The Sunbow Connection!

Why were there so many 80s shows about robots where the voices all sounded the same? GoBots and Robo Force, Voltron and Transformers, it's all the same voices just with different robot names! Join the Nostrodomatron and Colin of fairplaythings.com as we delve deep into the Sunbow Connection conspiracy and other things that I don't understand about life, the universe, and all 15 episodes of Robotix. Yes it's another Robotixtastic Podcastalyse as Colin and I return to Skalorr to discuss Robotix the cartoon and all of its mysteries like who the real villain of the show was, why nobody on either side really wanted to win the war, and how Commander X was breathing in space before Batman made it cool. What happens when humans crash on a robot planet instead of the other way around? What is the sound of evil Optimus Prime laughing? What is the difference between -trons and -tons and -cors and -cons? Find out all this (well except for the last one) and more in this WE ARE ALL THE BOOBIES edition of the podcastalypse!

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the Terracors-Nemesis, Steggor, Tyrannix, Goon	the Protectons-Bront, Nara, Argus, Jerrok

80s ROBOT VOICE ACTING: THE ONLY INDUSTRY WHERE EVERYONE WAS KEVIN BACON

Many cartoon voice actors who had previous toy robot commercial experience ended up with roles in Robotix. This is extremely coincidental considering there were only about a half dozen robot shows while everything else was a Smurf or a crime fighting team. Yet looking at the casts you would almost think that the same ten actors voiced all the 80s toy robot cartoons! Even more interesting is how this robot voice actor mafia also did most of the popular 80s cartoons that were not toy robot commercials. For example, Arthur "Argus" Burghardt who is more well known for voicing Devastator from Transformers and Nazgar from Robo Force also voiced Destro in that non-robot based cartoon G.I. Joe! Mighty Orbots is almost the only robot show to not share a robot actor with any other series except that Don "Ratchet" Messick voiced Bort. All the other robot shows' characters ended up sounding the same because they WERE the same actors!			Arthur Burghardt aka Nazgar as Argus
Frank Welker aka Trailbreaker as Bront	Susan Silo aka Pac-Man Sue as Narra	Neil Ross aka Slag as Jerrok	Arthur Burghardt aka Turbo as Boltar

Peter Cullen aka Tank as Nemesis	S.O.S. DINOBOTS WAS AN INSIDE JOB And don't get me started on Peter Cullen and Frank Welker. Quick! Can you name an 80s cartoon based on transforming toy robots that had Burghardt, Cullen and Welker in the voice cast but was NOT Robotix? You have at least two other shows to choose from! Cullen alone was in everything from GoBots to Robo Force, Robotix, Transformers, and Voltron! It's kind of odd that no matter which toy robot line was being advertised, Peter Cullen got paid. Autobot, Decepticon, Protecton, Terracor, it didn't matter-Peter Cullen profited majorly from the Toy Robots Wars of the 1980s no matter which imaginary faction or toy company won! Is it possible that Cullen's characters conspired to purposely prolong the conflicts in their episodes so that he could buy a Porsche? WAKE UP, CYBERTRON!
Frank Welker aka Rumble as Tyrannix	Michael Bell aka Lance as Venturak	Neil Ross aka Slag as Steggor	Corey Burton aka Brawn as Goon

PLOTHOLES, PIEHOLES, AND OTHER THINGS ABOUT THIS SHOW THAT 'TIX ME OFF!

Robotix is really a lot of fun. It takes a lot of the standard robot war tropes of its time and stands them on their head a bit. Humans crash into a planet of warring robots and Peter Cullen is the bad guy. Right there you have 180 degree twists on the Transformers. It's also animated beautifully and the character designs are very interesting to look at. But of course the Podcastalypse wouldn't be complete without me complaining about something and so Colin and I discuss a number of what I consider inconsistencies and problems with events in Robotix. Here are most all of them and even one or two bonus nitpicks we didn't discuss.

Narra's face is the laziest attempt at anthropomorphizing a robot toy I have ever seen. Remember how Marvel Studios went to great lengths to make humanoid character models based on the Transformers toys, many of which did not have conventional faces? They did a lot of work giving Ratchet, Ironhide, Windcharger, Gears and Huffer human looking faces. Where were those guys when somebody just slapped a stick figure happy face on Narra and called it a day?
In the final episode while the Protectons are fleeing through a city's ruins they enter a room with statues of what look like dinosaurs and a large gorilla. Why were these replicas on Skalorr? Did the Skalorrians visit earth at some point? Is Skalorr really Earth? Some of the Robotix look like they are patterned after dinosaurs, so is this an attempt to explain that? Why did they show this room so late in the show? This is more of a violation of Chekov's gun than a real plot hole, but I still found myself annoyed by it.
Compucore's behavior is easily the most aggravating thing about the entire show. Why did the Protectons build a computer that is practically sentient but that has no conscience whatsoever? It constantly frustrates the Protectons by witholding information and even wipes their brains when Nemesis asks it to. This thing essentially has the power of life and death, yet anyone at all can use it! If the Terracors were such obviously terrible beings, why does Compucore's programming allow it to take orders from them?
Are the Robotix really alive? The implications of the essence transfer process are actually quite scary. Compucore explains that when Argus is restored, it's done using a backup copy. The essences stored in the chambers are uploaded and downloaded like programs and even referred to as data. So what are the Robotix? Are they living sentient machines or just zombified pre-programmed automations?
Where is Venturak when the volcano explodes? Just before the volcano erupts, Nemesis beats up and abandons Venturak who is begging for help and tells him his melted remains will be honored in Terracor history. Despite this, Venturak stays with the Terracors and is NOT with the Protectons as they escape the volcano. Then magically he appears with the Protectons and is instrumental in getting Zanadon flying, only to later betray them by letting Nemesis invade by leaving the dome open. Why would he help Nemesis who left him to die and how did he get out of the volcano?
Breathing in space. This is the biggest and most obvious flub in the entire series. During the final battle, Exeter and Argus break through the window of the Terrastar's bridge and attack the Terracors. The window is never repaired and Exeter goes on to fight Kanawk who dons a spacesuit to survive in the cold airless vacuum of space. Somehow Exeter manages to fight heroically for several minutes in outer space with no protection from the environment!
WHY DON'T THE TERRACORS ESCAPE THE TERRASTAR BUT INSTEAD STAND AROUND LIKE A BUNCH OF IDIOTS WATCHING ARGUS AS HE DOES?
At the very end Argus floats toward his friends who are now in the form of a ship that flies him back to the surface. WHAT? The Protectons could have transformed combiner style into a spacefaring ship the entire time? Then why didn't they just do that at the beginning to get the humans home? Solve that problem and then focus on the Skalorrian war which was a thousand times more interesting without the humans!

FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• It's been a long time since Episode 39
• People still interested in Robotix on the TFW boards
• The complete Robotix on YouTube
• Robotix at Behind the Voice Actors
• Robotix toys are still in production
• A band called Robotix
• Robotix article at Wikipedia
• Robotix at ComicBookDB.com
• Bill Sienkiewicz selling Starriors cover art
• Similarities between Compucore, TORQ III and Wheels and Roadie from Pole Position
• The Robotix comic commercial
• Robotix at the Virtual Toy Chest
• STOP POKING ME WITH THAT THING!

PODCASTALYPSE RULE 34-If it is a mental disorder, there is a toy robot of it

Are you an extreme left wing bike gangster with a chainsaw and repressed psychotic anger issues? Are you a robot that turns into a self-conscious Lamborghini, a depressed Porsche, or a micro cassette that is hard to get along with on a personal level? Well Roboplastic Podcastalypse Episode 34 is for you! Let Dr. Steve L.K. Macrocranios guide you in this one hour therapy session where we'll examine the most infamous mentally disturbed robot (and non-robot) cartoon characters from Prince Adam to Spongebob Squarepants to Zartan. And speaking of everyone's favorite paranoid schizophrenic swamp skiing Dreadnok, we'll take a good hard look at the Zartan controversy of 1984 and see how several mental health organizations did not appreciate Cobra being an equal opportunity employer of action figures with mental problems. Dr. Macrocranios knows that when you're a robot that turns into a car, you can literally drive yourself crazy. So join me now in this EVERY STUNTICON COLLECTOR HAS A MENTAL BREAKDOWN edition of the Podcastalypse!

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GHOST IN THE CARDBOARD MACHINE

But before we get into the mental illness antics of imaginary toy robots, let's talk about mine! I cosplayed for the very first time at a convention called Animate!Miami last month. I guess I was really inspired when I was reading the comments at the bottom of a news article about the latest shooting incident some crazy wacko did at the time. The inspiring commenter wrote something like, "We will be dead for trillions and trillions of years and our lives are but a blink of an eye in the span of eternity" or something like that. I immediately knew that although everybody else would take it as advice to kiss their kids and go skydiving or whatever, I knew what he was really telling me was to go to a Brony convention dressed as a robot from a cancelled 1984 toyline before I die. So I just ran with it. At 38 years old I taped a bunch of cardboard together to look like a robot from a 1984 cartoon that only had one episode and I went to a con where nobody knew what I was and most of the attendees were younger than my Super Nintendo. And although it is probably 30 years and several childhoods too late to be dressing up as Hun-Dred the Conqueror and have people recognize the costume, I'm kind of glad I got it done within my once-in-a-trilion years window.



WHO ZARTED?

Did you ever notice that children's entertainment is filled with tons of mentally disturbed characters? Eeyore is depressed, Charlie Brown has insecurity issues, and that Calvin kid was the poster boy for paranoid schizophrenia. But for some reason those characters are tolerated while others like Zartan are not! As I was going through old newspapers from 1984 I ran across a ton of articles from December of that year detailing the story of Zartan's file card controversy. So what I wanted to do with this episode was explore the controversy surrounding Zartan to see how it impacted Hasbro's practice of writing character profiles, especially for the Transformers. But get this-the Transformers post Zartan were some of the most whacked out, violent mental cases in all of kids' toys and television, yet no consumer groups went after Hasbro for their portrayal of robots with mental health issues! Why was this? Well I have a couple ideas and I discuss them to myself in the show. Because being a master of cardboard robot disguises and talking to yourself obsessively about schizophrenic toy controversies from 29 years ago is a totally normal thing to do (JUST DON'T TELL MY PSYCHIATRIST).

Sears November 18, 1984


FIBZIB-FRENZY IS BLUE AND ZARTAN IS TOO

This Sears ad from November '84 is a pretty typical example of how the Zartan was advertised in newspapers. Just like the cartoon and commercials, nowhere did they make note of or call attention to his schizophrenia. In order to pick up on that you really had to be an attention paying, filecard reading consumer. I don't think the Indiana Mental Health Association actively had people going out and reading GI Joe filecards to see which ones were negative portrayals of mental illness, so I'd guess that this was picked up on by an alert parent who let them know about it. (This ad is notable for a few non Zartanian reasons, too. It's the only use of Jetfire line art I have ever found in an ad from 1984 and it's the only ad I've ever come across that includes the art of all four Decepticon cassettes without Soundwave.)

Zartan 1984	Zartan 2001

STILL CRAZY AFTER SEVEN MORE YEARS

What really trips me out is that after Hasbro censored the original filecard (above left) and deleted all mention of Zartan's mental problems for the '85 edition of the figure, they went back in 2001 and added it all back in, with exception of the schizophrenia. It's essentially the same mentally disturbed guy, though! Yet this time there was no consumer outrage. But I guess the 2000s were a much different time. Heroes in comics were as deranged and scary as the bad guys they were fighting, so a Zartan with multiple personalities in 2001 was small time bad guy dysfunction. Hasbro has since stopped using Zartan's mental illness as a selling point in their filecards.

