Tugs - Thomas the Tank Engine Multiplied by Epic

In 1988, the creators of Thomas the Tank Engine decided the market was ripe for more industrial vehicles with human faces. They created ‘Tugs’, which was much more dramatic than you’d expect.

Read about the grit, the boats, the fires and the dockyard EXPLOSIONS after the click! That's right, explosions!

Sex in Video Games

Sex. Sexy, sexy sex! Some call it shagging; others call it ‘making the beast with two backs’; almost no one calls it ‘dancing the f**k fandango’ but they should because that’s hilarious. Since mankind realised they could represent concepts with symbols, some of those symbols have been about dancing the f**k fandango. Who can blame them?

 Cave men loved big butts, they could not lie

Read more about three of everyone's favourite subjects - sex, video games and sex in video games - right after the click!

Gender Equality in Lynx Adverts - Everybody Wants to Bone

For years the Lynx adverts had a predictable, recognisable motif. But for a little while it was undermined. We’ll get to that later. This is the archetype: a man sprays Lynx deodorant on himself and becomes irresistible to women. They swarm towards him like a terrifying blend of ravenous wolves and starving locusts. For example in this 1-minute advert from 2006 where women literally cross forests, mountains and oceans in their bikinis, summoned by the stench of deodorant:

I bet that advert was a lot of fun to film.

There's more realistic adverts after the click - but not much more realistic.

Bad Advert Ideas (Part One)

Some ideas just don’t work: mustard seed underpants, discount placebos, poo-flavoured microwave meals, charging down a valley towards Cossacks and Hussars when the valley walls are bristling with enemy gun batteries.

Charging down a valley towards Cossacks and Hussars while the valley walls are bristling with enemy gun batteries

But some people don’t realise when ideas aren’t working, and carry on regardless: ketchup bottle sex toys, gourmet restaurants at truck rest stops, denying the working class, charging down a valley towards Cossacks and Hussars when the valleys walls blah blah etc.

It's a great idea to read more about bad ideas, after the click!

The Truth About Freeze Powers

In all superhero stories, the power of ice also equates to the power of freezing people. Not killing them, just freezing them – disabling them by turning them into icicles. In the popular film The Incredibles, for example, the character voiced by Samuel L Jackson is capable of freezing a bullet mid-air as well as the policeman behind it:
 

In the X-Men, Bobby Drake (aka Iceman) can do it, since his powers are also ice-based. In various Batman incarnations, Mr Freeze can do it. Superman sometimes does it with his super-breath. The list could go on. But sadly, that frozen policeman from the video is almost definitely dead.

Now that I’ve said it you probably already see the truth of it, but after the click let’s break down just how horrible it is.

Gotham vs Metropolis

I’ve been playing a lot of DC Universe Online since it became free (when I can get onto the server). If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an MMORPG set in the world of Superman, Batman and the Justice League etc. It’s a world populated by aliens, witches, geniuses, psychopaths and heroes. You get to design a superhero (or villain), go on missions and earn experience in the standard MMORPG way.

This game makes the differences between Gotham and Metropolis very clear. One city is dirty and decaying, bathed in both eternal night and heavy rain. In the other, everything is clean glass and shiny steel, and it’s always a bright sunny day. I’ll let you guess which one is which.

Hint: nobody can see the bat-signal in daylight

Where would you rather live? Based on the above summaries, you’d think everyone would immediately choose Metropolis. But the opposite is true – most internet surveys turn up Gotham as the city of choice. Why is this?

Let's find out after the click!

Cars of the Future

If a car isn’t burning precious natural resources and clogging the lungs of small children with noxious, cancerous tar then what good are they? You might as well be on a bicycle! So who the hell would buy an electric car? What kind of pathetic loser would you have to be to get rid of your huge pedestrian-cruncher or midlife-crisis-mobile? What, are you going to ride a bus like some kind of peasant? How will anyone know how big your cock is, unless you drink diesel like lemonade and tear down the road like a bull making sweet, sweet love to a lion – deep and noisy.

...and sensual.

After the click we'll find out about the other, correct side of the argument.