13 Unique Etsy Finds Inspired by ‘Labyrinth’

I was cruis­ing around on Etsy today (as I often tend to do when I have  money burn­ing a hole in my pocket) and came across some pretty awe­some hand­made cre­ations inspired by the great­est 80’s fan­tasy film, Labyrinth.  Below is a sam­pling of the most inter­est­ing items I could find, which range from cute to creepy.

Now hurry up, because you’ve only got 13 hours left to solve the labyrinth.

Cus­tom ‘Jareth’ Doll

Sure it’s a lit­tle creepy, but kinda cute at the same time.  At least CavingInn man­aged to get the size of David Bowie’s pack­age cor­rect, which I’m sure is the pri­mary rea­son why some­one would pur­chase this one-of-a-kind Jareth doll in the first place.  Er—that is, from what I hear.

“You have no power over me!” Framed Artwork

With this framed typog­ra­phy quote from BearAn­dRo­bot, you’ll never have trou­ble remem­ber­ing this line again.

‘Sarah’ Cos­tume

Sarah was rock­ing the puffy shirt long before Sein­feld. FaerySpell­Cre­ations made this bil­lowy cus­tom blouse and vest inspired by Sarah’s out­fit in the film.  I rec­om­mend pair­ing it with jeans and cheap plas­tic jew­elry to get the full effect.

Adorable Stuffed ‘Ludo’

This lit­tle guy is a hand­made cre­ation of felt and fur by Pelu­dossa, who some­how man­aged to make Ludo even more adorable than he already is.

Hand Sewn ‘Wild Gang’ Plush

With one of these hand sewn fire gob­lins by Pelu­dossa, you can “chilly down with the Wild Gang” (what­ever the hell that means) until you remem­ber you’ve  got a baby brother to save.  Sadly, the stuffed ver­sion doesn’t have a remov­able head.

‘Junk Lady’ Hand­made Art Doll

The Junk Lady was one of the coolest gob­lins in the film, and hap­pens to also be one of the coolest items on this list.  For $100, JunkPunkshop will hand­craft an orig­i­nal, one-of-a-kind gob­lin hag made of poly­mer clay who car­ries around all sorts of mis­cel­la­neous house­hold objects on her back.

‘Jareth’ Pen­dant & Mas­quer­ade Pin

There’s such a sad love deep in David Bowie’s heav­ily lined and mascara’d eyes…  These beau­ti­ful jew­elry pieces by The­Black­Em­po­rium were inspired by the film’s dreamy mas­quer­ade scene.

‘Hog­gle’ Doll Knit Pattern

Knit your own vertically-challenged, anti-social gob­lin com­pan­ion with one of AprilDraven’s Hog­gle knit­ting pat­terns.  This one won’t try to poi­son you or pee in your fountain.

“‘Ello!” Worm Hand­made Ring

Now here’s a Labyrinth worm acces­sory that’s more to scale. With this adorable hand­made,  hand painted ring from Art­ByAelia, you can lit­er­ally wrap Labyrinth’s cutest char­ac­ter around your lit­tle finger.

Dis­en­chanted ‘Door Knocker’ Pin

Knock and the door will open! (Pro­vided you haven’t pissed it off.)  Be a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tional com­pan­ion with this hand sculpted gob­lin pin from froudian artist Trollflings.

‘Magic Dance’ Cat Colllar

What’s more fun than watch­ing Labyrinth? Watch­ing Labyrinth while humil­i­at­ing your cat. You and kitty can dance magic dance in style with one of these bitchin’ cat col­lars from FurButtons.

‘Bog of Eter­nal Stench’ Scented Oil

I’m not sure I want to know what The Bog of Eter­nal Stench smells like, but for a mere $3.50 you adven­tur­ous types can pur­chase a vial of scented oil from rose­mary­grace that smells just like…like…OH WHO CARES WHAT IT SMELLS LIKE, IT’S THE BOG OF ETERNAL STENCH!

‘Stu­pid Baby’ Pin

This hilar­i­ous Labyrinth pin by The­Car­bon­Cru­sader says it all. Now go say the magic words again.

Hon­or­able mention:

In what can only be described as the most majes­tic work of art I have ever laid eyes upon, “The Gob­lin King’s Cross­ing” is a cus­tom oil paint­ing by Uni­cor­natopia of Jareth rid­ing a uni­corn, hold­ing aloft his mighty power crys­tal while famil­iar Labyrinth dwellers look on with unabashed awe.

