Author: Jake Rossen

John Harris, the slick and successful heir to his father’s multi-tiered entertainment business, thought he knew what would bolster his hockey business during the Great Depression. Between periods during pro games being played at his Pittsburgh arena, Harris would invite Olympic figure skater Sonja Henie to the ice. Henie would perform flawless skating maneuvers, giving the impoverished crowd more for their money.

By 1940, Harris had expanded on the idea: Instead of filling time between periods, he launched a plan to have skaters like Henie occupy the arena during the entire hockey off-season, wowing crowds with on-ice narratives, juggling, music, and expressive routines. Together with nine other arena managers, Harris formed the Ice Capades. Over the next six decades, the revue would tour the country, popularize ice skating, and make Harris a very rich man. It would even strike a deal with Disney to equip the company’s library of characters with skates—a move that would eventually prove to be the beginning of the end.

Born in 1898, Harris had slowly peeled himself away from his father’s financial interests in movie theaters and other attractions to focus almost exclusively on Duquesne Gardens, the Pittsburgh-area arena where he held rodeos, hockey games, boxing matches, and other spectator events. When he saw the success of his halftime skate show, he quickly began arranging for a touring company to take the idea to the next level.

Installing Olympic trainer Rosemary Stewart to advise recruits, Harris enlisted 150 performers. There were some curious mandates: Harris insisted that no woman be under 5-foot-1 or over 5-foot-5; the skaters would live and travel under the guidance of chaperones and a nurse; they’d be paid $65 a week, but would be responsible for maintaining their costumes, which could cost $450. (A skater was once docked a week’s pay for daring to sit down in her elaborate outfit.)

The Ice Capades turned a paltry $174 profit in 1940, but word spread and the tour caught on. Harris enlisted acts like Trixie the Juggler, who could skate without dropping a ball, to join his regular stable of performers. There were adaptations of Broadway plays and elaborate skating numbers. Harris wanted the event to feel like a Broadway show-stopper, only on skates. By the 1950s, the show was so popular that it dragged portable ice makers to baseball stadiums and other rink-less places in order to create a skating surface on which to perform.

Donna Atwood, who was just 15 years old when she joined the show in 1942, quickly became the Ice Capades’s biggest star (and eventually Harris’s wife). She toured with the show for 17 years, becoming such a celebrity that newspapers were able to report the pending births of her children by writing only that “Donna” was expecting. No last name was needed. Atwood even modeled for Disney animators for the sequence in 1942’s Bambi where Bambi and Thumper tumble on a frozen lake.

Disney’s official link to the Ice Capades began several years later, in 1949, when the two companies agreed to feature licensed Disney characters and stories in Ice Capades shows. With costumes shaped more for practicality on the ice than fidelity to their likenesses, characters like Mickey Mouse could sometimes be hard to recognize, but the relationship was a success. Disney featured in Ice Capades shows through 1966. (In 1969, when Disney launched its own stage tour, critics sardonically dubbed it “Disney on Wood.”)

By that point, Harris had already sold his interest in the revue for $5.5 million. Increasingly, the Ice Capades had turned to the skill and celebrity of Olympic figure skaters looking for a second act following medal wins in competition. Dorothy Hamill, the breakout star of the 1976 Winter Olympics, signed with them; Peggy Fleming opted to join up with the Ice Follies, a rival show. Owing to nervousness, Hamill fell twice during her Ice Capades debut.

“It was worse than the Olympics,” Hamill told the press, citing anxiety over her performance as the reason for her tumbles. But Hamill became as closely identified with the show as Atwood once had been, and the Ice Capades created a venue for athletes to parlay their Olympic notoriety into something more.

By the end of the 1980s, the Ice Capades were wearing thin. Following Hamill’s lead, Olympic stars like Scott Hamilton signed with other promotions, weakening the show’s core cast. Disney, meanwhile, had debuted its own Disney on Ice tour in 1981, which captivated kids with recognizable characters (and is still going strong). More importantly, Americans had learned—through shows like Ice Capades—of the athleticism and talent of figure skaters. Once a marginal sport, it became one of the key attractions of the Winter Games.

Although Hamill was no longer in her athletic prime, she still felt she had plenty to offer the stage show. In 1993, she, her husband, and a business partner bought the Ice Capades and pulled it from the brink of bankruptcy. Hamill’s intention was to evolve from the anthology-style revue of old to telling complete stories. Cinderella would be her first production. It would also be one of her last.

In less than a year, Hamill—who suffered a broken rib in 1994 when her Prince grabbed her too strongly in a waltz—sold the floundering company to televangelist Pat Robertson’s International Family Entertainment. By 1997, funding had dried up and two tours were canceled. In an era of cable television and the real-life skating drama of the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding feud, the public appetite for professional figure skating had diminished beyond repair. What was left was taken by Disney, which could offer everything from the California Raisins to Donald Duck gliding across the ice.

“I try not to think of the Disney shows as competition,” Hamill said in 1994, just before the sale. “They’re different from us. We don’t have skaters in big suits. Besides, the Walt Disney people have been very nice to us. When we were out in Anaheim to perform at The Pond, they gave me the keys to Toontown.”

How well domestic movies fare at the international box office has quickly become one of the most important contributors to their overall financial success. Rather than simply drop a film into Japanese or Chinese theaters with nothing more than subtitles added, studios have taken to tweaking and customizing major releases for foreign markets. For example, 2013’s Iron Man 3 featured extended sequences referencing China that were left out of the U.S. cut.

The powerhouse computer animation studio Pixar is no different, although their customizations can usually be accomplished less with passports and more with the click of a mouse. The Disney fact guide Oh My Disney recently posted a video offering side-by-side comparison shots of Pixar’s subtle changes for different audiences.

In addition to translating the language in their titles and dialogue, movies like Up can also wind up replacing imagery to make it more accessible to foreign-language viewers. The change jar in Up, which originally read “Paradise Falls,” was screened overseas with a jar depicting an image of Paradise Falls; in Inside Out, a fussy baby is fed bell peppers instead of broccoli in Japan, since broccoli is well-liked in Japan.

You can take a look at more differences in the video below:

[h/t /Film]

On the surface, it seemed like an impossible task. Take an $8800, NASA-approved interface glove running on $250,000 worth of computer hardware, then replicate the performance in a consumer-grade toy with parts costing less than $26.

The twist? “We had about nine months to get it done,” Chris Gentile, one of the engineers behind Mattel’s fondly-remembered but ineffectual Power Glove, tells mental_floss.

