Ruari and Mark go to the (toy) fair!

Hail all you nerds, geeks, dweebs, poindexters, and all other assorted types of this great underground culture we have going right here. As far as greetings go I think that was fairly comprehensive and long winded, for those who don't know who I am i thought I'd hijack the first bit of this post for a brief introduction. My name is Ruari (Rory) and I'm Marks pundit/co-host/sexpig on the Cult Friction show, and now apparently co-blogger for it and all (if you are a regular listener, I'm the funny one).

*an aside I was going to make some sort of "yeah, funny looking" joke there, but this is radio so I don't think it works.


THE TOY FAIR!

This weekend saw the 59th London Toy Fair, strictly for toy industry types and authenticated press types, so naturally your two cocky sonsofbitches radio reporters were there to lie steal and cheat our way in.

Which we did.

Well OK they were kinda lax, and we sorta just looked like poor, sodden newsroom interns (I even had a hat) but we got our flashy press badges and sauntered on in, here's some of my favourite bits...

Lego Stand

HOLY CRAP I LOVE LEGO!!! This stuff was quite literally the building blocks of most of my life (predictable joke) and to be honest i never really stopped playing with having merged all my friends collections together about 2 years ago in order to build a GIANT tower. Now obviously the highlight of the Lego stand was the giant Lego dudes.

Definition of futility, trying to interview plastic bricks, Mark, you have failed me for the last time!

As suspected the star wars franchise was there in force (predictable joke), and most of the attention was to the prequels (barf) however there was a showing from some more classical types...

Can you tell which Dr Jones is made of Lego?

Ahh Indy my good chum, how nice, you realise we are hat buddies right? Unlike the star wars aspects most of the Indiana Jones was from the pre shark-jumping, fridge-nuking, Jar-Jar era and I was sorely tempter to nick the little short-round figure who as well as being ever so slightly racist was also VERY small, wish they had a melting Nazi face figure...

I suppose Lego is just made of plastic...

Wow, theres like a hundred of these.
I really really hope rule 34 doesn't apply here

Nerdy Collectors Stuff

No toy fair would be complete (like I've been to loads) without a keep-it-in-the-box collector item stall and this one was no disappointment

It might look cute, but Mark actually has an STD,

that's a really hairy growth.

Tribbles, wow, I never, ever thought I'd see these as a toy. Mainly because they can be faithfully recreated by a furry pillow or practically any small dead animal. Though these ones did have the distinction of making two sets of noises the normal purr and a high pitched scream that indicated an nearby Klingon (who have apparently used specially trained warrior squads to eradicate the great cuddly menace!). But to be honest even the Tribbles couldn't hold a candle to the...

Side Note: it never gets old calling Mark "Marky McFly"

Wow a flux capacitor, that's sweet. Admittedly it didn't do much bar light up and occasionally enable us to transverse time and space, but still. I'd love to have one of them in my cupboard to confuse the meter-readers.

They also had a life sized star trek captains chair advertised, but I didn't get a picture of that so I'm not telling you about it. Myeh.

The Shootpad

Ok this thing was totally really good (I'm sick of typing sweet, seriously must have used that word like 30 times and this was the best my thesaurus had except for sugary or candy, now i feel hungry).

Basically its a dance mat for football games depending where and how hard (it has Wii-style sensors to track how far back and fast your foot is) you kick the ball, you pass, shoot, tackle, hack, dive, argue with referee, swear at crowd, snort coke and start a riot.

Ok I might of added my own there but still I had a brief go on this thing and despite not being able to move (ironically the actual D-pad was borked) I loved it. the feeling of being able to control your power with actually kicks is immensely satisfying and pretty much eliminates hilariously short long passes. It also has some of the pseudo-fitness aspect that allows Nintendo's little white box to appeal to that all important non-gamer demographic. Having just sounded like a PR rep I'll just let you have a gander for yourself.



Ok so it has a few niggles, the two swaggeringly annoying jockesque personifications of dickweedery in the advert aside. The previously mentioned lack of being able to move, sort of turned the game into a weirdly stereotyped idea of the American perception of "soccer" and when we got there it looked as if someone had given on of the pads one too many match-winning strikes and broke the ball. But overall the sheer "I'm a total football legend" feeling it gives you added with its ability to work with any footie game out there makes it a great addition to your console.

So there we are, my top three rides at there fair, we'll be discussing all of these and many more on Thursday at 6, tune into to our sultry tones at www.wiredradio.co.uk