KID STUFF!!

The breaking of the 78th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is a galaxy ranging ride through preproduction materials of the old Kid Stuff book, record and tape sets of the 80s! SEE pictures of my trip to the Bear and Bird Gallery's "Outside the Box" exhibit showcasing old printer's proofs and original art from childhood literary classics like Transformers: When Continentas Collide and Slaves of the Insecticons! HEAR my stunned amazement at the selection of strange and unknowable items from the production process of the read along book sets of my childhood. READ about the shocking unexpected find buried within the pile of papers I bought! What original Pablo Marcos Transformer art was up for grabs? What mysterious José Delbo robot drawing is haunting my every waking minute? And does Siimon Bisley even lift? Find out all that and more in this BEARS, BIRDS, BOTS AND ROBO HORSIES OH MY edition of the podcastalypse!

Or download it directly

See everything that was on exhibit at Bear and Bird's Flickr.

NOW HEAR / SEE / READ THIS

If you look on the back of your Transformer books by Kid Stuff you'll see their address listed as 450 N. Park Road, Hollywood, Florida 33021. Well that's just a few zip codes and two city bus rides away from me so I took a picture of the building that is there today, which I imagine was where they made the legendary Transformers adventures When Continents Collide, Satellite of Doom, Storms of Destruction, Jaws of Terror, and Slaves of the Insecticons. I got to meet Pablo Marcos and have him sign some of the Kid Stuff books he illustrated a couple episodes ago so these stories are kind of special to me.

Imagine my surprise then when I was at the comic shop the other day and their upstairs gallery had on display a ton of old Kid Stuff book and tape preproduction materials! Actually you don't have to imagine because this episode was recorded right when I was seeing it all for the first time. There was art from tons of different book and record series including G.I. Joe, Marvel and DC Super Heroes, Masters of the Universe, Barbie, She-Ra, Poochie, Webster, Sesame Street, Muppets, and of course the Transformers. Plus to top it all off, every last bit of it was for sale! The whole exhibit is ongoing through March so you want to check it out before people like me (except with money) buy up everything. There were easily over a hundred pieces from dozens of licensed properties.

'Satellite of Doom' Composition mock up (above left) and 'Slaves of the Insecticons' printing proof (above right)
I couldn't place the scene of Optimus and Prowl (above left) in any Kid Stuff book I know of but the piece to the right is from 'When Continents Collide'.
More original Pablo Marcos art from 'When Continents Collide'. Not bad at 60-75 bucks a pop.

I don't know what these were but the clear plastic layer on the top had the black line art and the layer beneath it was all the colors.


I don't know anything about He-Man or G.I. Joe Kid Stuff releases but these were cool looking to me.

I kinda wanted to get the printer proof of the Kid Stuff Transformers display (above left) but I'm not really a preproduction collector. However, I could not pass up the chance to buy a bundle of Galaxy Rangers materials (above right) all together for only 20 bucks!

The bulk of what was in the Galaxy Ranger pack was these storyboard style composition mockups. They're not really that interesting but the real treat was yet to come...


The big surprise for me was this set of Galaxy Rangers 35mm film frames! Since the book used animation cels from the second episode of Galaxy Rangers as illustrations, the production materials included clips of 35mm film with frames from the cartoon!

Goose piloting Ranger-2 flying alongside Ranger-1.
The Cybersteeds, or space robo horsies as I call them.
Check out these guns and Niko in a classic 'smack my head' moment.

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Bear and Bird Gallery's "Outside the Box" exhibit
• That time Pablo Marcos signed my When Continents Collide
• John Braden biography
• Outside the Box flyer
• ShockPopComicCon in Ft. Lauderdale in two weeks.
• Simon Bisley ABC Warriors Gallery
• Simon Bisley art on Facebook
• That time Derek Yaniger told me Simon Bisley inspired his G2 approach.
• 500lb Simon Bisley interview at ComicBookResources.com
• William Simpson has done more much more than Transformers.
• Happy Tree Friends in 'Copyright School'.
• More pictures I took at the exhibit
• Horrible Masters of the Universe song
• Got my Ultimate Edition Maxx Zero
• My conversation with Warner Archives about the status of their Robo Force and GoBots releases.
• Galaxy Rangers outro
• Steve-O Stonebreaker's Kid Stuff Transformers archives.
• Don't Rocket Punch Your Friends!

