'bout nuthin' no mo', 'cause Supa Tech Spidey gots my back. Ain't that right, Spida-Mang?
In their early days, Mega Bloks were just cheap Lego knock-offs, and their inferior quality kept them off the radar as far as business-ending lawsuits were concerned. The Lego company is horrible about suing the hell out of people who make blocks like theirs, even though the patent has expired and legally, at least in the US, companies have a right to manufacture bricks that work with Lego as long as they aren't exactly like Lego bricks. But that doesn't stop the Lego Group from suing left and right, using their financial might to try to strangle smaller companies' assets in court long enough to bankrupt them or prevent them from getting a foothold in the building blocks biz. That, and Lego's insanely draconian quality control measures, are why Legos are so damned expensive, and that is why the Lego company is in some serious financial trouble right now. The next time you see a relatively small Lego set for $30 a few feet away from a giant Mega Bloks set for $20, consider where all that extra money of yours goes… to Lego's lawyers. That's an awful shitty reason to pay twice as much for the same number of tiny plastic bricks, many of which will be touched only once by a child's hands before being lost under the couch and ending up in a vacuum cleaner bag. Maybe Lego should concentrate less on lawsuits and more on making affordable, fun, quality products like Super Tech Heroes. Or maybe they should send me a bunch of free stuff and I'll stop talking smack about them on the internet. Seriously, Lego, we could work something out.
But this isn't about Lego, its about Mega Bloks, and Mega Bloks have come a long way since the days when they were crap. MB are now a high quality product, comparable in quality to Lego, only without the uppity pretension and impending financial ruin. They've managed to work out deals to make toys based on Marvel Comics, Disney's Chronicles Of Narnia and Pirates Of The Caribbean, NASCAR, Dora The Explorer, the Cabbage Patch Kids, Power Rangers, Pokmon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Caterpillar, and Harley Davidson. And now they've got a deal for Spider-Man 3. Mega Bloks don't play, yo.
First of all, let me clarify; although Mega Bloks does have a number of Spider-Man 3 sets, the sets I'm reviewing here are not among them. These are older toys, and I although I can't figure out why they didn't choose to release new Super Tech Heroes for Spider-Man 3, I take consolation in the fact that these guys are far, far cooler looking than anything I've seen in the Spider-Man 3 line.
Like all the Super Tech Heroes and a great number of other Mega Bloks robots, the greatest thing about these Spidey-bots is the poseability offered by Mega Bloks' ball joint system. Fair warning: I'm going to be using words like 'balls' and 'mounted' a lot in the remainder of this review, so if you need to compose yourself while you ready your insult guns and take aim with a gay joke cannonade, by all means, please take your time. The only thing I hate more than gay balls flying in my direction is poorly aimed gay balls flying in my direction. There, I did the first one for you.
As you can see above - and I sincerely apologize for this sentence in advance - the clear plastic joints grip the balls tightly enough so they move around freely, but loosely enough so that they aren't damaged when you play with them. You know what? I can't do this. There is no fucking way I can make this sound like its not dripping with purposeful homosexual innuendo. So fuck it; I'm going to make this sound just as dirty as I possibly can. Here goes: as you can see, those nice, big balls are mounted at the end of strong, sturdy shafts. The shafts are nice and thick… thick enough to take a good pounding without harm, so rough play is never a problem, boys. With some gentle but firm pushing, those big balls slip snugly down into the holes, each of which are fitted with little red rubbers to keep those balls from moving around when you don't want them to. Don't forget your rubbers, boys! They keep those naughty balls and shafts in good, tight working order, so your little hero will always be in whatever position you like him best. Toodles for now, sailor!
Because I don't want to be here writing this thing for another hour, I'm going to break it down like this. The two Sidey-bots way up top are from Mega Bloks Amazing Spider-Man line, and are damn decent. You see how they look a little smoother and less greebly than the Spidey to the right? It also makes them a little less fun. There's not as much to build, and although that makes construction a lot simpler and quicker, simple and quick construction isn't necessarily a good thing when it comes to building block toys. The Spider-Man to the right, which I believe is part of Mega Bloks' overall Marvel line, is a lot cooler because he has so many chunky, weird little parts to put on. Also, he's got a transparent faceplate, and everybody knows that see-through Legos - or Legolike objects - are the silver and gold crayons of the building block world. His web shooter is powerful enough to use as a weapon against your other toys, and he looks great hanging from it. The silver Spidey above has the same webslinging mechanism, while the other shoots weird little discs which are very un-Spidey-like. Yeah, this guys is just a little cooler than the other two, but they all totally rock. My advice to any Spidey-fan or Lego enthusiast is to grab 'em if you can find 'em. You'll thank me for it.
May 9th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Hey, gang. In my eagerness to be home before midnight, I forgot to mention the Super Tech Heroes ultra-huge behind the scenes story. Apparently set in the future of the Marvel universe, the official company line from Mega Bloks is as follows: “In 2150, heroes from the 20th century have been brought back to life with the aid of cybernetic technology. These awesome machines fight crime and uphold justice in the modern cities of planet Earth.” Just FYI.
