When I went to Target the other day I was greeted in the menswear section by a display with a male model wearing Poindexter glasses and a Voltron shirt. Obviously my attempts to rewind the world back to 1985 by uploading thousands of old Voltron and GoBots newspaper ads to the internet were proving successful. Then I remembered that Megan Fox was seen late last year wearing a t-shirt of Voltron that she borrowed from her stepson. I suppose instead of my old grocery store ad induced time travel explanation it is possible Target is just staying on top of all the hip and trendy fashions currently en vogue with young movie star crossdressers. Or given that she was fired from Transformers, it is also possible Megan Fox is actually working at my local Target menswear department.
GOBOTS ARE THE BARRY MANILOWS OF TOY ROBOTS HISTORY
There are other possible explanations. Maybe there's an anti-Transformer backlash welling up and people just want to vote against Transformers by voting for Voltron with their t-shirt buying dollars. Odd as that may sound, it is the nature of fame that once the mainstream public gets their fill of anything super popular they end up hating it after a while. Just ask Barry Manilow.
He wasn't always adored universally as he is now. After his super popularity wore off in the 70s there was a long period where the only time you'd hear about him was in the punchline of Murphy Brown jokes. This is not unlike how Chris Hardwick said "Gobots were shitty, poorly animated knock-offs. They were rubbery." You don't have to be a Nostrodomatron to know this same rubbery fate awaits the Transformers. I have seen the future and it's all over Megan Fox's chest and it's in the lyric of every Barry Manilow song you know by heart but don't ever sing out loud when you hear it in the distance while you're shopping for cartoon robot t-shirts at Target. It's been a great ride Transformer fans, but this franchise's popularity has been expanding for a long time now and it's gotta deflate sometime. I'm saying somewhere out there is a multicolored robot monster with five lion heads, the face of a fox and a really big blazing sword about to bust the balloon of Transformer popularity. So if you like the Michael Bay movies then live it up while you can because here comes the big rubbery future. (I will be over here in the corner making Cy-Kill t-shirts and gently weeping while I sing Mandy as I have done every weekend since they canceled Challenge of the GoBots.)
3 comments:
I have only bought three TF t-shirts, one each of the Autobot and Decepticon logos, and a DW Megatron tee. I'm pretty sure if they started making Go-Bots t-shirts I'd buy every single one made.
Royal-T or Loco on a t-shirt might be the most awesome thing ever.
I would proudly buy a toy design based Leader One Tee Shirt. And I don't much wear Tees any more.
(I have had 2 Transformers shirts. The G1 Animated movie poster art one, and a movie Decepticon faction symbol. I do however have a G1 Con logo in my car's passenger driver side window. From time to time I get positive comments on it.)
The last Transformer shirt I ever got was as a gift for volunteering at Auto Assembly 2004. It was olive drab w/an Autobot sigil exactly like the one Simon Furman is wearing in this picture. Actually I think Simon got his at the same show. I was so proud of it and I wore it at least once a month. Then the 2007 movie came out and I stopped wearing Transformer shirts because I am a terrible person.
The next t-shirt design I have in mind to make for my son will be a direct ripoff of the Leader-1 card from the GoBots card game. You can see it at the bottom of this page. There's also a Royal-T there but I don't think it's done as well as it could be. It's pretty simple to print those out on iron-on transfer paper and voilà! Instant preschooler GoBots shirt!
I'd like to do a more grown up, gritty GoBots shirt for me (without having to draw it myself) but I've noticed GoBots have definitely been left behind in terms of getting more realistic renditions done of them in artwork. If it weren't for DeviantArt I think all the GoBot imagery we'd have would be screencaps from the cartoon.
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