Return of Return of No Weblog for Old Robots Week Part 1: If I had a (JC) penny for every time I've read this ad I'd be rich

The move into our new residence has consumed my life and because of all the unpacking there's still no time to write my usual 900 word dissertations on 25 year old toy robot Volkswagens and their transforming dinosaur cohorts. So in place of my regular robot ramblings here's a couple quick sentences about some other ads not featuring guys whose names end in "tron" or "troid".

The pages shown here are from what I consider the greatest (non-robot) newspaper toy ad of all time. They're from JC Penny's weekly circular printed the week of 24 November 1983 in the Los Angeles, California area. What makes it great is that not only is a whole page dedicated to each toyline but they wrote each page as if it were a comic, with the action figures doing the sales pitches! Usually the text in newspaper ads was limited to quoted product descriptions pulled straight from the toy manufacturers' promotional Toyfair catalogs. But the JC Penny ad writers went way above and beyond on this one, crafting short bits of dialogue from product descriptions for each line's figures to deliver in word balloons. What is also incredible is the ad's approach toward product illustration. Accurate line art is used but the artists drew fantasy settings for the background. It looks cartoony enough to pass as a comic but the renditions of the figures are pretty toy accurate. The resulting combination of toy illustration, comic book dialogue and product solicitation is the most blatant toy self-pimpery I've ever seen in any medium.

People who criticized the toy based cartoons of the 80s for being nothing more than program length commercials would have had heart attacks if they saw this. The shows' aim may have been to promote product but at least in the Masters of the Universe cartoon He-Man never was so shameless as to say "We have powerful weapons and strong armor! We'll get them for only $4.99 each"! And in Return of the Jedi no Ewok suddenly yelled out, "Gather the rebel forces! Only $2.99

each"! That's the beauty of this ad. It cannot be accused of being deceptive because it's an ad. No media watchdog groups or children's rights advocates could complain that JC Penny was trying to sell toys with their ads because JC Penny was supposed to try to sell toys with their ads. The comics, cartoons and movies couldn't get away with this level of toy whoring. GI Joe never told you that the other half of the battle was having $3.49 to buy each figure sold separately.

Unfortunately the ad didn't have writers as good as the ones from the comics, cartoons and movies. Canon and continuity give way to product promotion when JC Penny is doing the writing. He-Man bragging about how he's going to use the Attak Trak to take Castle Greyskull singlehandedly? Jabba the Hutt, Ewoks and Gammorean Guards speaking English? This is marketing run rampant and it helps me appreciate how much thought went into the writing of the cartoons and movies I grew up watching as a kid. I don't think the toy manufacturers would've created something like these ads if they could get away with it in the production of their media tie-ins. They really did care about entertaining me and making shows that were fun to watch and as unretarded as possible. JC Penny on the other hand only cared that I knew the Attak Trak was $16.99. I still like JC Penny because although their adfiction sucks, they're the only department store with their own Star Wars continuity.

RETURN OF NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS WEEK! PART 3: If only for a moment, the most powerful K-Mart in the universe

I'll be busy this week moving into the Palace of Eternia after 3 months of living in Castle Grayskull. It's a good opportunity to do a second annual NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS WEEK. Except unlike last year when I put some effort into it, this time I'm just phoning it in. So enjoy this week's store appearances themed series of ads where various Floridian malls and marts from over 20 years ago rolled out the red carpet for a variety of guests hailing from Tatooine, Symbion, Eternia and wherever Donkey Kong comes from.

TODAY: K-Mart in Temple Terrace, Florida hosts He-Man and Skeletor on October 9th, 1985. Awesome line of the ad: "ROBOTO"!

Get Get Animated!

In 2004 I was lucky enough to stumble upon the site of an animation pro named John Cawley. He was selling copies of his 80s animation fanzine "Get Animated!". I was drawn to it because issue #3 had an article on one of the greatest toy robots cartoons of all time-Mighty Orbots. I was blown away by that issue of "Get Animated!" so I bought a couple more issues and each was just as incredible.

John has been in the animation business for decades and "Get Animated!" is special because he produced it during the 80s. Reading it is like going back in time and re-experiencing happenings in the animation industry

but from an insider's perspective. I don't have my issue #3 with me but I remember the Orbots article was credited to Fred Patten and Darrell McNeil who are respected historians of animation. It included excerpts from an interview with Orbots writer Buzz Dixon done in 1985 during a meeting of the Los Angeles chapter of the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization. Other issues of GA were full of awesome stuff like that-holy hell even Osamu Tezuka is listed as a contributor! I am amazed that John still hasn't sold out of these after 25 years.

