The Bots Came Back!

The sound of the breaking of the 76th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the echo of a 30 years ago stampede of beeping, blooping, zipping, zapping, tape deck transforming, twin drill spinning, suction cup sucking, dinosaur stomping, Lamborghini crashing robots parading through the pages of Penny Power! Yes never before or since has a magazine ignored all the hype and marketing to bring kids the brutal truth about how much bang you got for your toy robot buck in 1984. This Consumer Reports magazine for kids took on all Tronians in an article titled "The Robots are Coming" from their Oct/Nov '84 issue before anyone even knew what a Decepticon Communicator was! Penny Power pulled no punches in its objective look at nearly every major robot line fighting it out in the early days of the Toy Robots Wars of the 1980s. It's the Starriors vs Armatron, the GoBots vs the GoDaiKins, RoboTron vs Robo Force, and Transformers vs...Magic Mike? Who will win? Who will lose? Whose transforms will leave the kids confused? Find out all this and more in this ONE WATCH TO RULE THEM ALL edition of the Podcastalypse!

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Read along with your own copy of the article here!



I CAUGHT A F.I.S.H.B.O.T.!!!

Waaaay back in episode 18 of the Podcastalypse I did a review of a Penny Power article from '85 where they evaluated some cool toy robots like the Zoids Giant Zrk, Starriors' Deadeye, and the Robotroid Space Station. But during the review I mentioned how there was an earlier Penny Power magazine article I remembered with tons more robot reviews in it that I didn't have. Then a couple months ago I talked to myself some more about how I'd missed out on an auction for that very most legendary issue and felt terrible about it. I felt bad because when it comes to my love of toy robots, Penny Power's "The Robots are Coming" article in their Oct/Nov 1984 issue is ground zero. I was a kid when it came out and it made a huge robot raygun blast right through my brain. In this episode I talk about the circumstances under which I saw it first come and go through my life in 1984 when I was in first grade reading it at the school library, taking it for granted and eventually seeing it nevermore. I had pretty much given up hope of ever finding it again because even on eBay issues of Penny Power are few and far between. Then last week the big penny in the sky used his power to give me another shot when I thought all my luck was spent. I was grateful and I learned that in life you can't count on second chances, but you can count on eBay's saved search alerts to let you know when somebody is selling the crap you want.

DO IT WITH BUY-IT-NOW OR DON'T BOTHER DOING IT

So the other day I got an email alert from eBay that someone was selling a stack of Penny Power magazines. I was super excited but the auction description said they ranged from '81 to '94 and although there were something like 24 issues in there, the range was wide enough that there was no guarentee that my issue would be one of the ones in there. What made it tricky to guess was that the only picture in the auction was of a pile of magazines where only the cover of the one on top was clearly visible. But thanks to the tiny little picture of the cover I saved from the last time someone was selling one, I was able to zero in on a very tiny sliver of the cover to the magazine buried at the very bottom of the stack. It took a ton of photo manipulation but I swore I could make out the hood of Jazz, the deluxe Autobot car from 1984. I was still not 100% sure so I sent the seller an email message asking if it was indeed the Oct/Nov 1984 issue. Well waiting for him to get back to me was more than I could bear. What if someone heard me talking about how legendary and great this issue was and set up their own eBay alert so they could buy one if it popped up? I couldn't stand the suspense so I just went ahead and bought the lot before the seller got back to me, which he eventually did and confirmed it was the issue I was looking for. I was elated and amazed and I felt really really lucky at having beaten my phantom competition. Then I laughed because I realized in order for it all to have played out like it did in my mind, someone would actually have to be paying attention to my show since episode 18.

First up it's GoBots, GoDaikin, RoboTron, the Radio Shack Armatron, and Robo Force!

Next it's Starriors, Magic Mike, the Kronoform Time Machine and then almost every assortment of Transformers available at the time.

With all those Ram-Mans and Robotrons it's amazing
Playworld ever went out of business!

