The Robotastic SuperConocalypse 2011!

The thirtieth seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse KRA-KOOMS apart like an iPod being eaten by a talking robot Tyrannosaurus in this Florida Supercon 2011 edition of the Podcastalypse! Thrill to the adventures of the Nostrodomatron as I spend the entire convention wandering around talking to myself about toy robots and pictures of toy robots. Then as if that weren't mind-blowing enough, I talk with special guests Ken Lashley and Gregg Berger, two men who know a lot about cartoons of toy robots! That's pretty much the toy robot subject matter trifecta right there. It's all here and more in this "TRANS-TECHNOLOGICAL CYBERTRONIANS" IS HARDER TO SAY THAN IT LOOKS edition of the podcastalypse!


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HAY GUYS CHECK OUT my Facebook gallery of Supercon 2011 pictures.



Ken Lashley is the man behind Draxhall Jump, which is the company most famous for originating the concepts and designs of the Transformers Transtech line. He's been involved behind the scenes with Hasbro on a number of franchises including Star Wars, G.I Joe and Transformers for over a decade.



Gregg Berger is of course a renowned professional voice actor famous for many roles including The Transformers' Grimlock the Dinobot. I asked him a few questions about the work he did voicing super robot pilot Tommy Davis in Tranzor-Z, the US released English dub of the legendary Japanese anime Mazinger-Z.



Darth Vader is a fallen Jedi who punched his pregnant wife to death but still knows how to party at Supercon!

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• My job as a roboplastilogical archaeologist at Supercon 2011
• My generation's indebtedness to José Delbo
• Juan Antonio Fontanez met my Jetfire
• Luis Diaz drawing me a Mazinger
• Fending off armageddon in your spare time
• My golden questional nuggets of wisdom at Gregg Berger's panel
• Ken Lashley is living the dream
• Draxhall Jump's work on Transformers Transtech
• Interview with concept artist Ken Lashley of Draxhall Jump
• Ken's design work on Beast Machines
• Ken's love of the robot genre
• Love is owning and watching the same cartoons on different formats
• Design process of action figures as product vs as show characters
• Being immortalized in plastic as the G.I. Joe figure Burnout
• How much of this Armada toyline poster do you remember?
• How high end concept work works
• Drawing the brunt of concept work on Transtech
• The connection between Transtech designs and those in the new Transformer movies
• Ken's early concept work on the Driller.
• Doing tons of concept work from Transformers boardgames to Star Wars Transformers blister pack pencil art and other package illustration
• Who keeps the pencils?
• The Star Wars Celebration 5 Ken Lashley "Galactic Bad Boys" print
• Working 15 careers at once
• Post Ken Lashley thoughts
• Somebody bought the $75 AT-AT!
• Scoring me an Exo-Squad transforming E-Frame
• The train robot formerly known as Midnight Express
• Tranzor-Z break
• Interview with Gregg Berger
  
• The degree of awareness Gregg had of Tranzor-Z/Mazinger fandom
• Casting directors filling roles based on actors' talent versus their celebrity
• Exploring the allure of giant robot cartoons
• Bumping into everybody from everything
Gregg's CD Think Globally...Act Locally
• FamousFoneFriends.com
• Gregg on Facebook
• Gregg at Auto Assembly 2011
• Don't Rocket Punch your friends!

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 4: February 1986 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by independent stations

Although the Nielsen ratings for February of 1986 don't technically qualify as "25 years ago" the numbers are still important analytical tools for roboplastic archaeologists looking to study the popularity of cartoon robot Volkswagens and their transforming Tyrannosaurus cohorts. I'm taking a look this time at the February '86 ratings for shows in the 'Early Fringe' time period (Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) as reported by independent stations. Independent UHF stations of the 80s were traditionally the realm of the half hour toy commercial and they were where I did most of my afterschool cartoon watching. Since the independents had a much wider variety of animation in their lineups than the networks, the numbers for the independents give a more complete comparison of the relative popularity of the most cartoons. But first here's the entire top ten based on Kids' share and rank for the early fringe as reported by independent stations in February '86:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
01/39	03/12	Diff'rent Strokes	34	12	11	11
02/32	17/10	Scooby Doo	22	10	10	10
03/31	08/11	Thundercats	72	11	9	11
03/31	09/11	Transformers	59	11	10	11
03/31	24/09	She-Ra	57	9	9	9
06/30	02/13	Three's Company	9	15	13	13
06/30	04/12	Too Close for Comfort	20	13	12	13
06/30	15/10	G.I. Joe	73	11	10	11
09/29	13/10	Little House on the Prairie	11	10	9	10
09/29	16/10	He-Man & the MotU	53	10	10	10