With a video game renaissance in full swing thanks to the popularity of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the late 1980s, the Power Glove debuted in late 1989 to a willing and receptive audience. Distributed by Mattel, marketing promised players that the glove would offer a deeper, more immersive experience with all of their favorite games thanks to the gesture-based controller, which looked like something out of the future. Rear up for a right hook that could knock out Mike Tyson; bend an index finger to make Mario jump.

While hundreds of thousands of kids were delighted to see the Glove under their holiday tree, the experience didn’t quite live up to the billing. Convoluted instructions and calibration made operating it difficult; backwards-compatibility with games proved unreliable. In less than a year, the Power Glove went from one of the hottest toys on store shelves to a forgotten novelty stuffed in closets across the country.

Was it an ill-conceived peripheral rushed to market, an important step toward the virtual reality that’s now poised to overtake the entertainment industry, or both? To find out, we spoke to several of the key players involved in the Power Glove’s launch, from its inventor to the designers responsible for turning a professional-grade scientific instrument into a Toys “R” Us hot ticket—a journey that would eventually involve Michael Jackson, Rambo, and the Japanese mafia. Here’s how Mattel lost its grip on what seemed like a sure thing.

I: GLOVE STORY

In 1976, MIT undergraduate Thomas Zimmerman was talking to a friend about their mutual desire for a new way to create music. As a child, Zimmerman had “air-conducted” orchestras and remained fascinated by the idea of a gesture-based interface.

Thomas Zimmerman (Inventor, Data Glove): I came up with the idea for a glove where you’d touch fingers to play chords. A friend of mine knew music theory and liked the idea. But I didn’t get serious about it until 1979 or 1980.

Jaron Lanier (Founder, VPL Research): I didn’t meet Tom until later. In the early 1980s, I was fascinated by the idea of using something called virtual reality to transcend language.

Will Novak (Engineer, Mattel): Jaron was the guy who coined the term “virtual reality.”

Chris Gentile (Co-Founder, Abrams/Gentile Entertainment): Jaron was one of those guys where you went, “Is he really in this industry?” He had dreadlocks, a hippie guy doing this tech stuff.

Lanier: I had come up with a video game in 1983, and suddenly had a lot of cash, giving all these visionary talks about the future. Tom came to see one and we hit it off.

Zimmerman: I had an Atari 400 that was a wonderful machine for $400. It had eight analog inputs; IBMs didn’t have that stuff. I built a glove with an optical sensor that could pick up finger bends. An LED tube was on one side and a detector on the other. I glued everything to an old gardening glove.

Lanier: It was really breathtaking in its day.

Zimmerman: The next thing I did was code a program for finger spelling, where you’d make a letter in the air and it would appear onscreen. And luckily, I had the inspiration to apply for a patent. It was a perfect interface for what we now know as the virtual world.

Lanier: We’d do demos with the Glove and incorporated as a real company in 1983.

Zimmerman: A woman I was dating left New York to go to the Oakland Ballet, and I followed her. That’s an essential part of the story. California was home to kindred spirits. I joined Atari. And, of course, I thought Atari would be interested in the glove. I showed it to my division manager there and he offered me $10,000 for it. I called a friend back in New York and he said, “That’s crazy. Don’t take it. It’s worth a lot more.”

With Lanier, Zimmerman formed Visual Programming Language (VPL) in 1983 [PDF]. Soon, his device—dubbed the Data Glove, with a patent assigned to VPL—would be in demand everywhere from Apple to NASA, and far more valuable than what Atari had been willing to spend.

Zimmerman: Atari laid us all off. I told Jaron about the glove and he said, “Wow.” He had been using a tablet and a glove sounded like a much better interface.

Lanier: We made demos—amazing, early demos that were incredible. We used 3D glasses like the kind used for movies. We made prototypes on an Amiga with stereo imagery. I wish there wasa  way to reconstruct them; they were spectacular. One was kind of like a cross between racquetball and pinball.

Zimmerman: I was making gloves for him on the side. Eventually he said, “I’ve got some funding. Come join me.” Once we were running, I designed an ultrasonic tracking device so we knew where the glove was in five dimensions. That really expanded it. Now you had a hand in 3D. By 1986, 1987, we were on the cover of Scientific American.

Lanier: We got involved in all sorts of high-end markets.

Zimmerman: Scott Fisher used to work at Atari with me, then moved to NASA. They were working on head-mount displays, so the glove was like peanut butter meeting chocolate.

Lanier: We sold to NASA and all sorts of high-end places.

Zimmerman: They wanted to control robots in space, for astronauts to do work outside of the spacecraft. The Data Glove had flex sensors with optics, which you couldn’t mass manufacture. [VPL employee] Young Harvill had come up with a way to make flex sensors out of fiber optics. It meant higher precision.

Lanier: The glove went for about $10,000.

Zimmerman: I remember watching [the 1992 Stephen King adaptation] The Lawnmower Man and the character is putting on an actual Data Glove. I’m in the audience going, “Don’t push so hard. You’ll break the fiber optics!”

With the Data Glove in demand among scientists, Lanier and Zimmerman saw potential to bring the device to a wider audience. To facilitate that, they entered into a licensing agreement with Abrams/ Gentile Entertainment (AGE), a marketing firm that had recently hit it big with Visionaries, a line of action figures packaged with holograms.

Hall: AGE licensed it from Lanier for toy applications.

Zimmerman: I believe AGE found us. It was kind of a spinoff.

Lanier: I found them. They didn’t find us. We had been toying with the idea of doing consumer-use products, but it was hit and miss.

Chris Gentile: We had a big hit getting the Rambo toy license for Coleco.

John Gentile (Co-Founder, AGE): We were working on the poster design for Rambo: First Blood Part II and thought a toy line would be interesting. The studio was like, “You know this is R-rated, right”? They had no intention of doing toys. This was like a one-man G.I. Joe army. Selling that to Coleco was the beginning of AGE.

Chris Gentile: We also licensed a hologram toy line called Visionaries for Hasbro. I had spent five years designing nuclear power plants before working for my brothers. I call those my Homer Simpson years.

Lanier: The senior guy at AGE, Marty Abrams, was this larger-than-life type of personality. Very hyper. A very New York kind of guy.

John Gentile: Marty was heavily into the toy business.

Lanier: The whole point was, we were the tech and they were going to package it as an entertainment product. 

Chris Gentile: We were originally looking at 3D games and doing development for Hasbro, but they weren’t  buying it. They didn’t think a joystick would work, so we started looking for something else.

John Gentile: We thought companies like Sega and Nintendo would be interested in VR.

