And becoming Super Mario Bros. 2 was just a return to its roots.

Yes, it's that time of year again! It has been said before and so it shall be said again, but Christmas is the holiday that is the most commercialized of all. A massive component of that commercialization has been The Christmas Special, that one-off theatrical short, television event, or just a Christmas-themed episode of a popular (or not so popular) show.

Say "Hello," to the Wild Man of Borneo. Today we finish our look at wave 3 of X-Men '97 Marvel Legends action figures and I think I saved the best for last. Cable was one of the non-members of the X-Men to play a pretty substantial role in the original animated series. He showed up in multiple episodes in both the first and second season and was a key player in what was to be the show's big finale, "Beyond Good and Evil." It wasn't a surprise to see him return in…

No porpoises were harmed during the making of this podcast. Guests: Gerry Davila, Ethan the Hungry Reader

Last year concluded ten years of advent calendar style countdowns of classic and not-so-classic holiday specials. Twenty five posts on consecutive days for one person with a family and a full-time job is a pretty big time sink each year. It's a year-round endeavor of hunting for specials never before seen or covered, viewing them, viewing them again, viewing them often a third or fourth time, then writing and capturing images for a blog post that routinely runs for thousands of words.

Enter the White Queen. If you have seen the first season of X-Men '97 then you may be wondering why Emma Frost, aka the White Queen, is receiving an action figure in the show's companion toy line. She didn't play a big role in the show having a speaking role in just one episode and then what amounted to a cameo in a later one.

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He's got the most attitude on the team. We are onto the third member of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its everyone's favorite hot head. Raphael got softened for the 1987 cartoon series to make him sarcastic and a bit of a goof-off. He didn't take anything too seriously and had a certain dry wit about him. It's quite different from his comic book portrayal where he was emotional, easily angered, and often confrontational not just with his enemies, but even his family.

At long last, the era of Morph is here! I'm always going to have a soft spot for Morph. It was rare to see a character killed off in a children's show, but that was the fate of old Morph who didn't make it out of the show's second episode. I wouldn't call it traumatizing, but there was definitely a haunted quality to that scene, "Wolverine!

The best there is at what he does. Back in 2021, Mondo unveiled for San Diego Comic Con a sixth scale Wolverine action figure based on the X-Men animated series from the 90s. It was a presale to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the show's premiere and product went out in 2022 closer to that actual anniversary. At the time, Mondo wasn't planning on doing more, but the response was so enthusiastic that their one-off turned into a whole line.

He has a way with machines. We were able to get through some of the logistics of this line with Leonardo, so for this second review we can just get right to it. One of the best decisions the 2012 iteration of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made was bringing back veteran voice actor Rob Paulsen. He's voiced countless characters over the years, but many know him as Raphael from the original TMNT cartoon.

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