February '86 was the first sweeps period after the legendary November '85 sweeps when Thundercats, Transformers, She-Ra, G.I. Joe and He-Man fought it out in a very toy cartoon heavy Kids' top ten. In November the only non-toy cartoons in the top 10 were Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry and perennial ratings champion Woody Woodpecker. For whatever reason Woody Woodpecker disappeared completely from the ratings in February '86, leaving the non-animated Diff'rent Strokes in the number 1 kids' spot. Tom & Jerry also dropped out of the top ten and the two vacancies left by them and Woody were filled by the live action shows Little House on the Prairie and Too Close for Comfort. One of the criticisms leveled against the ratings system was that the kids numbers were largely inaccurate because children didn't take their reporting responsibilities seriously. I tend to agree that something fishy is going on here because Little House and TCfC were mind numbingly boring to me when I was 11 back in '85. I can't imagine them being more popular than He-Man. Then again, maybe I'm discounting the most powerful demographic of all: pre-teen girls!

Feb '86 was also the second consecutive report to use Kids' rank and share, allowing for a little bit of kid-centric ratings continuity to be established. Transformers and Thundercats continued to be the top toy based shows in February 86, both tying for third with a 31 share. In November '85 they were in fourth and fifth place with Transformers taking a 34 share on the kids chart, slightly edging out Thundercats which had a 33. Although they both improved in rank, the slight erosion in overall share indicated that the popularity of toy based cartoons was beginning to decline.

Other animated shows outside the kids' top ten:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
15/25	23/09	Jetsons	21	8	8	8
19/24	28/08	M.A.S.K.	26	9	8	9
22/22	31/07	Flintstones	7	6	7	6
22/22	32/07	Tom & Jerry	5	7	6	6
22/22	36/06	Heathcliff	18	6	6	6
27/21	30/07	Challenge of the GoBots	24	9	8	8
29/18	37/06	Voltron	20	8	7	6
37/14	40/05	Bugs Bunny	7	5	6	4
38/13	42/04	Popeye	3	12	8	7
39/12	41/04	Inspector Gadget	13	5	5	4
39/12	49/02	Tranzor-Z	3	4	4	4
42/11	47/03	Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors	22	5	4	4
45/10	48/03	Super Friends	7	6	6	4
47/09	43/04	Robotech	11	6	6	5

After debuting on the November '85 ratings in 17th place with a 27 share, M.A.S.K. loses a few points and drops to 19th, which is still not too bad. GoBots falls five places to 27th and Voltron actually climbs up the chart, going from 37th in November to 29th in February. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors in 42nd place only falls one spot compared to November and Tranzor-Z rockets to 39th from 46th. Robotech at 46th remains the least popular cartoon in the kids' top 50. I am still amazed how Tranzor-Z remains so obscure in pop culture history and Robotech so lauded when the actual ratings of the day reveal Robotech's popularity to be well below that of most every other cartoon. It's possible the absence of Tranzor-Z merchandise in North America contributed to this while the less popular Robotech was afforded a toyline. Or maybe a cartoon about a robot that was just a robot didn't make as much of an impression as one about transforming robot fighter planes. Maybe the key to pop culture immortality in 1985 was not ratings popularity but whether or not a cartoon had Shoji Kawamori jet robots you could buy at K-Mart.

NEXT TIME ON RATINGSTASTIC ROBOTCARTOONALYPSE: The February '86 Early Fringe network ratings-featuring possibly the most robotastic top ten ever!

