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Toy Stories

''Transformers''? Ha! Other toys are just waiting for the blockbuster treatment! What about the sure-to-be-a-tearjerker ''Rubik's Cube: The Movie''? The sci-fi ''Asteroids''? Here are six ideas to beat Michael Bay at his own game

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BEAR WITH US Go ahead, laugh (we expect it), but Teddy Ruxpin here may just be some future summer's big movie star

All About

Transformers

By Chris Nashawaty

Chris Nashawaty

Chris Nashawaty is a senior writer for EW, and author of EW.com's DVD Insomniac column

With the blockbuster Transformers' release mere days away, we decided to see what kind of movies, based on our favorite '80s toys, we could come up with. To follow are a few ''treatments'' we think could give Michael Bay some competition at the box office.

Teddy Ruxpin
When a dying orphan boy's dream comes true, his stuffed teddy bear, Teddy Ruxpin, comes to life and whisks him into a world of wonder and imagination, where he gets to meet all of Teddy's stuffed animal pals. In the final days of his all-too-short life, little Timmy finds out what it means to have a true friend and be loved.

Rubik's Cube: The Movie
We see this as a three-hankie Oscar-bait drama about a poor, hunchbacked Russian inventor from Yakutsk who comes up with a way to pass the cold winter nights, a six-sided puzzle cube which will become his crowning achievement. The movie chronicles his arduous pursuit of a patent, his struggles with his nagging babushka wife who won't give him a moment's peace in his lab, and the ultimate irony — the fact that he himself is color-blind and therefore cannot solve his own puzzle.

Slinky!
Get ready for the ultimate in terror as a children's toy turns deadly. Its coils are sharp, metallic rings of death. And you can't hide because it will always slither in to tight spaces to find you. The highlight is a 10-minute DePalma-like set piece where the Slinkie slowly snakes down a staircase to attack a cheerleader making out with the high school quarterback on the bottom step. Directed by Eli Roth.

Slip 'n Slide
Or should I say National Lampoon's Slip 'n Slide? A hard-R teen sex romp, bursting with wet t-shirts and bikinis, is set in a horndog guy's backyard on the hottest day of the summer. Get ready to get wet and wild, it's Slip 'n Slide the Movie!

Asteroids
You thought it was just a video game. If only it was. The year is 2525 and a lone man (and his dog) on a faraway intergalactic outpost finds himself assaulted by a hailstorm of hurtling space rocks approaching his base. Can he blast them to smithereens before he is blasted to smithereens? If one man screams in space, does it make a sound?

Easy-Bake Oven
Emma Roberts stars as a clueless tween whose home-ec teacher gives her a hard time. She's failing the class. There's only one hope to pass the final and win over the dreamy class jock with a heart of gold — her signature Tollhouse Cookie Pie. But when the electricity goes out in her town, her plan is in peril. What to do? Ahhh, the Easy-Bake Oven, which runs on one battery-fueled heating bulb, will save the day. But it will still be a race against time.

Posted Jun 29, 2007 | Order Article Reprints