I just found out John has a CD of the collected "Get Animated!" for sale. I cannot recommend this highly enough if you're into 80s animation like He-Man and/or The Mighty Orbots. Actually if you're a fan of animation in general I'd say go through John's site and buy everything.

VINTAGE SPACE TOAST TOUR 2008-VALLEY OF THE PAULS

The Prince of Macrocrania and I made an unintended overnight stop on our road trip from South Dakota to my native Texas when shortly after leaving Oklahoma City I saw a billboard on the side of the road for the Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. I thought, "Action Figure Museum? Why have I never heard of that before?" Then I realized that while my life experience may grant me a Doctorate in Roboplasticology, when it comes to action figures I only have a couple of community college credits in Spider-Man that don't transfer anywhere. So instead of making it into Dallas as I had planned that night, I decided we'd stay in Pauls Valley and check it out the next day before moving on to Texas. The museum visit derailed and delayed my progress toward Houston just as action figures have derailed and delayed countless toy nerds' progress toward emotional maturity. But like Texas, emotional maturity really ain't all that great once you get there so you may as well have some fun playing with little plastic dolls for boys along the way.

Now I may be dumb about action figures but this was pretty much my idea of action figure Heaven (or Nirvana or Valhalla or that place they took Bilbo to at the end of Return of the King). There were glass case displays of GI Joes, He-Mans, Star Warses and others and a whole room dedicated to Batman. There were a couple of huge dioramas like the one of an action figure collector's room that they have a picture of at their museum image gallery. That was at least thirty feet tall and fifty feet wide and crammed with over a thousand loose and carded figures (including a Defiant Shuttle complex). That alone was worth the six bucks admission. Also there were assloads of carded and loose figures from hundreds of different toylines crammed on every available square inch of horizontal space throughout. I am amazed that anyone could erect such a massive public tribute to the last 30 years of the Wal-Mart action figure aisle. (Toy robots have inspired some erections of my own, but they are nowhere near as massive and I prefer to keep them private.)

Aside from a glass case located out front, there was another area dedcated to Star Wars at the back of the museum. It had a display with carded figures from many Star Wars lines from '78 through the present. That was cool but what I loved was the wall of newspaper clippings, cardbacks and ads for vintage Star Wars toys. They also had the new Hasbro Millenium Falcon on display which I have never seen out of the box. This area might not be all that impressive compared to some dealer booths at toy conventions or even some people's mom's basements, but to me it was fantastic being surrounded by this collection of reminders taking me back to my wasted, squandered, misspent childhood.

Would a more discerning action figure enthusiast like the Pauls Valley Action Figure Museum? I remember back in episode 55 of Big Kev's Geek Stuff, Kev went to the Toy Museum in Natural Bridge, Virgina and although that place way outclasses the Action Figure Museum I went to, Big Kev found it lacking. Now Kev is a bigger action figure fan than I so if he thought the Toy Museum in Virginia sucked then he'd probably hate this place and I imagine all of the same critisisms he had there apply here thousandfold. But I think museums dedicated to toys are a phenomenon in its infancy and they'll probably get better as they grow. The loudest critics may be collectors with collections that would dwarf these museums, but those guys ironically have no place to put them. If anyone wants to say the Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley sucks then go ahead, but first honestly ask yourself if anyone would journey across the country to your mom's basement and pay six bucks to look at your erection. It is probably not the kind of question an emotionally mature adult has pondered, but I can tell it's crossed the mind of at least a couple Oklahomans.

NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS part 3: Please Save Me He-Mans!

Although I consider myself the Indiana Jones of toy robots archaeology and I romanticize my hobby with terms like Roboplasticology, the truth is that all I'm doing is looking through trash as I go pop culture dumpster diving in the library microfilm archives of America. And although my search focuses on the roboplastical, I do on occasion come across ads for toys I remember that played a much smaller role in my robot obsessed 80s childhood (and a much larger one in the childhoods of kids not afflicted with roboplasti-tardation). So join me all this week as we take a non-robot oriented look at a couple other toylines that also made an impression on my Scraplets riddled brain.

