Todd McFarlane Not Planning Toys For New Spawn Movie

When the Spawn announcement hit San Diego Comic-Con, fans assumed a new toy line would likely follow suit. You might be surprised to learn then that no such toy line exists.

ComicBook.com's Jim Viscardi had the chance to chat with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane about the Spawn reboot, and when asked if the film would get an accompanying toy line, McFarlane gave a surprising answer.

"No, actually here's the funny thing. I own a toy company, so again all my sales people, I remember I had to calm them down but they were all like "Oh my gosh Todd's going to finally do something!" This was a few months ago and I had to sit them down going "You know how I said I think we're going to get pass the hurdle, we're going to make this movie? I didn't write a story that was gonna make toys."

It's hard to make a toy of a figure that is constantly seen in the shadows, and that will heavily be the case in the horror focused reboot.

"It's a horror movie," said McFarlane. "It doesn't have anything other than the shadow moving, and you can just see that they were like "Oh we're going to run into K-Mart, Walmart, and Target and say we've got the hottest toys from the hottest movie!" and it's like "no".

It was important for McFarlane to keep the focus on the story, and not get caught up in making the plot fit marketing and toy plans, something that has come to backfire on other films of Spawn's ilk.

'I've always felt like when I come up with an idea that you don't let any tail wag a dog. So when I was coming up with the idea I'd go "I don't want to worry about whether someone's going to buy the comic book or someone's going to buy the toys or if someone's going to buy the novel." I'm going to write something for moviegoers, and moviegoers as you know, can simply go to a movie, enjoy it, and go home, and never have to buy a hat, shirt, or a toy. They don't have to. They just go "hey that was a cool movie. What movie are we going to next week?", and they move on with their life."

Now that doesn't mean there won't be toys and accessories further down the line, but McFarlane just wants to make a well-rounded film first and foremost.

"To me, I just wanted to make a movie for moviegoers that like sort of dark creepy stuff and I'll just let the other dominoes fall around it. I'll worry about those as we go."

Spawn will be coming from Blumhouse, makers of The Purge, Paranormal Activity, and The Belko Experiment. The budget will be in the $10 million range, and no release date has been announced.

These clever toys will help spark your kids' curiosity

Gone are the days when Lego was enough to cure childhood curiosity. From toys that teach kids about the principles of robot construction and coding, to paper planes you can pilot, WIRED selects the smartest educational toys in the box.

PowerUp FPV

At last: a paper plane you can pilot - just download the PowerUp app, reach for your Google Cardboard and enjoy a different view of the world. PowerUp has engineered an 80g paper-aeroplane motor with a built-in wide-angle camera, microphone and Wi-Fi connectivity with a range of 92 metres. Tilt your head to control its movements, and - depending on the design - your sheet of 120gsm can reach speeds of up to 32kph.

Table Pong Project

YouTuber Daniel Perdomo has taken the classic 70s video game and turned it into a real-world proposition. With no previous technical knowledge - the paddle controllers are made from old hard drives and engineering principles picked up online - Perdomo and his team have made the virtual tangible, without diminishing the game's appeal.

Maglev Model Train

The concept for the magnetic levitating train dates back to 1902; the first commercially usable track opened in Birmingham in 1984. While we're all waiting for the hyperloop to take the idea to the next level, here's a small-scale version for your kids to play with. Build your own smooth-running, high-speed maglev track (above), albeit one that fits in your living room.

Lini Cube

With 105 ways to plug one cube into another (a typical LEGO brick manages just nine), Lini Cube is a versatile building block allowing for true 3D model-making. In a smart development, it adopts Selinko's internet of things technology: each pack of cubes features an NFC chip, which helps tackle toy counterfeiters, who account for an annual sector loss of £1.25 million.

Jimu Robot TankBot Kit

Jimu TankBot teaches robotic construction and coding. By using its free iOS app, kids can follow 3D instructions to program movement of the tank-treaded toy by its six servo motors. The kit's 190 interlocking pieces allow you to build the pre-designed TankBot, then modify it. It also includes an infrared sensor that tracks lines and senses objects to manoeuvre around or pick up.

Infantino B Kids BV Sensory Discovery Robot

Winner of Best New Toy at the 2017 Toy Fair, the Discovery Robot beeps, flashes and pulls funny expressions as your baby bashes, yanks, chews and generally abuses it. Rotate its head and hear clicking, press the hand and its eyes spin, then push and pull its feet for more visual and sonic stimulation.

Retailer Mothercare under fire for vintage housewife child ads

British retailer Mothercare is facing a backlash after advertising its range of cleaning toys with young girls dressed as 1950s housewives.

With her hair tied in rollers, one young girl wears a polka dot swing skirt while pushing a vacuum cleaner.