Chris Gentile: It was going to be a whole 3D system for Hasbro, but then Nintendo came looking for the G.I. Joe license and they thought there might be a conflict, so it was stopped.   

Lanier: To be honest, we had to sue AGE later on for our share of everything. It was a long litigation. They wanted to hold back royalties.

Chris Gentile: We did have the lawsuit and it was based on the fact that when we licensed VPL that the technology was [to be] much further developed than ultimately it was, and we therefore had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more to get it ready for commercial production. When Jaron and my brother John finally met by chance at a conference, they looked at each other, realized what both sides were spending, and decided then to settle it without the lawyers. 

Lanier: They agreed to a settlement but Marty had this one demand: He wanted me to come to every future pitch meeting AGE had. I said sure. We wound up at meetings with Michael Jackson, Imelda Marcos, and Donald Trump. It was surreal.

Chris Gentile: It was Pax that signed up Jackson for a partnership for the Japanese version of the Glove and used Jackson along with the film release of RoboCop to promote the Glove.

Hiro Sakeo, the owner of Pax, was a major real estate developer throughout Japan. Supposedly, on some of these deals, he had various types of corporations that would be minority partners in these deals, and the government discovered a couple were allegedly entities set up to launder dollars. It was not Pax directly.

II: HANDING IT OFF

The Nintendo Entertainment System, released in the U.S. in 1985, had quickly become one of the most popular toys of the decade. Lanier and Zimmerman were confident a stripped-down version of their Data Glove could entice consumers looking for a fresh way to interact with the console.

Lanier: Marty took us everywhere with the Glove. Really, it could’ve ended up at Hasbro. Marty liked to play them against one another.

Chris Gentile: We had an existing relationship with Mattel, having done some of the early Talking Barbies for them.

Lanier: I was really out there with the Glove. I was imagining people transforming into creatures, using their arm as a tentacle, that kind of thing. Maybe I wasn’t so in touch with the market.

After suffering a financial flop with their Intellivision (“intelligent television”) home console in 1979, Mattel wasn’t eager to jump back into the video game fray. AGE was hoping to change that.

Novak: At the time, video games were a dirty word at Mattel. The Intellivision had almost put them out of business. People lost their pensions over it. The last thing they wanted to hear about was a video game.

Chris Gentile: They thought they were going to be the next big video game company. Then the whole industry crashed.

Hall: What buoyed them was not being an actual video game manufacturer. The logic was: Nintendo was a rising business, so let’s be an accessory. Let’s grow with them.

Novak: I remember Jaron coming in with some VR goggles. Mattel was thinking about it, but then the concern became that a kid would be wearing them and fall down a flight of stairs.

Lanier: I approached Mattel and I was more or less told that I didn’t know anything about the industry and to come back with someone who did.

Novak: Mattel had a constant stream of inventors coming in looking to sell prototypes. When Gentile came in with the Power Glove prototype, I was the only one to say it was a bad idea.

Hall: They basically came over with the $250,000 Data Glove system hooked up to a Commodore.

Chris Gentile: I had the Data Glove wired into a computer system that fed into the NES so the console thought it was a joystick.

Lanier: We had come in prior to that with some pretty impressive demos, like a racquetball-type game. This demo was to close the deal, to convince them to make it and ship it.

Novak: Chris was there with an old black-and-white Mac. He had this golf glove with wires coming out of it. The Mac was the interface between the glove and the NES. He was demonstrating it with Rad Racer, like having a virtual steering wheel, and Punch-Out.

Hall: It was the older version, with a sort of ghosted version of the player on screen.

Chris Gentile: We had other games, racing games, but Punch-Out was the focus. It had the biggest feel for the Glove. It’s almost first-person, because you’re over the shoulder of the guy.

Novak: What sold it, and it was the weirdest thing, was when he suggested [Mattel CEO] Jill Barad try it. She put on the glove, he fired up Punch-Out, and she knocked the guy out on her first hit.

Chris Gentile: She hardly ever played games. She knocked Glass Joe out.

Lanier: I thought Jill was very cool. She was one of the few female toy executives at the time.

Novak: I thought Gentile rigged the game to do that.

Chris Gentile: The game was not rigged at all.

Novak: Jill took off the glove and said, “I want to do this.”

Hall: Everyone was skeptical, but she was extremely enthused. She essentially asked what it would take to have something ready for the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1989. This was October 1988.

John Gentile: We wanted to do a whole 3D system, but Mattel was more comfortable getting Nintendo on board with the Glove with dedicated games.

Chris Gentile: When she wanted it, it became about taking a $10,000 device and turning it into $26 worth of materials. 

Hall: They offered big development dollars, so the answer was yes. The answer should have been no.

In late 1988, work began on an attempt to convert VPL’s Data Glove into something that could line toy shelves at a retail price point.

Hall: AGE had come to Mattel and said, “Oh, yeah, we can sell this for $90.” But they didn’t actually have a plan to do it.

Zimmerman: It was the difference between a Volkswagen and a Rolls-Royce. One is a high-quality lab instrument.

Hall: With an $80 product, it’s a five-times multiplier of what it actually cost. So you’re really talking about $16 worth of materials for a set-up that might have cost $50,000.

Novak: When I started getting into it, I got research from Nintendo. A typical play session would last anywhere from 90 to 120 minutes. With the Glove, your arm would get tired after 15 or 20 minutes. So that was problem one.

Hall: We didn’t actually have original games to demo it with. It was more about finding a bend sensor that worked. There were levels of gesture recognition. We’d use boxing games, Mario, stuff like that to replicate the A, B, and arrow buttons.

Lanier: We basically licensed them the patent. We were not responsible for engineering the consumer version.

Novak: Gentile was around a lot. There was some resentment. Here was an outside guy yelling at Mattel guys. He stood to make the money, where we were just working on salary.

Hall: I would say that Mattel had to worry about reliability and the customer experience, where Chris could just make grand pronouncements on how things should be done. He wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences in terms of production.

Chris Gentile: They basically kept us hidden the entire time. They didn’t want the whole company getting involved with video games again. It was Jill’s project.

Hall: It may have seemed that way to him. What happened was that the Glove was part of the new business development group, which was a little bit isolated for political reasons. From Mattel’s perspective, it was like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna leave you alone.’

Novak: He was a nice enough guy. I’ve got nothing against him. It just felt like we were his development lab.

Hall: AGE turned in a prototype in mid-December 1988 that didn’t work for squat. The Data Glove used fiber optics, and the challenge was to come up with something to replicate that. The first one was carbon-impregnated silicone rubber. That worked, but it was slow.

