Robin Bobcat - 01 April 2009 06:44 AM

Actually, the scene you want is from Airplane, with the stewardess inflating Otto, the autopilot..

And that appeared on video (in the movie), so it must’ve been real too! 

(Actually, I understand that since the movie, you can buy Otto somewhere.)

I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’ve seen two fairly reliable sites that said the thing originated with the Onion affiliate site.  I’m very skeptical that the thing ever made it into stores even if it was made.  (And it wouldn’t be all THAT difficult to make a video like this even if the thing never existed.)

Also, pointing to a copyright date on the toy doesn’t mean the toy has necessarily been around that long. I’d assume the copyright refers to the licensed images and not the toy itself.  If anything, it means the toy couldn’t be older than that date, but it doesn’t mean it’s not newer.

Transfrmr - 01 April 2009 03:08 AM

Unfortunately, this does seem to be a legitimate “Inflatable Wolverine Toy”. So the Claim that an Inflatable Wolverine toy with the inflation point being rather unfortunately located is not a hoax.

I’ve gone through a few articles an not unless it was a really ridiculous site did it claim that it was a “Wolverine Bolow-up doll” specifically.

The Inflatable Wolverine toy with an inflation point located where the male genitalia would be is thus not a Hoax.

I’m not sure I follow the logic.  The fact that some sites referred to it as a “blow up doll” proves that the toy actually exists?

I understand Alex’s assessment of it could line up with what Accipiter said.  The one in The Advocate really can’t, though.  I’d like to know what their “further digging” consisted of.

Yes, the video looks pretty good.  It could be a real toy, but I don’t think this video alone is proof.  Is there any other information about this?

Robin Bobcat - 01 April 2009 06:44 AM

Actually, the scene you want is from Airplane, with the stewardess inflating Otto, the autopilot..

That’s the one.

JoeDaJuggler - 01 April 2009 10:57 PM

Transfrmr - 01 April 2009 03:08 AM

Unfortunately, this does seem to be a legitimate “Inflatable Wolverine Toy”. So the Claim that an Inflatable Wolverine toy with the inflation point being rather unfortunately located is not a hoax.

I’ve gone through a few articles an not unless it was a really ridiculous site did it claim that it was a “Wolverine Bolow-up doll” specifically.

The Inflatable Wolverine toy with an inflation point located where the male genitalia would be is thus not a Hoax.

I’m not sure I follow the logic.  The fact that some sites referred to it as a “blow up doll” proves that the toy actually exists?

I understand Alex’s assessment of it could line up with what Accipiter said.  The one in The Advocate really can’t, though.  I’d like to know what their “further digging” consisted of.

Yes, the video looks pretty good.  It could be a real toy, but I don’t think this video alone is proof.  Is there any other information about this?

Hmm. Well now you have me second-guessing myself. The video does look good, and the source is someone who regularly reviews innapropriate toys and does have some credentials and credibility. A search for Rinco turns up Rhode Island Novelty right away, but the company seems to go by RINO (even down to the URL and not Rinco…

I’ve sent in a request to Rinco through their website as to whether they ever carried this toy sinc eit really does seem that Jeepers Media is the only place that has any… We’ll see what they say..

So, I digress for the time being. It looks like there may be a toy that really was manufactured that had these characteristics, but it has yet to be proven in any substantial form.

The original post in this thread claimed that the toy that the Christwire article was based upon really exists but is misrepresented. If Mike Mozart really doe shave samples of the toy, and it actually was produced, then the Christwire article is actually not a hoax, since ti doesn’t refer to a blow-up doll, but rather an “inflatable toy”.

I guess the quality of the video had me jump to a premature conclusion, and it could very well be yet another hoax riding on the back of a hoax..

I will now cry in the corner quietly….

Okay. . .I didn’t really care enough about this to look earlier on, but now that some fussing has started over it I’ve gone ahead and done an online search for every relevant combination I could think of involving the words “wolverine”, “hammer”, “inflatable”, “rinco”, and “toy”.  And yes, I got some very. . .ummm. . .interesting results.