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Rule 34 is the new 52
• There are now internet search results for "RoboForce cosplay"
• GoBot cosplayers are my heroes
• Who wants free hugs from robot satan?
• RetroRoboAd holiday countdown 2012 at the Robofacial Bookocalypse
• Merry Christmas you're autistic
• Aspergers syndrome is so 2012
• Every team needs its crazy (saxophone playing) man
• The good book of spiritual comforts for the robotarded
• Raoul, hero of the brown kid insertion Transformer characters
• The reigning champions of toy robots familial dysfunction
• Alternators are Robo Force in disguise
• Tantrum's head hose leak-the only explanation ever given for robo madness
• BREAK-Duocons commercial
• The Tyler Durden of Transformers
• Top ten cartoon psychiatric disorders
• BREAK-Zartan commercial
• The original Zartan filecard
• Buzzer, the other mental Dreadnok with repressed psychotic anger and also without it
• 'Schizophrenic' Doll Concerns Officials / Times-Union Dec 4, 1984
• Paranoid Doll Cause of Concern / Palm Beach Post Dec 5, 1984
• Company apologizes for 'schizophrenic' toy / Milwaukee Sentinel Dec 5, 1984
• Doll maker admits mistake / Tri City Herald Dec 5, 1984
• Mentally ill doll draws an apology / The Bulletin Dec 6, 1984
• Children, Toys, Fantasies / Lawrence Journal World Dec 8, 1984
• Doll has real-life enemies / The Calgary Herald Dec 10, 1984
• Penance performed at party / Palm Beach Post Dec 19, 1985
• Larry Hama on Zartan
• Flywheel's tech spec motto
• Outro: "Zartan" by TheHardStuff

Madmen, Masters, and Mad Machine Men (of the SuperConocalypse)

The destruction of the 47th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is a cosmic cartoon cataclysm, causing Eternia and Cybertron (and a million other pretend planets) to collide and forcing the surviving sci-fi characters to take refuge in Miami in the special super hero containment facility otherwise known as Florida Supercon 2012! Thrill in stunned boredom as you listen to me walk around the Miami Airport Convention Center talking to myself about how scared I am to meet my favorite comic book and cartoon celebrities like Denny O'Neil, Alan Oppenheimer, Howard Chaykin, and many others who hold the secrets to the greatest unknowable mysteries of the 20th century like who named Optimus Prime and why does Skeletor laugh that way. How much does Denny O'Neil remember about his work on the original Marvel Transformers comic book? How does Alan Oppenheimer feel about violence in 1980s animation? Did Gregg Berger dress up as Grimlock and do toy store appearances in 1985? Find out all this and more in this "HALF THE COSPLAYERS AT SAN DIEGO COMIC CON ARE ACTUALLY HOOKERS (AND OTHER THINGS I LEARNED FROM HOWARD CHAYKIN)" edition of the podcastalypse!


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Oh hey check out Flickr Macrocrania for more of my pictures from Supercon 2012 so you can follow along while you listen to my adventures at the convention. But first-F.I.S.H.B.O.T.!


IT WAS EASIER TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT GROWING OLD WHEN TOYS FROM MY CHILDHOOD HAD HIGHER BUY-IT-NOWS

This episode's F.I.S.H.B.O.T. (F*** I Should Have Bid On That!) is a pair of vintage Star Wars spaceships that didn't break 60 bucks each despite being in really nice shape with their boxes and working electronics and everything that would make my life complete had I only been the guy that won them. Yeah it really pisses me off that the modern rereleases of these ships I never had as a kid don't come with the lights and sounds and little rotating gun thingys that made them so awesome when the kids were playing with them in those commercials back in 1983. What's really troubling deep down inside it somehow it seems offensive to me that old Star Wars toys are starting to go cheap. It's as if I am taking it personally, like the falling secondary market value of toys from my childhood makes my childhood less cool. And as the playthings from my childhood make the permanent transition from museum gallery gold to garage sale garbage, so too will my memories go from hundred hits blog post power pellets to so many forgotten megs taking up space on some deeply buried blogger.com floppy drive somewhere. I guess I shouldn't have trusted the secondary market value of 1983 to my pop culture financial advisor George Lucas and never deposited my childhood at HasbroBank.


THE ARCHITECTS OF MY CHILDHOOD DIDN'T KNOW I WAS STILL LIVING IN THOSE SAND CASTLES THEY BUILT IN 1983

And so as I grow older I find myself venturing to places like Florida Supercon 2012 in search of some sort of pop culture retro validation but all I find left of my childhood is post-coital He-Man cartoon cells, thousand dollar bananas, and Skeletors made out of wiener shaped balloons. The once priceless artifacts of my youth that I really wanted have long since been bought and sold on eBay for more money than I could afford, or their auctions ended during the time I wasn't paying attention because I was at the library searching through microfilm of newspapers from 1978 looking for grocery store ads with Shogun Warrior Godzillas in them. And so I go to conventions scraping the bottom of the barrel of 80s nostalgia and hoping to connect with the men and women who helped create the epic mythologies of transforming robot Tyrannosauruses and scantily clad space aliens with big blue Lou Ferrigno bodies and bright yellow skeleton skulls for faces. But why? It's the question I see in the eyes of every Gregg Berger and Alan Oppenheimer I meet as I'm handing them the 20 bucks so they can sign my hat made out of wiener balloons that's been carefully sculpted to resemble a post-coital Skeletor. And to them it really doesn't matter why, because although my search for an immortal manifestation of the wonder and imagination sparked by my long lost childhood lust for life (and talking robot tyrannosauruses) continues, all I really just did was buy them a bacon 'n cheese double steakburger and chili cheese fries combo at Steak 'n Shake.