John Gentile: Those optics were never going to hold up to kids jumping on the Glove.

Zimmerman: What they did that was great was come up with something silk-screened, which was far superior.

Hall: What we wound up with were flexible ink on Mylar sheets. We paid about five cents each for them.

Lanier: Conductive ink is a really inexpensive way to make a bend sensor.

John Gentile: The ink was able to measure changes in resistance. It was Chris’s idea, and it was excellent.

Chris Gentile: The conductive ink was much, much cheaper than the optics in the Data Glove. It took about nine months, which was pretty quick.

As a Nintendo licensee, Mattel needed the blessing of one of the most notoriously difficult companies in the entertainment business. If they weren’t comfortable with the Power Glove, Nintendo would potentially hold back on their official Seal of Approval.  

Novak: Jill would go to Washington once a month or so. They knew they couldn’t do anything without a license. Mattel hated Nintendo.

Caesar Filori (Former Hardware Support, Nintendo of America): Licensed products weren’t things we really supported. Tengen, for example, made games that worked on the NES, but we didn’t back them.

Hall: They butted heads. The Power Glove wasn’t the only 3D peripheral in development. Brøderbund had the U-Force, an infrared device with perpendicular panels that could measure hand waving.

John Gentile: We were aware of U-Force. They were doing some things that overlapped, doing certain things the way we were doing them. But theirs was less about finger tracking and more about the hand.

Lanier: Nintendo kept us at arm’s length. We wanted their friendly cooperation, but there wasn’t a lot for them to do.

Chris Gentile: AGE didn’t have a lot to do with Nintendo of America, but they licensed the Glove for Japan. I do remember they wanted a second instructional manual to make set-up more clear.

John Gentile: What Nintendo was concerned about was making sure the product could hold up through millions of finger bends. Once it ran up to 10 million, we got their Seal of Approval.

Hall: Nintendo being Nintendo, they worked hard to play people off one another. Mattel would want to add functionality and Nintendo would resist it. These are pretty large and arrogant companies. Everyone wants to be in control.

While Mattel’s engineers tried to shrink the price of components down, other team members were focused on its aesthetic appeal. Mattel hired Image Design’s Hal Berger and Gary Yamron to help finalize the look.    

Novak: We had to think of the size of the Glove. We went through like 300 or 400 different hand sizes trying to find something universal.

Hall: We never made a left-handed version. The decision was, only 10 percent of the population is left-handed, so that was it. The retailers didn’t want to bother stocking both.

Novak: The look really came from Bob Reyo. He was the senior vice president of marketing for boys’ toys. One early prototype was really cool, almost spider-looking, but fragile.

John Gentile: We had to worry about sweat, wicking, stuff like that.

Novak: Bob kind of held it up with two fingers and looked like he was smelling a turd. He tossed it in the middle of the table and said, “I can’t sell this for $80,” and left.

John Gentile: We were after a RoboCop kind of feel—this big rubber gauntlet wrapped around your forearm.

Novak: That’s when I learned about perceived value. This Glove, cool as it is, doesn’t look like it’s worth $80, so they throw 15 to 20 sculptors on it.

Although Nintendo had released over 100 games for the NES through 1988, none were designed with a gesture-control device in mind. It would be up to Mattel to develop titles that were proprietary to the Glove.

Novak: I was the software guy, so I was the one developing original game titles for use with the Power Glove. One was Super Glove Ball, where you controlled a hand in this 3D space. The other was some piece of crap title they licensed called Bad Street Brawler.

Zimmerman: We didn’t develop games [at VPL] for it. As it turns out, no one really did.

Novak: Bad Street was just a side-scrolling beat-‘em-up. They wanted to launch a game with it so I tried to make it work with the Glove. They paid $30,000 or $40,000 for the rights. It makes me sick to even say the name.

Chris Gentile: We were trying to tell Mattel that we need games. They kept saying, “Let’s wait and see how the hardware does first.”

Novak: What we showed at CES was basically an Amiga with a game playing and a kid actor pretending to play it. That’s really what sold it to retailers.

Hall: It was all the visual look, but not the tech. We were still working on the sensors.

Chris Gentile: Mattel wouldn’t even put their name up on the booths.

John Gentile: We were in a back room. It was very low-key because Mattel had no idea the reaction they would be getting. 

Hall: I remember spending 72 hours at a time getting it ready for those shows. I burnt myself with a soldering iron.   

Novak: This poor guy, Darren, was the guy at Mattel who had to make the templates for all the games. Say you wanted to play Double Dragon: He was the guy who put the cartridge in and figured out the code to put in the keypad on the Glove.

Zimmerman: Making it backwards-compatible sort of did the Glove a disservice. It’s like taking a fine jeweler’s watch and using it as a hammer.

Chris Gentile: They were looking for developers, but it’s a chicken-or-egg thing. No developer wants to produce games until they know a lot of the devices are out there.

Hall: It got shown to us in October with none of the final tech. By February, we had the bend sensors working. It was a pretty fast turnaround.

Chris Gentile: That first CES, we took 700,000 orders.

John Gentile: Toys “R” Us ordered 100,000. Kmart ordered 100,000.

Novak: I was the only one who had doubts. I had no idea how right I was.

III: A LOSS OF CONTROL

Bolstered by the continued popularity of the NES, Mattel’s Power Glove became one of the hottest gift items of the 1989 holiday season. The device was also front and center in The Wizard, a Nintendo-approved film starring Fred Savage about a video game savant that was released just 10 days before Christmas, on December 15, 1989.

Hall: They did very well going into the season, getting a million orders.

Zimmerman: They sold the sizzle.

John Gentile: We saw Universal was doing The Wizard, a coming-of-age story. They used controllers throughout, then the Power Glove at the climax. We designed the poster, too.

Novak: I got a screen credit on the movie as “Power Glove Advisor.”

Filori: I remember all the game counselors were absolutely riveted to see how they’d depict the call [tip line] center. They definitely made it look more glamorous than it was. We didn’t even have computers. All of our notes were in books.

Novak: The kids were playing Rad Racer with it. “Oh, it’s so bad.” I remember that.

Hall: The best part of The Wizard is Fred Savage wearing a left-handed glove on the poster.

When the Gloves were finally taken out from under Christmas trees and unwrapped, the hype didn’t quite match reality. Kids found it cumbersome, hard to calibrate, and even harder to make work with existing NES games.

Novak: I sensed there would be an inherent latency in the response. A regular controller is digital—press a button, bing, something happens.

