Who would have thought a program named Goo would be so popular? Probably Kai Krause, the legendary software developer behind many of MetaCreations great products. Like Goo, MetaCreation's new SuperGoo turns images into digital taffy that you can stretch, poke, prod, and twist into something utterly odd. SuperGoo brings all the facial stretching features from Goo, and combines them with a new feature, SuperFusion, which lets you blend images, or parts of them, together.

Unlike a morphing program designed to "melt" a pair of pictures together into something entirely new (a "friend" once blended my image with a cat to form "Catrick" (shudder)), SuperFusion allows you to replace individual facial parts, either from the large, included array of Feature Libraries, or from your own collection. We were wondering what our little brother would look like bald, and SuperFusion made it no problem to find out. We even generated random faces that combined all sorts of odd features from SuperGoo's libraries.

Like most (all?) of Kai's artfully assembled products, the interface is the thing. And while you're sure to figure out what's going on, it's not an easy interface. But given the flexibility of adjusting the brush size and the Goo Flow (how slick or thick the image you're tweaking responds to your brush), this difficulty was an inviting challenge rather than a daunting chore. You don't have to play your way through the application's interface, there is a full array of online help, but we think it adds to the process. Think of it like finger-painting; it's more fun the more mess you make.

SuperGoo definitely goes beyond its predecessor, and it's definitely worth the $50 price tag.

Company: MetaCreations
Phone: 805.566.6200
Price: $49.95
Available: Now
Platform: Windows 95, NT; Mac System 7.6.1 or later
Requirements: Pentium processor (or better) or Power Macintosh (or better), 16MB free RAM, 40MB hard disk space, CD-ROM drive, 16-bit color video