C'mon baby give me a Whirl (and a Roadbuster, too while you're at it)

Vintage Space Toast Tour 2009 came to a grinding halt in September when I lost my camera. It was the replacement for the original Vintage Space Toast Tour camera that died after taking over 5,000 pictures of old toy robots newspaper ads and me standing there. Unfortunately VSTT Cam II did not get to die of old age like his predecessor but instead fell victim to my forgetfulness and the possible thievery of certain trailer park residents. The last memory I have of the camera was putting it on the roof of Optimus Lime and then driving off after delivering some cardboard boxes to a trailer park. I thought about calling the park and seeing if they had a lost and found but that camera had a smudge inside the lens that was affecting its performance so I let it go. Then last week I realized that the SD card inside not only had all of the pictures I took at Mizucon but it also had all of the 1987 newspaper ads I had collected so far from Miami. Reaccomplishing 1987 was going to be a lot of work and just thinking about it got me real down so absolutely no progress was made over at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace since August. I felt overwhelmed like I just fell off a Tyrannosaurus but they always say when you fall off the best thing to do is get right back on that Tyrannosaurus.

GETTING BACK ON THE TYRANNOSAURUS

Then Black Friday came along and Office Depot was having a doorbuster sale on some incredibly crappy camera for just 50 bucks. Black Friday doorbuster camera sales are always underhanded marketing trickery designed to liquidate terrible cameras so I feel really bad for anyone who buys Black Friday cameras non-ironically. All I needed was something that could take pictures of toy robots newspaper ads off a microfilm monitor at 1024x768. I don't do the wake up early thing so I went in at 1 in the afternoon, confident that even that late on the biggest shopping day in the galaxy they would still have them because a) they were crappy cameras and b) nobody shops at Office Depot.

THE GOOD THAT MEN DO IS OFT INTERRED WITH THEIR NEWSPAPER ADS FOR ROBOT TYRANNOSAURUSES

So I got the camera and last weekend I made the trip to downtown Miami and spent a couple hours at the main library breaking in the new camera, which after a rough start ended up working really great. I forgot how disheartening it is to sit in front of a microfilm scanner and look through reels and reels of newspapers full of 25 year old plane crashes, murders and car accidents just to find one or two ads for Dinobots. Perhaps the hardest part of my hobby is revisiting the terrible catastrophes and all the evils that men do I thought forgotten to me until I cracked open those microfilm rolls.

TG&Y Family Center 12/15/85

But I also forgot the joy and elation I experience when I unearth a pretty good toy robots ad that hasn't been seen in decades, as was the case with this TG&Y ad from December of '85 for the Deluxe Autobots Whirl and Roadbuster. It was a big deal because I've never found an ad featuring Whirl before. Heck, Deluxe Autobot ads are pretty rare in the first place-I've only ever found two and they both show Roadbuster line art. But with every great toy robot ad triumph there is always some huge downer in the rest of the paper like a school bus getting murdered by lions and I feel bad. Bad because all those kids never got to grow up to appreciate the joy a deluxe Autobot can bring, but more importantly they will never get to read my blog or see the next update over at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. This holiday season as I complain about having to ride my time traveling Tyrannosaurus all the way back to 1987 a second time I will be appreciating that I did not die in a plane crash murder car accident in 1985. Most of all I will be grateful that neither did you, my fellow Macrocranians. I LOVES ME READING DEM SITE STATISTICALS.