{"id":1459,"date":"2005-11-17T12:42:44","date_gmt":"2005-11-17T12:42:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/17\/striking_poses\/"},"modified":"2024-11-28T00:57:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T05:57:47","slug":"striking_poses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/17\/striking_poses\/","title":{"rendered":"Striking Poses"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>There was another nice write-up<\/strong> for the Thumbs<\/a> in the November 2005<\/a> issue of AVN (Adult Video News).<\/i> Although I knew this was coming out, it slipped my mind until after the fact, so I never grabbed a copy for my archives. Luckily the writer, Ken Knox<\/a>, sent me a PDF file of the page for posterity.<\/p>\n

Ken had also given the site some enthusiastic coverage in a blog entry<\/a> of his own a while before this hit the stands, which made me all kinds of smiley. Any attention for the project is always nice, but it’s especially satisfying when people get a kick out of the full mix of elements going on in those photos, instead of just appreciating them for the humorous or the horny content.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Striking Poses
\nA kitschy new gay adult site takes \u201cplaying with dolls\u201d to a whole new level.<\/b>
\nby Ken Knox<\/p>\n

If you think you\u2019re too old to play with dolls, then think again. Just ask Pete Handler, who found a whole new way of playing with some old G.I. Joe and Ken dolls when he launched his doll-centric but decidedly un-kid-friendly site PoseableThumbs.com<\/a>. The site\u2019s conceit? That had G.I. Joe and Ken met under the right circumstances, they just might have become the best of buds \u2014 fuck buds, that is.<\/p>\n

Having seen a few comedic photo layouts of Barbie, Ken, and Joe in various sexual scenarios, Handler decided to cut Babs out of the picture entirely and instead focus on the unexplored but obvious chemistry between Ken and Joe. At first he posted a few of the pics in his profile on an online hookup site just for laughs, but soon found that he was actually turned on by them. \u201cIn [the other pictures I\u2019d seen], they were always done for laughs or shock value,\u201d Handler explains. \u201cI wanted to go a lot further and see if I could really make them erotic.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he ditched the humor angle and started posing the dolls in more dramatically erotic situations. \u201cGood porn is usually about getting the viewer\u2019s imagination to do a lot of the work, so I wanted to see if I could get the same reaction by using the same setups, props, costumes, and lighting tricks, but using action figures instead of real people.\u201d<\/p>\n

So Handler started hunting down action figures and dolls on site like eBay (\u201cThere\u2019s a huge market for these really detailed military action figures that come with tons of elaborate props and costumes,\u201d he notes), and began to \u201cmix and match\u201d what he found, taking the figures \u201cout of the barracks and into the bathhouse,\u201d as it were. He\u2019s also photographed his dolls having back-alley threeways, locker room trysts, and full-on leather dungeon scenes. \u201cI\u2019m trying to trick people into getting turned on by using all the same visual shorthand that goes into regular fantasies,\u201d Handler explains of his iconic scenarios. \u201cI get a kick out of how easily we accept and [get hot for] symbols like jail cells, locker rooms, and jocks,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Audience reaction has been so positive (\u201cLots of guys have written to say that they were surprised to find themselves so turned on by the photos,\u201d he happily reports) that Handler\u2019s taken to asking for suggestions for scenarios, and will even custom create one-of-a-kind pics for fans \u2014 though he admits that it\u2019s sometimes a challenge to meet their demands. \u201cOne guy asked me to do a layout with a priest and another with a seeing-eye dog,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard to find those items to shoot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Handler says he\u2019d like to shoot enough material to publish a coffee-table book of his images, and hopes that Web surfers keep coming back to see what\u2019s in store for the site in the future. \u201cI have plenty of figures that haven\u2019t been used yet and a very fertile imagination,\u201d he says. \u201cSo the site will definitely keep expanding, regardless of how else the photos get shown.\u201d<\/p>\n

You know what that means, kiddies: It’s playtime!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was another nice write-up for the Thumbs in the November 2005 issue of AVN (Adult Video News). Although I knew this was coming out, it slipped my mind until after the fact, so I never grabbed a copy for my archives. Luckily the writer, Ken Knox, sent me a PDF file of the page … Continue reading “Striking Poses”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultragay","category-ultrapress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71582,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/71582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}