Under "features and benefits," it lists "introduces children to real life."

The same images are used to advertise toys, including a cleaning trolley, on the Early Learning Centre site, which is owned by the same company.

The photos met a slew of livid parents and advocates on Twitter.

In a statement to CNN, Mothercare said:

"At Mothercare, our aim is to offer a wide range of toys to appeal to the many different tastes and play interests of little ones. We feature both boys and girls playing with many different toys."
The company added: "In the 'Playing House' section of our website we feature both boys and girls playing with a range of household items."

Mothercare depicts a couple boys within this toy line, but they're all dressed in contemporary clothing.

Notable UK-based campaign "Let Toys Be Toys," which calls for the end of gender-based toy and book limits for children, tweeted a photo criticizing the items.

"No, not retro toy ads from the 1950s, but Mothercare/ELC, 2017," the organization added.
British celebrity supernanny Jo Frost slammed the products, too.

"How disappointing, i guess nxt week it will be boys with toolbelts& hard hats on. This is not exactly the Early Learning i can appreciate," she tweeted.

While some shamed the marketing team behind the idea, others threatened personal boycotts.

"I love @MothercareUK and #elc but after seeing this I will have to go to somewhere else for toys," said one woman.

One woman posted a side-by-side comparison of this ad next to a 1979 ad for Mothercare homemaker toys, showing close to nothing has changed overall for little girls since then.

Studies outline a distinct role that toys play in the psychology of young children. Kids base their future aspirations on what they perceive as available to them.

The industry has grown more gendered in recent decades, research shows.

Exploiting the myth of gender-specific colors, labels, and roles kindles a self-fulfilling cycle. It's bit of a cop out that also ends up backfiring, says Bjorn Jeffrey, who co-founded a company that makes digital toys for kids 3-7.

It makes ethical as well financial sense to offer a genderless choice as the market is twice as large, he says. The open choice also encourages more creativity.

"Kids get a lot of ideas early from play about what they can do, what they like and what they can aspire to," says psychology professor Deborah Tolman of the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York. "By making those themes gender specific, it leaves out a whole range of possibilities."
Reinforcing these gender limits goes hand in hand with fueling derogatory attitudes toward other identities, like sexual orientation and sexuality.

"If kids are coming into social situations with more constrained ideas about what boys and girls should be from playing, you can see how that would contribute to the negative reinforcement of ideas about identity and sexuality," says Tolman.

Shocked parents tweeted their hope that the Mothercare images were a spoof. However, as of Tuesday morning they were still on Mothercare's site.

How good were these childhood crazes

“MUUUUUUUMMMMMM! Can I have a fidget spinner?” my six-year-old daughter asks for the third day in a row.

“No,” I say.

“Why not? Sally has one and Ruby has one.”

“Because you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because there’s enough crap in our house.”

And then suddenly, I get a flashback of my own childhood. Of smashing shiny conkers hung from strings together when we lived in London. Of jumping over elastics on the hot asphalt. Of being cornered by a group of boys in the schoolyard of Farrer Primary, Canberra, and bullied into swapping my huge and gorgeous cat’s eye marble for a crappy, chipped pearly one — and crying in my bedroom later that afternoon.

Yes, my friends. The fidget spinner is just the latest in an endless list of childhood crazes.
Remember these beauties?

JACKS OR KNUCKLEBONES

Knucklebones originally came from sheep but modern versions are made from plastic or metal. The game usually involves throwing them up in the air and catching them in various different ways.

According to Wikipedia, the game of Jacks is as old as the hills: “Both the [Homer’s] Iliad and the Odyssey contain allusions to games similar in character to knucklebones.”

Vicky, 66, says: “You had to have a set of five, if they were really smooth and white even better. We would trade two or three dirty ones for a nice shiny one. Boys just had them in their pockets but girls tied them up in their hankies.

“We played at play time and lunch time. I didn’t know they were Jacks until I was older and wiser, I then thought those weird metal jacks were for poor unfortunates who couldn’t get real knucklebones.

“Writing this I can almost feel them landing on the back of my hand — and the last time I played was in the heat and dust of St Augustine’s Primary School, Wodonga in 1963. The nuns used to roll up their sleeves and play too — they were champions! Oh happy days.”

MARBLES

Every time the marble craze comes around, kids think they are brand new. In fact, examples of marbles go back centuries — to ancient Egypt and the region that, once-upon-a-time, was known as Mesopotamia, in the Middle East.

There’s a massive range of marble games and lingo — terms like: quitsies, clickies, tick-tack-toe, keepsies, knuckle down and knock out. Different types of marbles have their own alluring names, too: galaxies, tonks and tronks, grandmas and grandpas … the list is endless.