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• My 4th grade Library Club aka child labor slaves of the elementary school librarian
• Penny Power was the anti Dynamite!
• A brief toy chronology of my childhood
• F.I.S.H.B.O.T. a few episodes ago WAS THIS VERY MAGAZINE!
• Buying it with style (and $36.00)
• Kids of the 90s remember Penny Power in its renamed form as Zillions.
• Old episode I did about GoBots being dominant early leaders.
• My review of the 1985 Penny Power magazine article in episode 18 of the Podcastalypse
• You don’t go full dump truck in your first robots assortment!
• Playworld commercial with Robotrons behind the kid dressed like a reindeer.
• Wikipedia article mentioning Penny Power was harsh on Starriors.
• IS IRONHIDE WORTH THE EFFORT?
• My personal list of top three robot lines from this issue
• Don’t Rocket Punch Your Friends!

The Shogunian Bop Bag Extravaganza (and other legendary adventures in robotardation)

The 51st episode of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is a most dangerous intersection of ebay addiction, secret lost product release date knowledges and toy robot blow up dolls. Thrill to the almost daring adventures of the Nostrodomatron as I talk 35 year old toy robots news to myself while sitting at a bus stop at what used to be the most dangerous intersection in America. Then hear me squeal like rubber tires on a Stunticon as I realize an important ebay auction is ending so I rush home for a date with destiny and hopefully a future date with a Great Mazinga bop bag. Why were there so few ads for GoDaiKin toys in 1982 and '83? What year were the Superion and Menasor giftsets first released? And what kind of parent gives their kids Parasites for Christmas? All this plus part two of my Robo Force conversation with John of ToyFinity.com and Sean (the guy who bought Tiltor for 25 bucks) in this I'VE BLOWN BOTH OPTIMUS PRIME AND TRANZOR-Z edition of the podcastalypse!

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HOW MUCH WEIRDO MUST A WEIRDO BE BEFORE HE CAN BE A HERO?

I bought my first old toy robots line art catalog recently. This must sound like the Pope saying he just bought his first bible. I understand it's a shock to some people that this milestone comes so late in my career, given I fancy myself the Indiana Jones of old toy robots newspaper ads. But the truth is I have very little in common with the real Indiana Jones other than sometimes I feel like librarians want to make out with me. Yeah I waste a lot of time looking for toy robot artifacts that will eventually be sealed up in boxes like so many Roswell aliens and Arks of the Covenant in some New Mexican aircraft hangar, but my collection of old toy robot drawings books is far less valued by Nazis and all I had to do to get them was be searching eBay in the right category. So it was little surprise to me when I was going through Computers/Tablets & Networking > Monitors, Projectors & Accs > Other that I found the 1985 Matchbox Dealer Ad Planner. It is an awesome book featuring line art of the legendary lead paint Voltrons, a line of robot monster cars called Parasites, and tons of other possibly deadly and/or inappropriately named Matchbox toys that parents gave their kids for Christmas back in 1985. And since the book gives me all I need to make my own 1985 toy robots ad, I get more interactivity from it than Indiana Jones can get from his aliens (although talking with dead aliens is about as much fun).


A WISH IS JUST A F.I.S.H.

F.I.S.H.B.o.T. (Fuck I Should Have Bid on That) of the episode goes to ebay auction 271067160953 for a Shogun Warriors department store special catalog supplement (above left) proving that Combattra was indeed exclusive to upscale retailers as I had speculated back in episode 36. With a ninety-nine bucks BuyItNow I figured it would be up for auction forever. Then it sold a day after I first saw it! F.I.S.H.B.o.T. I say! F.I.S.H.B.o.T.! But then there's ebay auction 190732262858 for a Bandai price list from 1982 (above right) where the picture supplied is so good I don't have to win the auction to get what I want, which is information. I highly covet the material but I'm Not Bidding on That! Would that be a F.I.N.B.o.T.?