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 2: November 1985 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by independent stations

As I uncover more and more television ratings reports in old issues of Variety magazine a couple of things become clear to me. First, ratings were reported in a number of ways at a number of times. There were three main reporting periods-February, May and November. However, judging from ads placed in broadcast industry publications like Variety and Broadcasting, networks also had access to weekly and monthly reports not widely reported anywhere. The reports also divided up information based on time period and channel affiliation, so whether a show aired on an independent or network station affected its ratings just as much as what time of day it aired. The second big realization I had was that ratings like most statistics can be interpreted a number of ways. Since the data reported comes from these brief windows in time and is parsed in a number of ways, Nielsens can make the same show seem either relatively popular or a ratings loser. Ratings analysis depends then on how you look at the numbers, so a broad, overarching measure of the popularity of a show like The Transformers is tough to ascertain when the data comes in one drip at a time. With the reporting periods 3-5 months apart, a show may have been consistently good or bad in the interim and it would go unnoticed on the all important Feb/May/Nov sweeps reports. Despite these limitations some very important conclusions can be drawn, not the least of which being that a lot more people were watching Challenge of the GoBots 25 years ago than they'll admit to today.

The last time I blogged about ratings numbers I took a look at the May 1985 reporting period. That was a tough one to start with because all I had to go on to determine show popularity was the overall household rank based on share. But starting with the November 1985 reports two new columns were added-Kids' Share and Kids' Rank. This changed everything and made my analysis much easier. Now I was able to rank cartoons based on their kid popularity, which is really all that matters for the kind of analysis I'm trying to do. Here then are the top ten shows based on Kid Rank from the November '85 Nielsens during the early fringe (Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) time period:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr
01/39	16/10	Woody Woodpecker & Friends	3	7	7	8
02/35	05/11	Diff'rent Strokes	30	11	12	10
02/35	23/09	Tom & Jerry	3	10	8	6
04/34	04/12	Transformers	60	12	11	10
05/33	09/11	Thundercats	75	10	11	9
06/32	02/14	Three's Company	10	14	15	13
06/32	15/10	She-Ra	52	9	9	9
08/31	08/11	G.I. Joe	73	10	11	9
08/31	22/09	Scooby Doo	25	11	11	10
10/30	14/10	He-Man & the MotU	50	11	10	10

Some of the shows tied for rank based on their share of the kid market, as was the case with 2nd, 6th and 8th place. For purposes of my chart I used the overall Household Rank as the tiebreaker. I also included Household Share because that's the number the previous rating period columns (the last three on the far right side) use so it's easier to see overall trends. The trends are suspect to me, though because again Nielsen has prior historical ratings numbers for shows that hadn't aired yet. For example, She-Ra shouldn't have November '84 ratings because it hadn't aired yet. Likewise, Thundercats shouldn't have anything from before January of '85. I still don't know where they got those ratings that shouldn't exist.

Without the Kids' Rank it was hard to track the popularity of these shows with their target audience. In the May numbers (which only used overall Household Share) animated shows barely cracked the top ten. But when rearranged this way it becomes very obvious that children loved watching cartoons and animation dominates this top ten instead of being the exception. One thing that remained constant from May to November was that Woody Woodpecker was still the highest ranked animated show. I do remember watching a lot of Woody Woodpecker but I never realized he was more popular than any toy based cartoons in the ratings for a little while. Most of the toy cartoons here in the top ten (with the exception of He-Man) were making their Monday-Friday run debuts in fall '85 so this is truly the beginning of the battle of the toy shows. Transformers does exceptionally well here, ranking fourth not just in Kids but also in overall Household Rank. The magic doesn't extend to all robot shows, though, and the next highest is Challenge of the GoBots which comes in at #22 as we see in the next chart...

