Toy Story Moment

Actually a few hundred Toy Story moments all at once.



Poor Optimuses.

-Signing off.

Truth and Lies In Advertising (Are of No Concern Here)

So I still don't have an internet connection. I do have this Transformers toy commercial, which is one step away from the greatest type of toy commercials ever made, though.



That being stop-motion commercials where the actual toys appear to be moving under their own power.



Seriously, those are the best.

And also illegal in the United States, as indicated by the Transformers ad having the "toys do not move on their own" disclaimer.

-Signing off.

VENEGANCE (Not My Typo)

Do you see what you have wrought, anthropomorphic animal people cartoons of the '90s? DO YOU SEE?

(NOTE: The following contains cartoony violence, including blood.)



I'm not saying it's a bad thing, per se... It's just silly.

(Note that the Mechawhales are also toys adult collectibles.)

-Signing off.

Yet Another Amusing Transformers: Prime Toy Commercial

Like, oh, about two thirds of the eastern United States, I'm currently weathering out a bit of a storm. So here's a quick post.



Two things that make me laugh beyond the obvious content of the advertisement itself, from the TFWiki page for the item being advertised:

1) Optimus Maximus is classed as an "Autobot... thing" in the disambiguation section.

2) The caption for the toy photograph-"Your Optimus is so fat, when he sits down people call it base mode!" Classic.

-Signing off.

I Wouldn't Want To Ride That: Moon Unit Edition

In the vein of this older post, I've decided that every now and again I'll mock vehicles designed by people who are, well, in need of learning how to design vehicles.

I present you Mattel's "Uni-Tread and Space Bubble."



Do you see how bad that poor guy in the Bubble is getting rocked around? Granted, a full-scale version would probably have better balance through weighting, but still...

Also, I wouldn't ride in a vehicle that only separated me from hard vacuum with a plastic bubble, but maybe that's just me...

-Signing off.

LOTS OF BULLETS

This commercial is hilarious for some reason.



First, the fact that they have dual shoulder-mounted gatling cannons is funny in itself-as gatling cannons can fire about a thousand rounds a minute, well, why would you need two?

Second, the implication that this is the first time Transformers have ever had such cool weapons.

Yeah, you really want to imply cool weapons have never appeared in Transformers before?

-Signing off.

Mood Whiplash

I have... kinda weird Internet browsing habits.

Two videos that I found my way to today: Implicitly violent humor.



Insanely cute Japanese gal trying (and mostly succeeding) to speak English while advertising a product.



This is not an unusual combination for me.

-Signing off.

IT'S KEYBOTS!!

HEY EVERYBODY, I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE KEYBOTS!

YOU STICK A KEY IN THEIR LOCK AND THEY POP APART!

THEN YOU CAN PUT THEM BACK TOGETHER, ONLY DIFFERENT!



APPARENTLY YOU NEED A GUY WITH A DOCTORATE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THIS!

THE KEYS ARE SHAPED LIKE SWORDS! ISN'T THAT COOL!

MAKE AN ARMY AND CONQUER THE WORLD WITH THEM!

(I'm very sorry.)


-Signing off.

Weird Anime Character Find (#1)

(As in the past, the #1 is if I feel like continuing it. No guarantees.)

From 1991's Getter Robo Go (which is one of those things that supposedly "never happened") comes...

...this... guy, who I can only describe as a weird cross between Arnim Zola and Two-Bad.

-Signing off.

Great Face or Greatest Face?

There's an obscure cartoon based on the Playskool Transformers Go-Bots line which can be found on YouTube. I was showing it to my sister for giggles, because it's kind of funny and occasionally surprisingly awesome (for instance, at one point the leader Go-Bot grabbed an oil tanker's anchor and pulled it straight up a mountainside).

And then there's my sister's favorite part: The Strong-Bot face.

He pretty much has this face all the time, except once when he appeared to be mad. (His eyebrows dipped. Except that he doesn't have any eyebrows...)

It's pretty funny if you can stand the audio. (Quote from my sister while watching one episode: "Everything he does is so cute... and destructive!")

-Signing off.

Gold Lightan Hands

(What the FLIP was that, Blogger? Yeah, yeah, maintenance, I know, but you [temporarily] nuked a bunch of posts [and I still had to partly fix mine, at least-did anyone else get those weird number boxes in their tags?] and made it inaccessible for long enough for me to miss a post? Worst maintenance cycle ever.)

I've talked about Gord Raitan Gold Lightan here before. For reference's sake, here's the intro of the series.



Finding toy commercials always seems to add new context about robots like this.



