so i've been collecting incredibles toys from mcdonald's. i've eaten half a dozen happy meals in the month of november, and have four toys to show for it (i've now gotten doubles of two toys, which i gave to drbmd for his birthday). terrible, i know; i own super size me on dvd. but the toys are pretty damn cool.

it started a couple weeks ago because i was hanging with drbmd & he hadn't eaten dinner. there's a 24-hour mcdonald's only a few blocks from his house, so that's where he was going. i was hungry but had already eaten dinner hours earlier, so, remembering that mcdonald's was doing a happy meal tie-in with the incredibles, i decided to try a happy meal. i got an elastigirl toy (though mcd calls her "mrs. incredible") & it was actually pretty cool. so even though i hadn't seen the movie yet (though i planned to and expected to like it, being a superhero geek), my collector's mode kicked in & pretty soon i kept going back in order to get more toys. best case i'll probably only end up with 5-6 out of the 8 (at least without getting the rest on ebay or something), but they are genuinely good toys for the low cost. and once this promotion is over i'll probably go many, many months before eating another mcdonald's burger.

well today is my father's birthday, so we all went out for lunch, then dad & i went to the movies to finally see the incredibles.

wow! the movie was everything i could've hoped it would be. i would rank the incredibles as being on par with any superhero film i've seen. it's total formula (the characters are clearly modeled after the fantastic four, for just one example), but they absolutely nailed that formula. this is textbook superheroics. having only seen it once, i'm not totally comfortable it's "better" than truly great superhero films like spider-man (1 or 2) or the original burton batman. but i can say this movie this movie is great for all the reasons the raimi spider-man movies are: fantastic action sequences combined with very strong character work. and it's PG, as opposed to all my superhero favorites which are all PG-13.

and i haven't even mentioned the animation. needless to say, it's "exquisite", to borrow a term from connie's review.

this also tells me i need to watch the iron giant, which i'd always heard was good, and was adapted/directed by brad bird, the same man who wrote & directed the incredibles.

(fyi: the toys i have so far are [in order of coolness] violet, frozone, elastigirl, and syndrome. if the sequence shown on the happy meal site is correct, i can hopefully still pick up the incredibile at least, though it's probably too late to get mr incredible, dash, or jack-jack. or maybe i should stop eating all that solidifed fat & get them all on ebay... there are already 81 auctions up, many of which are for the full set [and several of which have "buy it now" options, even]. that would be the healthiest option, but i've managed to make it this far without even signing up for ebay. i'm not sure why; it's probably inevitable that someday i'll have to do it. but it's also xmastime, so maybe i should just hint around that a full set of incredibles happy meal toys might be a good ebay gift...)