[Talisman]

Well, got my PS4 in yesterday, beat the first island of Frontiers, and I have this to say:

Eat shit, Goku.

[wentwood]

On PS 2 I recently finished 3 of the hardest Tomb Raider levels to date

Tomb Raider VII Legend

Bolivia
Peru
Japan

Japan was insane. One of the hardest levels I've played period in any game. Started the Africa level. Talk about nuts out of the gate.

[Rabbitman]

If anyone has Netflix, there’s a Japanese game show on there called “Run For the Money” and you will probably recognize a couple tokusatsu actors on there.

I saw Kamen Rider Brave, and Kamen Rider Valkyrie. They also have the guy who sings the Don Brothers theme as a contestant.

It’s a show about a bunch of celebrities being hunted down by business suit freaks. If a freak catches you, you are out, but if you avoid the freaks, you could win up to 5 million yen.

I had a good time watching it.

[Jello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabbitman

It?s a show about a bunch of celebrities being hunted down by business suit freaks. If a freak catches you, you are out, but if you avoid the freaks, you could win up to 5 million yen.

Glad you're having fun, but man does this sound like some capitalist dystopia stuff without having seen it

[wentwood]

I knocked off 10 bucks on Pocket Monsters XIV Black And White. Now that just leaves Adventures In Unova And Adventures In Unova And Beyond to finish up Gen 5. XY is the last generation on Cartoon Network Disney XD ran previous airings of XY.

Sun and Moon was 3 series but that was a short era for the series before moving to Netflix.

Hopefully we get Master Journeys and Ultimate Journeys on DVD.

Trans Formers 8 and 9 are both locked in by Paramount which is set during Trans Formers Beast Wars. Trans Formers 7 is also part of Beast Wars. It looks like Paramount wants to move forward with the continuity.

After Trans Formers 9 any chance of them adapting Trans Formers Prime at some point?

Also No Way Home is now the 8th Spider Man movie as the next continues on from No Way Home.

I was waiting for confirmation from Sony for placement of No Way Home.

[TokuKnight89]

In a funk cause I remembered something and I don't know if that's a good thing or not!

When Toys-R-Us reached its endgame around 2017-2018, it seemed inevitable cause of online shopping and disreputable business practices. However, there was a time when those of us from the '80s and '90s and '00s viewed Toys-R-Us as the place to go if you had access to one. Many of us, myself included, got a lot of Power Rangers and Transformers from them.

In the years since, the brand has tried to revive itself through various means. Cultural relevancy still remains just high enough to have someone wearing a Geoffrey Giraffe costume during the recent Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's no great surprise that nostalgia is fueling a lot of this so-called "relevancy".

However, I re-remembered the feeling I got from an old 2018 op-ed which offered a dissenting take on the demise of the brand (which kind of echoes the themes of the original Child's Play about marketing and capitalism):

"Teaching children that happiness comes from shopping was never the best lesson anyway. In fact, researchers*have found*that the commercialization of childhood causes problems including obesity, violence, family stress, sexualization, and early use of drugs and alcohol."

Yeah, it's a pretty heavy take! I do think that it's a bit of a broad-brush cause such effects aren't necessarily universal. However, it does give me a lot of pause! I hate the idea that getting a bunch of those aforementioned Power Rangers and Transformers could produce this kind of thing!

What do you think?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/opini...ion/index.html

[Mesnick]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TokuKnight89

"Teaching children that happiness comes from shopping was never the best lesson anyway. In fact, researchers*have found*that the commercialization of childhood causes problems including obesity, violence, family stress, sexualization, and early use of drugs and alcohol."

Speaking of commerce, I've always been struck by how good advertising can fool people's brains. There is a very good example with which few people are familiar. I am from a country of the post-Soviet space and, at one time, in order to discourage people from buying foreign jeans, we started producing our own. They were cheaper and more accessible, but they were not popular, because ... they did not shed and did not wrinkle, like foreign ones. That is, these pants were of better quality and it was because of this that people did not want to buy them. Individuals have even put stones in the washing machine to achieve a worn effect on these pants.

Quote:

What do you think?

That everywhere you need a measure. Well, yes, children should not grow up with the idea that only things can make them happy. However, in practice it is very difficult to organize.

[ShiShiLeo]

Well I'm bummed.

I got the dreaded "package delivered" notification from USPS but no package in sight (I checked no alter than 10 minutes after the notification). This was last week so I waited a few days in hopes that it would show up but to no avail.

USPS says, if it says delivered, its delivered, but my apartment complex and the surrounded complexes all have problems with packages delivered to the wrong address as well as package thieves. So the package is likely gone now.

I hope everyone else had better shopping experiences than me!

[DreamSword]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShiShiLeo

Well I'm bummed.

I got the dreaded "package delivered" notification from USPS but no package in sight (I checked no alter than 10 minutes after the notification). This was last week so I waited a few days in hopes that it would show up but to no avail.

USPS says, if it says delivered, its delivered, but my apartment complex and the surrounded complexes all have problems with packages delivered to the wrong address as well as package thieves. So the package is likely gone now.

I hope everyone else had better shopping experiences than me!

Yikes, that sucks dude. I've had to deal with that myself. Best case scenario the package got marked delivered by mistake and you'll find it tomorrow.

[EpsilonX]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TokuKnight89

"Teaching children that happiness comes from shopping was never the best lesson anyway. In fact, researchers*have found*that the commercialization of childhood causes problems including obesity, violence, family stress, sexualization, and early use of drugs and alcohol."

Yeah, it's a pretty heavy take! I do think that it's a bit of a broad-brush cause such effects aren't necessarily universal. However, it does give me a lot of pause! I hate the idea that getting a bunch of those aforementioned Power Rangers and Transformers could produce this kind of thing!

What do you think?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/opini...ion/index.html

Yeah, I've thought about that too. Recently, my gf found a youtube video full of nostalgia 80s cartoon openings, and it reminds me of the good ol' days of cartoons essentially being toy commercials. It sent me into a nostalgic spiral, and I looked up a bunch of toys I loved as a kid. And then I realized - my childhood was awesome because I had a bunch of cool toys and shows that took me to worlds that exist outside of what's actually possible.

Watching TV and buying stuff is what made me happy as a child, which is not sustainable.

As much as I loved my childhood, I do sometimes wonder if it gave me (and everybody else) unrealistic expectations of what life should be, which is part of why everybody seems so depressed. Or are these things the only thing saving our sanity from rising costs, hustle culture, etc.