‘Hobbit’ Inspires Littlest Big Showdown in the World, Round One: Lollipop Guild vs. The Seven Dwarfs

It's been almost nine years since my last journey to Middle Earth. Full disclosure: I only went there hoping to catch Arwen on the rebound after Aragorn gave her the old heave ho and all I got to show for it was a broken heart and a case of Elven crabs. But it looks like the winds of fantasy are pushing my ship there once again on December 14th when The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first installment in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy hits theaters.

As I await the onslaught of every annoying comedian I know doing Gollum impressions, I pay tribute to those timid adventurers of lilliputian dimensions, the Hobbits, with a round robin-style showdown where we pit fantasy's most badass dwarfs and midgets against one another to see which creatures are truly strong enough to face off against Bilbo and Co. in the final round.

Today's first round sees a face-off between those scruffy and saccharine slaughters from Munchkinland, the Lollipop Guild, against the holy septemvirate, the miners of might...The Seven Dwarfs. Let's see who will live to survive to next week's fight.

The Lollipop Guild - Don't let the stockings and candy fool you, these guys will kill you with kindness then crack you over the head with a lollipop the size of sunflower. If you thought the teamster's union was bad, don't mess with this guild unless you want to end up buried under the 50 yard line of Giant's Stadium. Sure, they don't pack a lot of muscle, but they go for the long, drawn-out death: Steadily increasing your blood sugar with heaping piles of sugary sweets until you fall into a diabetic coma and pass away in the dark of night.

The Seven Dwarfs - With names like Sleepy, Bashful and Happy, they're already down a few points on fierceness. But these little tykes make up for it with their Thunderdome-style weaponry of mining equipment. Ever take a pitchfork to the head before? And you damn well know they're whistlin' as they pick and shovel their way through your lower intestines. These guys are more gold hungry than medieval anti-semitic depictions of Jews and they don't care who they have to kill to get their hands on that yellow mineral.

And the winner is...

Sorry to all you fans of the Yellow Brick Road out there, but this bout goes to the Seven Dwarfs. Years of abuse and languish under the hands of the evil Wicked Witch of the East has caused atrophy in the Lollipop Guild's muscles and spirit. They just don't have the fight in 'em anymore. So congratulations Dwarfs, you move on to next week's battle. Good luck.