José Delbo brought a binder of vintage original Transformer comic art including many covers and splash pages


I swore the Denny O'Neil autograph line would not defeat me as it had in the past


Minimalism at its Gundam finest

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Preparing to unleash the power
• Intro poem (Skeletronian version)
• Beginning at the end
• The weirdest person you'll see at a comic convention (is me)
• What it's like entering Supercon
• Grimlock and Skeletor sitting side by side
• Live pre-show report from my attic
• Figuring out what to get scribbles on
• Opening the last surviving packaged transformer in 1993
• Opening up the dealer room doors
• The exciting empty seats of Jose Delbo & Denny O'Neil
• Juan Fernandez Wheeljack poster
• Not being able to appreciate Neal Adams
• Order66 toys had a most impressive table
• Interview with guy running the only Transformer booth at Supercon
• Got me another Hun-Dred robots
• F.I.S.H.B.O.T.-A vintage Y-Wing went for $53.43 & a B-Wing went for $55.54
• A toy from 2004 is too recent to be childhood memories!
• The great Supercon 2012 dealer room blackout
• The great Supercon 2012 marriage proposal
• Awesome Pregunta Of Steve at the "Meet the Transformers" panel
• I'm too old to know who Michael Hogan is
• Pre-meeting Denny O'Neil anxiety
• The one question Denny O'Neil interview I've waited years to ask
• Awesome Pregunta Of Steve during the "Art of Writing Comic Books" panel
• Tales of Alan Oppenheimer signing my Warpath card
• Rundown of original art at José Delbo's table
• Awkward fan conversations with old comic artists
• Getting my Star Wars Galaxy 6 card signed by Michael Locoduck Duron
• Fantastic post coital He-Man cell
• Buying coffee for Bill Sienkiewicz
• Not a lot of robot cosplay at Supercon
• Howard Chaykin Photocalypse catastrophe
• 50 cent comic binpocalypse
• Hasbro Brony viral marketing conspiracy theory
• Brony fandom's similarity to Satanic ritual cult hysteria
• Awesome Pregunta Of Steve during the "Meet Alan Oppenheimer" panel
• Getting a picture with Slave Leia cosplayer from absolutionshow.com
• The pop culture balloon bender guy
• Coming to terms with my bad picture with Howard Chaykin
• DeLorean outside reminding me of Steelskin the DeLorean Transformer
• Following Gregg Berger around the convention floor
• Spreading the gospel of Robot-Japan
• Got me a picture with black shirt Moon Knight
• The origin story of Moon Knight's white costume design
• The Chaykinocalypse concluded
• Getting free promotional José Delbo flyers
• A lovely pic with Cobra Commander
• Closing Supercon Superthoughts at the bus stop
• Don't Rocket Punch your friends!

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 1: May 1985 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period as reported by independent stations

I was looking through the June 26, 1985 issue of Variety Magazine when I came across some television ratings numbers. They were for the reporting period covering May of 1985 and they showed ratings for television shows in the top 100 markets in the US. This was awesome because fellow roboplastic historian (and perennial favorite among the collector community) Hooper X and I had been wondering about how good or bad the Transformers fared in terms of ratings during the the show's early seasons. I never expected to find more than ratings for the top ten shows in prime time listed in Variety (if I was lucky), so imagine my surprise when I found this report covered not just prime time but many other time slots as well. Obviously the most important slot to me was the late afternoon period when the cartoons aired and luckily that list had not just the top ten but extended out to the top 54. It was more than long enough to include ratings data on some of my favorites like Voltron, Tranzor-Z, Robotech, Transformers, G.I. Joe and He-Man. This ratings report was exactly what I was always looking for! Or was it? After doing some analysis of the numbers I realized there were some problems here. Problems like ratings existing for shows before they ever aired! But I'll get to that later. First I have to try to explain some of the terminology used on the chart, which is intimidating because I find the lexicon of television ratings scary and confusing. So in other words I hope with this post I will begin the most informative and in-depth television ratings breakdown for afternoon cartoons from 1985 (that makes absolutely no sense to me).

Early Fringe-It turns out the time I was most interested in was defined as "Early Fringe". This is the period Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., which started about an hour after I got home from elementary school. It's when I remember doing the majority of my childhood cartoon watching.

Households Share/Rank-This is the number that matters the most as it determines where the show stands in relation to all the other shows in the same time period. I interpret it as the percentage of all households everywhere watching a given show and ranked accordingly. Rank is not necessarily proportional to the number of stations carrying a show because some stations may reach larger audiences than others, so a lot of stations may still not have as many households as one station in a large market.

DMA Shr-The Designated Market Area Share is the percentage of people watching in a region where all the people have the same shows available for them to watch. It's essentially how much of a market was watching each show but not reflective of total households everywhere. DMA will generally follow the same trend as household rank so as the number of households watching get lower DMA also gets lower, although two shows with identical DMA will have different household ranks. DMA is useful because in the chart DMAs from previous ratings periods are shown, giving a trend of viewership for each show.

HH Rtg-I suspect this is Households Rating and although I'm not sure, it may be a percentage of all households everywhere tuned in to a show. It's the most confusing number to me because it correlates with nothing else and fluctuates wildly, independent of ranking and DMA share.

May 84 / Nov 84 / Feb 85 Shares-These are the DMA ratings for each show from previous ratings periods. Great for establishing trends in viewership but also great for confusing me as some shows will have numbers here for periods that they weren't known to be on the air! I'll get into specifics as they pertain to individual shows.

Now let's look at the list of top 54 shows during Early Fringe in the 100 biggest television markets as reported for the ratings period of May 1985:

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
1	4	MASH	15	8	14	14	16
2	5	Love Boat	14	5	17	15	15
3	8	WKRP in Cincinnati	14	7	14	12	14
4	7	3's Company	14	6	15	13	15
5	8	Alice	12	6	13	12	12
6	27	Diff'rent Strokes	12	5	11	12	13
7	3	New Newlywed Game	12	3	8	10	12
8	3	Pvt Benjamin	12	5	11	11	12
9	8	Woody Woodpecker	12	3	12	10	11
10	21	G.I Joe	11	3	11	10	11

Here in the top ten we already have two syndicated cartoons-Woody Woodpecker and G.I. Joe. As someone who doesn't really understand the appeal of G.I. Joe I was really impressed that it ranked so high, beating out even He-Man. I have this (admittedly ridiculous) theory that the G.I. Joe toyline isn't actually popular with the public at large but it's instead a propaganda campaign subsidized by the US government and that's why it consistently sold well. Yet the numbers don't lie and it looks like G.I. Joe was genuinely a ratings winner and consistently popular in previous ratings periods. But how could that be? This all looks good until you realize that G.I. Joe didn't start airing daily episodes until September of 1985. How could there be May of '84 ratings when all that existed at that point was the 5 episode 1983 series? Isn't it odd that by May of '85 G.I. Joe only had a total of ten episodes apparently being rerun for two years and yet it still ranks number 10 in the ratings? The strangeness doesn't end there...

