WHAT THIS BLOG NEEDS IS SOME DINOBOTS PAJAMAS

When I was a somewhat emotionally mature twentysomething with my life more or less in order I could never shake the feeling that buying toy robots wasn't normal no matter how much I enjoyed it. There was always that twinge of self consciousness that has since become the inspiration for countless Usenet and other message board discussions all over the online adult toy collecting community. That different manifestations of these feelings were being discussed told me I was not alone but that wasn't very comforting. So in order to cope I did what all disenfranchised misfits do and made up a disorder to legitimize my "condition" in the eyes of mental health professionals and to rationalize my fear of the hot cashier chicks I wanted to bang. I came up with what I called Treatable Adult Roboplastico Disorder Syndrome, the earliest symptoms of which are intense feelings of shame and embarrassment experienced at checkout counters resulting from being an adult male buying toys. I hypothesized that guys afflicted with T.A.R.D.S. feel conflicted between the biological urge to bang the Toys R Us cashier and their instinctive drive to make Peter Cullen's retirement as comfortable as possible by buying every latest little plastic toy robot tractor trailer. I really do think there were some psychological issues at play contributing to the excessiveness of my toy robots obsession but who wants to spend money on psychiatrists when you could be buying robots? Thankfully for robotards like me, I found that do-it-yourself validation is only one made up disorder away.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH TOTALLY UNCURABLE ROBOPLASTICO DISORDER SYNDROME

TG&Y Family Center 12/15/85

I thought my T.A.R.D.S. was in remission after I stopped buying toy robots as much as I used to. Plus constantly moving around the country like a fugitive helped because it's hard to make progress when you see those same cashiers all the time. I thought the days of feeling humiliated by a toy robots based hobby were behind me. Boy was I wrong. The other day I found myself in a situation reminiscent of those early encounters with cashiers but what happened recently made those feelings of humiliation seem like total amateur hour. In addition to collecting old newspaper ads for lines like Transformers and GoBots and Voltron, I also collect ads for ancillary merchandise featuring said toy robots franchises-stuff like toothbrushes, electric racing sets, power cycles, sleeping bags, tents and radios. Part of this miscellaneous merchandising includes children's clothing like hats, shoes, shirts and even underwear and pajamas. What I never realized until last week when I went to the library was that collecting these ads for the Vintage Space Toaster Palace means that at times I am taking pictures of ads featuring little boys in pajamas. So there I am a guy in my thirties hunched over the microfilm machine monitor trying to get a good picture with my camera of some little kid dressed up in Dinobot pajamas in 1985. I never realized this might be creepy until I was getting some good Dinobot pajama ads and I got up from my chair and there's some teenage looking chick at the computer station directly behind me giving me a smirky look like she's caught me in some sort of compromising position but I'm all, DINOBOTS, BITCH!

K-Mart 10/09/85	Montgomery Ward 11/13/86	Sears 12/12/85