ROCKET SNIPE!

Up left is ebay auction 281014750917 for a pretty cool Mattel 1980 catalog. Usually these aren't a big deal but this one has Mattel employee names scribbled on the pages. This led me on an internet search for the men who designed Rodan. I suspect one of their names is Ray Gross based on these page scribbles, but despite several minutes of furious Google searching I am no closer to finding his email address so he can turn down an interview with me. Oh well. During my trip to McAllen, Texas, I came across an old ad for Shogun Warrior bop bags and commented at length about them back in episode 36. Well guess what popped up on eBay after I never in a million years thought I'd find one? And so the finding of this auction begins a 20 minute odyssey in the middle of this episode fraught with human tragedy, perseverance and last minute bid sniping as I curse the faceless other butthole sniper bidders who would deny my lips the opportunity to touch what amounts to a Tranzor-Z blow up doll.

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE ¡Hola Guerreros Rodados! Making robotastic the most dangerous intersection in America Happy 35th anniversary, Shogun Warriors! 1982 Bandai GoDaiKin price list on eBay The lack of official Bandai line art for the GoDaiKin line What the majority of GoDaiKin ads looked like Proving GoDaiKin was first released in 1982 The oddly categorized Matchbox 1985 Dealer Ad Planner auction BREAK-GoLion theme Mattel repo art books from '85 to '87 recently sold on ebay The 1978 Mattel Toy Fair catalog with department store price list Another '78 Mattel catalog with nice peek into the Shogun Warriors pages The mystery of Ray Gross The 1978 Mattel pre-Toyfair price list Filling the holes in my unified field theory of Shogun Warriors releases Racing home to bid on a Shogun Warrior bop bag BREAK-Dairugger 15 intro The Superion and Menasor gift sets-what year were they first released anyway? The Wikipedia Stunticons article gets the release year right, but CITATION NEEDED! The unofficial Transformer guide book that is the source of the most correct Stunticon release info The trail of evidence runs through Alt.Toys.Transformers BREAK-"Robo Force" by DJ Flula and Captain Danger Continuation of the interview with John and Sean from episode 44 An in-depth discussion of the lack of manufacturer stampings on the mysterious unreleased Tiltor Speculating on what exactly this Tiltor toy is BREAK-Mazinger-Z intro Closing thanks to everyone who is not me Don't Rocket Punch Your Friends!

Foleys 14 December 1984 Carls 16 November 1985

Monday Morning Mecha Pilot: The Godaikin, the badakin and the uglyaikin

One of the most important jobs of a toy robots archaeologist is doing what I call Monday morning mecha piloting. A Monday morning mecha pilot looks back with 25 years of hindsight and tries to analyze why a given line of toy robots died out before Michael Bay could make a movie of it. It's based on the assumption that all toy robots are so awesome that every 1980s toy robot franchise had the potential to last longer than they did or 500 years (whichever came first) even the robots that turned into ladybugs, slot machines and McDonald's Big Macs. While everyone else nowadays goes about their lives in a daze driving their Transformers edition 2010 Camaros and not questioning their homogenized Hasbro childhoods, the Monday morning mecha pilot is asking, hey, why aren't we riding Cy-Kill edition Harley Davidsons? Why were dorks my age dressing up like giant penises from Star Wars instead of Tranzor-Z for Halloween last year? When I'm driving my car why can't I ram it into the butt end of a dump truck and then we jump in the air, combine with a jet and make a giant robot? Why hasn't Ford (the car company, not the Han Solo) invented that yet? WHERE IS MY VOLTRON MOVIE? If there's one thing I've learned from spending hours at the library in front of microfilm machines looking for old toy robots newspaper ads it's that the non-passage of all of these events and technologies is a direct result of the degree of success Bandai had marketing their toy robots in the 1980s. Show me a man who doesn't know what a Daltanias is and I'll show you why Michael Bay has a career. Let's look at where mankind went so terribly wrong.