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
11	65	He-Man MotU	11	3	13	12	12
12	14	Little House o.t. Prairie	11	4	14	12	11
13	46	Scooby Doo	11	3	14	13	12
14	3	Waltons	11	4	14	10	10
15	21	Brady Bunch	10	3	12	9	10
16	21	Flintstones	10	3	11	11	12
17	3	Hart to Hart	10	5	7	9	9
18	13	Jeffersons	10	5	12	10	11
19	4	Transformers	10	3	8	10	9
20	10	What's Happening	10	4	11	11	11

Transformers comes in at #19 in the May ratings despite not beginning its Monday through Friday run until September! By May of '85 there were only 16 episodes of Transformers from the 1984 debut season. Were these being repeated daily? Again we have an instance of a cartoon with nowhere near the number of episodes necessary for syndication ranking high in the ratings. Even stranger is that there are DMA numbers for Transformers from May of 1984, a full four months before the first season began airing! How is this possible? Could it be that the four stations from which these ratings were reported carried the Transformers before any others in the US? Was the cartoon even ready to be aired in May of '84? I don't understand how any of this could make sense.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
21	3	Batman	9	3	7	11	11
22	7	Benson	9	4	8	8	10
23	11	Dukes of Hazzard	9	4	12	11	11
24	17	Happy Days	9	4	9	9	9
25	39	Heathcliff	9	2	10	10	11
26	11	Leave it to Beaver	9	3	10	10	9
27	3	Sanford & Son	9	4	8	7r	8
28	10	Star Trek	9	4	10	10	11
29	7	Bosom Buddies	8	4	9	9	7
30	10	Bugs Bunny	8	2	7	7	9

Not much for fans of robots cartoons to talk about in the 20s except Heathcliff, which had that transforming car the Cadillac cats rode around in.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
31	8	Gilligan's Island	8	3	9	9	10
32	11	Good Times	8	4	10	8	9
33	11	Laverne & Shirley	8	4	9	11	9
34	15	Mork & Mindy	8	3	10	9	9
35	4	One Day At A Time	8	4	11	9	10
36	3	Quincy	8	3	8	9	8
37	9	Robotech	8	2	9	9	8
38	28	Super Friends	8	2	11	11	10
39	17	Tom & Jerry	8	2	11	10	10
40	52	Voltron	8	2	10	10	9

Robotech having May '85 ratings makes sense because it debuted in March of '85, but likewise it shouldn't have any ratings history from 1984! So where they're getting November and May '84 numbers is a mystery to me.

Voltron comes in surprisingly lower than I expected but thankfully it was around in daily syndication in 1984 so the previous year's numbers aren't as suspect. Still, it didn't start until September of '84 so I don't know how they could have DMAs for May. I expected Voltron to have stronger numbers after the ads I'd seen in Variety touting it as the number one new animated show of 1984. I thought it would be at the top of the list, or at least be higher ranked than G.I. Joe or He-Man. Then I realized it was all a matter of marketing spin on ratings numbers and I understood being the number one NEW animated show is different from being the number one animated show period.

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
41	7	Too Close For Comfort	8	4	10	9	10
42	5	Buck Rogers	7	3	12	11	7
43	7	Eight Is Enough	7	3	12	10	7
44	3	I Love Lucy	7	2	5	8	6
45	41	Inspector Gadget	7	2	8	8	8
46	4	Popeye	7	2	11	7	9
47	4	Andy Griffith Show	6	2	5	6	5
48	15	I Dream of Jeannie	6	2	6	6	6
49	3	Anything For Money	5	2	11	7	9
50	16	Bewitched	5	2	7	6	6

Can't forget the most awesome transforming police car ever!

Households Shr/Rnk	# of Stations	Program	DMA Shr	HH Rtg	May '84 Shr	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr
51	5	Chips Patrol	5	2	8	7	6
52	15	Fat Albert	5	1	7	7	6
53	25	Tranzor Z	5	2	6	5	5
54	6	Plastic Man	4	1	7	5	4

Rounding out the bottom of the bunch is Tranzor Z, who like many other shows fared better in other time slots outside of early fringe. In fact a lot of these shows aired at other times, further compounding the difficulty of creating a fair comparison of each show's relative popularity. This all remains very confusing to me. I am still totally stumped by how some shows have ratings from periods before they aired. Maybe the ratings are right and we don't know definitively when these shows first came out after all. Maybe there were test markets and other situations that IMDB and Wikipedia have no knowledge of. I wish these numbers would have been more cut and dried and simple to understand instead of confusing me more. But what I've presented here is at least a start and hopefully in the future I'll come across other ratings reports that can shed some light on the questions this one raised.

The Day of Woman and Robots

Back on Christmas of 2008 one of my first and favorite podcasters-Shawn Robare of Branded In The 80s-conspired with one of my most recent favorite podcasters-Jerzy Drozd of Art & Story Extreme-to share with the world a Christmas themed Transformers comic published in the December 26, 1985 issue of Woman's Day magazine. The scans were fantastic but what was infinitely more valuable to me was that Shawn gave the exact coverdate of the issue. I'd seen the magazine discussed occasionally on the message boards of various Thoroughly Informative Transformers Themed Internet Entertainment Sites but until Shawn's post I never saw anyone release the most important factual tidbit of all-when the friggin thing came out! Armed with that information and full of enthusiasm, excitement and prayers to baby Jesus I looked forward to the joy of getting ripped off on eBay.

I TRY NOT TO BID ON AUCTIONS WITH A HIGH REGRET-IT-NOW

In the two years hence I've seen the magazine pop up exactly three times. The first time was as part of a bound collection of all the Woman's Days released in 1985. It was the entire year all in one hardcover volume the seller said was once part of a library collection. That auction had a Buy-It-Now of $25, which I thought was a bit high because I couldn't justify owning a whole year's worth of Woman's Day just for what amounted to two pages. I don't care how good those cookies on the cover looked.

