The Week in A Bad Education Towers #014

An actual week! Thats not too bad! Hope you all had a good weekend, fuck the Queen and all that.

In typical Phil fashion I had an email drop telling me to buy something so I did, the Evercase EXP Limited edition:

Now I’ve been thinking about getting one of these for a while as I keep hearing they’re good but I’ve never pulled the trigger. But here we have a new screen! TATE mode! Irem games! 5000 units only! So I bought it.

And had immediate buyer’s remorse. Because it’s a lot of money and its tying yourself into that cartridge system were you can only play the games they release. And there’s a whole world of handhelds out there that can emulate pretty much all systems so why this? And thats what went through my mind, and why I cancelled the order.

I think I’d much rather get a Miyoo Mini or something like that as I’d get much more use out of something like that. I think. Would I?

The great thing about the internet is discovering things you barely remember as a kid and then you find out it was actually real and other people remember it:

Case in point: I had one action figure that was Action Force/GI Joe sized that had a big bulky jet pack that had wings. I’m fairly sure this was picked up from the local post office when I was bored whilst my mum was queing to do something. Yes I am an only child.

I remember the box art looked cool, and so was that jet pack gimmick; each dude had his own jet pack which could then be combined together to form a bigger vehicle. Cool, right?

It went into toy rotation then into a box then I painted the dude to look like the Silver Surfer then I assume it went to a charity shop, but I always remember that jet pack gimmick. And everynow and then I’d give it a google; nothing. Couldn’t track it down. No clue what the name was, maybe it was a knock off or something so what would be the chance of tracking it down?

It took finding a website that listed out 90s toy brands and going through each one, one by one until I found it and of course it started with a U: Unifighters by Galoob, specifically Bomber O’Neil:

Years, I’ve been looking for that. Year. Normally Toy Galaxy gets there first but not this time.

So we watched all of Poirot. The whole series on the ITV Hub. 70 odd episodes, with adverts.

For God’s sake why?

Nostalgia is one thing; Poirot lasted a real long time from 1989 to 2013 so those early ones very much remind me of Sunday evenings before school. And especially that title sequence and music.

But really, its just a great show. You have a perfectly cast lead actor in great little mystert plots all wrapped up in art deco aesthetic.

Thats not to say that the show remains static the whole time; you can cut it up broadly into two eras, the first is when it was an hour long show of about 10 episodes per series. Then after a certain point it became one of those prestige shows where you’d get three or fours feature length episodes every year or so. From series 6 in 1996 that iconic opening was dropped, then from series 9 regular characters like Japp, Hastings and Miss Lemon were dropped as well. This was in 2003 so suddenly everything is in widescreen, the camera work starts to become and bit fancier.

All of this is acnhored by David Suchet as Poirot. It isn’t often that an actor is perfect for the role but this is one of them; recent turns by John Malkovitch and Kenneth Brannagh have been good but don’t quite capture the character the way that Suchet did.

But then, they had a couple of goes at him at most whereas Suchet had like 70 bites of the cheery.

Would I recommend a watch of these? For sure, they’re never less than fun murder mysteries, a perfect thing to wind down watching in the evenings when you just want to see posh people get killed.

Two in a row, we’ll try and keep that going!

Anyways, bye!

Phil Doyle