Thanksgiving dinner is served... and it's chewy! Remember in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when Violet Beauregarde takes the three-course dinner chewing gum and describes all the flavors it changes to? It was hard to imagine gum tasting like roast beef, but thanks to Accoutrements (Archie McPhee), it actually exists now, along with turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberry flavors. And it's a good thing too, because Jones Soda appears to have given up on making their annual holiday soda packs which we dared to review, so somebody else needed to step up to the plate to deliver us our Thanksgiving meals in unconventional forms.
The Thanksgiving Gumballs are obviously more colorful since it comes with turkey, cranberry and pumpkin pie flavors. They even embossed their names on the tin container to remind you that YOU ARE ABOUT TO EAT THANKSGIVING GUMBALLS. Not ready to dive right into the poultry, I started off with the cranberry flavored gumballs - they were sweet with just a faint hint of cranberry flavoring... quite tasty. Next up was the pumpkin pie, and the flavor was definitely stronger with this one, instantly reminding me of pumpkins, but still surprisingly good. Then it was time for the turkey. Oh my god, these were absolutely DISGUSTING. If a computer decided to interpret what it thought a turkey might taste like and produce it in pellet form, then you'd have these gumballs. They actually have a smokey flavor to them. I had to spit the turkey gumball out, because if I kept it in my mouth any longer, I think I would've puked. Horrible.
Saving what I assumed would be the worst for last, I popped open the Roast Beef Gumballs and I could already smell the artificial roast beef flavoring with a hint of salt & pepper. Never thought I'd be saying that about gumballs. EUGH. I immediately regretted biting into the roast beef gumballs; it's scary how they actually taste like roast beef in a weird way, unlike the turkey ones. Look, I enjoy roast beef, but it just doesn't work as bubble gum... and while it's not as bad as those bastard turkey balls, that doesn't mean I'm going to chow down on these ever again.
So just to recap:
Cranberry gum = Tasty
Pumpkin Pie gum = Good
Roast Beef gum = Pretty bad
Turkey gum = Tastebud Poison
So there you have it. These Thanksgiving Gumballs are by no means a substitute for a meal... not even if you're an astronaut, but I applaud Archie McPhee for daring to turn those festive dinner items into gumballs. I wonder if they'll make stuffing & gravy, brussels sprouts or green bean casserole flavors in the future. For the sake of my taste buds, I hope not, because if they do, I'll have no choice but to do another one of these taste tests.
Anyway, I hope all of you have a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday whether you're eating gumballs, turkey dinners, turkey pot pies, tacos or nothing at all. And even if you don't live in the States, you can still make an excuse to celebrate by watching the Doc Mock's Movie Mausoleum Thanksgiving Special or a great flick like Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Be sure to share in the comments section what you ended up eating and what you ended up doing for Thanksgiving. Gobble, gobble.
[click here to see the full-sized photo!]
It's finally ready! Pox and I spent a long time planning out our latest pixel poster and I'm really glad we finished it up in time for the holidays this year. The new poster has a winter holiday theme, so it's perfect for any of you looking to buy some gifts for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus or whatever the hell you feel like celebrating when the weather turns painfully cold. The winter wonderland pixel poster is the exact same size as our original retro beach party pixel poster (34" x 13.5") and we managed to squeeze even MORE colorful characters into this one than last time. Just click on the image above to enlarge it and see what I'm talking about.
For the first time ever, we're taking pre-orders here on I-Mockery because we know these are gonna sell just as well as the original posters did, so we wanna make sure we have more than enough in stock to guarantee that you'll receive them before the holidays come around. And just like last time, anybody who purchases our new winter pixel poster will be given a secret link to a page containing the complete legend for the poster to help you identify all the characters.
So please help show your support and pre-order a poster (or two... or fifty) whether it's a gift for yourself or for somebody else. I guarantee you'll end up staring at it for a loooooong time to come and it makes for a hell of a conversation piece for whenever you have friends over. If you're a fan of isometric pixel art along with basically anything we've ever written about on this site, then you're going to LOVE this poster. You'll love it so much, you should consider buying more than one, so you can sleep with one of them and not worry about how it's getting all crinkled up.
Ultimate Retro Winter Wonderland Pixel Poster:
United States Orders
Ultimate Retro Winter Wonderland Pixel Poster:
International Orders
Also, for those of you who've still put off buying the original pixel poster, it's time to stop procrastinating, because we're doing a 2-Pack (not to be confused with Tupac) where you get both of our pixel posters for cheaper than they would cost to buy separately. Plus, we're only charging you the cost of shipping one of them, so you'll save on shipping as well. And just look how nice they look when hung closely:
[click here to see the full-sized photo!]
Don't they look happy together? Wouldn't they make you happier having them hanging on your wall? Don't you want to be happy? The answer to all of these questions is obviously YES, so pre-order them both before your brain explodes into chunks of 8-bit goo!