Surely there was nothing Transformers or toy robots related in all those other issues bound with it, right? That auction sold within a couple weeks of when Shawn's post went up. Then the issue popped up again on eBay around the time the first auction ended when a comic book shop was scalping a single copy of the issue with a Buy-it-Now of $20. They knew what they had and the description used the Transformer comic within as the selling angle. There's no way I was gonna pay $20 for two pages, especially to scalpers. I could've got the whole year for that! Seeing two copies come and go in such a relatively short time had me convinced all I had to do was wait a couple days and another one would pop up. Then a year went by and that hardbound library collection I missed out on earlier because of my cheapness started looking pretty good. So I began wishing a copy of that friggin' magazine would just show up so I could buy it no matter how much it cost since I finally realized how rare it was. They say a fool and his money are soon parted and I've realized the same is true for cheap guys but it just takes a little longer.

WELL WORDED EBAY SEARCH CRITERIA MAY NOT TRUMP DIVINE INTERVENTION BUT IT HELPS

Well finally around two weeks ago baby Jesus hooked me up because a seller put a ratty old copy of the most roboholyest of Woman's Days on eBay. It was in a lot with three other old raggedy Woman's Day magazines I wouldn't need, but hell the Buy-It-Now was only $2.99. So I figured I'd keep the one I wanted and chuck the rest of 'em in the garbage once they arrived. Because again, surely there was nothing Transformers or toy robots related in all those other issues, right? Holy hell was I wrong.

As it turns out I got a lot more than I bargained for when within the pages of those old Woman's Days I found old toy robots ads! Old Woman's Days was the last place in the universe I'd ever expect to find that stuff. The same issue that had the Transformer comic also came with a pull out section from Toys R Us called the Christmas Dream Book 1985. Inside there were ads for Gobots, Voltron and Wheeled Warriors. Then in the issue from earlier in December there was an absolutely beautiful black and white ad from Kay Bee toys for Transformers. So then arose the terrible realization that there may be other ads like this lurking in other issues from that year and possibly other years. It wasn't just the ads that had robots, either. There were articles about toys that were written as holiday gift guides with Transformers pictured in those, too. Were those ads? The more I read the more the distinction between article and advertising began to blur. Then of course there was the Transformer comic presented as a Christmas story for children but it was really an ad when you think about it. I became convinced that there had to have been some sort of covert subliminal Hasbro/Woman's Day advertising conspiracy. The more I read Woman's Day the more I realized it was not a collection of articles on women's issues, but actually a trojan horse filled with thinly veiled advertisements for Hasbro toys disguised as articles on women's issues. Well except for that one about chlamydia on page 28. That was totally about chlamydia.

SO MANY WOMAN'S DAYS, SO LITTLE TIME

Kay Bee Toy Stores 12/03/85

As luck would have it, the magazines arrived last week on the day of the 36th annual IronRoboHellaCon! I would like to thank Shawn and Jerzy for however indirectly contributing to my happiness on my big day. It made me think about how wonderful my life has been made thanks to the technological advancements of mankind and how the pinnacle of a society's evolution is the ability to buy from ebay power sellers. It is truly incredible how large organizations of people I will never meet including Hasbro, my internet service provider, the staff of Woman's Day, other Transformers fans, the US Postal service and everybody who works at eBay are brought together over time and space in a grand magical electronic conspiracy so that I may get birthday presents from the internet. But all that wonderfulness came at a price and I don't just mean shipping costs and Paypal fees. Knowing there's the possibility I might find other Hasbro propagandas in back issues of women's magazines is both a terrible and exciting knowledge. Whether or not all this will result in a quest to seek out more old Woman's Day issues is still up in the air because I've got a tryptizillion other projects to deal with first. But the mystery of what may or may not be contained in those other issues will always be nagging me now in the back of my mind. I'll probably never get a shot at a whole year's worth of Woman's Day for dirt cheap like that one time. Unless I can find some old lady with a large collection of Woman's Days, tracking them down individually is gonna be expensive. Even if I do find a grandma like that I'd be reluctant to meet her. I suspect the only reason someone would stock up on vast numbers of old issues of that magazine is because they were trying to self diagnose whatever venereal diseases they kept getting in the 80s. However, it might be worth it because she'd probably be really really good at making those cookies.

CY-KILLING TIME:I sat down here at the computer to eat cereal and write about GoBots,and I'm all out of cereal but still don't wanna write aboutGoBots

A lot of times I wonder what it must be like to be someone whose time is truly valuable-a person whose life has real worth in the overall scheme of things and who is significantly impacting the course of human history with each breath they take. People like the leaders of countries, heads of state, European heavy metal musicians and the scientists who keep inventing bigger and bigger televisions. These are the people whose seconds of life are worth many times what hours or days of my life are worth. Then there are people whose contributions to mankind I don't quite value as much, like dinosaur archeologists. Dinosaurs are nice and all but there is no discovery a paleontologist could make that has any practical application in my life short of discovering a really cool new animal that Hasbro could make into a toy robot*. This leads me to the following conclusion:

YOUR LIFE'S WORTH CAN BE MEASURED BY HOW MUCH OF A WASTE OF YOUR TIME IT IS WRITING ABOUT GOBOTS

GoBots Robots Robots Robot Fun Fun!

I am worried about the possibility that I may do something that makes me of worth to humanity because then my time will be too valuable to spend writing about GoBots. I wonder where that line is-what is the exact weight of a man's importance that tips the scales of his time's value so that he can no longer afford to blog about toy robots from 25 years ago. Let's say a guy who currently blogs in a deeply meaningful, distinguished and wonderful way like Roger Ebert was also a big GoBots fan. I swear right now Roger Ebert is not at all concerned with spending his last moments writing about GoBots because after his lifetime of great accomplishments what remaining time he has is too valuable to waste on such trivial pursuits. But the relative worth of GoBots blogging becomes more meaningful when it's something I do because my time is not as valuable as Roger Ebert's. So when I wake up and say "Hey, I think I'll write 900 words about GoBots today", it's not as damaging to the net intellectual output of humanity as it would be if Roger Ebert decided the same thing. This is why I hope to never have the burden of being a productive individual making any meaningful contributions to mankind, and also why if I ever do get a real job I will make sure it is in paleontology.