Other Animated Shows Outside the Kids' Top 10

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Nov '84 Shr	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr
15/28	38/07	Bugs Bunny	4	4	5	5
17/27	21/09	M.A.S.K.	28	9	9	8
18/25	34/08	Jetsons	18	7	7	7
22/24	33/08	Challenge of the GoBots	34	9	9	9
29/22	40/06	Heathcliff	17	7	6	6
31/20	41/06	Super Friends	5	11	10	10
34/18	46/05	Flintstones	06	4	5	6
37/17	42/06	Voltron	20	8	7	7
40/15	49/04	Inspector Gadget	12	7	6	6
41/14	50/04	Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors	30	5	5	4
46/09	52/03	Tranzor-Z	6	4	4	3
49/07	51/04	Robotech	9	6	6	6

I didn't feel like typing the entire list out to 54 places like I did last time so I included only animated shows outside of the top ten. Robot shows didn't do relatively well overall compared to other cartoons, with classics like Voltron, Robotech and Tranzor-Z near the bottom of the list. The GoBots at #22 is actually very respectable. Voltron on the other hand was on the downslide as it fell to 37th place here and didn't deliver the same ratings World Events Productions was able to promote back in the same ratings period a year earlier. Robotech doing so relatively poor is interesting because this show is consistently mentioned by Japanese animation fans as being the show that got them into anime. (Yet Tranzor-Z beats it in the ratings and I've never heard anyone say nowadays that Tranzor-Z was their gateway anime show.) Robotech is another show for which there are ratings from months that it hadn't aired yet. Even worse, the 6 share reported here for May of '85 contradicts the actual May '85 report which said it had an 8. I've found it wasn't uncommon for a show to have a certain share rating and then see that number change as reported in the next report's prior history columns. But at this point I'm willing to just overlook those inconsistencies and write it off as me not being knowledgeable enough about the ratings process to interpret it all properly.

Next time I'll continue with November 1985's numbers from network affiliates. For some reason the network top ten kids' shows had pretty much the same cartoons but in an entirely different order and with different share numbers. Since the networks had other more popular programming not all of the shows that made the independent list were on the network top 50. So it should be fun to see how what was popular on independent stations may not have done as well on the networks and vice versa.

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 ONLY OLD TOY ROBOTS NEWSCAST WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OLD TOY ROBOTS GNUS!

The fifth seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse shatters like Gary Gnu's skull taking a rocket fist to the face as I discover there may in fact be new developments relating to my favorite 25 year old toy roboplasticos! Listen in horror as I discuss revelations about new toys coming out that may or may not be the return of the Shogun Warriors and GoBots, Micronauts (or the lack thereof) at Toy Fair, and the new old Voltron DVD cartoon that came out last week! Plus Tales of the Robotarded featuring me buying (and losing) 90 dollar toy robots and a story of grown up Transformer fans trying to do good things for little children but that end up acting like little children themselves! YUP IT'S A WHOPPER ALRIGHT!

Or download it directly

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Opening Poem-The Roboplastic Podcastalypse (Super Manly Scary Voice Version)
• Show dedication to a good friend whose been in my pants for a long time
• Hoping my life will erupt into a roboplastical mustard commercial
• How to break friends and impress nobody
• "Soul of Chogokin GX-49 Shin Mazinger-Z" is Japanese for both "Tranzor-Z" and "Sayonara ninety dollah"
• Wondering if Koji Kabuto ever had to wait for the bus in front of Hooters
• Cries and screams and no music to my ears
• Standing in my stupid
• Robotardation defined
• Casually liking toy robots is like having cold sores
• AND NOW THE GNUS
• SWAN interview with Super 7 founder Brian Flynn about the $300 Shogun Stormtrooper
• The upcoming $300 Anniversary Neo Mazinger-Z Jumbo
• 'Naut at ToyFair 2010
• HellYeahCop-Tur!
• Live free or Dairugger
• Shoutout to the Transformer fan illluminati
• The 1986 Hasbro pre-Toyfair catalog gets put online and the ensuing robotarded fanpocalypse
• An explanation of the significantly different prototype Transformers from the newly scanned '86 Hasbro Pre-ToyFair catalog
• Show us your Thoroughly Informative Transformer Themed Internet Entertainment Sites!
• Why I am too busy to come on all the big Thoroughly Informative Transformer Themed Internet Entertainment Sites
• Ending poem