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ Meme is Now a Movie

One of the great­est inter­net memes of all time is now a movie.  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is a film based on the mys­te­ri­ous real clas­si­fied ad pic­tured above, which first appeared in a weekly Dan­ish news­pa­per.  The ad was later paired with the accom­pa­ny­ing photo of a rather serious-looking young man who seems to have stepped straight out of 1986, mul­let, turtle­neck and all.  The orig­i­nal YTMND that started it all has over 1.2 mil­lion views as of Jan­u­ary 2012.

What will a movie based on an inter­net meme be like?  The film, directed by Colin Trevor­row,  is about two mag­a­zine employ­ees (Aubrey Plaza & Jake John­son) who set out on an assign­ment to find and inter­view the quirky man who placed the clas­si­fied ad seek­ing a time travel com­pan­ion (Mark Duplass).  Accord­ing to an early review in Vari­ety,  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is “a sci-fi-tinged odd­ball com­edy about love as the ulti­mate risky adven­ture” that fea­tures “some nice soul-searching moments along­side a steady stream of laughs.”  Indeed.

Does axl­bon­bach (the per­son who cre­ated the orig­i­nal YTMND) deserve com­pen­sa­tion?  What about the unknown man in the photo?

I sup­pose it’s only nat­ural that the film indus­try would start min­ing the annals of the inter­net for movie ideas, since they seem to have exhausted most other resources.  Last month we heard about Bad Ass, a movie star­ring Dany Trejo based off the “Epic Beard Man” viral video.  It’s hard not to feel like these types of movies are only being made to cash in on the mil­lions of hits and social media buzz these dig­i­tal curiosi­ties have gen­er­ated over time.

One of the best doc­u­men­taries I’ve seen in the last few years is a film called Win­nebago Man, in which the film­maker sets out on a quest to find out what became of the tem­pera­men­tal, potty-mouthed RV sales­man whose unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous sales train­ing video out­takes ended up on the inter­net and became wildly pop­u­lar.  It was a heart­felt and fit­ting trib­ute to a sim­ple man who did not real­ize the extent of his own fame, but whose recorded moments of weak­ness gave us so much joy.  It’s doubt­ful that movies like Bad Ass and Safety Not Guar­an­teed have their sub­jects’ best inter­ests at heart.

Watch Some Dude with a Mullet Explain Why Ninja Turtles are Evil

Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles were everywhere—TV, the box office, toy stores, t-shirts, lunch­boxes, super­mar­ket aisles (basi­cally every aspect of my child­hood).  And typ­i­cal of most full-blown pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­nons, Chris­t­ian peo­ple were irra­tionally afraid of them.

This Chris­t­ian dude with a mul­let explains:

“The heroes are using ‘white magic’ or East­ern mys­tic ‘good pow­ers’, such as Star Wars taught us; the ‘good side’ of the force.  The bad guys are using the bad pow­ers; the ‘black side’ of the force.  It’s the same pow­ers exactly when you look at it from a Bib­li­cal view­point.  It’s white and black magic, which is a fallacy.”

Watch the video for more pro-Christian pro­pa­ganda, flimsy cor­re­la­tions between Vanilla Ice and witch­craft, and other lam­en­ta­ble 80’s fashions.

LOL, Chris­tians.

Just What We Need: Two ‘Beauty And The Beast’ Shows In The Works

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

ABC and The CW com­mis­sion pilots based on the clas­sic fairy­tale.
Via www.thisisfakediy.co.uk

Retro Blast: The Power Glove Instruction Manual from 1989

Over the week­end, my boyfriend was at his parent’s house dig­ging through some boxes of old junk in the base­ment when he unearthed some­thing that could prac­ti­cally be con­sid­ered an archae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery by gamer’s stan­dards: the orig­i­nal Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual from 1989!  And in almost per­fect condition!

As soon as I got over my imme­di­ate jeal­ousy that he owned the Power Glove as a kid and I didn’t, I began to won­der if it might be worth anything—not nec­es­sar­ily in terms of money, but worth the infor­ma­tion and nos­tal­gia.  After all, only 100,000 Power Gloves were sold in the U.S, and how many of them still have the instruc­tion man­ual intact?  Although I’ve played with a Power Glove before (and was thor­oughly dis­ap­pointed by the expe­ri­ence), I can’t recall ever hav­ing seen an orig­i­nal instruc­tion man­ual.  So I did a few Google searches to see what was out there.

To my sur­prise, I couldn’t find a com­plete scan of the man­ual; only this text ver­sion, and a few scanned images of ran­dom pages.  And that’s really too bad, because the Power Glove man­ual is a ver­i­ta­ble gold­mine of lulz.

