Max Steel news makes Gobots feel optimistic

Let's be honest, we all know that GI Joe: Rise of Cobra is going to suck, right? There's no scenario under which we walk out this August from an air-conditioned theater jam-packed with grown men in underoos and oddly formed girls who long ago figured out that they could be queens with the right choice in backpack and say "Wow, now that was good." The best we can hope for is that it sucks in a way that is still fun (this is a family blog, so I'll leave that obvious entendre alone). I know that Paramount has found success without merit in the Transformers franchise, but I'm guessing that these other boy toys are going to go the way of the Bratz movie and not the way of Michael Bay's giant robot-nuts-swinging opus. So, somebody tell me why Variety is reporting that the studio that shouldn't is pairing up with Mattel again for Max Steel, a forgotten toy whose very name evokes pornography. This lame-ass semi-superhero is described as a "19-year-old extreme sports junkie," a descriptor that should, in and of itself, merit the systematic and categorical destruction of each and every small likeness of his. Also, he's full of nanobots (which give him strength, unlike nanabots, which make you feel bad about your choice in wife and want to know why you don't call more often). Somehow, according to the press release, he's pretty tepidly received stateside but is huge in Latin America, where he is the number one action figure. Mattel has figured out that they can cash in on past success without having to actually make new or good toys and is aggressively pushing for Max along with a new He Man movie (I say new, because God help the fool who forgets the beauty of the Dolph Lundgren/Courtney Cox classic Masters of the Universe, which I'm pretty sure made me infertile), a Hot Wheels movie with Joel Silver producing (he did so well with Speed Racer), and (my favorite) a View Master movie (yes, the toy that basically acted as a manual, crappy, 3D powerpoint precursor). The whole toys-to-films craze should die off soon, but if it doesn't, I'm really crossing my fingers for a live-action, R-rated Popples movie.