Month: March 2021

Man, these were neat. I mean, anyone who grew up on '50s big bug movies loved these. Of course, now we have all these incredible garage kits and statues for every obscure flick you can think of, but back in the days these things were a real breath of fresh air.

Man, I don't remember this one at all. I wonder if this was the last one and didn't get distributed as much or something. I will say I think the other bugs lend themselves more to being super gigantic. Wasps and such could be scarier if they were the size of small dogs or…

I think there was a gap after the Aurora kits came out, but then another company (I think it was Fun Dimensions) realized that there was no copyright or licensing issues on generic, 50s-style giant bugs. These were very fun because they came with these dioramas with crushed cars and running victims, etc.

I definitely owned this one, a couple of them over the years in fact. It's a rather generic Godzilla, clearly not based on any particular suit. Again, though, this might have been the first widely-available piece of Godzilla merch in the US, so it was pretty damn cool none the less. The glow in…

Weirdly, the most dynamic pose of any Aurora monster model kit went ot the Phantom of the Opera, perhaps indicating his origin as a silent film character.  I never thought about it, but the line really was very Chaney-centric. Lon Sr was represented by both the Phantom and the Hunchback (fittingly a victim in…

So...first of all, obviously, NOT Frankenstein. Also it's interesting how the green skin thing really caught on. All the toy manufacturers (not that "all" were that many back then) went with the green skin thing. I wonder if that's how Universal was licensing the image back then. You can tell Universal didn't own the…

While the technology of the day didn't allow for the mass produced, affordable models themselves to look much like the actual actors (sometimes exacerbated by the paint jobs; in this case I think the eyes were made a bit too big), the box art showed that the images of the actors themselves were licenced.…

For the "Monster Kid" generation, raised on Famous Monsters of Filmland and watching (or trying to watch) scratchy, edited prints of old monster movies our on teeny black and white sets, desperately manipulating the rabbit ears to get the signal to stop dropping out, few things were more iconic than the Aurora monster model…

I just notice this was on Amazon Prime. (Actually, Prime has a fairly nice selection of Price films.) I don't think I've ever seen this. It I did, it was a looong time ago and I don't remember it. Obviously meant to evoke Corman's Poe films, especially the anthology Tales of Terror. I think…

I am very excited. I have been waiting for American release dates for the anime film Demon Slayer: Mugen Train for quite a while now. It's finally set to hit theaters starting April 23rd. I'm kind of hoping that it will get a regular release, although anime films tend to play two to four…