On the first day of 2010....WAS THE EIGHTH DAY OF GOBOTS

Ah, the first post of the new year. It sets the tone for all other bloggery that follows in the next three hundred something days. I was quite intimidated by the thought of writing this, the most definitive post of the year. It will define the trend, it will set the bar, it will mark where I was in my life on the day the twentyteen decade began. This post would serve as a snapshot of my soul-of the things most important to me at the start of the year that would mark my 36th ride around the sun. What great themes would inspire me to sit down and commit to internet a permanent record of my state of mind as I look forward to a new age of peace and happiness till all are one, till all are one, till all are one? Would I write of honor and sacrifice, or of world freedom and its invincible guardians? Would I write of love, or of family and other miscellaneous sentient beings? What weighty matter deserved this most sacred position in the chronicle of the Roboplastic Apocalypse? AND THEN I'M LIKE, DUDE, SUPER GOBOTS! Whenever I find myself faced with tough questions, Super GoBots is always the answer!

Montgomery Ward 12/18/85


GIVE ME A FACE!

I remember kids bringing Super GoBots to school in '84 and I just could not get very excited about them . The biggest problem was that the majority of the first Super GoBot series shared the same transformation scheme (cockpit becomes the head and hood becomes the chest/torso) and the vehicles were not very dissimilar to each other. The tank guy named Destroyer and 1985's Staks the orange semi were standouts not because they were good looking but because they proved recycling that transform could have been more interesting if it was applied to more than just Volkswagens, Porsches and Datsun 280-Zs. Psycho the future machine was probably the best of the car cockpit heads but you had to be a certain kind of kid to appreciate these robots without discernible faces. I was not that kind of kid. I could handle it when Robotech did it with their faceless robot jets but those were faceless, badass, armored, million missile launching, robot jet fighter planes in space. I'm only willing to forgive so much when all you do is turn into a Volkswagen (even if you're a Volkswagen with roof mounted missiles).

Montgomery Ward 11/10/85	TG&Y 11/17/85

SPAY-C YA NEXT YEAR

Toys R Us 11/06/85

But there was one Super GoBot I owned that I absolutely loved. It was Spay-C, the robot space shuttle. I had a thing for Space Shuttles just like every other kid in the mid eighties until that sort of blew up in our faces. But robot plus space shuttle were two great tastes that tasted great together. I had that little green Transformer one named Blast Off and the big white Transformer one named Astro Major that turned into a robot chicken riding a robot cat. There was also Astrotrain during the height of the Transformers' popularity but for some reason Hasbro just couldn't get it right and deliver a white space shuttle that turned into a humanoid robot. That's all I wanted and that's where Tonka's Spay-C saved the day. I loved that toy literally to pieces. All that's left of my Spay-C are a few broken bits of plastic and metal all beat to hell and unrecognizeable for what they once were, just like the real space shuttle! I swore one day I would rebuy Super Spay-C but every time I go to Botcon I see the prices dealers want for unopened ones and all I know is the one day I'm talking about definitely isn't Botcon day.

WALK A MILE IN MY LEADER-1DERPANTS

My father-in-law has said what a man finds himself doing on the first of the year is what that man will be doing every day for the rest of the year. Here I am sitting in a little room surrounded by the ghosts of 25 year old space shuttle robots and their transforming tank-faced cohorts reminiscing about when I was in fifth grade. That's kind of dumb but I'm also getting a bunch of GoBots ads ready for inclusion at the GoBots section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. I'm hoping that working on GoBots ads today means I'll be finding more of them this year. Although I have a decent representation of almost every GoBots figure and assortment for 1984 through 1985, in 1986 GoBots ads become extreeemly scare. Even if I do find GoBots ads in '86 they always feature older robots and it's always some sort of clearance. That sucks because '86 was when some of the best GoBots ever came out, super or not. What also sucks is that one time my father-in-law caught me wearing my wife's pants. He was like, um do you always wear my daughter's pants? And I was like, Dude! Super GoBots! That was one time Super Gobots was not the answer.