Gandal

One of the many magazines I often buy is "SFX", a British movie mag which features lots of great photos and decent writing, and like several other British magazines I find on the racks at Barnes and Noble, it is lushly printed.

I picked up the January 2013 issue last week, and started to look through it, and was startled to see that there was a piece in it about the Ninja Turtles. (If I'd looked more closely at the fine print on the bottom of the cover, I would have realized it was in this issue.)

Basically it was an interview with Kevin, which was mostly fine except for one glaring error having to do with a trip I supposedly took to Brazil, where, deep in the Amazon rainforest, I saw a native lad pretending to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, this anecdote illustrating just how the TMNT meme had permeated the globe. The problem with this -- and in the article, it is written as if I am telling this story -- is that I have never been to Brazil. That incident actually happened, but it happened to an associate of mine who related the story to me, following which I repeated it a number of times over the years, as I thought it was a nifty tale. But I've NEVER said that I was on that trip to Brazil. 

Anyway…

… what I really wanted to write about here is yet another stupid typo, this time in an advertisement for a "Gandalf" collector's statue, one of a number of "Official Weta Collectibles" released to go along with the new "Hobbit" movie. It's not a Weta ad per se, but rather one for an online store called www.mothersbasement.co.uk. It's a full page ad, in full color, on page 8 of the magazine. I suspect it cost quite a bit to place it.

And at the top of the ad, Gandalf's name is spelled wrong.

Holy cow.

I have great sympathy for whoever put together that ad, knowing the kind of sinking feeling likely felt when he or she finally saw how it appeared in this magazine (and perhaps other places as well). --- PL