G=Fme²: HOW TO CALCULATE IF BLOGGING ABOUT GOBOTS IS A QUALITY EXPENDITURE OF YOUR TIME (AND ALSO THE RESULTANT NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF SAID BLOGGING TO THE COLLECTIVE IQ OF ALL MANKIND)

So instead of doing as I promised myself I would and devoting a good chunk of time to updating the GoBots section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace instead I goofed off all last week, watching old Japanese robot cartoons, reading Transformer comic books and coming up with what I call "The Theory of Gobotivity". It is my unified field theory of toy robots blogging and its directly proportional relationship to my wasted, wasted life. Simply put the equation is G=Fme², where 'F' is defined as how much dumber the world will be after you blog about GoBots (measured in the number of lolcats and retweets your inane 900 word ramblings will inspire); 'me' is the value to humanity (measured in happy laughing children) of the pathetically small collection of miserable little accomplishments you call your life; and the solution for 'G' is either a yes or no in answer to the question of whether or not you should write about GoBots and/or if paleontology is the career for you. My next theorem will attempt to establish a conversion factor for turning units of Roger Ebert time into the lesser time value currency that is my life so that I may figure out how much longer I need to spend watching old Japanese robot cartoons and reading Transformer comic books so that I may one day write a deeply meaningful, distinguished and wonderful blog post about GoBots, or failing that-dinosaurs.

NEXT TIME ON GOBOTASTIC WASTEOFTIMEALYPSE: GoBots Robots Robots Robot Fun Fun!

*I'll bet the only reason paleontology even exists at all is because Hasbro underwrites that entire branch of study so paleontologists can discover dinosaurs that would make some awesome new Dinobots.

The 1984 Hasbro Toy Catalog part 4-Page 68: The Decepticon Planes! OR: Excuse Me While I Warp this Sky

I remember clearly the first time I ever saw a newspaper ad with line art of a 1984 Decepticon plane other than Thundercracker. Up until that point I wasn't really paying attention and I assumed all the Decepticon plane line arts I found were of Starscream. But this ad had drawings of Skywarp and Thundercracker and labeled them as such. Skywarp was pretty obvious because he was black, but at first I was confused with how they knew it was Thundercracker. Reducing full color images to black and white line drawings eliminated all the color references I needed to do a quick and easy differentiation between the blue jet and the grey one. So when I first started collecting Transformers newspaper ads I'd find what looked to me like a white jet and my mind would assume it was a representation of Starscream. I had to look a little harder at things like decals on the wings and vertical stabilizers in the drawings to figure out that it was really Thundercracker all along in the ads I'd found so far. Skywarp popped up more frequently later on but Starscream remained elusive until I found one ad in Pasadena. I thought it strange that the popular leader of the planes was so rarely found advertised in line art when Skywarp and Thundercracker ads were relatively more common. Was it a toy robots newspaper ad conspiracy between Hasbro and stores from 1984 to keep Starscream from selling while promoting Skywarp sales or was it just random chance? The answer becomes clear when you consider that not much thought was put into toy robots newspaper ads beyond cutting and pasting text and pictures from manufacturer toy catalogs. Obviously Skywarp had a better publicity agent.

Sears 12/10/85	Thrifty 11/07/84

You gotta trust me that these are three different drawings

Several errors were made due the rushed nature of the 1984 debut of the Transformers. Some toys in the 1984 catalog appeared in certain colors that were not released that way and some toys were released in certain colors that never appeared in the catalog. Another type of mistake was the switching of Tech Spec chart numbers between the three Decepticon jets Skywarp, Starscream and Thundercracker. Reading the character bios clarifies that Skywarp is "not too smart" while Starcream as Air Commander is the highest ranking of the group. Yet on the charts the stat numbers got mixed up and Skywarp ended up with a rank of 9 while Thundercracker got the lowest intelligence at 4 and Starscream who was supposed to be the fastest flyer had a speed of 9 instead of 10 like Thundercracker. What exactly was going on here? Were the numbers mixed up and the bios were right or were the bios mixed up and the numbers were right? If it was just a problem with the numbers being on the wrong charts then the names and bios were what was intended, but if those chart numbers were correct then it was the names and bios that were switched. This is a big deal because if you believe the numbers were right but the bios were wrong then that meant the black jet was the one that was supposed to be the highest ranking and thus leader of the team. Was the black jet somehow robbed of its place in toy robots cartoon history because of a printing error? Was Starscream supposed to be the name of the black jet? Or was Skywarp the correct name for the black jet who also was supposed to be the leader? These are the questions that separate the people who are normal toy robots fans from the people who are the confused toy robots fans living a lie inadvertently perpetrated by miscommunications between Marvel and Hasbro (although I'm not sure which one I am right now).

The Budiansky Code

Unfortunately for my "the black jet got screwed" conspiracy, in 2006 during a Transformer convention the writer of the original Transformers tech specs (Bob Budiansky) revealed the original handwritten document where he came up with all the character ratings. That paper proved that the original intention was to have the numbers correlate with the character bios. Starscream was really the leader with a rank of 9, Skywarp really was dumb with an intelligence of 4 and Thundercracker didn't really have a speed of 10. His document pretty much squashed any speculation that the black jet was intended to be anything other than a subservient flyer in the Decepticon Air Force. It's obvious from the paper that the intention was to have the black jet be named Skywarp and play the role of follower. Or was it? The colors of the toys are not mentioned in the Budiansky code. I still see a scenario where Hasbro wanted that black jet to be the leader and the real mixup was the names! Although Budiansky laid it all out clear as day I think the confusion that led to the tech spec anomalies came from someone at Hasbro who intended for the black jet to be the leader trying to match up what Budiansky gave them to the jet colors and character roles they wanted. These are the hallucinations that separate the people who are normal toy robots fans from the people who are the confused toy robots fans living in an elaborate fantasy inadvertently perpetrated by miscommunications between Marvel and Hasbro (and I'm starting to see which one I am right now).