But what I found:  I could only find one example of the Wolverine inflatable hammers that wasn’t just a recap of this story.

It included this image:

So the item seems to exist.  But the image is too small on that page to see if the placement of the valve is where it has been claimed. . .though it would make sense to have the valve in that part of the toy.  On the ones in the Mike Mozart video, the valve seems to be on the side that is presented in the above photo.  Though it’s hard to tell because of the extremely irritating way he has of shoving his face or the toy right up into the camera lens so you can never really see the whole thing.

Here is another webpage that sells similar products (such as the Spyro the Dragon inflatable hammer, whomever he is).  At the bottom of the page it states “RINCO = Really Inexpensive Novelty Company!”

So it seems to be the same company making that inflatable hammer as Mike Mozart said made the Wolverine one.  Again, though, I’m not seeing the placement of the valve anywhere on the product, even though the picture quality is better on this website.

Finally, here’s another page that lists several other inflatable superhero hammers for sale.  They only have them with Hulk, Iron Man or Spider-Man on them, but Marvel Comics seems to indeed have had a line of these toys.  There’s no information on who made it.  And it’s still not clear where the valve on them is.

So it seems that there is indeed likely a Wolverine-themed inflatable hammer.  But the positioning of the valve is still in doubt.

EDIT:  And here’s a website with one of the Spiderman hammers as well as a Green Goblin one.  It shows the reverse side of the Goblin one than is shown on all the other hammers.  No sign of the valve’s position on it, though.

Nice find Acci. I looked around for the product hosted somewhere else yesterday and found nothing at all which fuelled my doubts.

I have a utility that lest me capture screenshots at a set rate, so I nabbed 20 frames per second of the video. While Iwas doing it, I noticed something else that I hadn’t before.

In the video, Wolverine is on BOTH sides!

I think this is supposed to be the front:

And this would be the back:

Now I’ve had a few of these squeaky hammers from sports events and the like, and they usually do have the valve stem at the bottom. Since they had Wolverine on both sides, it actually makes this being a real-toy much more plausible to me. In theframe-by frame screenshots, the valve looks real when seen from all angles, and it is consistent with valves that I hav seen on similar toys.

I’m tending to lean towards this being a real toy… Still not 100% sure, but…

Transfrmr - 02 April 2009 10:52 PM

In the video, Wolverine is on BOTH sides!

Yep.  But the shape and pattern on the hammerhead part lets you know which side is which.  And it appears from the video that the valve is on the side that faces upwards when the hammerhead is at the top and facing to the left.  So in the hammer that is shown on the first webpage I linked to, the valve should be visible (if the image quality was good enough to see it) because that’s the side facing upwards.

I tried magnifying that first image from the site selling the hammers to see if I could see anything, but it just got all pixelly and blurry without me seeing anything.  I don’t know if that’s because the valve isn’t there, or if it’s just below the resolution threshold.

Well, this is about the best I can do on a clearer zoom of the picture.

It actually does appear to have something at that spot (a lighter colored circle…) but with this low quality picture, it’s impossible to tell if it really is a valve, or just a reflection, or nothing at all.

Interesting info.  Nice work, both of you.  (I couldn’t even find an example of a Wolverine hammer for sale.)

I can’t quite see how the figure could be on both sides.  It sure looks like his legs wrap around the end.  Or is that a different image? (I mean, not identical to the one on the other side?)

I still find the video itself unconvincing.  If the hammer that Acci found exists but doesn’t have the valve stem in the figure’s crotch, it wouldn’t be that tough to cut out a piece of plastic from on hammer and glue it in the appropriate place on another.  If I had done that, one way of hiding any imperfections would be to keep the things moving around a lot and shoving them close to the camera.  (Why would he do such a thing?  I dunno, but I’ve never heard of Mike Mozart or toy reviews before, and now quite a lot of people have heard of him and his services.)

Maybe I’m just getting cynical!