May 10th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
On a totally unrelated note, check out this amazingly wonderful piece of 60s weirdness. The night before Easter a lot of my family ended up at my aunt and uncle’s house in Indiana. My aunt makes a legendary goulash which, in my 31 years on this planet and despite my endlessly hearing about how amazing it is, I have somehow never got to try. I sense a conspiracy. Anyway, she chose the night before Easter to reveal her big secret to us: the goulash recipe in question was not handed down from her Germano-Austrio-Slavic ancestors as we had all assumed, but rather came from a cookbook she had conned from a traveling kitchen knife salesman in the early 60s.
In retrospect, the truth is actually a much cooler story than the handed-down thing. Apparently this guy had been told that my aunt and uncle were newlyweds, and he waited for my uncle to be gone from the house before making his move on what I can only presume he thought would be a financially inexperienced new housewife. But like I said, my aunt has Germano-Austrio-Slavic ancestry. That’s gypsy blood, people. You can’t con a gypsy. That’s like trying to outrun a Kenyan, or out-long-divide a Japanese guy, or out-sexist a 1960s traveling kitchen knife salesman, or out-bigot an overweight sci-fi web author from Kentucky. It just can’t be done.
The gypsies are a savvy people, and in an instant my aunt was onto him like a shark smelling chum in the water. That poor, dumb bastard never stood a chance. He promised all sorts of fantastic deals and confusingly worded installment plans, and my aunt just nodded and acted more and more interested until, convinced she was hooked, he started offering free stuff just for “thinking it over.” BAM! She had him. He left her with a few free things, not the least of which was the 1961 Cutco Cook Book: Meat and Poultry Cookery, Volume One by Margaret Mitchell. Of course, when he returned the next day, she was strangely uninterested in the knives, but she thanked him kindly for all the free gifts, and from that day forth my uncle has enjoyed the benefits of marrying a clever woman in the form of endless meals of heavenly goulash. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never actually been allowed to eat any. Did I mention this? Not that I’m bitter.
Anyway, my aunt pointed out that she had never had any interest in making anything from this cook book other than the goulash, which is evidenced by the fact that the goulash pages are well worn and ingredient splattered from years of use, while all the other pages are pristine. I reasoned that if something as good as the goulash came from this book, then it might contain other treasures as well, and was therefore definitely worth investigating. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. It was like being down in The Well Of Souls with Sallah and opening the ancient Egyptian crypt that housed… 20th Century Wieners.
I shit you not, I thought I was going to piss myself when I saw this. 20th Century Wieners. How in the hell did they think that name up? After I laughed myself into a frenzy, I passed it around and let the fam get a kick out of it. That night I stopped by and picked up the ingredients, and come Easter we dined on 20th Century Wieners. They’re okay, I guess, but I don’t like tomatoes that much. Everyone else seemed to love them, ’cause they were gone in no time. Frog Boy keeps asking me for the recipe, so here it is for all the world to enjoy. A quick check of a few search engines yielded nil results on both “20th century wieners” and “twentieth century wieners.” That’s right folks, this is a Sci-Fi Guys web exclusive! If you see 20th Century Wieners anywhere else, you’ll know it came from here first. Bon appétit!
May 15th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
For Szélső Fa
September 6th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
December 13th, 2007 at 2:21 am
I love Lego and have been really excited to buy some for my kids this christmas. Do you think Lego Mindstorm\’s too advanced for them? they\’re 8 and 10.
Chris’s note: Although this is a spam message and I’ve deleted the links, it does raise an interesting question. I’d say it depends on the kid. Some of the more advanced LEGO stuff is definitely geared towards teens or adults. Having a LEGO robot is fun, but programming is not. I can tell you this with all certainty: as an 8-10 year old, I would have used the parts to build whatever I wanted to play with at the moment and would not have spent hours upon hours programming a robot to do what my imagination and hands and some very special vocal sound effects from my mouth could make it do in seconds. I’m more of an in-the-moment LEGO guy.
But you know what? I’m not the expert. This is a question for Q. His son is in the LEGO robotics club at his school, and is about this age if I’m not too greatly mistaken. Q, what do you think?
December 15th, 2007 at 10:16 am
CJ turned ten during his stay in the Lego club, so I’ll peg the age at 9-10. They did some fairly advanced stuff, but honestly it was just a touch out of reach for him, and I’d put him near the top of his group (that’s not just step-fatherly pride there). He even got some of the advanced LEGOs for a birthday present but besides making a car axle it doesn’t get much use. Within a year or so he’ll be fully within the “I’m going to build a LEGO contraption to take out the garbage” phase, I’ve no doubt. But eight and ten might be a touch too early for MindStorm.
They’ll play with it, that’s for sure. And the MindStorm would be excellent for introducing a kid to programming - it’s essentially BASIC programming (if statements and conditional loops) but graphically set up like LEGOs in that there are IF blocks and COUNT blocks that you put other command blocks into. CJ thinks it’s awesome and I’m glad to foster him in learning to program (their team got an award for creative programming, and CJ was one of the two programmers in the group - and yes, that absolutely *is* stepfatherly pride!) - but yeah, don’t expect 8 to 10 to be taking full advantage of the kit’s potential. It’d probably be more cost effective to get some of the cool Star Wars kits (or whatever) that don’t revolve entirely around programming and gear ratios.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:34 am
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Chris’s note: Rarely on a Monday morning am I greeted with such a bizarre and inappropriate yet disturbingly lucid spam message. Let alone four of them like I got this morning. But it carries a good message, so I’m going to let it pass. A Happy 2008 New Year to you all, and lots of teen boy cum loads to us, every one! Amen!