Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The once and future show

I like Futurama better than the Simpsons. There. I said it. Now come and get me with your torches and pitchforks, or sporks or whatever you have. (A good old controversy is going to do wonders for this blog).

But before you do that, first don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that The Simpsons is not a mythical show that changed the way me, you and the world sees animation, or even television. What The Simpsons accomplished, no other show did. But sadly, most shows are able to accomplish what The Simpsons is apparently unable to do: They, eventually, died.

I'm an absolutely hardcore fan of the first 8 (maybe 9) seasons of the Simpsons, but that run of the show ended more than 10 (TEN!) years ago. Futurama started more or less like a spin off show (is Bender a Robot Homer?), but after season 2 never stopped getting better, more profound and more appealing (if never as funny as The Simpsons). Then, after the idea peaked, it died.

But nothing stays dead on TV (specially if your zip code is 90210), so it returned in the form of movies. Good movies, way better than the stupid, old and washed out Simpsons movie.

In Latin America, the voice actors (an incredibly talented group starting with Humberto Velez as Homer, he's funny in any language, you should look him up), got tired of being underpaid and under recognized and left. This was bad for the show, but not as much as the lack of good scripts was. If the Simpsons are gonna have a second coming is going to need some good rest and a complete new set of writers with fresh ideas (it worked for most of the ever living comic characters).

And actually this whole rant is an excuse to tell you this:

My Futurama Wave 6 figures arrived today!



I also got Leela as Clobberella, but since she counts as a variant, I didn't even wrestle with the twisties for that one, just the gorgeous Amy Wong and the Robot Santa BAF (Solomon Grundy aside, one of my favorites BAFs ever!).


"I like little green men, so what?"


"- Excuse me, is this Christmas town?
- Shut the hell up you skinny asshole!"

They actually did something very clever with the Santa BAF, since they only divided him in parts for five figures, and the wave had six, they place two normal arms with Leela and a normal tip in his hat with Fry as Captain Yesterday. But they placed the spiked tip and the arm holding the machine gun with Amy. That way, you could complete Santa if you bought only Leela, but she was the superfluous one, she was the variant, so of course you needed Amy too to complete the Planet Express crew.

Here's the whole gang:



Now, if the series ends with wave 7 (Professor Farnsworth, Hermes and Nibbler) I would be oh so happy... If not, and if someone from Toynami is reading, I have created my own dream waves of awesome Futurama figures. This would be:

Wave 8: Mom and Slurm Mckenzie.



Wave 9: Morbo and Linda from the future news.



Wave 10: Lrr and Elzar, in a pure alien wave.



The BAF for this three waves would be the one and only...



Hedonismbot, one of the best and better exploited robots in Futurama world.

Then, similar to Wave 7 (two figures without BAF and with a cool bonus little figure) I would love this Wave 11: Cubert Farnswoth, Dwight and Hypnotoad.



I would also like the heads of Leonard Nimoy and Matt Groening... But that would be asking too much... Right?

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