In what I assume is a licensing loophole of some sort, NECA will be doing a line of Simpsons toys, but rather than giving us another set of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, we're getting Hef, Tom Hanks, James Brown, Yao Ming and Kid Rock.

From the press release:

Available to consumers in early 2014, the limited-edition boutique collection will feature diverse product roll-outs, highlighting the guest stars' animated likeness as depicted on The Simpsons. Additional celebrities showcased for the program will include other iconic music sensations, award-winning actors, actresses, sports heroes and more. New products will be introduced every two to three months, containing different groupings of guest stars, with limited quantities available at select pop-up shops and retailers worldwide.

Twenty-five figures will be released in total.

If I had to guess, I'd say that, like Minimates, this might be a partial end-run around likeness rights. In which case, the figure I most want from the deal is Clint Eastwood.

Who do you hope to see in the 25?

In semi-related content, here's a supercut of every Troy McClure movie title...

Remember how great that first Ice Age trailer was? No, I don't mean just for the Vanilla Ice song, although much bowing is due for that, indeed (yes it is, and you know it). Skrat and the acorn was some classic cartoon zaniness...but mostly unrelated to the tale of a mammoth, a sabretooth and a sloth finding a human baby and carrying it home.

Disney's Frozen - as opposed to Adam Green's Frozen, in which people trapped on a ski-lift wait forever to exercise their only viable options - is a retelling of The Snow Queen, but you'd never know it from the teaser, which features some funny business between a reindeer and a snowman, whom I assume will be comic-relief characters.

The final film may end up a typical fairy tale...but the teaser ain't that. Check it out after the jump, and tell me that snow dude was not made in the image of the Mad Hatter.

Please note: there will be SPOILERS in this review. Probably nothing a fan couldn't guess, but I have to touch on the ending a little bit just to encapsulate the general experience.

When the lights came up at the end of the world premiere of My Little Pony Equestria Girls, following a brief in-credits easter egg for fans, my screening companion (whom regular commenters will know as Kyle "SlyDante" LeClair) turned to me and said, "On behalf of all Friendship is Magic fans, I would like to apologize to you for the preceding movie" (this was what he meant by taking a bullet yesterday). Considering the zeal with which the little-girl audience responded to the film's musical numbers with well-prompted clapping led by festival volunteers, I suspect the official target audience won't mind too much. But when it comes to Bronies, the adult male fans of the cartoon who insist it's a well-written show...I predict there may be some gnashing of teeth. Whatever clever concepts the show may have - and I cannot claim to be especially familiar with it - the movie does not do very much with (there is a funny parody of political attack ads, but that's about it). And for a TV cartoon turned movie (think of how Simpsons did it, or Beavis and Butt-head), there was no extra expenditure to make things look better on the big screen. Given the relatively simple nature of the drawings, you could probably watch this on your phone and not lose much visual detail, if any. I wouldn't suggest paying to watch it, but if you held a gun to my head and told me I had to see it again, I'd say, "Sure, fine whatevs." It's far from the worst movie based on a TV cartoon I've ever seen. If you can really call it a movie at all.

You will never own the original Jetfire, since Hasbro lost the rights to the Macross moulds and the original is now super-expensive. But this Comic-Con, they will taunt you with the following (images via yojoe.com):

Hasbro has to know we'd all like to see an honest-to-goodness G.I. Joe/Transformers crossover line, but they taunt us with mere repaints, and in the case above, a partial resculpt that reminds us what we cannot actually own.

The humanoid version of Bludgeon who comes in the set is pretty decent, though.

And then, possibly salvaging the entire set from giving us the nostalgic blues, we have this heartwarming pairing of a girl and her pet.

The $100 set also includes a Vamp jeep in Hound colors, and Snake Eyes with green Autobot pants. Nothing in the set transforms. Not a damn thing.

Unless you use a hammer; then it transforms into a pile of plastic parts. And not back.

More Hasbro exclusives for SDCC 2013, including Jem and My Little Pony, were revealed yesterday in USA Today.

You can thank Christopher Nolan.

Perhaps not the way you're thinking. Tom Hardy won't be playing a "realistic" Jason any time soon, nor will Kenny need your permission to die. Rather, in order to secure co-funding from Paramount on Nolan's upcoming sci-fi epic Interstellar, WB gave up its revenue rights to future Friday the 13th - some of which had been owned by New Line - and South Park sequels (Comedy Central was formed from two pre-existing channels, including a Time-Warner one).

BUT...this only holds for five years. So if I were Paramount, I'd be hard at work developing both right now.

I have little doubt that's exactly what they're doing.

Well, that was quite eventful.

We had the Red Wedding on Game of Thrones. As well as Venture Bros. premiering with a pretty good GoT reference (plus a Hart to Hart reference nobody younger than I will get), and a T-shirt of the week club.

We also learned that Matt Smith is leaving Doctor Who. Speculations have ensued as to who the next Doc will be. While I'd like to see an older eccentric like Jim Broadbent, odds are it'll be a younger, handsomer guy. And it'll probably be a relative unknown - the only time they've gone for star power has been to propel attempted relaunches: Paul McGann in the TV movie, and Christopher Eccleston in the TV resurrection.

