I have written a poem for you my fellow Macrocranians. It is twenty minutes long and it is the sound of the first seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse being broken. It is also the sound of me confusing myself talking about celebrating the 25th anniversary of Zybots and how Tickle Me Elmo is the most mindblowing toy robot ever.
Or download it directly.
THE 35 YEAR OLD GUY WHO LOVED POWERGLIDE
The Podcastalypse begins with thoughts about some toy robot I got at Wal-Mart the other day but I didn't tell the whole story. Being sick can make me do dumb things so back in November when I wrote about how I fell in love with a big toy robot airplane at Wal-Mart I thought it was the influenza. Ultimately
Someone did not love Powerglide.
sanity prevailed and after walking around the store with it all rubbing it and hugging it and professing my undying love for it, I did finally put it back. Then after Christmas it was gone. Lo and behold, I was at Wal-Mart in mid January and that same Powerglide was back on the shelves except the box was beat up and it was repackaged all roughshod and the toy robot was upside down inside and the saddest thing was there was a piece of tape with a portion of torn red and green Christmas wrapping still attached to the back. So immediately I start thinking about that whole "if you love something set it free" b.s. about stuff coming back to you, except in this case it was more like "put it back on the shelf at Wal-Mart and see if someone else returns it". At that point it occurred to me that if I truly loved this thing then I'd buy it now seeing as our love is so true that it came back to me but get this-they still wanted 30 bucks for it! And I'm thinking, hell, there was no way I wanted to pay that much for it when it was brand new, much less now that it's sloppy seconds. There's no way I'd pay that much for a Transformer someone else devirginized. So fast forward to last weekend when I found another one brand new on clearance for 15 bucks. I would almost call it a happy ending but anytime a 35 year old man leaves a store with a toy robot he bought, it's actually very, very sad. SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE
HASBRO MAKE THIS TOY
- Opening poem: "The Roboplastic Podcastalypse"
- Little foil 25th anniversary triangles are Hasbro's victory flags from the toy robots wars of the 1980s
- I am hip and cool because I know what a Power Ranger is
- American podcasters love old Japanese robots, just not the American ones (that originally came from Japan).
- Defining Roboplastico and how it differs from the all tickling, all dancing Elmo
- The Powerglide Paradigm
- If I can't be Walter Diakronkite or Tom Brokronoform I'll settle for Gary Gnu.
- Will serious discussion about GoBots cause the podcastoscape to explode
- Better podcasting through Roboplasticology
- It's a great time to be 1985
- Closing poem
8 comments:
You had me at "Tech spec testicles".
I anxiously await the next transmission, evil king of roboplastiholism!
Thanks! I need to memorize that intro. It is my dream that one day Brian Savage will recite that poem as he addresses the masses during the kickoff of some future Botcon.
I think the next episode will have live orations from Vintage Space Toast Tour Miami! In other words, I'm going to record some of it at the library this weekend while I'm doing actual ad searching on the microfilms. I expect to go from 3 listeners to 1 after that. My aim is to make toy robots so boring that I produce an episode that gets absolutely no downloads. Then after I have destroyed toy robots podcasting I will pursue the Botcon license so I can recite that poem about techspec testicles as I addresses the masses during the kickoff of some future Botcon.
I had a Wal-Martglide moment myself. People were telling me "ZOMG, Wal-Mart has Ultras on clearance for $15 bucks!" I was all "Feh. The only way I would buy a Classiverse Powerglide is if he was teeny tiny like Legends Brawl and Beachcomber and Bumblebee and Cosmos.
All the way to Wal-mart I was saying "I didn't want this toy when it was all white and ugly, I don't want it now."
As I saw one on the shelf on clearance I was telling myself, "Honestly, he'll be twice as big as Classics Optimus, he's not going to look good on the shelf."
As I scanned the figure at the self-checkout I was saying "Ya know? $15 bucks isn't such a bad deal for an ultra class figure."
And then I transformed Powerglide and put him on my Classics shelf and I am content in the fact that my Classics collection has a horrendously oversized, robo-boobies packin' Powerglide now.
It is really, really sad.
What's really sad is I still haven't opened my Powerglide yet. I wonder if I would have been better off just leaving it there or possibly returning it. Taking it back seems anticlimactic after how thrilling the hunt was, but that's pretty much modus operendi for the bizarrely complex catch and release program I call my hobby.
When I told my wife how I felt she told me I could always give the toy robot airplane to our son and I thought, Oh yeah-I hadn't thought of that. I knew he would come in useful for more than just breaking stuff and pooping on things one day.
While both Powerglides look like mongoloids, I much prefer the old mongoloid, even though I never had or saw it as a kid.
Okay. I am so not a tech savvy kind of person. Like you and Barbie, I think HTML is hard. Hence the static condition of my website. (My god, if facebook had been around just three years ago in the way it is today, I probably wouldn't even have one. But I digress...)
Anyway, because I am not an early adopter, I only got my first iPod over Christmas. Since then, I've uploaded the entire FPT music archives to the little bastard (it's a lot of Ozzy Osbourne for one wretched soul, let me tell you...) Recently, podcats have become interesting, so I've been... er... drinking (?) from the Savage Love tap pretty much non-stop.
But there are toycasts out there. Let's get some. So with some help, I finally uploaded the roboplastic podcastica collection last night.
Dude, first, let me say I'm impressed. And second, did you really believe, like you say in podcastica 1, that this would only go on for about a dozen or so episodes?
Seriously, it's great to shine a spotlight on the old jems (and Jem for that matter - where is her podcastica?) I'm looking forward to the Micronauts turns, and more laughing on the bus. Will keep you posted as to my progress (mwhahahaha!).
Welcome to 2005, you late adopter, you. Thanks for listening. Yeah, the original intention was to stay super focused on one robot toyline per episode for 12 shows and have a guest on for each show who knew a lot about the specific toyline. But then my lack of experience with recording software put a halt to that. I still can't even figure out how to record one person talking, let alone two.
Also I don't have connections in a lot of fandoms so asking total strangers to come on my obscure show was something I wasn't comfortable doing. It ended up being me talking to myself and in person interviews with people like José Delbo, Jim Salicrup and Michael Golden who just happened to stop by.
So nothing went the way I planned. I did end up doing dedicated episodes for GoBots, Shogun Warriors, the Interchangeables and Robo Force but they all fell far short of what my original vision was. Instead the show ended up being about trips to the library and eating McFish sandwiches. I have a Voltron one coming up soon but the Micronauts show is still very much on the backburner until I get the courage to ask someone smart about Micronauts to help me out.
I've recently bought some recording software that lets me record VoiP conversations so I'm not going to give up on that. I've been in contact with some people I consider very instrumental in some of these old robots toylines and hopefully they'll say yes to interviews. We'll see how it goes. Until then I'll keep talking about going to the library and eating McFish sandwiches.
I'm totally up for a guest appearance if we can figure out a way to do it and a topic of interest. Maybe our shared love of old catalogs.
Speaking of which, I need to send you a list of the growing collection.
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