JC Penny 24 November 1982

I'M JUST A SUCKER FOR A GUY WITH A BIG SWORD AND AN ORKO

Albertsons 11/30/84

He-Man! Just thinking of the name brings back memories of the booming bass of the announcer's voice in the opening seconds of that cartoon. I will never forget watching that show everyday after school in late '83 and playing with the assloads of He-Mans my mom had been buying me since '82 (although I must admit I never had Barrie Cat). He-Man also consumed large amounts of my time while I was in school because I was always drawing him on my notebook paper while the teacher was talking. And until the sad day that my mom cut off our He-Man because she thought the toys were getting satanic, He-Man was all that got me through after Return of the Jedi left me cold. I guess I was on the rebound after Star Wars ended, stuck between toylationships and He-Man was there and I was weak and vulnerable. He had big muscles and a nice house. He had all sorts of cool rides and he was even a cat guy. We were just using each other when all along I should have been hanging out with that cute little red Lamborghini from Japan!

Murphy's Mart 21 November 1984

TEELA WAS MY FAVORITE HE-MAN

Before I go further, I have always called the line "He-Man". When I look at somebody's Masters of the Universe collection I always think, man, look at all those He-Mans. I know the correct term has got to be "Masters of the Universe" or "Masters". Even "MOTUs" would probably be more acceptable. Hell, even the retarded sounding "He-Men" would be a more proper plural but ever since I was a kid I have always used the silly sounding and grammatically incorrect "He-Mans". But hey, with names like Spydor, Panthor and the Attak Trak, He-man wasn't exactly a toyline for budding grammarians or orthographers.

IT LETS YOU MASTER TURNS...MASTER SPINS...MASTER BAITING!

Albertsons 11/30/84

You gotta have a bike! Transformers and GoBots were both rather unimaginative with the naming of their plastic tricycle bikes. Both of their bikes shared the generic name "Power Cycle". Voltron did a little better with the "Lion Cycle". But before all these rather generic and uninspired attempts at plastic bike branding, there was the brilliant and magical moniker used for the He-Man bike-THE MIGHTY CYCLE. Man that name had balls! It's what I imagine Evil Kinevil wished he would have called his bike. Tell me this isn't the greatest plastic bike commercial you've ever seen! Okay, honestly I was a little disappointed in the commercial because I was expecting He-Man to show up at some point and shoot his sword lightning at one of the kids as they're riding, instantly vaporizing the boy and turning the Master Cycle into a robotic Mecha Battle Cat that would transform into a suit of armor for He-Man to wear as he leaps into space and kills the sun.

ROKKON IS THE MOST HEAVY METAL ACTION FIGURE NAME EVER

My focus when searching though old microfilms is entirely on toy robots ads and if I stray from that it's usually for good reason. One great reason came up when I saw the Gimbels ad below. Amongst all the other Mattel toys they were advertising for their "Mattel Week" was a three pack that is something of a holy grail for He-Man collectors. I found the Lionel Playworld ad next to it interesting because it's from late 1986 and by then toystores had stopped advertising He-Man as much as they used to. To see an ad with so much Masters of the Universe line art love in one place was rather novel, even if it was within the context of a liquidation ad. The characters shown illustrate why He-Man lost favor in my house. Mom thought the Snake Men were a bit over the top and I thought Snout Spout and the Comet Warriors were a bit over the shark.

Gimbels 11/20/83	Lionel Playworld 11/28/86

THE END OF (t)HE-WORLD

Playworld 11/18/87

The most powerful clearances in the universe handed He-Man his butt in 1987. Although I jumped that sinking ship early, He-Mannerisms would stay with me. Even decades later my love of He-man would make me both famous amongst literate toy collectors and an object of ridicule amongst hipster Antarcticans. I once started a thread on the Usenet group rec.toys.action-figures.discuss where I remarked that the 2000 reissue Teela looked fat. I was credited when that comment made it into the following month's Toyfare magazine, which makes me a famous published guy or something. Then once during a poetry slam in Antarctica I introduced myself as "Esteban, prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull". I could tell by the rolling eyes and stunned silence that those Antarcticans weren't exactly the kinds of people who posted to rec.toys.action-figures.discuss. I took comfort in knowing that even though I was considered a weirdo in Antartcatica, the last refuge of social rejects and outcasts from all corners of human civilization, it was geographically impossible to kick me off the planet. THAT WAS THE LAST TIME I READ GREEN EGGS AND HAM TO THOSE FUCKERS!