I knew what I had to do. (Skip Ahead to Down­load)

Lucas is a Lie

Just from a casual glance through the thirty-five page instruc­tion man­ual (yes, thirty-fucking-five pages!) it is read­ily appar­ent how com­pli­cated the Power Glove is to use.  Can you imag­ine giv­ing this thing to an excited lit­tle kid and then wit­ness­ing their sheer dis­ap­point­ment when they couldn’t get it to work because GOD DAMMIT you have to pro­gram it first using a series of com­pli­cated ges­tures and button-pressing sequences.  And if it still didn’t work (which it inevitably didn’t) you were encour­aged to call a 1–900 Mat­tel num­ber for “assis­tance” and charged $1.50 for the first minute, $.75 for each addi­tional minute.

In real­ity, this “new dimen­sion of game­play” the man­ual describes is a far cry away from those rad moves Lucas showed off in The Wiz­ard. I guess that’s why Mat­tel felt it was nec­es­sary to dumb things down for the kiddies.

Enter “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”

Meet “Glove Mas­ter” and “Lit­tle Digit”, a pair of white, non-threatening, casually-dressed car­toon char­ac­ters who exist solely to explain away the com­plex­i­ties of oper­at­ing the Power Glove with help­ful illus­tra­tions and what can best be described as church pam­phlet humor.

But are “G.M.” and “L.D.” (as they like to call each other) all that they seem??  Look a lit­tle closer and you’ll see that Lit­tle Digit, a naive boy of about ten, has a habit of get­ting him­self into some ques­tion­able sit­u­a­tions with Glove Mas­ter, an older gen­tle­man who refuses to take his jacket and sun­glasses off even though they are both clearly indoors:

What the hell is the “Sens­ing Zone” and what is Glove Mas­ter doing with his hands hid­den behind the TV?  Also, appar­ently Glove Mas­ter likes to com­mu­ni­cate via his crotch:

Didn’t I say it was a gold­mine?  For an amus­ing if slightly creepy snap­shot of video gam­ing life in 1989, I highly rec­om­mend you read the whole thing, which was painstak­ingly scanned and PDF’d by yours truly.

Down­load

You can down­load the full scan (PDF for­mat) from Rapid­Share here:

Nin­tendo Power Glove Instruc­tion Man­ual — 1989 (PDF)

You’re wel­come, Internet!

Relive Your ‘Saved by the Bell’ Days with this 8-Bit Style YouTube Game

For every­one who ever grew up watch­ing Saved by the Bell, indie film­mak­ers The Fine Broth­ers have cre­ated this kick-ass “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style YouTube game chron­i­cling a day in the life of Zack Mor­ris as he goes on a quest to date his feather-haired dream girl, Kelly Kapowski (who else?).

You can play it here:

Styled like an old 8-bit game, all the famil­iar char­ac­ters, set­tings and cheese­ball high school plots are sure to con­jure up some good ‘ol SBTB nostalgia.

(Because some­where, deep down, you know you still heart Zack Morris.)

This way to more Adven­ture Games on YouTube!

5 Virtual Retro Toys You Can Play With Online

The other day I stum­bled upon a site that archives those won­der­ful old Read-Along adven­ture books and makes them avail­able for down­load.  It made me nos­tal­gic for other toys I remem­ber fondly from child­hood, and I went on some­what of a quest to see how many vir­tual ver­sions of old toys I could find.

If you’re feel­ing up for a bit of retro­tain­ment and have some time to kill, these vir­tual toys are as close as you can get to the real thing.

Simon

» Play with Simon
Pos­si­bly the great­est toy from the 1980s, Simon was like an audio/visual assault on your basic mem­ory recall skills.  It fre­quently made us feel infe­rior, but those flashy lights and syn­the­sizer sounds kept us happy in our button-mashing comas.  And who didn’t want to be that bad-ass Johnny kid from this com­mer­cial?  WARNING: This is addictive!

Speak & Spell

» Play with Speak & Spell
The orig­i­nal hand-held elec­tronic learn­ing toy that paved the way for decades of imi­ta­tions.  What child of the late 70s/early 80s didn’t have one of these things?  Plus, accord­ing to E.T. you could hack this baby to phone home the mothership.

Etch-a-Sketch

» Play with Etch-a-Sketch
My skill at vir­tual Etch-a-Sketch is only slightly less sucky than my skill at actual Etch-a-Sketch.

This one lets you print out your cre­ations, but sadly lacks a shake-to-erase fea­ture.  Still, it’s a fun time-waster.

