Once upon a time, my podcast co-host Katrin Auch and I worked on staff together at GamePro magazine. This was in the era when all the staff editors and artists had cartoony pseudonyms. It became a point of criticism — some people suggested that the editors were hiding being a fake name, but when the one levying that self-righteous critique is posting under the name Goku1985, well, that kind of loses its sting. Besides, we didn’t take it seriously; it was just fun to have your own cartoon character. And when they made those cartoon characters into action figures…well, that was geek immortality.
GamePro partnered with Joyride Studios (a division of Ertl) to make a line of action figures based on a wide variety of game characters — Sonic the Hedgehog, SSX, Crazy Taxi, Virtua Fighter, stuff like that. (They also helped broker the Halo and Nintendo lines, but Nintendo said the latter had to have Nintendo Power’s name on it instead of GamePro’s.) The catch was that Joyride had to make a limited number of figures based on the GamePro editorial characters, and we let the readers decide who got made. Kat’s character, Miss Spell — the witch who put the sex in dyslexia — was one that made the cut.
Now, let it be clear that nobody really expected the GamePro figures to be big sellers. They only made 2500 of each one — individually numbered on each figure, no less — relegating it to “chase”status by design. We were never intending to compete with Samus and Super Monkey Ball; it was really just a feather in our cap.
Then it became a box in our garage. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a huge honor, but how many tiny plastic reminders of the past does one person need? Kat and I have been hoarding a few cases of Miss Spell figures for years, and I figured it’s time to make good on my podcast promise to give some away. So in honor of Kat’s birthday this weekend, I’ve got 10 to hand out.
To enter…well, start by listening to the podcast this week. I teased this many months ago on the show and, since Kat participates every week on the podcast, the prizes should go to podcast listeners. And since they’re her figures, she has designed a competition for giving them away. She explains it all on podcast 067, so download it and find out what you need to do to enter. You have until the end of Sunday May 15th; starting Monday the 16th, she’s going to pick winners.
So have fun with that, and good luck. Oh, and happy birthday, Kat.
UPDATE 5/16: In case you never went back to listen to the show, Kat challenged the listeners to come up with a LOLcat based on a) photos she’d taken of her own cats (Sadie’s the gray one, and Devon’s the white one) and b) the podcast/OneOfSwords in general. She looked at the 30+ entries multiple times before she could make up her mind, and it was tough picking the winners. But these were the ones that made her smile the widest and laugh the loudest. The entries proved two things conclusively: One, we have a lot of international listeners with a good sense of humor — we got lots of entries from Canada, England, Scotland, and New Zealand, as well as the US of A. Two, everybody around the globe likes making fun of Hugh. We wonder if that might the common thread that will one day create world peace.
Here are the 10 winners, in no particular order:
Mark Litzinger -- Kent, Ohio, USA
Kevin Selinger -- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Salvador M. -- California, USA
Matthew Booth -- El Segundo, California, USA
Mick Smart -- location TBD
Patrick Gadrow -- East Aurora, New York, USA
Robin Scott -- Aberdeenshire, Scotland, UK
Bane Williams & his girlfriend -- location TBD
James King -- UK
Craig Galbraith -- Guelph, Ontario, Canada
It should be noted that Kat saw the last one early on and said “It’s a classic. I have to respect that.”
It’s a busy week behind the scenes, so please be patient on prize fulfillment — I’ll get them shipped out ASAP. If you entered and didn’t win, Kat thanks everybody for the creative effort and the virtual birthday wishes — she had a lot of fun seeing what people came up with and appreciated the kind words, too.
And if you didn’t get any of these jokes…you should listen to the podcast more often. Because now it’s a matter of world peace.
