Saturday, January 16, 2010

TRANSIST AND SURVIVE! TRANSIST AND SURVIVE!



I'm doing my updates to the Vintage Space Toaster Palace where I put up a bunch of new* ads at the rate of one toyline a week. The year started off with Micronauts and last week I did GoDaiKin and this week was supposed to be Zoids. But then I started noticing some hits to the blog coming from a post Th0r4z1n3 did about the Four Star Phantom jets, which are some of the most infamous knockoffs of Starscream ever made. That got me thinking a little about my Four Star section at the VSTP and how it was in need of some big time updating. Then I got a shoutout on the latest episode of the Radio Free Cybertron podcast where the guys asked me about that time Hasbro pursued legal action against K-Mart for selling the Four Star Transistor Robots line. It always trips me out when podcasters mention me. I was listening to that show when I was at Wal-Mart opening the refrigerated door where they keep the milk and then BAM! I got mentioned, and not just mentioned but Rob the co-host was breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to me like Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Suddenly I felt as if Jesus was tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear, "Hey dumbass, people really are reading your blog!" Or maybe it wasn't Jesus but just the guy stocking the milk on the other side of the shelf inside the refrigerator.

TRI-SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE


TG&Y 11/10/85
Even more mysterious to me than secret whisperings from the milk man is how Four Star's Transistor Robots line continues to fascinate and terrify people all these years later. I was so inspired by the recent interest shown by the various bloggers and podcasters that I updated the Four Star Transistor Robots section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. Instead of just replacing some grainy ads and throwing up some new* ones I reformatted the whole page to make the information more understandable and useful. As it happens I got really immersed in the Transistor Robots universe and came away with a little bit of an understanding of the makeup of the line. Before this I was only vaguely aware of the more infamous figures like the knockoff Devastator, the jets and the Dinobots. Then after reorganizing my Transistor Robots page into the various sizes and prices I got an appreciation for the other figures in the line like the Jumpstarter knockoffs they named "Flip-Flops" and the weird one off robots I'd never seen before that had no recognizable parallels, like the remote controlled "Mastermind". So I've done my part to demystify the legend of the Transistor Robots a bit but there's still much unknown about this line. It's a freaky and crazy and wonderful selection of toy robots and it's no wonder that although it died off 25 years ago we're still talking about it today. If you want to marvel at some of the weirdest interpretations/improvements/molestations ever done to Transformers I'd also suggest Super Toy Archive's Four Star Transistor Robots page. They turned Kickback into a praying mantis! Holy crap what more could you ask for.

*25 years old

5 comments:

Th0r4z1n3 said...

What a coincidence, I recently said "hey dumbass, people really are reading your blog" to some random stranger as I stocked the milk in my local grocery store... lol

Thanks for the input on the infamous "K-Mart Connection", you good sir are a wealth of knowledge :D

Brian Kilby said...

I was telling Th0r4z1n3 on Twitter that I'm going to start a Transformers blog where we talk more seriously about Transformers than we do on the site and your blogs are getting the "blog roll" treatment (i.e. linking to you guys to increase our own credibility. :-D) Was going to do it with Jim Sorenson's blog and Nala's blog. What other blogs out there should I be reading?

Evil King Macrocranios said...

I don't think I'm on-topic Transformery enough in terms of the kind of credibility and audience you're looking for but Sorenson, Nala and Th0r4z1n3 are definitely a great start. To round out the top ten I think the others you gotta gotta gotta have for frequently updated Transformer based content are Botch's Office (which is the gold standard), FairPlaythings (for serious artifactual ruminations), Walky (the biggest toy robot blogging rockstar on the planet), The Baroness's MySpace (for super social network Transformer cred), G.B. Blagork (when he's writing about Transfomrers) and Stephenmus Prime (for great pictures out of Asia, although his page takes forever to load).

Evil King Macrocranios said...

And don't forget Counter-X! That one is the closest to what I think is the ideal toy robtos blog/information resource.

Brian Kilby said...

Okay, The Baroness and Stephenus Prime are new to me. I'll have to check them out. The rest I know (or know of, I don't know FairPlayThings personally.) Walky being the rock star of toy blogging is funny to me. I've known Walky too long to think of him that way but it is true. Look at the TF Wiki and Shortpacked, two of the largest Transformers sites, period.

 

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Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.