The Mighty Morphy Toy Robot Orgy

On top of a backlog of things I want to blog about I've also got a billion other projects I'm working on all designed to establish a larger physical and political presence for the Kingdom of Macrocrania on the internet. I noticed from my blog statisticals that using the Blogger search box at the top of the page isn't as useful as I thought it was. I always thought it was at least good enough that people looking for important things like Voltron and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch could find all the incredibly useful insights, analysis and conspiracy theories I've written on such subjects. But it turns out that search box is total crap so I'm working on tagging every post I've ever written with useful topic titles like "Life is like a furricane" and "We are all Peter Cullen's unwanted children". I'm also working on writing a Transformers podcast about toy robots that are not Transformers because somehow for some reason podcasters are ignoring the incredibly tiny and practically non-existent non-vocal minority audience of people wanting to hear somebody talk about Mighty Orbots and Tranzor-Z. And of course in addition to these things I'm also working on a gigantic backlog of toy robots ads from Rapid City, Pasadena and Miami for the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. But when I say I'm working on all these things I really mean I'm thinking about doing them but instead when I sit down at the computer I end up looking at pictures of Japanese toy robots auctions all day.


If I won the lottery I would buy a 2010 Bumblebee Camaro and paint it like this

There is a public auction about to be held in Pennsylvania where they are going to sell off one of the single most concentrated masses of Japanese toy robots in all creation. The tale of cataloging, identifying and processing the hundreds of individual roboplasticos and robometallicos is being told by the men called to do it at their blog. I do not envy their job but it must be really cool to know so much about robots that people would come to you in situations like that. Once an old lady in Tucson asked me to identify some robots so she could sell them at garage sales and I ended up misidentifying some and I think I told her some of her GoDaiKins were from She-Ra. Being the low class bourgeois Transformer trash fan I am most all of that Philadelphia collection is stuff way beyond my level of knowledge and appreciation. But hot damn there's some crap there that's so incredible I recognize I'm not worthy to even be looking at the jpegs. First you've got the things that joe average neurotypical toy robots fans people like me know about. There's your lots with GoBots, the SDF-1 Macross, some Shogun Warriors, a couple Joons Valkyries, every Soul of Chogokin Mazinger in one shot, and throw in some Masterpiece Transformers and any one of those is like a good day searching on ebay. But then you know you're not in Kansas anymore when you start seeing things like an original GA-01 gold thigh Mazinger or an authentic all gold GA-01 or holy hell a non-GoDaiKin Combattra! Then after you've seen every rare incredible Japanese robot thing ever made you get to what looks like a convertible '72 Ford Fairlane painted in the colors of the Mexican flag and customized in the most awesome Great Mazinger deco ever. Then you realize no matter how many women you lay, no matter how many toy robots you own, no matter how many powerballs you win, you will never truly be a man until you drive something that looks like that in real life.

HASBRO MAKE THIS TOY

Then it all just starts going Twilight Zone and after a while you stop asking why is Great Mazinger flying a boat or driving a race car and the existence of such toys not only stops being weird it all makes perfect sense. Then you realize that no matter how cool it was to have a Transformer power cycle when you were a kid, your childhood pales in comparison to some four year old Japanese guy who grew up riding the Dol Giran robot dragon wagon. Then finally everything you thought you knew about life, love, god and toy robots crumbles with your sanity when you see a toy of Mazinger-Z driving a rocket launcher equipped convertible red Volkswagen that looks like Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch. Suddenly blog tags, podcasts and websites of old toy robots ads lose all significance in light of this new goal that becomes the overriding focus in your life-leaving your family and everything else behind to illegally break in to Mexico to learn how to paint giant robots on cars.

SATURDAY at SUPERCON: TALES of DOOM, 'TUME and CROOM

I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO A CONVENTION that was not Botcon or some sort of anime apocalypse. No webcomic-cons, normalcomic-cons, gamecons, Joecons, Cobracons, Nintendocons, StarWars-ebrations or anything to do with furries. So it is with much excitement that I updated the Roboplastic Flickrpocalypse with pictures I took Saturday at Animation Supercon 2009. There was much adventuring during last Saturday's quest to secure yet another picture with someone dressed up in a cardboard robot costume, as is customary no matter what type of convention I'm at. Things were not looking good for our hero but thankfully I did find this one guy dressed in cardboard boxes wrapped in aluminum foil who bore a striking resemblance to the Cockmaster2005. The guy had "GlompBot" or some such silliness written on the back but I should have gone up to him and said, "Hey, it's the Cockmaster2005! I see you're a big fan of my work! Honestly that head should be more triangular. Here let me sign it for you."

