Premature Nostalgia

When did cars stop getting cooler, and begin getting lamer?  Technologically more advanced, sure—but increasingly soulless.  When was the peak?  The 1950s?  The 1930s?

I can tell you when the iPhone peaked.  iOS 6, on the 4S.  I already miss it, and it's still in my hand.

The Summer of Animated Slugs?

Took my six-year-old daughter to see the William Joyce-penned Epic this morning.  The movie features a snail & slug duo as comic relief:

During the previews, we saw this slug as featured in the upcoming Pixar film, Monsters University:

Not to mention this very slug-like thing:

To my amazement, we next saw a preview for an animated movie about nothing BUT snails (racing snails, apparently), called Turbo (get it?):

That's where I was planning to end this post.  But we got home, made some lunch, turned the television to Disney XD, and—absolutely no joke—saw for the first time a new show called Slugterra on the screen:

Okay, so apparently Slugterra has been around since last October, and I hadn't noticed it.  But seriously, what gives?  It's not unheard of for similar ideas to cross-pollinate, propagate, percolate, and ultimately reach fruition at the same time, especially in the world of animated films (think A Bug's Life and Antz both manifesting in 1998), but this is ridiculous.