GO-DIED-IN TRANSLATION

Whistle Stop 05 Dec 1983

As I roam the country's libraries riding in the jaws of the time traveling Tyrannosauruses known as the Canon 300 series microfilm scanners looking for old toy robots newspaper ads, one line's ads remain extremely elusive. Of all the toy robots franchises from the late 70s/early 80s that lasted more than two years, it is the ads from GoDaiKin-Bandai's line of giant Japanese die cast robots-that are the rarest. Why was it that other lines from that era that Bandai made toys for like Shogun Warriors (in conjunction with Mattel) and GoBots (in conjunction with Tonka) were the ones that got lots of retailer support while GoDaiKin hardly ever showed up in newspapers? I think it was because GoDaiKin was the first line Bandai tried to distribute without the help of an American toy company acting as the marketing middleman, as was the case with those other lines. It was their inexperience with the way advertising worked in America that crippled GoDaiKin from the start. Bandai learned nothing from their previous joint venture with Mattel and in disregarding lessons that could be gleaned from the successes of Micronauts and Shogun Warriors, they set back toy robots marketing to the stone age.

RICH PEOPLE WILL BUY ANY TOY ROBOT AS LONG AS IT'S EXPENSIVE

Karls Toys&Hobbies 12/08/83

The vast majority of toy advertising done during the late seventies/early eighties in the US was by major retail chains like Zayre, Target and K-Mart and the big box toy supermarkets like Toys R Us, Lionel Playworld and Children's Palace. Yet these were not the places carrying and advertising GoDaiKin from the line's introduction. Early GoDaiKin ads came from mall department stores and independent Mom&Pop toy importers-places that didn't run weekly toy circulars in Sunday papers during the holiday season. I once spoke with the co-owner of one such independent toy store in Rapid City, South Dakota who told me they carried GoDaiKin because they wanted to carry high quality, larger ticket toys that were an alternative to what was being offered in the mainstream. They felt Bandai's robots were in the same class as toy train sets they imported from Europe and finely crafted wooden building blocks from Germany. It was these smaller stores and department store chains like Foley's and May Company who were willing to carry toys like GoDaiKins, which sold at price ranges higher than what major retail and toy supermarkets were comfortable with. My fellow Monday morning mecha pilots across the internet believe that the higher cost of GoDaiKin robots in relation to other toys of the day was one of the line's biggest faults. If the market was Joe average Toys R Us customer looking to save a few bucks then that'd be true, but the GoDaiKin target market was the more discerning upper middle class toy buyer who was more likely to shop at toy importers and department stores like Foley's or May Company than toy discount chains.

May Company 11/23/84


GOD, AI KIN'T REMEMBER THE NAME OF THIS ROBOT

Yet it's evident from the kind of ads I do find for GoDaiKins that Bandai was not supporting these stores with the kind of promotional materials they needed to advertise the line. Since the small Mom&Pop stores didn't run full color weekly circulars what they needed were simplified line art and bullet point style product descriptions for use in their newspaper toy ads, which were black and white copy that ran in the body of the newspaper.

Land of Oz 12/15/85

Bandai provided text descriptions that were overly wordy and they left the toy stores to come up with their own product art which oftentimes resulted in grainy black and white photos of one toy alongside generic descriptions of the whole line, if they even ran pictures of the robots at all. During the height of GoDaiKin advertising in 1984 it was most common to see them lumped in with robots from other competing toylines in one big generic robot sale. Getting lost in these smorgasbord robot buffet ads was somewhat appropriate since the GoDaiKin line itself was a hodgepodge of various robots from differing Japanese franchises with very little in common aesthetically to tie them together. They may have been superstar robots with TV shows in Japan at one point but with no strong marketing push to differentiate them from the crowd and absolutely no brand recognition in the US, the line was dying on the shelves in '85 at the height of the toy robots craze.