Rob Paulsen-a real special teams player

FOR AUTOGRAPHS I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY VOICE ACTORS MORE THAN HOW MUCH THEIR TRANSFORMER COST AT RETAIL IN 1986

Speaking of signatures, in my last post I wrote about how many of the guests at Supercon had roles in the original Transformers cartoon but because they were charging $20 for autographs and $30 for pictures I didn't approach them. The guests all sat at tables in a long row along the east wall of the 100,000 square foot convention room and each had in front of them various autograph prints and a sign that said "AUTOGRAPHS $20". There was no way I could have any sort of conversation with these guys about how huge a dick Wally Burr was to work for on Transformers without feeling guilty about taking up the time they could be using to sign stuff and get that extra 20 bucks off some kid dressed as Harry Potter who really likes Futurama. There was one point late Saturday when the crowds had subsided and I might have gotten to talk to Rob "2/5ths of Superion" Paulsen but just the thought of that $20 fee was a big turnoff. It's the principle. I understand these guys should be compensated but damnit, Gregg Berger was only charging $5 for his autograph at Botcon and he was friggin' Grimlock king of the Dinobots. There should be some kind of scale, especially if you were only two of the little Aerialbots and not the big middle one that Superion's head goes on. I'm thinking if the most famous Transformer you voiced had a toy that only cost $5 then maybe you aren't a $20 autograph. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, CASEY "CLIFFJUMPER" KASEM.


Mecha engineering requires advanced knowledge of robots and geometry, also mad hot melt glue gun skills.

ONE MAN'S TRASH IS ANOTHER MAN'S VADER

Although guilt and cheapness robbed me of a chance to hobnob with my childhood robot heroes I was able to make the most of my $25 admission by hitting up some great panels. Some panels I was aware of and others were total surprises. Like not only was that guy who made South Florida's favorite cardboard Gundam there, he was doing a panel on how to make cardboard costumes! I was so inspired that suddenly all those empty moving boxes in my house that are a pain to get rid of were transformed in my mind's eye into a potential army of cardboard Optimus Primes and Darth Vaders. Unfortunately fan costume technology and cheap overseas labor has advanced to the point where my cardboard costume ideas have been rendered unnecessarily complicated and stupid by those guys that dress like Stormtroopers everywhere and the Halloween aisle at Wal-Mart.

You gotta have some serious Imperial connections to be a snowtrooper stationed in Miami

THE DIFFERENCE IS THE POKEMON HOOKERS HERE SKIPPED THE POKEMON PART

Conventions in general have grown so generic that guest lists and panel programming are almost interchangeable between anime, comics and normal cartoon conventions. The real difference-what tells you where you are-is what the people are dressed up as. And aside from Stromtroopers that show up whenever more than 50 people are gathered in one place regardless of occasion, Animation Supercon did have a rather unique brand of cosplayer. Anime themed cosplay wasn't as prevalent here as at other conventions. There were still a lot of people dressed up but instead they were in costumes from comic books like Watchmen, Batman, X-Men, GI Joe and whatever comic has ninja hookers. I got pictures with a black costume Spider-Man, a Doctor Doom and even a Storm in the classic pre-mohawk look with the big hair and cape. I could almost have staged my own Secret Wars and locked those three in a room to fight it out for 20 bucks while I took bets on who would win. Except that wagering on gladiatorial cosplay deathmatch fighting is probably illegal. Also, it's kidnapping.

What was fantastic about these four was how drunk three of them were

FRIENDS OF BRUCE W.