Filori: It didn’t work well with a lot of the games—fast-twitch games. It wasn’t precise enough.

Hall: It’s about absorbing the experience of game play, and if the controller gets in the way, it’s not going to work. Pushing buttons is subconscious.

Lanier: When I helped them demo it, I didn’t think the interaction was very good.

Hall: Waving your hand in space, you don’t have a visual reference for where the center is. You end up making huge gestures to go there.

Novak: Look at Mario. You need perfect slides, jumps, bounces. You bend a finger on the Glove and it’s like it says, “Oh, did he bend a finger?” The software may not recognize it.

Filori: The problem is you just can’t map something like that to any game and have it be fun. That was the problem. There was no game experience that became better for having used the Glove.

Chris Gentile: I don’t believe there was a problem with lag time. The problem was with how people would calibrate it. The ones I saw set up properly, it was real-time functional. I didn’t see any delays.

Hall: There were issues with how the ultrasonic sensors would work. We used two and ideally needed three, but it would’ve made the Glove big and ugly.

Novak: The ultrasonic triangulation actually worked, but it was a bitch to calibrate. No kid was going to do that.

Hall: We originally had the transmitters on the TV and the receivers on the Glove in case people wanted to play with two Gloves at once. But the receivers had a very broad, wide angle, so we swapped them. That was a last-minute thing.

Novak: To set it up, you had to hold your hand out and make a fist. If you didn’t, the operating system didn’t know what was a fist and what was your hand. It needed to be pointing at the sensors, and no one was doing it.

Hall: Ultimately, the experience was your arm getting tired, you have no idea where the center is, there’s no 3D. So you shove it into a closet.

Lanier: You hold something continually, and you’re going to generate arm fatigue no matter what. Holding your hand out is not great. You want to be in motion. That’s why the early demos had racquetball.

Zimmerman: They had this concept of holding the Glove up in space, but then your arm drops and you lose that center and engage the Down button. The solution would have been to make that box move so it readjusts as your arm does. It’s just a tiny user interface tweak.

Novak: I once set up a demo for a BBC reporter. The woman was playing Super Glove Ball as she was talking and it worked perfectly.

Chris Gentile: Sometimes kids would enter the wrong code for the game, and you’d get responses that didn’t make sense.

Lanier: At the last minute, there was a design decision about the plastic tracker above the knuckle, so when you closed your hand it was uncomfortable. People were just not thinking about how the Glove would be used.

Further demoralizing players was the lack of games designed exclusively for the Glove—there weren’t any released in time for the 1989 holiday season.

Novak: Super Glove Ball didn’t come out until a year later.

Hall: Really, it was launched too early.

Novak: The push was to get the hardware out. We didn’t even start development of Super Glove Ball until four or five months in. All the marketing and advertising was based around the Glove.

John Gentile: Mattel said, “Why spend the money? They [players] will just use NES games.” But the value of the Glove was with specific games, like Nolan Ryan Baseball. You would’ve been able to throw the ball at the batter and focus on spin and rotation, stuff like that. It would’ve been fantastic.

Hall: I was one of the people lobbying for them to wait a year and have some 3D games, not hackery with existing games.

Filori: I think maybe Mattel thought people would make games automatically for it. But where was the incentive to do that?

Lanier: I would say there was a big problem with the software quality, but that wasn’t my job to adjudicate.

Novak: To a rational person, you’d want software to go along with the hardware. Mattel didn’t see it that way.

Hall: The Glove was just not good in compatibility mode with older games. It was all big moves and getting exhausted trying to figure out the controller.

Novak: At that time, Nintendo controlled the game cartridges because they sold the lockout chip. So Mattel goes to them and says, “We want to order 300,000 cartridges for Super Glove Ball. We want to blanket the holiday with them.” And Nintendo says, “We’ll give you 20,000.”

Novak: That was their key to success. They knew what happened with Atari. They wanted to keep crappy software from flooding the market. 

Zimmerman: It’s too bad they didn’t make a killer game for it. I guess once Mattel sold the hardware, they were done.

Novak: It drove me crazy. The Glove was just limping to its grave.

Although it experienced brisk sales for the 1989 holiday season, word of mouth eventually cast a long shadow over the long-term prospects for the Power Glove. Mattel’s plans for a Turbo Glove, a lighter version with the keypad worn on a belt, were abandoned.

Novak: We had two other games we were going to do with Rare, but they got canceled.

Zimmerman: I think it did the world of VR a huge disservice. It made a huge platform of visibility, but the play was not satisfying. That’s what killed Atari.

Lanier: It was a big hit early on, but just kind of petered out.

Chris Gentile: By the time Super Glove Ball came out, it was like 14 months later and interest had just disappeared.

Novak: In the real world, it would’ve been a huge hit financially. But at Mattel, bonuses are tied in with sales projections. And they just over-projected. They went from thinking they’d sell $60 million to $80 million. It got up to $120 million. So when they only sold $80 million, it was a disappointment.

Chris Gentile: I’d love to have a so-called failure like that every year. It was a little bit of the future that was hard to grasp for some people. Today, people have mobile devices. Back then, it was a challenge.

Lanier: I remember a lot of Gloves got held up in Japan by authorities in a warehouse.

Chris Gentile: We sold a total of 1.3 million Gloves, including in Japan.

John Gentile: The Glove did very well in Japan, selling 600,000 units. At the time, there were only three or four million NES systems installed, so to do 20 percent of the installed base was great.

Zimmerman: A lot more could’ve been done with it. Virtual orchestras, virtual pottery—there were more artistic applications.

Chris Gentile: We wanted to release games, but it was pulled off the market after a year.

John Gentile: By the time the next Toy Fair rolled around, we could sense it starting to die down. We had a good year run.

IV: THE POWER OF GLOVE

Although it lasted less than 12 months on store shelves, the promise of the Power Glove—a seamless interaction with three-dimensional software—later came to fruition with video game systems like Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect, as well as the surge of VR platforms led by the Oculus Rift. 

Novak: I had a little laugh when they came up with the Wii.

Lanier: The Microsoft Kinect was sort of a spiritual successor to the Power Glove.

Hall: It was a pivotal product that was unfortunately-timed, but it changed people’s mindset.

Zimmerman: It was a tangible manifestation of VR that was mass-marketed. It was almost cyber-punk.

John Gentile: The work we do now, people with Oculus, Samsung, the Glove always comes up. It’s an instant ice-breaker. Everybody had one.

Lanier: I later helped Spielberg brainstorm on Minority Report, and the Data Glove sort of made an appearance in that—this idea of using gestures in this dystopian world. We made a working model so the screenwriters could feel what it was like.