Rubik’s Cube

» Play with Rubik’s Cube
I was never able to solve one of these stu­pid things, let alone do it in 8 sec­onds.  If you had a cheaply-made Rubik’s like I did, you could try to cheat and rearrange the stick­ers.  This vir­tual one has real­is­tic twisty-turny action! (And all the frus­tra­tion of the real thing.)

Lite Brite

» Play with Lite Brite
There’s no telling how much dam­age we did to our reti­nas star­ing into these things.  Lite Brites were a relax­ing way for artis­tic kids to spend a rainy Sat­ur­day.  Per­son­ally, I never had the patience to fin­ish my designs, or I’d acci­den­tally shake the thing and lit­tle plas­tic pegs would go flying.

I’m still hold­ing out hope for vir­tual Magna-Doodle.  Now go have fun reliv­ing your childhood!

Remember Read-Along adventure audio books?

Being a kid in the 1980s was awe­some.  We had Trans­form­ers, Garbage Pail Kids and Simon, among a plethora of other not very edu­ca­tional toys.  (Well, I sup­pose you could argue that Simon was educational…to some degree.)  If our toys were edu­ca­tional, there was usu­ally some type of elec­tronic gim­mickry involved, I guess because we Nintendo-playing, cartoon-obsessed spawn of the MTV Gen­er­a­tion had short atten­tion spans.

But one of my favorite low-tech toys of the 80s was Read-Along audio books.  I used to spend hours lay­ing on the floor on my stom­ach with my Fisher Price tape recorder, open book sprawled in front of me as I took an audi­ble jour­ney into my favorite sto­ries.  I must have read/listened to Beren­stain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree at least fifty times.

Who didn’t love turn­ing pages to this sound?

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Some of the coolest Read-Along books were the ones based on movies like Star Wars, Grem­lins, and The Goonies.  I found this great site that archives these for­got­ten trea­sures of the past.  You can down­load MP3s of the books’ audio, or an .exe file that presents the orig­i­nal book pages with read-along audio.  They even have Read-Along ver­sions Wil­low and The Dark Crys­tal!  Head on over to Read-Along Adven­tures for a trip down mem­ory lane.

Live-Action Ninja Turtles Return for 2011

In geeky movie news this month that makes me feel like a fifth-grader again, TMNT co-creater Peter Laird con­firmed in Vari­ety rumors of another live-action Tur­tles movie planned for 2011.  The announce­ment comes on the heels of TMNT’s 25th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion.  Other than mak­ing me feel old, I’m also damn excited.  Because in Hol­ly­wood, every­thing I loved grow­ing up in the 1980s is sud­denly cool again.  The new Tur­tles film will be pro­duced by Scott Med­nick of Leg­endary Pic­tures, who is cur­rently pro­duc­ing the soon to be released Where The Wild Things Are, another live-action fan­tasy film (which hap­pens to be based on yet another com­pletely awe­some thing from my child­hood).  And if these screen­shots are any indi­ca­tion of what’s in store for the next TMNT, then color me green with excitement.

After the orig­i­nal live-action movie, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles films went from bad to worse, though 2007’s ani­mated TMNT was OK.  Then again, I’m of the opin­ion that the first Tur­tles movie is one of the great­est if under­rated comic book movies of all time—but I may be a lit­tle biased.  I was obsessed with all things Ninja Tur­tles as a kid.  Like really obsessed.  If it had a TMNT logo on it, I owned it.  I could quote the movies word for word (prob­a­bly still can).

My wish­list for the new live-action Tur­tles movie:

• Darker, grit­tier, edgier Tur­tles truer to the orig­i­nal Mirage comic books.
• Curse words.  Most TMNT fans have grown up, and so should the movies.
• Sex (if only to sat­isfy my mor­bid curiosity). 
• Real­stic CGI that doesn’t look like CGI.
• Back to basics origins/roots sto­ry­line. (Think Bat­man Begins.)
• April O’Neil, and any­one other than Paige Turco to play her.
• Blood, weapons, and graphic violence.
• Moar Raphael.*

Things I could live without:

• Shell-tastic tur­tle puns.
• Any char­ac­ter who exists solely in the Archie comics series.
• No Venus.
• Ran­dom kid-who-meets-the-Turtles char­ac­ter (a’la Keno in Turltes II, and later Yoshi in Tur­tles III).
• Any sto­ry­line involv­ing time travel.
• A Turtles-themed rap song.
• A PG rating.
• Cow­abunga.

The sucky part about all this?  Wait­ing two years.

*Raphael is still the coolest tur­tle, and if you don’t agree with me, I’m not shar­ing my Ninja Tur­tles fruit snacks with you.