The destruction of the 53rd seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of a super dimensional cardboard fortress crashing into southern Florida! Yes it's a Robotecatastrophe as the Nostrodomatron pays several hundred dollars for a cardboard box in the shape of his favorite giant cartoon spaceship from the 80s, the SDF-1! Listen in Zentraediriffic terror as I relate tales of the rarest, most impractical and ridiculously oversized paper airplane ever sold as part of any toy robots line. Plus I talk Robotech for an hour with the guy who owned it before me, who as it turns out wasn't a giant space alien named Zor. Is this the largest Robotech item ever sold at retail? Is the SDF-1 the Fortress Maximus of Robotech or is Fortress Maximus the SDF-1 of Transformers? Where in the world am I going to put a nearly 5 foot long cardboard spaceship? Find out none of these answers and more in this I DON'T THINK IKEA MAKES A SHELF THIS BIG (AND OTHER ROBOTECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES) edition of the podcastalypse!
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CARDBOARD CONSTRUCTION-IT'S A LOST ART
Nowadays we don't get as much wacky cross merchandising of sci-fi cartoon toys as we did back in the 80s and perhaps the greatest victim of this modern day toy company conservatism is the cardboard playset. Vintage Star Wars is chock full of cardboard backdrops from the Palitoy Death Star to the Cloud City playset. GoBots had the Super GoBots Guardian Headquarters and Transformers had both the S.T.A.R.S. mailaway Control Center and the Warren Activity Center. And Robotech had this! The Play Make SDF-1 is the largest cardboard 80s playset I have ever seen. Staggeringly huge, it measures 4 feet 11 inches in length. That's enough to dwarf Fortress Maximus in spaceship mode. You'd think that it would be legendary in 80s kid circles, but I've never heard any stories from people who had one or knew a kid down the block that had one. I never knew they existed until the late 90s and even then there are very few pictures of them on the internet. So when mine arrived I built it right up and documented the building process in a gallery at Flickr and also over at the RoboFacial Bookocalypse. After completing this mighty behemoth I can understand why toy companies stopped with the cardboard playsets-not because there were no more awesome spaceship designs, but because Play Make used up all the world's cardboard making these.
- SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE
- Tribute to my favorite Japanamation casserole
- Have you ever seen a Rick Hunter Gumball Bank?
- Why a man sells his American Trypticon
- The Robotech Section at Alex Bickmore's Super Toy Archive
- The famous "From the collection of Kenneth Olson" page
- Only the second picture (I know of) on the internet of a Play Make SDF-1 is from George Samson's collection
- The rare Matchbox SDF-1 playset
- The April 5, 2011 Play Make SDF-1 auction that ended at $160.27 w/16 bids
- Evidence of an even earlier 2002 auction with a BIN of $200
- Deeply philosophical Robotech conversations with my five year old
- Conversation with ebay seller 001collector aka Phillip
- Being Robotech fans for 28 years
- Remembering KayBee clearances on ExoSquad Robotech
- Giant Japanese toys like the Yamato Destroid Monster and 1/48 Valkyries
- The durability of Robotech in pop culture
- Scratch built 1/24 Valkyrie at theRPF.com
- 3D printers coming to Staples
- Restoring Phillip's broken Matchbox SDF-1 from the 80s
- 40 year old virgins have all the best Robotech displays
- Tough to find Robotech items during the 80s
- Boldly collecting Takatoku Valkyries at Star Trek conventions
- Phillip's Play Make SDF-1 warehouse find
- Phillip's memories of other Play Make cardboard playsets
- Excerpts from the Robotech Wars video on YouTube
- The 2011 Robotech Complete Original Series box set
- The GI Joe / Transformers SDCC exclusives Shockwave and Starscream
- Phillip's Skystriker VF-1 crossover customizations
- Phillip's custom light up Skystriker engines project
- Play Make SDF-1 picture gallery at the Robofacial Bookocalypse and Flickr
- Finding nicely scaled Macross models to display alongside the SDF-1
- The Nichimo 1/200 scale model kits at Macross World
- The non-Robotech Testors rereleases of Nichimo Macross model kits in '85
- MegaCon heads up!
Haters don't understand that without Robotech we wouldn't have gotten Darth Vader sized Valkyries.
