It kind of figures that only well after I finished my last big Shogunianpalooza podcastalyspe I'd find some more Shogun Warrior ads and come up with additional brilliant thoughts perfect for that show. It's like when the right thing to say pops into your mind days after the conversation. Except in the world of blogging and podcasts there is the advantage of being able to edit material in afterwards to make it seem like I was actually prepared with good material the first time. So I suppose through the magical power of computers I could just retroactively sneak in this additional stuff and add it to the show like it was always there, kind of like how George Lucas does it. But I'm not going to do that because I know I would hate to live in a world where George Lucas does podcasts of him talking to himself about Shogun Warriors for 45 minutes. Well actually that would be pretty cool but I wouldn't like the eventual Special Edition George Lucas Shogun Warrior podcast where he goes back and re-edits so it sounds like Bobba Fett was there with him the first time. Hell, that would be pretty awesome, too. That would actually be the greatest Shogun Warrior podcast ever. (Honestly the main reason I didn't want to go back and ad this stuff in to my last show is because I am tremendously lazy.)
Venture 12/10/78 | My house 10 minutes ago |
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THEY LET THE WOOKIE WIN
The Venture ad from December 2, 1978 up top to the left is something I was really excited about finding recently. I've only ever seen one other ad for the 5 inch Shogun Warriors so finding a second one featuring Raydeen and the super rare Gaiking is really awesome. The five inch Shogun Two-in-Ones were a tremendous milestone in American toy robots history as they were the first line of transforming robots in the U.S. that converted without extensive parts swapping. It's frustrating that I don't find more ads for this line but I think they just got drowned out in the contest for ad space by Star Wars and Micronauts. I've noticed that although line art exists for the first four non-transforming 5 inch die cast Shoguns (Mazinga and the Getter Robos) I have never found ads with line art for the Two-in-Ones. A lack of manufacturer supplied line art may be the culprit in why ads for these Shoguns are so rare. Actually, with the exception of the jumbos Daimos and Gaiking, line art for the later waves of all Shogun Warrior sublines is practically nonexistent. I don't know if this is Mattel's fault for not creating it or if retailers just didn't run it in their ads. Who knows. Oh hey heck out how the packaged robot is actually Gaiking in a Raydeen box!
FIRST BUT NOT BEST
Up to the top right is a demonstration of one other thing the Shogun Warriors did before the Transformers-flappy boxes! I personally hate boxes with those easily bendable flaps on top. I know Shogun warriors didn't invent this kind of packaging, but they did do it before other robot lines so I thought I'd mention it. What's interesting is how although Shogun Warriors and Transformers were packaged in the same kind of box, the windows are on opposite sides relative to each other. So what would be the front of a box for a Transformer is the back of the box for a Shogun Warrior. Plus the Shogun boxes were meant to be stood up vertically instead of laid flat like a Transformer. Yet there are enough similarities that I wonder if Hasbro was taking notes when Mattel was marketing the Shoguns because they did so many things similarly. Still I wonder what's the point with box flaps anyway. Maybe it's the extra square inches of promotional printing flaps allow or that that the extended portion makes better use of existing shelf space by making the packages look bigger than they are or something psychological like that. All I know is from a practical collector standpoint I hate box flaps and Shoguns did them first before other robots (which isn't exactly a good thing in my book).
30 YEARS LATER THEY STILL CAN'T GET THE VEHICLES OF THE $100 COMBINERS TO TRANSFORM
And finally, speaking of ads for super rare stuff I hardly ever see, here's another Combatra giftset ad, this time from Wieboldt's. I knew I'd come across another Combatra giftset ad almost immediately after telling the world how virtually non-existant they were in the last episode of the podcastalypse. Wieboldt's also had the same regular retail of $49.99 as Hechts but their sale price was an impressive 20 bucks off, bringing Combatra down to $29.99. That's still $99.10 in inflation adjusted 2010 money so they weren't really doing you any favors. My opinion is changing on how extravagant the purchase of a Combattra giftset was back in '78. Sure it was a week's groceries but even nowadays it is not all that unusual to see $100 robots made of combining vehicles live and die on the shelves during the holidays. I guess that's one other thing Mattel did before Hasbro.
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