Decades after the Glove’s release, several users have found aftermarket uses for the device, which has been repeatedly “hacked” to provide a user interface for many do-it-yourself projects.

Hall: MIT had a few dozen projects based on hacked Power Gloves. This kid at the last Maker Faire, he had a hacked Glove and operated a simulation helicopter in 3D space.

John Gentile: I’ve seen people use to control stop-motion animation. DJs use it.

Zimmerman: The patent has expired, but I’m just happy to be able to say I was involved in the first wave of all that.

Nearly 28 years after its introduction, the Power Glove remains one of the most iconic pieces of video game hardware ever developed. A Kickstarter-backed documentary, The Power of Glove, is slated for release this year.

Hall: It was one of the first things to bring the potential for a truly immersive world. Tron had come out, but this was the first time you could put something on and feel like you could be part of the game. And it looked cool.

Chris Gentile: Even for people who didn’t feel it worked, it was an eye-opener into the whole virtual world. It was the first time someone could feel like they were inside the game as opposed to outside of it.

Filori: It’s a retro piece of tech that has a lot of personality to it.

Lanier: What’s interesting is that it being heavy and the overall design of it is probably why it’s remembered after all these years. It just looks cool.

Novak: Some YouTube comments, people want me dead. They think I invented it.

Chris Gentile: It’s interesting people think of it as a failure, because people still use it and still talk about it.

Lanier: I think people get nostalgia for stuff like this because of malaise, because the current moment sucks.

Zimmerman: The first time I saw it, I was passing a Toys “R” Us in New York and saw it in the window. I must say, I had this amazing sensation that I thought of something and had it manifested in the physical world. The irony is, even having worked at Atari, I don’t play video games.

Lanier: Honestly, if people had seen the early demos made for the Glove, they would’ve understood what made it so interesting to everyone.

Novak: If it was set up correctly, the damn thing worked.

Funko, that massively successful collectibles clearinghouse—you’ve likely seen friends or family members lose their collective minds over their Pops! Vinyl figures—just announced a new addition to its lineup: Their Disney Treasures subscription box service is set to deliver exclusive, Mickey Mouse-approved items directly to your door.

Funko announced the partnership on their website on Monday, promising that an introductory box would have a Pirates Cove theme and come with a Mr. Smee Pop! figure based on Captain Hook’s first mate from the Disney iteration of Peter Pan. The crated loot will join other branded Funko boxes, including offerings from Marvel and DC, and follows a long list of Disney Pops!, including characters from The Lion King, Frozen, and several Pixar films. In keeping with the tradition of subscription item bundles, the box’s contents will be a surprise until your postal carrier drops it off.

The company hasn’t announced a release date or price, but filling out a sign-up sheet will provide notifications when they’re available. If you want to hold off to see what’s included, a multitude of “unboxing” videos will likely show up on YouTube before too long.

Decades ago, cosmetic enhancement entered a new and lucrative era with the emergence of Botox, a botulinum toxin that paralyzes muscles to erase visible signs of aging.

In 2017, Botox is still as popular as ever. And now, a new process that addresses a different portion of the cosmetic surgery industry is quickly gaining ground—one that can freeze and kill off fat cells without injections or anesthesia. It’s been trademarked by one company as CoolSculpting, and those concerned about areas of unwanted fat believe it’s the next big thing in cosmetic enhancement.

In a huge industry vote of confidence, pharmaceutical company Allergan Plc agreed to pay $2.48 billion this week for Zeltiq, the company behind CoolSculpting. Also known as “body contouring,” medical professionals take an instrument and place it over fatty tissue for approximately 35 to 60 minutes (treatment length will vary by procedure). Freezing temperatures attack the fat cells, up to 20 percent of which die off and are then eliminated by the body within weeks.

Because the procedure is non-invasive and doesn’t require the downtime of a surgical intervention like a tummy tuck or liposuction, patients are usually under no restrictions and can resume normal activity quickly. It’s typically used for the abdominal area and under the buttocks.

According to Bloomberg, CoolSculpting and similar efforts are catching on because the patient can pay in cash, eliminating insurance hassles—cosmetic intervention isn’t usually covered—and practitioners can collect up to $4000 per treatment. If patients are happy with the results, they’re likely to return for more, or opt for further refinement with Botox and other methods.

Allergan is betting CoolSculpting will be a huge portion of the body contouring market that’s expected to grow to $10.5 billion by 2020. And they should know: Allergan also owns Botox.

[h/t Bloomberg]

The theater owners and exhibitors attending the ShoWest convention in February 1989 had a lot to look forward to. In an attempt to stir their interest in upcoming studio releases, major distributors were showing off stars and footage: Paramount led with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Columbia had Ghostbusters II. But it was Warner Bros. that caused the most stir.

In addition to Lethal Weapon 2, the studio had Tim Burton’s Batman, a straight-faced adaptation of the comic, and Michael Keaton—who slipped into a screening of some early footage—was no longer being derided as a poor casting choice. Then, in the midst of all this star power, the studio brought out a 35-year-old actor-writer-director with a shock of orange hair and an Australian accent.

The man had never appeared in a feature film before, much less starred in one, but Warner was gambling that his forthcoming comedy about a Tasmanian Albert Einstein who invents rock music and runs into Thomas Edison would be a hit. It had already become the sixth highest-grossing film in Australia’s history, besting both E.T. and Rambo: First Blood Part II.

The man’s real name was Greg Pead. Warner Bros. introduced him as Yahoo Serious, Hollywood’s next big comedy attraction.

To understand Warner’s appetite for an unproven commodity like Yahoo Serious, it helps to recall the peculiar preoccupation American popular culture had with Australians in the 1980s. Energizer had created a hit ad campaign with Mark “Jacko” Jackson, a pro football player who aggressively promoted their batteries in a series of ads; Paul Hogan parlayed his fish-out-of-water comedy, Crocodile Dundee, into the second highest-grossing film of 1986. (Serious would later bristle at comparisons to Hogan, whom he referred to as a “marketing guy” who sold cigarettes on Australian television.)

Born in Cardiff, Australia on July 27, 1953, Serious grew up in rural bush country and mounted car tires at a garage in order to pay his way through the National Art School. When he was expelled for illustrating the school’s facade with satirical jokes that the faculty didn’t find particularly funny, Serious moved on to direct Coaltown, a documentary about the coal mining industry, and pursued painting.