So why would Hasbro want the black jet to be the leader and is there any evidence of this intention anywhere at all? As far as motive all I have is speculation based on how the black color scheme was a Hasbro original creation. The color schemes for the jets that would become known as Starscream and Thundercracker previously existed when these toys were originally released in the Diaclone Jet Robo line. Hasbro came up with an original color scheme with more sinister character than the other jets just to make that guy a moron? It doesn't seem right. Then again they didn't change the colors on the toys that would become Optimus Prime and Megatron so it's a weak argument. The only evidence I have is also pretty weak speculation based on the positioning of the toys relative to each other in early promotional materials. In both the 1984 Transformers pack-in toy catalog and on page 68 of the '84 Hasbro toy catalog Skywarp is positioned forward with the other two behind him, as if to suggest that he is the one that is most important-the leader. Can there be any doubt as to which ones are following when the physical placement of the toys puts Skywarp at the forefront? These are the delusional misinterpretations that separate the people who are normal toy robots fans from the people who are the conspiracy minded nutcases unable to let go of obvious mistakes made because of simple miscommunications between Marvel and Hasbro (which I pretty much am).

The Decepticon Planes page of the '84 toy catalog also contains some actual useful Skywarp revelations beyond what I use to support my complicated toy robots conspiracy theories. It is interesting to note that the Skywarp pictured is a hybrid of the prototype used in the '84 TF toy pack-in catalog and the later production release that had a black nosecone. It has the purple tailfins, the black shinguards, the purple cannons and missiles, purple landing gear and the super long sharp pointy forward wingtips from the early prototype. Hell it may actually be the early prototype with a black nosecone painted or stuck onto it. This Skywarp along with the black hooded Bluestreak in the Autobots pages leads me to believe the '84 Hasbro toy catalog was made shortly after the '84 Transformers catalog that came with the toys, since the versions here are more in line with what eventually was released. I imagine these changes reflect Hasbro's process of working out how they were going to translate the Skywarp palette into an actual production color scheme taking into account available paint applications and gang molding of parts and stuff like that. For more info on the evolution of the early Decepticon planes including their variations and prototypes I strongly recommend Maz's Early Decepticon Jets article over at tf-1.com.

I think that's going to wrap it up for my coverage of the 1984 Hasbro toy catalog. All that's left are the pages for Optimus Prime and Megatron and although those two are iconic figures it's hard to write anything new or interesting about them. Plus there's probably some Transfan illuminati guy out there pulling his hair out with every page I reveal from this sacred tome. Maybe I'll leave the last few pages for someone else to write about in the future. I could never figure out why people haven't scanned this stuff in by now, although I do have my theories...

UPDATE!
I was unpacking my stuff and noticed that the interior of the octagonal 1984 Transformers Jumbo collectors case uses the toy catalog pages for the Autobot minicars and Decepticon jets. There are no name labels here, unlike the toy catalog.

25 Years ago in Transfromers PART 5-DRIVE OF THE MACHINES or:As with the generation it inspired, concieved in the back of a car

The origins of the great fictions are always as fantastic as the stories within them (and by great fictions I mean the stuff with droids and Hobbitses). Lucas wrote Star Wars incorporating mythological symbols and motifs and The Lord of the Rings was born of a writer who had seen the hells of World War II. So as a young pre-teen in 1985 I remember wishing that Transformers too had been born of legends torn from the mind of an angsty English poet. Surely the story of intergalactic war waged between sentient robots took decades for some solitary recluse to write in a cave as he slowly drove himself mad fine tuning the storytelling subtleties and delicate layers of meaning within the subtext of an epic adventure about alien robots that crash into a volcano and turn into Volkswagens.

IT WAS LESS "WAR AND PEACE" AND MORE "HAROLD AND KUMAR"

Playthings Magazine Feb 1984

But in reality I've found that the true creation story of the very core of the Transformers mythos didn't come from the tortured mind of a disturbed genius caveman. Instead there is this excerpt from a book titled "The Real Toy Story" where the writer relates a road trip taken by four guys between Hasbro's Rhode Island headquarters and New York City. (The author doesn't provide and exact date of this historic car ride but my best estimate based on an interview with Hasbro's Senior Vice President of Research and Development George Dunsay would be sometime around June or July of 1983.) The four guys were Hasbro Senior Vice President of Marketing Steve Schwartz, Thomas Griffin who was the president of Griffin-Bacal advertising agency, Paul Kurnit the executive vice president of Griffin-Bacal and Joe Bacal, who I think was the co-chairman and creative director of Griffin-Bacal at the time. I've written before about how Griffin-Bacal was the real creative force behind The Transformers (and also their feelings on the marketing of its predecessor) so it didn't surprise me that these were the guys in the car. It just surprised me that the creation of the Transformers story happened in a car at all. It wasn't the miraculous virgin birth/conception by midichlorians genesis I expected, but it is still fitting that my favorite sci-fi story of robot cars was born in the back of one.

THE HARSHEST ASPECT OF LIVING IN REALITY IS KNOWING I WILL NEVER GET TO SEND A POSTCARD FROM MOUNT SAINT HILLARY

With their jets vs. cars alien space robot fantasy idea in place, Griffin-Bacal would go on to further flesh out the concept alongside Marvel Productions, where comic writer Bob Budiansky and others would come up with names and character profiles and other elements that would complete the background story. Then there came print ads in toy industry trade publications featuring those cars and jets fighting each other in space and eventually other advertising for the line including commercials, comics and the cartoon. Of course there is more, much more to the creation of the Transformers toyline beyond Griffin-Bacal's involvement. What strikes me most about it is how the creation of the franchise and its mythical backstory was such a collaborative effort spread out over the contributions of so many talented individuals. There was no one distinct George Lucas or J.R.R. Tolkien creator type behind the Autobots and Decepticons. THEN MICHAEL BAY COMES ALONG AND CRAPS ALL OVER IT AND OHMYGOD ROBOPLASTIC APOCALYPSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!