What you see here is a generic soda brand based off of Dr. Pepper that we saw at Wal-mart. The name of the soda seemed so over-the-top that I just had to take a photo. When I look at this, the image of Thor, the god of thunder, comes to mind. Why not put Thor on the box wearing scrubs? That would be pretty neat.

Apparently, Dr. Thunder was originally called “Southern Lightning”, so that gives you an idea of their branding abilities. Now that sounds more like a name for a super hero than a brand of soda. “Don’t worry, Southern Lightning will save you!” Thank Thor they changed it to Dr. Thunder!

At least it’s more exciting then another Dr. Pepper rip-off known as “Dr. Bob”. It’s basically some guy’s name. “Hey, can I have a sip of Dr. Bob?” “Mmm, Dr. Bob is so refreshing and goes down smooth!”… okay I’ll stop there.

2008 saw the theatrical release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth chapter in the Indiana Jones quadrilogy and first new Indiana Jones film since 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Along with the release came the usual slew of multimedia products from a LEGO Indy video game to a fake whip for kids to the collectible action figure collection by Hasbro toys that encompassed all four of the Indy movies.

We found this price tag at a Wal-Mart store a while back where the Indiana Jones movie action figures were supposed to be.

I was excited at first when I saw this label because I had been eagerly anticipating the release of the Temple of Doom action figure line. Not only was it my favorite of the films when I was a child but this wave of figures contained the one figure that I had been waiting for since the launch of the line, Thugee cult leader Mola Ram (the guy that pulls the guy’s heart out in the movie). At first I didn’t even notice the strangeness of the error on this tag and began searching vigorously through the nearby pegs of action figures, none of which were Indiana Jones. In fact, there weren’t any Indy figures around and the peg that this tag was on was filled with Batman action figures that hadn’t sold.

Really. No Wal-Mart employee thought this was out of place? Really. Maybe they did it on purpose because they hated the film. Why not just call this “TEMPLE OF DOOM FIG” or something? And why did they bother to include the size of the figures (3.75 inches) in the title if they couldn’t even fit “doom” in there? They even included Indiana Jones in there twice, both as “IJ” and “INDY.” Seriously. How could they screw this up so badly?

I really over-analyzed that poop joke, didn’t I.

Erin and I were at Toys ‘R’ Us and went to a Star Wars display at the front of the store when something on a shelf of clearance items caught my eye. It was perhaps the most unintentionally eerie plush holiday decoration that we had ever seen.

Maybe he was supposed to look this way. Maybe Charlie Brown had finally snapped. Maybe this was some kind of cry for help.

We squeezed his foot and made the music begin and the result was just as spooky. True to Charlie Brown fashion, a jazzy piano version of “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” played. Sure, that’s appropriate for a holiday-themed decoration/toy. The clincher here was that the batteries were near death and the music sounded flat, slow, and downright bizarre.

It was clear that this toy was intentionally trying to scare everyone away from buying it. Maybe it liked sitting on the clearance rack next to some Rudolph action figures. We didn’t care that he wanted to never be purchased. Evil Charlie Brown was something so weird that we had to drop $8 and take him home with us.

The only way to make this guy not look like he’s planning to take over the world was to grab his face and give him a little face lift with my hand.

The effects were only temporary…

We ran into this product a while back in the baked goods section at Wal-Mart.  “¡Sponch!” is an imported cookie product from Mexico that is essentially shortbread cookies topped with marshmallow, coconut, and strawberry jelly.  It doesn’t really matter, though: this stuff takes the Orbitoad prize for best product name ever.

Stay tuned for an upcoming ToadTalk episode where we put “¡Sponch!” to the test.  Will it be as good as it’s name is?

It’s Mario’s pal, Toad!

The second entry in the tribute to cookies series is that of the starman power-up from the Mario series of games. Touching these bouncing stars makes Mario temporarily invulnerable and able to kill pretty much any enemy that he runs into. Despite years of testing, power-up does not apply to cookie.

We begin our tribute to humorously-shaped cookies with this “Simpsons” tribute cookie: Bart’s favorite cookie shape, the bloody spearhead.

These photos were submitted by Orbiteammate Katie. These two deer lights were part of a holiday display at a city hall during December 2008. These two deer lights weren’t posed in this compromising position, but this is what the display looked like as you drove by it. Thanks for the photos, Katie.

