CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF TRON WITH A BOX OF CEREAL

Thirty years ago today, Walt Disney's Tron premiered in movie theaters. To help celebrate, here's one of my favorite items from my Tron collection. It's the elusive Tron Mini Flying Disc Shreddies cereal box. This box was only available in Canada, making this a hard box to find for us USA kids. My good pal and fellow cereal box collector Jason Liebig, the CollectingCandy.com guy, surprised me with this box a couple of years ago. Here's Jason's hi-res scan from his flickr archive. (Click on the box for a closer look.)

Jason also included the complete set of Mini Flying Discs and I've scanned these below.

Hopefully Tron will continue to play frisbee for another thirty years! Happy Birthday Tron!!

OUR D23/DISNEYLAND ADVENTURE: PART 4 TRON

Greetings programs! Rejoice! We’ve finally arrived at part four and that makes it the last Disneyland post. My twelve year old Tron loving self would have loved seeing all the cool Tron stuff at D23. Of course my 41 year old self enjoyed it just as much.

Hockey helmets off to the D23 folks who designed and set up the Tron room.


The original character costumes came to life in this black lighted environment complete with sound effects and Tron-esque voices.


Tron costume worn by Bruce Boxleitner.


Flynn costume worn by Jeff Bridges.


Yori costume worn by Cindy Morgan.


Ram costume worn by Dan Shor.


Unfortunately the Barnard Hughes costume wasn’t on display, but I did manage to buy this production piece. It’s a photo study of Dumont’s costume played by Hughes. This should make for a nice display with the note he sent me.

I’m not into Disney pins or Vinylmation, but I wasn’t able to resist these items.


At the D23 Expo, I was lucky and snagged a limited edition pin set signed by Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan. I’ve never had the chance to meet Bruce to get his autograph, so this was the next best thing. He and Cindy both attended the Expo, but his signing time conflicted with a panel. I met Cindy a few years back.

The Vinylmation is of Flynn and was the only one in the set from the first Tron.

Like I said, I’m not into pins, but I bought the Penny Arcade set just for the box. I had no clue this Atari tribute box existed and I about zapped out when I saw it displayed in one of the Main Street shops in Disneyland. You get three random pins based after classic Disneyland attractions and cult Disney movies. The design of the pins are fantasy Atari games and they’re packed inside a smaller box that’s shaped to look like the cartridge. Of course I was hoping for a Tron and Rocketeer. I was lucky and got a Tron pin along with an Astro Jets pin and a People Mover pin. If only a People Mover video game really existed! If you want a set, visit this site for info here.


I was glad to see that ElecTRONica was still open in California Adventure. We entered the Grid and this is what we saw.







If I had a bucket list when I was 12, then “Play Video Games at Flynn’s Arcade” would have probably been at the top.


Well...I got to scratch that off my imaginary list on this trip. I was envious of all the cool kids who got to visit Flynn’s Arcade when it was set up for the San Diego Comic Convention.

We walked in during the day and the place was empty. We played a bunch of classic vids for almost an hour including the imaginary game from Tron, Space Paranoids! So cool they recreated an actual working game for the arcade.

Here’s some of the games in the arcade.







I’m a neon junkie and I love old neon signs. So, neon signs based after some of my favorite games in neon form was almost too much. I managed to hold the camera long enough without going into fits to snap these next shots.










Afterwards we tried some blue lemonade at the End of Line Club and joined the Tron dance party!







Laserman was totally rad! Take a look at his performance here.



After one more game of Tron, it was time to head back to Disneyland for souvenir shopping and a few more rides! Oops, I mean attractions.

Boy, you know what? After working up these Disneyland posts my feet hurt. Hmm....it was just like I was there again.

Thanks for stopping by and surviving this retelling of our vacation.

TRON WEEK IS OVER

TRON LEGACY - MY REVIEW

A sequel that I’ve been waiting to see for 28 years finally hit theaters this past Friday and I didn’t see it on opening night. That’s right, and I skipped Tron Legacy for a date night with the first lady. (She’s not a Tron fan.) We saw Tangled instead, which to my surprise was really a fantastic movie. Shh... don’t tell the first lady, but it wasn’t all for love that I skipped Tron Legacy on opening night. The complete truth is that I didn’t want to see it at my IMAX-less local theater and I wanted to experience it with my brother just like we did for the original Tron back in the day.

So we road tripped three hours away to catch Tron Legacy in IMAX 3D and met up with big bro, sis in-law and my two nephews. My nephews enthusiasm before the movie reminded me how my brother and I felt with the original Tron. This made my already sky high hopes for this film even higher. Could the movie match the hype and marketing that I’d followed for the past two years? The answer is yes - yes it did.

I really enjoyed Tron Legacy! Sure there’s many things to be critical about the movie if a person wants to get nitpicky, but for me, it was fun once again to revisit the world of Tron. It has a lot of “cool” and “wow” moments! This second visit is a bit more touchy feely than the first one with a son trying to reconnect with his father. (This might be the perfect film to watch on Father’s Day!) What the movie lacks in plot and story it makes up for in style and design. Though for me, I wished for more neon. Some parts were a bit too dark and so it needed more splashes of colorful glowing lights. Glowing light just pops in 3D and this film needed to punch it up with more light.

As cool as it was to see Jeff Bridges play Kevin Flynn it was even cooler to see a younger Jeff playing Clu in digital form. Just like the first movie, this movie pushed the limits of computer special effects and it gave Clu a creepy quality for a great villain. The one actor that stole the show was Olivia Wilde as Quorra. She plays such an interesting character that she you want to learn more about her. Thumbs up for Quorra! One major character from the first movie is poorly used in this sequel and for Tron fans, this will probably be the number one complaint. I was disappointed in this character’s lack of screen time. (Hint: the movie is named after him.)

A new game can be played with TL and it’s called - Name the Movies Tron Legacy Borrowed From. I was able to name five, how ‘bout you? Ah, this is not necessarily a bad thing since they take from movies that I love, so all is good. The best part of the film is the super-duper soundtrack by Daft Punk. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a movie with a soundtrack that moves the story forward as well as Daft Punk’s score did.

My non-Tron fan wife liked Tron 2 much better than the original. My nephews really loved it and gave it five awesomes! As for my brother, well, he dug it just as much as I did and enjoyed the wave of nostalgia too. Tron Legacy is film to have fun with and to let yourself fall into a Tron trance and just enjoy the eye candy that it truly is. I can’t wait to see it again!

MMM YUMMY TRON LEFTOVERS

Hey look what I found in the fridge, more Tron stuff! It sure beats meatloaf!





Visit Branded in the 80's for an old magazine ad featuring this Smuckers give-away.






A stat used to create a newspaper ad for the Pike Place Cinema.