Serious would later recall that the desire for a larger audience led him away from art and into feature filmmaking. ”It hit me like a ton of bricks one day,” Serious told The New York Times in 1989. “I remember having a cup of coffee and I went, ‘Well, look, there is a giant canvas in every little town everywhere around the world. And on this giant canvas there are 24 frames of image on that screen every second and it’s the most wonderful living art form.’” It was around this same time, in 1980, that Serious changed his name.

To get a feel for the language of film, Serious sat through repeated viewings of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove; he aspired to have the kind of total autonomy over his movies that directors like Woody Allen and Charlie Chaplin enjoyed.

In 1983, Serious was traveling along the Amazon River when he spotted someone wearing a T-shirt depicting Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. The image is now pervasive, appearing on posters and other merchandise (not to mention an early cover of mental_floss), but it seemed unique to the performer, who was struck by the idea that Einstein was once young and never took himself too seriously. And the concept for Young Einstein was born.

Serious’s idea, which transplanted Einstein to Tasmania and imagined encounters with Sigmund Freud, Thomas Edison, and the atomic bomb, took years to assemble. He borrowed camera equipment and sold his car to help finance the film; he shot an eight-minute trailer that convinced investors he was capable of making a feature. His mother cooked meals for the crew on set.

In order to maintain creative control, Serious gave up profit participation in Young Einstein, which he starred in, co-produced, co-wrote, and directed. When the film was released in Australia in 1988, it made an impressive $1.6 million at the box office and drew the attention of Warner Bros., which likely had visions of a Crocodile Dundee-esque hit. American press had a field day with Serious, who appeared on the cover of TIME and was given airtime on MTV.

Critics and audiences weren’t quite as enamored. The Orlando Sentinel suggested that “Tedious Oddball” would be a more appropriate name for the film’s creator. In his one-star review, Roger Ebert wrote that, “Young Einstein is a one-joke movie, and I didn’t laugh much the first time.” In the U.S., Young Einstein grossed just over $11 million, a fairly weak showing for a summer comedy. It was bested in its opening weekend by both Ron Howard’s Parenthood and the Sylvester Stallone action-grunter Lock Up.

Although American distributors quickly cooled on Serious, Australia’s enthusiasm for the filmmaker didn’t dampen. When Serious released 1993’s Reckless Kelly, a fictionalized account of outlaw Ned Kelly, it made $5.4 million in Australia—three times as much as Young Einstein. Serious took a seven-year sabbatical, then returned with 2000’s Mr. Accident, a slapstick comedy about an injury-prone man who tries to thwart a scheme to inject nicotine into eggs. Meeting a tepid critical and financial reception, it would be his third and (likely) final film.

At roughly the same time Mr. Accident was released, Serious took issue with upstart search engine Yahoo!, alleging the site was piggybacking on his popularity. He filed a lawsuit, which was quickly dropped when he failed to prove the URL had damaged him in any way.

The amused headlines stemming from that incident were the last examples of Serious capturing attention in America. Having completed just three films, no other projects have come to fruition; Serious launched a website detailing some of his background and to air some of his Yahoo!-related grievances.

Now 63, Serious currently serves as director of the Kokoda Track Foundation, an Australian aid organization dedicated to improving the living conditions of Papua New Guineans. The board’s website lists him as Yahoo Serious, which is the name he claims that all of his family and friends have called him since he changed it in 1980.

“You can choose every aspect of your life,” Serious once said. “Why not your name?”

It’s everything a movie producer could ever ask for: Thieves rappelling down from a skylight to avoid motion detectors; a criminal mastermind known only as “The Astronomer”; Scotland Yard. All of them embroiled in a successful—at least, so far—heist of more than 160 rare books valued at over $2.5 million.

The Guardian reports that a team of highly organized criminals broke into a London warehouse in late January to swipe rare titles, owned by multiple parties, that were being held in storage en route to a California book fair. The heist was facilitated by the crooks drilling holes into a skylight, then using ropes to inch down to prevent alarms from going off. Works from the 15th and 16th centuries have been reported missing, including volumes written by Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Galileo.

Closed-circuit cameras captured the thieves making deliberate searches of boxes known to contain the valuable items, meaning they were well-prepared for what they might find. Because the books are so distinctive, it would be virtually impossible to sell them without raising suspicion; authorities suspect an ethically-challenged collector known as “The Astronomer” may be behind the score.

If true, it wouldn’t be the first time a love of books led to a brazen robbery. In 1990, an Iowa man named Stephen Blumberg was caught after he had spent two decades amassing nearly 19,000 books from libraries and museums. The collection was valued at $5.3 million. Blumberg served four and a half years in prison.

[h/t Smithsonian]

Although social media has made it easy to share your feelings with the press of a button, the market for old-fashioned analog greeting cards is still chugging along. The industry rakes in an estimated $5 billion annually, led by card giants Hallmark and American Greetings and bolstered by hundreds of smaller start-ups.

At big and small firms alike, card designers are tasked with spending their days finding fresh ways to communicate love, sympathy, or holiday cheer. We spoke to a few of them to find out what it takes to stand out on the retail card racks.

1. THEIR CARDS ARE SURPRISINGLY PERSONAL.

In the card business, writers are constantly angling to capture a “universal specific,” or a common theme that sounds personal despite having appeal across the board. Matt Gowen, a staff writer at Hallmark, says that one of the best ways to arrive at that sincerity is to imagine you’re writing a card for one specific person in your life. “Starting with a real person and a real relationship gives you lots of little details to use,” he says. “Writing an anniversary card, I can think about my own wife.” A colleague of Gowen’s writes her Mother’s Day cards with her own mother in mind. “Her mom just loses it. It’s a lot of fun.”

2. THERE ARE RULES FOR THE TOP THIRD OF THE CARD.

Most card displays are front-facing, with only the upper third of the card exposed to shoppers. That means card designers need to try and capture your scanning eye with something that makes at least a little bit of sense even when it’s cut off from the rest of the pack. “You need to create a symbol, image, or word that immediately makes a person want to pick up the card from about a three to six-foot distance, [which is] often how far someone is when they scan cards,” says Kate Harper, a freelance card designer. “For example, if it is a love card, adding a heart to the top third is helpful. It immediately communicates to the person passing by what the topic of the card is.”

3. THE REJECTION RATE IS HIGH.

Writers and designers at Hallmark are typically brought on group projects that are sorted according to holidays or themes, with a mandate to create anywhere from 100 to 150 cards for the occasion. Because standards are high, the vast majority of their ideas won’t make it into your hands. “If you write humor, which I do, a 10 percent acceptance rate is considered high,” Gowen says. “Most ideas end up in the trash. You learn to develop a thick skin.”