THE ONLY SACRIFICE A SUCCESSFUL TOY ROBOTS LINE REQUIRES IS THE IMAGINATIONS OF CHILDREN

Perhaps the biggest nail in the GoDaiKin coffin was the lack of media-tie ins for the line. Comics or television shows that raised awareness and promoted the toys were the most basic of ingredients for a successful toy line back then. This I feel is embarrassing because it raises the question was the problem GoDaiKin or was the problem us? These were some great toys. The failure of this line was more an indictment of our lack of imaginations as children. Were we just not able to appreciate robot lions that combined with space Winnebagos to make giant robots? One great example of the marketing opportunity being missed here (and how brain dead my generation of 10 year olds was) arose when Matchbox in 1985 licensed and rebranded the 1983 GoDaiKin GoLion as a toy tie-in with the enormously popular Voltron TV show.

Robinsons 11/30/84

If kids had to be shown Voltron so they'd get how GoLion was cool then maybe kids were stupid. Maybe consumer advocate groups who felt toy cartoons were the equivalent of mind control were overestimating the imaginative genius of kids. Maybe we needed our lame imaginations kick started and force fed a specific play pattern down all our throats. Maybe Jabba the Hutt costume is karmic restitution for our not knowing a great robot lion if it bit us in the butt when we were kids.

PONTIAC YOU ARE DEAD BECAUSE YOU DID NOT INVENT WHEELED WARRIOR STACK AND ATTACK TECHNOLOGY

In the end, who's to say what failure is anyways? Just because a toy robots line didn't last 25 years or long enough to have awful movies made about it doesn't mean it failed. Without an insider's perspective of why business decisions are made, any assumption of failure is just uninformed speculation on the part of Monday morning mecha pilots. So I am not going to claim I know why Bandai's GoDaiKin line of giant robometallicos had such a brief life in the early 1980s, but it seems to me they could have done a better job of getting the word out. This became apparent as I updated the GoDaiKin section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace with a measly six new* ads. Seeing how few ads I've accumulated for this line when I've found hundreds of Transformers ads in each of its first three years had me putting myself in the position of retro-Bandai marketing executive wondering what went wrong. I ended up with the conclusion that there are no solid definitive conclusions that can be made from my second hand observations and 25 years of retrospective. Even I with my thousands of 1980s toy robots ads and several years worth of Hobby Japan magazines can't begin to put the pieces together. All I know now is it is foolish for me to think I could understand consumer market economics and the mystifying motivations behind Bandai, Ford, Hasbro or any other companies that used to make shiny metal things with lots of chrome and rubber tires. I've learned it is best to leave the Monday morning mecha piloting to the professionals...but wait there's more! I'll be damned if while researching this thesis on failed Bandai robot toylines I haven't uncovered the real reason the Shogun Warriors was canceled! Stay tuned next time my fellow Macrocranians as I definitively blow the lid off the biggest scandal in toy robots history!

NEXT TIME ON ROBOTASTIC ARCHAEOLOGIST: THE FALL OF THE SHOGUN EMPIRE!

VSTP could stand for many things-Very Soft Toilet Paper is one

Personal free time is getting more and more scarce around here in the Kingdom of Macrocrania-or more accurately-personal time to do bloggy reminiscing about old toy robots ads is getting more and more scarce around here. I still have a lot of ads to put up at the Toaster Vintage Space Palace but between watching GoLion volume 2, downloading episodes of Macross Frontier, playing the demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and complaining all day about the VSTP ad backlog, I hardly have time to do actual updating. I swear though, this week I will at least get some Very Soft Toilet Papering done and the following four ads are highlights from the batch I'm working on.

EVERYTHING CRAP IS CRAP AGAIN

This Ace Hardware ad from 1978 features The Star Team, which at first glance seems like a cheap knockoff of Star Wars. It actually was but when a lawsuit was filed against Ideal (the makers of Star Team) they won because Star Team was based on toy designs originally released up to a decade earlier. Star Team is actually the final mutation of a line of toy robots called Zeroids that were originally introduced in '67 or '68 depending on who you believe. Zeroids were definitely a product of their time and the robots had a charming sixties sci-fi look. "Charming sixties sci-fi look" is my polite way of saying they looked like a vacuum cleaner fucked a Christmas tree.