GIANT CREEPY SPECTRAL HAND ATTACK. (Actually, I suppose GIANT CREEPY SPECTRAL HAND-POWERED TRANSFORMATION would be a lot more accurate, but I'll go with that.)

-Signing off.

Separated at Birth: Creepy Fuzzy Thing Edition

Ferbus and Furby.

This is one of those things that's so mind boggling, I can't believe they both actually exist in the same reality.

Ferbus is a strange little alien pet/sidekick from the American Masked Rider series (which aired from 1995 to 1997 and was not really a huge attention getter, at least not compared to Power Rangers, the series it had been spun off from).

Furby is an even stranger little electronic pet... thing that can talk to people or another Furby (popular from 1998 to 2000).

They have similar appearances and even similar names (though Ferbus actually has arms and real legs, stubby as they are).

And somehow, they aren't related at all?

How is this possible?!

(On a related note, I've heard a funny story about Furbies. A friend of my sister apparently owned several, along with a much more obscure electronic talking toy called an Oogly. [Yes, really, though I may be mispelling it.] Ooglies were extremely loud, exuberant, and downright obnoxious-if I recall the commercials, they basically scream and shout and laugh like maniacs.

And apparently they scare the bejeebers out of Furbies, who "go to sleep" whenever an Oogly is too close.)

-Signing off.

They Could Have Come Up With A Better Name

In a somewhat similar vein to this recent post, here's an old commercial segment for Ding-A-Lings, some quite old robot toys that I've recently learned a bit about.



Purportedly, this is the equivalent of a sales pitch to a supply chain, i.e. stores that would have sold the product, though it is believed by the poster that the footage would have been recycled in commercials.

Lately, I've been charmed by old and obscure toys of various sorts. And probably not the ones that you're thinking of. Have you ever heard of Animax or Megadon?

I hadn't either, more than two days ago.

Although I'm not much of a toy collector (despite having a decent collection); I'm more of a collector of pixel arrangements.

-Signing off.

ROM, Spaceknight: The Commercial

(I just figured out my 700th post was Spider Plus Mummy. Fitting.

Also, I don't know what butthead designed this keyboard, but why did the Insert key get moved up out of reach of my fingers? I use that key a lot.)

This commercial is totally rad. (Wait, since when do I use the word rad?)



That is all. (Unless you want to look at my past "space knight" posts. Just click the label. You know you want to...)

-Signing off.

Creepy Lego Stealing Guy Will Steal Your Legos... Creepily

What I personally think is most remarkable about this video is how it perfectly plays on the way a child's fantasy world works.



That dude's ability to steal Lego bricks from anywhere via the little doors in his wall is similar logistically to the way Santa can deliver gifts or Monsters Inc.'s monsters can use magic doors.

It's a weird (and absolutely creepy) but awesome piece of work.

-Signing off.

A Great Advancement In Toy Technology

(For sis, who is on a trip: Bombshock, Optimus Prime, and Bumblebee. [Also, on an unrelated note, space slug and interocitor.] She knows what I'm talking about. For the rest of you... Sorry, you'll just have to wonder.)

For more than a decade now, the majority of American toys (at least, the majority of my American toys) have suffered through a brutal requirement in the name of safety: Twist-ties.

These plastic-coated wires have been the bane of many a child's (and toy collector's) efforts to extract their toys from packaging. (As Dave Barry once noted, it seems that the safety regulations are updated because now and again the regulators receive word that a child managed to get a toy out of a package.)

I am happy to report, however, that for the first time in history that trend seems to have reversed.

I recently purchased several Transformers, and upon opening one discovered a significant, incredible change:

They've replaced the nigh-indestructible metal/plastic composite twist-ties with tough yet easily cut-with-scissors paper/string ties.

As someone who has opened multiple Supreme and Leader class Transformers, who tend to have a twist-tie spaced every three quarters of an inch across their massive frames, secured tightly by any means possible, and generally collapsed in exhaustion afterward, being able to easily cut the [expletive deleted] things with scissors without worrying about dulling the blades is wonderful. I could cut the new strings with my tiny, poorly designed toenail scissors.

On the other hand, the new strings probably will keep me from building a five foot tall model of the Liege Maximo out of the old twist-ties, but I guess you can't have everything.

Here's hoping they're a permanent change.

-Signing off.

Behold...

The terror of...

...Mr. Machine!

When my mom first bought this toy (my uncle [her brother] had one of them as a child, and it was apparently spurred by nostalgia), I thought little of it, beyond the fact that it reminded me of Roboto from He-Man, and I figured it was probably at least partly the inspiration for Roboto's design.

Little did I suspect...