Simon, 39, is the oldest of three boys. When they were kids, he got out of sharing a room with his middle brother, Paul, by using marbles to bribe his younger brother, Michael.

“Michael had his own room. He swapped a solo room for my marble collection! That’s how valuable they were at the time. Mind you, he is dark about it to this day!”

ELASTICS

Generally this game involved jumping in and out of a long loop of taut elastic held at each end around the ankles of a couple of friends. Everyone chanted rhymes and the elastic got higher and higher. Here’s a cute home video demo.

Rachel, 45, recalls playing elastics — especially the rhyme “England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Inside, outside, inside out.”

She says: “Remember you went ankies, kneesies, thighsies and then necksies? I hate to say it, but I was the school champ in elastics.”

YO-YOS

“I never seemed to be able to do all the tricks that others could,” muses 49-year-old Megan.
Personally, I relate (always was hopeless with a yoyo.)

The yoyo — made from two disks and an axle with string tied to it — became popular in the 1920s, before making a huge resurgence in the 1990s. However, you can spot yoyos in Greek paintings dating back to 440BC. Who knew yoyos were that old?!

There’s even a World Yo-Yo Contest. This year it will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland.

(Some people see so-called “circus diabolos” as being related to the yoyo.)

FRIENDSHIP BANDS

When I was in primary school, I gave myself a repetitive strain injury from making so many friendship bands. (As outlandish as this seems, it’s true.) My mother, a physiotherapist, bandaged my wrist to help it heal. And she forbade me from making more bands!

Normally, the bands are made with thread and are given to others to show friendship. Creators use different combinations of colours and knots to create attractive patterns. Sometimes beads are added too. Here’s a simple guide if you’re keen to get started or show your children how.

(To me, other trends like loom bands and “Scooby Doo” knotting techniques are just variations of the same idea.)

It’s not you – solving a Rubik’s cube quickly is officially hard

If you thought solving a Rubik’s cube was difficult, you were right and maths can back you up. A recent study shows that the question of whether a scrambled Rubik’s cube of any size can be solved in a given number of moves is what’s called NP-complete – that’s maths lingo for a problem even mathematicians find hard to solve.

To prove that the problem is NP-complete, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers Erik Demaine, Sarah Eisenstat, and Mikhail Rudoy showed that figuring out how to solve a Rubik’s cube with any number of squares on a side in the smallest number of moves will also give you a solution to another problem known to be NP-complete: the Hamiltonian path problem.

That question asks whether there is route that visits each vertex exactly once in a given graph consisting of a collection of vertices connected by edges, like a triangle, pentagram, or the vast connections in a social network such as Facebook.

It’s reminiscent of the travelling salesperson problem, which aims to find the shortest route that visits several cities only once, probably the most famous NP-complete question of all.  “It’s very clever. The description of how it works is very clean,” says Jeff Erickson of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

NP-complete problems are easy to check, if you’re given a proposed solution, but the amount of time it takes to solve them explodes as the number of inputs goes up, at least with the algorithms we know about today. On the other hand, problems that have algorithms that run their course in a more reasonable amount of time based on the number of inputs are called P.

Researchers are still unsure whether algorithms exist that can solve NP-complete problems faster. This question, often called the P vs NP problem, is one of the most important unsolved maths problems and will net the solver a $1,000,000 prize from the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

So if you’re frustrated about how long it’s taking you to solve a Rubik’s cube, it’s not just you. “You have the excuse now: Rubik’s cubes are legitimately hard,” Rudoy says. You’re not going to figure it out quickly, so you might as well sit back and enjoy the puzzle.

Playing God

Every standard 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube can be solved in a maximum of 20 moves from any starting position, no matter how scrambled. In 2010, programmers found that 20 is the colourful puzzle’s so-called “God’s number”, a name they selected to suggest that even a deity couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube any faster.

A year later, Demaine, Eisenstat and their colleagues devised a formula to solve a Rubik’s cube with sides of any length and found that the number of moves required for a cube of side n is proportional to n2/log n.

Finding God’s number for a cube with n=3 took several years of computing time and Demaine estimates that the n=4 case would take billions of times longer. “I conjecture it will never be fully solved,” he says.

God’s number is the upper limit for the most scrambled cubes, but many cubes will not take that long. Figuring out whether any given configuration of a cube will take fewer moves is tricky. “We know an algorithm to solve all cubes in a reasonable amount of time,” Demaine says. “But if I give you a particular configuration of the cube, and then you want to solve it with the fewest moves for that configuration, that’s really tough.”

Demaine started working on the question after seeing it in a post from Erickson on a computer science forum, although Erickson says the question had been floating around for a while. “It’s nice to see it finally closed off,” he says.