This was submitted to us by Orbiteammate Katie who spotted this sign at Volano National Park in Hawaii.  Apparently, building pules of rocks is considered taboo, hence this sign.  However, it would appear that some hooligans have rebelled by building this pile of rocks.  Talk about social defiance in action.

We found this store by total accident one day when we got lost and were looking for a restaurant.  Deep Seize is now closed but let me tell you, the place was great.

The prices were fair and they had several games that I was looking for, so that alone scores points in my book.  The employees were also friendly which can be uncommon in video game stores.

It takes guts to start your own business based around your passions and I have to hand it to the former owners of Deep Seize.  The second-hand video game market isn’t as booming as it once was and mom-and-pop used game stores are closing all over the place.  In the past two years, I have had four of my five frequently-visited video game stores shut down for good because of the economy.  Sadly, this place suffered the same fate and I’ll regret not being able to go back there.

We were out driving a while back and saw this sign.   People post signs like this all the time that advertise various services, whether its work-at-home schemes, local dating sites, or cleaning services.  Rarely do you ever see anyone do anything to these signs, even if they’re scams.  That sure wasn’t the case here.

The first joke is the “Mate Detailing” writing on the sign that used to say “Intimate Detailing,” I’d assume. I sure wouldn’t want someone to detail my mate.  That would be weird.

I like how they not only made this sign say “mate” and tore off most of the phone number but went as far as to make a little sign of their own and slap that bad boy onto this sign.  I wonder if there were more of these signs around the area and this person tracked them all down and did this to all of them.

Can’t touch this vandal’s wit.

Actually, you can: its called a restraining order.

Its Christmas in July!  While digging through pictures to add to the site for future articles, I came across this photo, which was one of the very first that we took for the site.  Somehow, I had forgotten that it was ready to be posted.

My best guess would be that the letter “C” fell off of this decoration, but I don’t know where it would fit on that decoration.

Google’s Picasa program is a pretty neat little utility to organize your collection of digital photos and upload them to online albums.  It features a nifty feature that detects faces and allows you to tag them as various people.  Picassa also guesses  at identifying people by name after it sees several similar faces.  However, there are other, hilarious times when Picasa’s face detection and name guessing falls flat on its face.

When you start up Picasa, it automatically scans your computer for images.  This is the time when it automatically indexes them in search for faces.

Let’s begin with this photo that I took at a BBQ several years back.  This Shih Tsu puppy was cooling off in a cooler atop various drinks.  Awwwww.   I know.  The panel to the right of the streen with the vertical column of faces is the “People” bar that shows faces that Picasa has detected in the photo.  Clearly, this dog does not have a human face, so it was not detected by Picasa.  However, the people on the sticker on the cooler were.  Let’s look at them up close.

Here we see the People bar up close.  Obviously, none of these faces belong to people that I know nor do they even remotely resemble them.  While I don’t find much fault in guessing incorrecty, why would it think that the same person would be in thge same photo three times, let alone once as a male and twice as a female.

Next up is an example of how face-like objects can appear as faces.  I took this photo of a bunch of clone trooper action figures several years ago.  None of the other similar photos showed any results but this one did.

Yikes.  How did it get so confused?

This was found in the background of another photo.  It took me a while to figure out what this was and it turned out to be a small skull that was part of a Muppet figure display.

These were from two photos of a large nutcracker decoration that were taken one after the other

Yet another example of a completely inaccurate guess.

Poor Tonya always gets misplaced.   This time it thought she was a yawning old guy in the background of a photo.

Not even I am safe from inaccurate guesses.   I am not now nor have I ever been a female.

These two pictures came from a group shot of Star Wars figures.  I find it funny how the genders were reversed on these.

This image of The Rock was in the background of a photo on a book.

This came from a few old group pictures from middle school.  Either I know lots of Ryans or something mucked up the system again.

Here’s some more faces from an old school group photo.

 Even more group photo pandemonium.

This one slays me.  I was searching through some “unidentified” faces and came across something that clearly isn’t a face.  In fact, its part of a cork board.

Here it thought I was one of the squares of a screen door.

Yep.  Looks just like me.

I’ve tried to find a face in this shadow and kind of see a nose, lips, and the bottom area where the face’s left eye would be, but… this is really a stretch. Either that or Picasa just found a ghost in a photo.

Here it thought part of a Penn State sweatshirt was a face.

Finally, we have the face in the back of a chair.  Really?  We do?  Wow.  I’d have never known.

Originally posted 17 August 2011.