Mr. Machine spends most of his time relatively precariously perched near a window in our kitchen/dining room. (It's only precarious because we have an incredibly stubborn old cat who might decide to shove him off, and an enormous younger cat who might knock him off by accident while in the general area. I have nicknamed the younger cat "Shizu-quake" [Shizu is her name] because of her tendency to knock stuff down.) I made little note of this, until one night, after the sun had gone down...

I was washing dishes in the kitchen. (Yes, really.) I was alone, because my sister, who usually hangs out with me while I'm doing the dishes, was on a little group expedition of some sort. And I glimpsed back, and... Well, I didn't quite jump, but I was pretty startled at the sight of a face in the window.

As it turns out, of course, it was just a reflection of Mr. Machine's face on the window, seeing as how the darkness outside had transformed the window into a mirror. However, the mirror's distortion had turned Mr. Machine's face from its slightly odd, not terribly pretty face into a horrible, monstrous visage.

I am totally not making this up.

-Signing off.

Toy Commercial From Heck

Well, perhaps I'm being uncharitable. But don't these old Inhumanoids spots look awful? And I mean video quality, not just visuals.



Having owned the Magnakor toy, I can state for a fact that the thing in the commercial was a prototype or something. Mine was considerably more proportionate than that thing. (I still have 'im 'round somewhere, I just don't know where.) Also, that thing in the commercial has no articulation whatsoever that I can see; mine could (without the thin shell that formed his outer covering in front) move his arms, legs, and even his head-5 whole points of articulation. (Wow, those were the days, huh?)

But here's one thing I think should be made perfectly clear: No Magnakor toy ever had a magnetic gimmick. Some guy who talked about the show and the toys remarked that Magnakor had magnets in his halves for the sake of holding him together or something; I regret to shatter his illusions, but that's not the case. Magnakor was held together by simple friction-his cheap ol' shell didn't even have room for a magnet.

I wouldn't rant about it, except that that remark has stuck in my craw literally for years now, and I thought I'd put it out there on the Internet for hapless Inhumanoids researchers (ha!) to find.

Also, with regards to Magnakor's toy versus the appearance in the show, it's ironic to note that his component halves were Fire (check) and Ice (what?!), as opposed to the toy's Fire and blobby Rock.

While I'm babbling about Magnakor, I might as well mention-wouldn't it just stink to be him? His sole purpose in life is to stand there paralyzing Metlar. For crying out loud, get the boy an electromagnet or something.

-Signing off.

5 Reasons the Inhumanoids Should Cross Over With the Transformers

(Don't say I didn't warn you.)

5. The two franchises clearly exist in the same multiverse.

Aside from the obvious fact that both properties belong to Hasbro, they do have some concrete connections. First, the Inhumanoids character Sabre Jet would seem to be either the same person (or an alternate reality version of the same person) as the GIJoe character Ace-while this isn't a direct connection, GIJoe clearly exists in the same overall multiverse as Transformers, and so the Inhumanoids must as well. Second, the Shattered Glass continuity of Transformers coexists with an Earth that has "metal monsters" from the Earth's core. In effect? Inhumanoids. ("Metal monster" is an exceedingly accurate description for Metlar, the primary villain-Metlar's sole weakness is to magnetism.)

4. Because Hasbro can totally get away with it.

Do I really need to elaborate?

3. It's a logical reason to use the monster-like Decepticon Pretenders.

Either these Pretender shells would be cloned from Inhumanoid tissues, or...

Open scene. Metlar, with a motley crew of various monsters, is standing there surveying the situation. He is holding some kind of MacGuffin-er, new weapon or tool, which he hopes will grant him an edge in the coming episode-er, conflict.

Metlar: Finally, we will be able to conquer the cursed Earth Corps and those Autobots with this, my new...

Metlar trails off as he spots a few troops who strike him as odd-looking. They are the Decepticons Bomb-Burst, Bugly, and Skullgrin, disguised in Pretender shells.

He looks confused. They try to look as innocent as possible.

Metlar: Who the slag are you?
Skullgrin: We your troops.
Metlar: ...

Metlar: Eh, whatever.

It's ironic to note that the Autobot Pretenders actually have a certain resemblance to Earth Corps figures.

2. You know who else would be perfect for a crossover like this? Brushguard.

He'd probably chase Tendril and the Redwood guys around trying to get samples.

1. Because it would be awesome, man.

If nothing else, it would, as my sister suggests, be a second legitimate reason for crazy groups like the Rapid Anti-Transformer Assault... er, whatever they're called, but yeah, special anti-Transformer task forces would have more of a job if the Inhumanoids were there to deal with too, and Sis also wants to see Megatron and Metlar go toe to toe sometime.

