It took me over a decade, but I finally saw Godzilla. The Matthew Broderick 1998 version, I mean.

Wow. Terrible.

I try to enjoy what everyone else trashes, because it’s the easiest way to be a bitchin’ nonconformist. But I could not do it with this movie. I’ve seen a thousand “giant monster” films, and even the worst of them had some charm. Here? No.

Everything about it was bad. By the time my mental bullet list grew to 37 lines – and I believe #37 was “Could they have chosen worse music even if limited to tracks from Ace of Base’s seminal album, Happy Nation?” – I gave up and agreed with the critics.

Still, I’m not sorry that they made it. Without 1998’s Godzilla, we wouldn’t have gotten 1998’s Godzilla Koosh ball.

You all remember the Koosh fad, I’m sure. Millions of rubber strings working together as a weird ball, ready to stretch and smoosh all of life’s little stresses away.

Well, at some point, King Koosh decided that his empire would grow to new heights by sticking heads, arms and feet into the things. I’m not sure how many “Koosh characters” came to fruition, but as the photo proves, there was a Godzilla version at the very least.

He’s awesome. They even used specially colored filaments to match Godzilla’s grey-green skin. He can’t stand without using his tail for balance, and sure, he looks a bit like Godzilla-as-a-Fry-Guy, but the fact remains that Koosh balls are infinitely more interesting with dragon limbs.

Also: Note the bunch of looped Koosh strings just behind Godzilla’s head. That means I can hang him from my rearview. I won’t, but it does mean I could.

There’s the header card. Not very interesting, but I didn’t want anyone to hatch the theory that I simply disassembled a Godzilla figure and glued the parts into a Koosh ball, all to perpetuate the idea that these really existed. I’m not a bad guy.