live-action Japanese Spiderman from the ’70s

Recently I came across YouTube video clips of a live-action Japanese Spiderman TV show from the ’70s.  This is something to see… prepare to be surprised, even if you know quite a bit about Spiderman.

If you watched the video, you might’ve noticed it was from 1978 and it featured a giant live-action transforming robot.  How long did it take before America got transforming robots?  Something like 1984, wasn’t it?  The Japanese have been ahead of us for a while on cartoons and sci-fi technology.

According to this other video (with a different theme song, one you may be more familiar with), Spiderman has a flying car (the Spider Machine GP-7), and the giant transforming robot is named Leopardon and belongs to Spiderman.  The song says he has radioactive blood, and he wears some type of mechanical device on one of his wrists.  I’m really curious about the story now…

On a related note, someone took clips from the Japanese Spiderman TV show and made a compilation video, adding NES-style music from Mega Man.  (NES = the original Nintendo system, in case you didn’t know.)

Spiderman’s pre-fight antics look amusing, plus his voice in Japanese is awesome (“SPYDA!”).  I’m gonna have to watch one of those episodes sometime…

explanation of Global Warming for children

There were some good (verbal) responses on our recent post with the child-like explanation of nuclear meltdown, so today we’re going to show a video that explains what causes Global Warming.  This is a simplified version, at a level anyone can understand.  (So if you still don’t get it, you’re obviously making things too complicated.)

FYI, this is from an episode of Futurama, in case you were wondering.

Taco Bell superheroes

Speaking of Taco Bell commercials, did you know Taco Bell has actually made superheroes out of their ingredients?   And they didn’t just make a cheesy commercial — they made a whole episode!   (Well, four and a half minutes, anyway.)

This is a parody of Superfriends, which makes it kinda cool in a retro, parody way.  The team is called the Super Delicious Ingredient Force (SDIF), and they stay at the Fortress of Flavor.  You’ve gotta watch this.  It’s the epitome of cheesy, in a funny way.

Episode 1 is when the SDIF team battles the Cruddy Combo Clan.

Of course they have their own website: SDIF.com.  Apparently each character even has their own Facebook page, which is stretching the gag a little thin.

There are currently four episodes.  You may be wondering if they get better or worse.  Well, in my humble opinion, they get even more cheesy.  Whether that is good or not, you can decide for yourself.

FYI, these are funnier if you watch them with a friend, so you can make share commentary on it.  (It also helps if you have a sense of humor… obviously.)  You can also leave a comment sharing your thoughts on it, and you get bonus points if you can make it funny.  🙂

Regardless of how cheesy / generic these are, at least an attempt was made at humor.  These clips are better than most commercials — even just the sound effects in the first one makes it worth watching.   I wish more ad companies would make funny commercials.  Hmm… I think that’s a job for… BUFFET O’ BLOG!  While I jest, the staff here could make the most awesome commercials, without a doubt.  So perhaps we should design a few… especially if we could get paid for it!

Los Links!

The other day in a Mexican restaurant, I saw a TV commercial for Microsoft’s search engine Bing.  It looked like a parody of a Spanish soap opera.  I’ve since seen it on English TV.  There’s two of them I’ve seen so far, and they’re funny because the acting and script is so bad.   Actually, there’s more bad acting than storyline, which works in terms of randomness.

Los Links, Episode Uno

Los Links, Episode Dos

If you actually want to make more sense of the commercials, there are extended versions of both, which are about a minute long each.

Los Links, Episode Uno (extended version)

Los Links, Episode Dos (extended version)