I'm seriously going to keep going with the Inhumanoids Stuff Week thing tomorrow, unless there's some reason that I don't. I... hey, get back here!

-Signing off.

How to Revive the Inhumanoids

...Not in the literal sense, I mean...

Oh, whatever.

I'm obviously a huge nerd, and the fact that I've actually considered how one would revive a poorly remembered toy franchise (which I've talked about here) from the '80s is just a sign of the peculiarities of my particular brand of nerdiness.

And, in all seriousness, I think it's a viable one.

The central aspects of my plan are twofold. (Hasbro employees, if you're reading this, I'd be happy if the series was revived, and that's all I'd ask for as a reward.) The first is understanding just why Inhumanoids tanked.

Much as I love the oddball little franchise, it had one glaring flaw-all the toys were too darned big. The smallest toy in the line was at least the size of a modern Transformers Voyager-class, and most of them were Ultra-class sized or larger. The stars of the line, Metlar, D'Compose, and Tendril, were about the size of Transformer Supreme-class toys-if not bigger. (I used to have a Metlar, but my mother threw him out after his head broke off. WHY? I loved that headless Metlar!) This means, in the modern market, that the cheapest toys in the line would at a minimum cost of $20 a pop. $20 a pop for the smallest toys in the line. And the toys were absolutely tremendous, minimally poseable, and had minimal gimmicks. Obviously, a new toyline would have to go with smaller, cheaper toys, at least for most characters. (For an explanation of the Transformers size class terminology and a chart of related price points, look at this web page.)

The second step is a major cost-saving measure: Recycle other toys.

No, I don't mean the originals. Fun as the classic toys might be in one respect (they be BIG and HEAVY-one person on the ol' internets described their primary virtue as being the fact that you knew you could kill somebody with one), they're figurative dinosaurs-uncompetitive in today's market. No, I'm thinking of mining the past of another toyline, one that would love to foist off what it sees as its past mistakes on some poor, unsuspecting fellow toyline. I am, of course, referring to G. I. Joe.

Yes, seriously, GIJoe. Here's some examples of what GIJoe could part with: Bio-Viper. Monstro-Viper. Lobotomaxx. Predacon. Carcass. The Manimals (Iguanus, Slythor, and Warwolf). (If you're a Joe fan from the time period, don't deny hatin' 'em, you heartless jerk. The line died around then, and you blame them for it.) Digging deeper, there are things like the rather boringly named Armor Bot, and of course even vehicles like the Septic Tank and characters like Cesspool would probably be better-suited to the Inhumanoids franchise than GIJoe. (Or the Cobra-La team. Heh heh heh.) While one's at it, it wouldn't make much difference to move over such sub-franchises as Sgt. Savage or GIJoe Extreme, or at least individual characters from them. (Click my "GIJoe" label for more information on those, or do your own search. I'm in a groove, and don't feel like taking the time to link them.) GIJoe is crammed with figures and vehicles which are "too goofy" (too unrealistic, too sci-fi, too whatever your pick) for GIJoe (fans' tastes), and of course generic figures can provide extra human characters, while Inhumanoids would not be harmed by this supposed goofiness in the least.

To pick up the slack that would exist in the line in the form of the decided lack of large monster toys would be the relatively small remainder of the line, made up of various medium-sized new-mold monster toys, topped off by one good-sized one (say, "Leader-class"-that is, about $40) to contrast whatever the largest vehicle in the line was.

If the line is met with failure in the mass market, well, boo hoo, but at least development costs were pretty low. If the line is moderately successful, then it can hold on by producing more recycled toys with relatively few new-mold monsters; if it is very successful, of course, then the design work would be worth the effort, and newer and different vehicles and figures could complement the designs of the monster toys.

Marketing, of course, would be a reasonably important feature-I would suggest cheap re-releases of the Inhumanoids on DVD, maybe some pack-in minicomics, and tie-in animation of some kind. (Even just webisodes.) To keep it in step with the market, the monsters' appearances and powers would probably best be rather more anime-like than they are in the old cartoons and toyline. Not that they weren't anime-like already in many ways-I mean, in its own quirky way, D'Compose's "turn stuff into giant killer zombies" power is pure anime. And I would suggest banking on what I've described Inhumanoids' appeal as being for me-"kiddie Lovecraft," a series about terrible monsters that people don't know enough about.

And there we go, a semi-detailed outline of just how one would rebuild some stupid failed toy/cartoon franchise from the '80s for today. Join me tomorrow, when I talk some more about Inhumanoids.

I am so totally stone cold serious-this is now Inhumanoids Stuff Week.

-Signing off.