Zeroids is the toy robots equivalent of Freddy Kreuger or Jason. It's a novel idea that was cool maybe once but it keeps coming back. After Zeroids died its natural death the first time, Ideal repackaged some of the figures in a Star Warsy way and called it Star Team, hence the lawsuit. Then years after that horrid bastardization, Ideal came up with RoboForce in 1984, which featured pretty much the same outdated Zeroids robot styling just recycled for the eighties. RoboForce robots had many of the same design characteristics like vacuum hose arms and lack of discernible heads and legs. Unbelievably a company called Captain Action Enterprises is bringing back the original Zeroids again this year! Don't they know that rereleasing antiquated toy robot designs that have outworn their welcome is just embarrassing to themselves and their customers?

FROM THE LAW OFFICES OF UNFROZEN CYLON LAWYER

Ads for the original Battlestar Galactica ships always creep me out when I come across them. This Joske's ad from December of '78 is really cool though because it's for the Cylon Raider, which I had when I was a kid. Recently I came across some lawyer blog where they wrote a snarky post about what they consider the ten most dangerous recalled toys of all time. A guy claiming to be the brother of the most famous choking victim in action figure history responded with a comment on the lawyer blog. In the list was a mention of the 1979 Battlestar Galactica missile fiasco, which I thought was pretty interesting because I know the internet is full of crazies but who's going to spend time impersonating Jay Warren?

Those lawyers did a good job writing about the recall. Except they got the year that the kid died wrong. And he didn't choke on the missile launcher itself as they state, but the missile that got lodged in his throat. And they incorrectly stated that the recall was for "all BSG models" when it was actually just the missiles that got recalled. And the part where they state that production was suspended was incorrect because Mattel continued manufacturing the toys, just with modified missiles. Overall it was a decent effort, but please, if you're an unfrozen Cylon lawyer leave the toyblogging to the professionals.

IT TURNS OUT 90 PERCENT OF THE COST WAS FOR ENGINEERING THEIR COMPLICATED ROBOT HATS

What can I say? This is the most fantastic toy robot newspaper ad I have ever seen. It's not just because it's a full page in the Los Angeles Times from November of 1984. It's not just because it features wonderful lineart of some of the greatest toy robots from the 1980s. It's not just because it features classic GoDaiKins like Goggle V, Voltes V and Daltanias. It's all those things plus I finally get to see retail prices for many of these legendarily expensive toy robots. I've run across a handful of GoDaiKin ads before but they've always been in the $35-$40 range. Finally I get to see that Robinson's was charging $85 for the 13 inch tall Voltes V. By comparison the Transformers' Fortress Maximus was a two foot tall robot that sold for $89.99 at Toys R Us. Voltes V may seem expensive until you realize he's wearing a cowboy hat with bananas coming out of it.

IN THIS WORLD NOTHING IS CERTAIN BUT DEATH AND I HATE ROBOT WATCH ADS

Sometimes I'm spending hours looking through miles of microfilm for old toy robots ads (and praying for death) when I come across one that makes it all worthwhile. Such was the case when I found this Ben Franklin ad from December of 1984. It's an ad for a nameless, brandless five dollar robot watch (on sale for $3.44). Normally I HATE HATE HATE toy robot watch ads. They're always the same dumb robot watch in the same dumb pose because it can't do any poses except Frankenstein arms. But check this out-Ben Franklin decided to draw up some killer art that looks like it could have been drawn by the Japanese artists who did the robot drawings on the Transformer boxes (if they were drunk and in third grade).



ALL THIS AND MORE IN THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE OF VINTAGE TOASTER WATCH PALACE!