Over the course of the last week, I've acquired a plethora of spiffy new iCarly merchandise. I figured I'd have it well-played-with by now. But a vicious illness overtook me, and so I haven't beeIt'n able to properly utilize any of it thus far. And now here I am with two straight days off of work.
So I'm declaring it iCarly Weekend. I'll marathon episodes, and play (the) game, and think about iCarly, and write about iCarly, and then I'll marathon more episodes. Now, some of you out there might be saying... "But isn't EVERY weekend an iCarly Weekend for you?" Certainly that is true... but not quite to the extent you may expect. You see, iCarly is one of those TV shows. One of those shows that's on half of all the time. It's on almost as much as Family Guy and has one-third as many episodes. So up until this point I've allowed myself to enjoy the chase a bit; watch it when its on.
But iCarly primarly is on in the evening, and in the afternoon... And I'm invariably up in the early morning, when there's less than nothing but jackspit to watch. Eventually I got tired of saying "Damn, why can't iCarly be on now?" I got all 4 of the currently available half-season DVD sets, giving me the first 2 seasons (the first 52 episodes). I just hope season 3 and 4 come out in this format.
You know, sometimes I wonder if iCarly is popular in Japan. It's probably not... because over there being wacky and preposterous isn't nearly as novel. But I wish it was, because I bet they would come out with incredible merchandise, like those Rei & Asuka models with the absurdly high production values -- hundreds of dollars and chiz. I would totally get a SLEW of iCarly models if they had high production values, especially if they were direct episode reproductions.
I'd wanna get a Carly "Cookie Mischief" model, a Sam "My Cheese My Rules" model, Sam in her school uniform from iHave My Principals (not a Japan kind of school uniform... it's just a really slick looking, greyish outfit), heck Carly in the school uniform too, both or either of them in their Santa hats from iChristmas, T-Bo with his food stick (I'm thinking pickles, or donuts), a Melanie & Freddie set, maybe even an iSaved Your Life set or iKiss set... and that's just off the top of my head.
What makes me thnk of it is because the iCarly dolls we have aren't very good. I'm an action figure fiend from way back... I would love to get my hands on some iCarly action figures, even though they'd almost invariably end up in a wild brawl (seeing as how that's basically the only scenario I know how to architect with action figures.) But the dolls that we have available don't look anything like the characters, and the accessories are no good either. How about a Sam doll which you can switch clothes on and it becomes Melanie? How about Freddie, does a doll of him even exist? I won't even ask about Gibby or T-Bo.
"The moral of the story, is try not to get too old." -- Neil Young
Yeah, that's an interesting thing. Otaku culture in Japan ensures that self-respecting figure companies will go out of their way to create perfect likenesses, whereas in America the likenesses are frequently abhorrent and nobody ever complains.
ReplyDeleteThey're disposable toys, not collectible models. Which says a lot about consumerist American sensibilities.
Then again, most popular characters that get figurized in Japan are anime characters, and I presume that it's easier to recreate the likeness of an anime character in a plastic model than it is for an actual person.
Then again, maybe that's just an excuse American companies [would love to] use. You'd think we'd have the technology to create a convincing likeness of a real life person in a plastic figure. Or do we? I don't know. Maybe not.
We have that technology, think about musician figures. Morrison, Page. I've got a Kurt Cobain figure sitting on my dresser. Looks good. But if such things exist for TV shows it's surely just The Sopranos and stuff. Too bad the cost of commissioning the creation of a figure would be beyond astronomical...
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