6 Movie Merchandise Misguided Messes

Look at Ariel and King Triton smiling and dancing around that plate of their loyal subjects, whose corpses are carved up and breaded for your eager consumption. It's like their entire business model is luring the sea's inhabitants to Atlantica, only to sell them as food to the humans of the world above. And what the hell are you so happy about in this picture, Flounder? You aquatic Uncle Tom.

That's making pretty light of mass murder, Disney. Universal didn't make a Schindler's List board game with the tagline "Use all of your might, use all of your power ... get all the Jews into the sho-"

This title card brought to you by last-minute restraint.

Right up until Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, there wasn't much crossover between musical fans and comic book nerds. So we feel bad for the poor team called into the boss's office back in 1952 and asked, through a haze of cynical cigar smoke, to pen a comic adaptation of Singin' in the Rain.

The My Fair Lady/X-Men crossover wouldn't happen for several more years.

The hit Gene Kelly musical won awards for its music and choreography, neither of which could be translated to the silent medium of text atop still images. So how do you make a long-form adaptation of Singin' in the Rain without any music? Simple: You don't. Paring all the songs and cutting the story down to its basic plot made for a trim 12-page book.

Twelve pages. We've written longer pieces about interesting bowel movements.

Also keep in mind that, unlike many musicals in which the singing is incidental to the plot, the musical elements of Singin' in the Rain were its entire point. As such, the story of a woman with a substandard singing voice tends to translate badly.

You can totally read how shitty she sounds.

And that's to say nothing of the printing technology of the day, which turned Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds into Vincent Price and a department store mannequin from Buffalo Bill's dungeon.

Who just finished feeding on a litter of puppies.

The Singin' in the Rain comic is a great way to relive the classic movie ... in the same way that having an Astro Pop is a great way to relive real space travel.

Unless he's in the hands of a very skilled writer, Superman can be kind of a boring dude. Mostly because his superpower is everything -- from super-ventriloquism to throwing his chest logo as a projectile, there's no problem that Superman can't solve by dipping into his bottomless well of often-never-seen-before powers that he just discovered he has. It's not like Batman would ever resort to such a hackneyed storytelling device ...

Why do that when you can throw money at the problem?

This becomes a problem for toy makers trying to sell a Superman line. You can't really market any accessories, because Superman doesn't need any goddamn accessories. Giving Superman a bitchin' exoskeleton is like giving Superman a rascal scooter -- he doesn't have the slightest need for either. Luckily the folks at Kenner heard those concerns and said, "Yeah, but what if we gave him both?"

Here's the Superman Justice Jogger.

"Take the world's most powerful superhero and strap him into a machine that was defeated by Ewoks!"

The Justice Jogger was a walking machine for Superman that promised "power stepping action" as though goddamn Superman is mostly known for his inability to get around under his own power.

[Please do NOT insert carefully-avoided Christopher Reeve joke here]

It's an accessory that would make sense for Professor Xavier, but not so much for a superhero who is not only not disabled, but is what some might even call ... super-abled? It's like giving the Flash a Prius -- if anything, it would only slow the hero down by several magnitudes. Seeing Superman stomp around in a robotic Hoveround makes it look like he had a bad breakup with Lois Lane and gave up on life.

"Why bother, Wonder Woman? You're just going to leave like she did!"

J.M. McNab co-hosts the pop-culture nostalgia podcast Rewatchability ( rewatchability.com) which can also be found on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @Rewatchability.

For more ridiculous toys, check out The 10 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Toys Exported by China and 9 Unintentionally Terrifying Old-Timey Children's Toys.

Daniel O'Brien can help your kids draft their own presidential fantasy team, with these hilarious-but-true profiles of our past leaders in Your Presidential Fantasy Dream Team!