I could go for this regularly, but doubt it.

Meanwhile, The Simpsons expanded at Universal Studios Florida, and revealed their "Flaming Moe" as an orange soda with dry ice. (Booooooo!!!!!).

And I guess the statute of limitations is pretty much up on the new season of Arrested Development on Netflix - go crazy talking about that as you wish.

Any other shows you need to discuss? BRING IT!!!

Before it gets canceled, the show will be visited by a dynamic duo. It will also be very generous vis-a-vis the aging process.

Both will appear on the June 19th episode, "Leela and the Genestalk." I'm guessing some throwaway joke will explain how Burt Ward clearly dropped about 100 pounds before he died, and why Adan West's hair is dark brown. Or maybe those two just make so much money on the convention circuit that they can demand animators give them virtual plastic surgery, which is way cheaper than the real kind and less terrifyingly Joker-ish.

A while back, we discussed the many times pro wrestling has attempted to blend in with the mainstream, and failed miserably in the process. Well, either Vince McMahon never read the article (slacker) or he DID read it, and was somehow inspired to cross-promote even more, thinking the law of averages has to be on his side by now.

How else to explain WWE crawling into bed with Hanna-Barbera all of a sudden? A few months ago, they announced a new Scooby-Doo movie centered around a haunted WrestleMania (Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair are main-eventing again?) and now they've unveiled the follow-up: The Flintstones. With wrestlers. All because The Rock called John Cena a "fruity pebble" one time. Thanks a bunch, DWAYNE.

So now we get to deal with Cena meeting Fred and Barney, and presumably beating their asses at bowling because he's the awesomest at everything in the history of history. But why stop there? Tons of cartoons are ripe for an Invasion Of The Bodyslammers. All Vince needs is a semi-plausible angle to explain why they're there.

Barring that, he could just steal our nifty ideas for future WWE-cartoon crossovers. Feel free to do so; all we ask for in exchange is a spot on the next pay-per-view where we beat up Brock Lesnar, pin him in 90 seconds, and make him weep like a baby. Also, a private weekend with the Diva of our choice. But only one. We're not unreasonable or anything.

8. The Smurfs

Hey, we've already got two Hanna-Barbera shows that McMahon should've left alone, so why not make it a third? Smurfs and wrestlers together might sound like a bad idea, but so was making a CGI Smurfs movie. And they've done that TWICE. So clearly, an idea being "horrible" is not a deterrent.

How to set it up? Pretty simple, really. Gargamel invents a shrinking potion to make him small, thinking if he's the size of the Smurfs, he might be able to find their village easier. Did he already do that? It sounds like something he might do. Oh well, he can do it again. Better than coming up with an entirely new scheme that inevitably dies a slow, painful death.

Naturally, he leaves the potion behind, and it's discovered by a traveling band of wrestlers. They drink it, because how could a random boiling beverage in a dirty beaker possibly be bad? This shrinks them down, they are soon discovered by the Smurfs, and everybody just has the wackiest day imaginable. Probably all the male wrestlers will fall for Smurfette, because it's not like they work with impossibly gorgeous women every day or anything. Also, Grandpa Smurf will beat up a lower-card talent, because that's exactly the kind of positive exposure one needs to make it in the rasslin' business.

The unrated Director's Cut could feature Hornswoggle, extra-extra small due to being a little person shrunk down to Smurf-level, getting squashed like a bug. Doesn't matter who does it, as long as it's squishy and icky and the camera stays on it for a real long time.

"Vince McMagma, John Cenastone and CM Punkrock" will be the costars in a new DTV animated feature that will bring together the worlds of the Flintstones and WWE. Despite my title pun, there's no word on Mick Foley being in it - his character name just fits the catchphrase the best. This follows on the heels of a Scooby-Doo crossover due out next year.

The relationship between the two began after an ad-lib from The Rock describing John Cena as a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. Rather than take offense at the potentially homophobic innuendo (to which Cena replied with a more blatant Witch Mountain/Brokeback Mountain line about his opponent), the Flintstones folks at WB seized on the synergistic possibilities. Still, I'm guessing Dwayne Johnson is too big a star to get sucked into this as The Bedrock (which sounds like the name a Johnson-lookalike porn star might have).

Is this...ahem...Rock Bottom for the modern Stone Age family? Or would that have been the proposed Seth Macfarlane reboot?

Neil Gaiman sounds exactly like my uncle Patrick, and nobody else in the world does, so it weirds me out to hear his voice every time. But there's no denying he has a presence, and whatever his acting ability, he could probably do at least one role similar to himself pretty well. Especially as a vampire.

Yes, that's Buffy alum Amber Benson on the left. Both are attached to Blood Kiss, a vampire-noir from director Michael Reaves, who has written for such neo-noir animated shows as Gargoyles and Batman: The Animated Series.

But it's a Kickstarter project. One very close to the minimum as of this writing. And Gaiman has pledged that he will only act for Michael, and not in anything else.

Is it your dream to see the Sandman creator on a big screen? There's only one way to make it happen.

Insert "better than Zach Braff" joke here.

h/t bgone