Pixel Poster 2-Pack:
United States Orders
Pixel Poster 2-Pack:
International Orders
As long as you order by December 15th, they're guaranteed to be in your hands in time for Christmas... after that, I can't make any promises. Thanks in advance to all of you who pre-order these posters and may all of your stockings be stuffed with pixelated goodness come December!
Survey: We'd love to hear what you all think of the new winter wonderland pixel poster, so please drop a comment below!
Another Halloween season has come and gone, and while it was a lot of work as always, it was fun work and I'm already missing it. The annual Halloween Costume Carnival in West Hollywood did not disappoint. We went with some friends (as seen in the photos above) to walk up and down Santa Monica Boulevard all night long, checking out the amazing costumes people came up with. I had a blast scaring the crap out of people with my "jack-o-skeleton" costume too. Whenever somebody would stare at me for a little too long, I took that as my cue to go right up to them, contort my head and make some wicked screeching sounds as if I was an agonized trick-or-treat demon in search of blood. Sometimes they would laugh, other times they would scream and try running away as I followed them around the streets for several minutes. Do that on any other day, and you get arrested... on Halloween, however, scaring people is the name of the game.
In case you're wondering, the Halloween costumes pictured above from left to right are as follows:
Re as a Gold-Faced Ghost. Me as Jack-O-Skeleton. Dr. Boogie as Boo Berry. Shannon as one of the Frog Brothers. Scott as a Hypno-Bishop.
This Halloween, I also got to live out life dream #874:
I got to ride on Pee-wee Herman's Bicycle! As soon as I sat down, I wanted to ride that bike all the way to the Alamo, but with all the pedestrian street traffic in West Hollywood that night, I wasn't going to get very far. Still, it was fantastic to see in person and it had every little detail, including the extremely hard-to-find tiger siren. And yes, I brushed its teeth once when nobody was looking. Couldn't help it.
Being one who always believes in rewarding trick-or-treaters for their efforts, I wasn't able to let them walk away from our house empty handed even though we weren't going to be home. So I decided to cover our front steps with Boo Berry cereal boxes and a huge box filled with all kinds of candies. I even made signs explaining how much each person could take, and even took my recently acquired discount bin zombie head (who I named "Bob") and made a sign for him warning individuals not to take more than the allotted amount. Everybody was telling me I was nuts for putting that much out and that we probably wouldn't even get any trick-or-treaters, but I did what I always do: ignore everybody and let the voices in my head guide me. I was determined that this would be a home that trick-or-treaters would talk about amongst themselves for years to come, as if it were an urban legend... The house that gave away full boxes of monster cereal and tons of candy!
Keep in mind, I had a lot riding on this. If only a few or none of the treats were taken, all my friends would mock me 'til sunrise and beyond. So what did we come home to after being out all night long for our own Halloween celebration?
WE WERE RANSACKED! Every single cereal box was gone and the huge cardboard box I had filled with assorted candies was completely emptied with the paper lining strewn about. It was as if a bunch of Gremlins had come by, had a Halloween party on our front steps and then left the mess behind for us to clean up. My chums were shocked that none of the treats were left and that the severed head of Bob the zombie wasn't taken. It was a sweet victory indeed, but I'm just glad we had some kids come by and enjoy all the treats I put out for 'em. Of course, if it was one kid or one group that took it all, I'm sure Bob will hunt them down and forever haunt their every waking moment. Either way, the Great Pumpkin has smiled down upon me for doing the holiday and trick-or-treating some justice, and I'm confident that our front steps will forever be a thing of legend come Halloween each year.
Now we find ourselves in November. November has always been a somewhat unimportant month to me. Sure, the first week usually serves as an adjustment period where my life no longer revolves around writing about old horror b-movies and bizarre Halloween costume accessories from China; a return to normalcy, if you will. The rest of the month, however, just feels like the lull before Christmas. There's Thanksgiving, of course, but that never felt like a holiday as much as it felt like a ridiculous feast, and I've never been a big fan of turkey anyway. I'd gladly trade in my turkey & gravy portions for an authentic Philly cheesesteak any day of the week.
Fortunately, even with Halloween over, we have a lot of new things in the works. We'll be launching a new flash game this month that I think you're all gonna have fun with, we'll be starting up our annual Secret Santa event and we're putting that wraps on a brand new pixel poster! This one is going to be a winter / xmas themed one, so we plan to have it available for purchase well before the holidays so you can hang it above your fireplace and stare at it over the holidays as you drink egg nog from moose mugs. And to those of you Halloween fanatics who still haven't had your fill, you'll be glad to know that Dr. Boogie wrote an extra in-depth horror movie feature that we didn't even have time to put up in October, so you can expect to see that up online sometime within the next 48 hours. I'll also be posted the uncensored version of the Halloween Justice Squad video (no bleeped-out lyrics) and a downloadable mp3.
Yep, it's looking like November will be just as busy as September and October were... and that's a good thing. Stick around.