4. THEY DON’T LIKE TO USE HUMAN FACES.

Ever wonder why cards feature an abundance of adorable animals or decapitated bodies? It’s because photographed human faces may make cards less appealing. “When people buy cards for someone, they have an idea of the person they are sending it to,” Harper says. “Maybe they are older, younger, or a different ethnicity than the person on the card. The buyer is asking unconsciously, ‘Does this look like my friend?’ Unless the images are completely humorous or retro, you rarely see photos of faces on cards.”

5. THEY LIKE TO SPY ON YOU.

Harmlessly, of course. To develop an ear for relatable dialogue, card writers often comb social media or eavesdrop on conversations in public settings to get a feel for what strikes a chord. “Sometimes you’re out doing errands and something will stand out,” Gowen says. Inspiration has struck while waiting for his car to get washed. One colleague, he says, likes to loiter in card shops to see which types of cards shoppers pick up.

6. INDEPENDENT DESIGNERS NEED TO SQUEEZE INTO THE MARKET.

Those monolithic, aisle-wide card displays in your local pharmacy? They’re actually owned by the heavy hitters—Hallmark and American Greetings—and serviced by both. Owing to contracts with store chains, it’s not likely you’ll find any small-press, irreverent cards on shelves. “It’s impossible for an indie company like mine to get into a CVS or Walgreen’s,” says Emily McDowell, owner of Emily McDowell Studio. Instead, she markets online and to stores like Urban Outfitter that don’t have exclusive deals with the major brands.

7. RED ENVELOPES ARE IFFY.

Greeting card companies worry a lot about colors. “Bright, upbeat colors stand out,” Harper says. “Browns, grays, and black and white don’t do as well.” That thinking also applies to envelopes, although some designers stay away from red. “It’s best to not use red, since the post office has problems reading black ink on red envelopes.”

8. THEY DON’T JUST WORK ON CARDS.

For a company like Hallmark, whose specialty stores carry a steady supply of gifts and novelties in addition to greeting cards, staff writers are expected to have their hand in a little bit of everything. “I’ve written for t-shirts, mugs, posters, songs,” Gowen says. “Anything with words, you name it.”

9. THERE’S A REASON SOME CARDS ARE BLANK—AND NOT FOR THE REASON YOU THINK.

While major companies often insist on having words on both the inside and outside of cards, McDowell says that customers have taken a liking to cards that are completely blank on the inside. “I learned that early on,” she says. “It’s partially consumer-driven in that it’s more flexible for consumers to write their own personalized message. It’s also partially due to the fact that our cards, and all other boutique cards, are sold packed in individual plastic sleeves, together with their envelope, in order to protect the product in the store. Having blank insides eliminates the need for customers to open the packaging and see what’s written on the inside.”

10. THEY GET SURPRISED BY THEIR OWN CARDS.

Writers at Hallmark work on so many different card concepts that it can become difficult to keep track of which fall by the wayside and which make it to stores. “In the writing studio, you’re removed from that process and you can forget what you worked on,” Gowen says. “Then you walk into a card shop to buy a Mother’s Day card and go, ‘Oh, I worked on this.’ It’s kind of a nice surprise.”

11. PRICE IS IRRELEVANT.

When card-shopping, buyers typically get sucked in by an image and then sold on the writing. Whether a card is $1 or $10 doesn’t really matter, according to Harper. “The price is the last consideration in determining the purchase,” she says.

12. IT’S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS.

Thanks to Pinterest, Etsy, and a host of other creative commerce sites, there’s been a deluge of greeting card designs. What could be easier than a simple design and a little sentiment on paper? “It’s an easy point of entry because cards are cheap to produce,” McDowell says. “But they’re not often made by trained designers. I was in advertising for 10 years.”

Gowen has also seen some of the I-could-do-that spirit. “People come up to me all the time and tell me a funny story that should be on a card. It might be funny, but is it universal? That’s the trick.”

And, he says: “Anyone can write a card. But can you write them five days a week for a decade?”

If there’s one thing the Fox network is known for beyond The Simpsons, it’s having the desire and means to completely ignore the finality of canceling a television series. The trend began way back in 2004 with Family Guy—which was dropped in 2002 before robust DVD sales caused the network to reconsider—and has continued with new iterations of 24, Prison Break, and The X-Files.

The broadcast channel is reportedly extending their TV necromancy to another show that may have expired before its time: Firefly, the 2002 Joss Whedon-created series about a motley crew of space jockeys. During a chat at the Television Critics Association gathering in January, David Madden, Fox Broadcasting’s president of entertainment, indicated he’d be open to a new season if Whedon was involved.

Whedon had previously taken a noncommittal attitude about Firefly, saying he’d do it only if he was motivated and if the core cast was available for filming. For nearly a decade, that was off the table because of actor Nathan Fillion’s role as the lead on ABC’s Castle, which ended last May. In a Long Beach Comic Con panel with the cast in September 2016, Fillion was ambivalent about the possibility.

“I totally get wanting more,” he said. “I hear it all the time … At the same time, we all had what I would call my dream job. It was the perfect position. Everything was great. Even the challenges we faced, we faced them together. We were all in it together and we were all pulling for the same thing, to make a great show. And I loved every minute of it. It’s really hard to look at that kind of stuff and say ‘Give me more.’ Because enough is enough. Oh my god. It was everything. It was everything. How can everything not be enough?”

While Whedon and Fillion mull it over, Fox is in no danger of running out of nostalgic material. The re-launch of Prison Break is scheduled for April; Madden said he was optimistic a new season of The X-Files would premiere in 2018.

[h/t /Film]

Let’s face it: Unlocking doors can be really boring. The repetition, the lack of surprises on the other side, using the wrong key. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could restore a sense of excitement to gaining entry into your home?

Thanks to the folks at The Key Armory, now you can. The company is in the middle of a Kickstarter campaign that promises backers uncut keys shaped like sword designs pulled from pop culture, with an expected ship date of July. In addition to He-Man’s preferred Skeletor cutter, you can also choose from weaponry inspired by Final Fantasy 7, Voltron, and Xenoblade Chronicles.

The new crop of keys joins the original 10 designs that The Key Armory successfully launched in an earlier Kickstarter campaign—including one from Thundercats—that are available for purchase on their site. Backers and customers will be able to take the $12 uncut keys to a locksmith and have them fitted for their individual locks. Depending on votes from backers, the company may eventually add keys inspired by Conan, Game of Thrones, and others.

[h/t Gizmodo]