The absolute highlight of the day was the "Batman in Animation with Lee the Batfan" panel. I don't know anything about Batman or even care but I had an hour to kill before the "Transformers Panel of Awesome". By the time I walked in the Batman panel had already "started", if you consider three drunk guys who didn't know much about Batman talking out loud to themselves "started". It was actually really funny. They would ask the audience to ask them anything about Batman or just anything in general and when someone would ask a question the guys would get distracted by cosplayers in the hallway and start heckling. It was chaos as they stalled for time until the real panelist "Lee the Batfan" showed up. In the meantime they related about a million times the story of how Lee is the second biggest Batman collector in the world, and that's because the old number two just died recently. They repeated this constantly so when they asked for more questions I asked them if they were to rank all Batman collectors in the world, where would their friend Lee stand? And as if they never related the story before, they repeated how Lee is the second biggest Batman collector in the world, and that's because the old number two just died recently. I also asked them who their favorite Shogun Warrior was, but what I really wanted to know was how did you guys get so wasted by 4 p.m.?

They shouldn't turn into animals-they should turn into Dinobots

I CAN TELL TOM LIKES TRANSFORMERS BY HOW MUCH HE HATES TRANSFORMERS

Two panels I went to were hosted by a guy named Tom Croom, who is a rather outspoken figure in Florida anime fandom and he's got the haters to prove it. The first panel was about the history of anime fandom in Florida and boy was he the subject matter expert there. I had a rough idea of the convention scene before this panel but now I have a lot better idea of how it all fits together-what cons came from which organizations and where those organizations originated. It was extremely informative because Tom was not afraid to be very candid with hard facts about convention organization like how much it costs to do them and how exactly they "die". The second panel was his legendary "Transformers Panel of Awesome" which he's been doing in some form for a couple of years. Now I've been to various Botcons and seen a lot of panels done by experts in the world of Transformers so I wondered how awesome it could be with just a guy in front of a table and no guests or displays or visual aids. I soon realized Croom is a bit of a showman who's good at engaging the crowd with his somewhat controversial and even slightly offensive opinions. He started off by establishing his credibility immediately. He ran down the list of co-presenters he'd done the panel with before including Greg Berger and Stan Bush and he was not shy to mention he knew things about Transformers that they didn't. Then he kicked off explaining why Beast Wars sucks because it fails to meet his definition of Transformers, which had something to do with them being mechanical, non-organic alt modes turning into humanoid robot forms. Now I'm not all that crazy about every incarnation of the franchise but I try to be tolerant of others' likes, so that was a bit off-putting and uncomfortable. I wondered if anyone else felt the same since the majority of the crowd was in their late teens/early twenties who were probably raised on Beast Wars. I was willing to tolerate the hating but after ten minutes of him ranting about Beast Wars I got up and left to go to the mascot sewing panel because that's what I do if I don't like something-I stop watching it. I'm not crazy about BW either but I don't understand why Tom's seen all the Beast Wars shows including the Japanese spinoffs if he thinks it sucks so much. Then again there is a certain level of showmanship here and he was really getting the rest of the crowd engaged which is a sign of a good panel. I guess I'm just not the target audience for his aggressively entertaining style. I can understand after going to these two Tom Croom panels why he's so reviled by some yet so loved and respected by others, which is an ironic description of him because it also applies to Beast Wars.

ARE ALL PLUSHY

Supercon ended for me at the mini-mascot sewing workshop, which held the biggest surprise of the day. As I was sewing my little plush squid together I was telling the girl running the workshop how I wanted to learn to sew because I bought a plush Ravage at Botcon a couple years ago and I wanted to learn how to make plushy mini cassette Decepticon animals myself. Well guess who I was talking to? The girl running the panel here in Miami was actually the same person who created the plushy Ravage I bought in Cincinnati! The guy selling them at Botcon initially bought them from her! I'd found the very creator of the things that inspired me to get sewing in the first place. Faced with this knowledge I did what any aspiring sewing apprentice would do-I decided to quit sewing and just pay her to make more for me. If things work out I'll eventually have a little zoo of evil plush dinocassettes. In addition to the little squid I made I also came away from Supercon with a bootleg DVD set of Tranzor-Z, issue #3 of Fanfare Magazine from Spring 1980 (with Fred Patten's legendary "Animation in Japan" article) and issue 15 of Super7. Both the magazines only cost $2 each so that was a big score. I almost almost wished I would have pre-regged and gotten the whole 3 day pass but there really wasn't much left for 35 year old Geewunners to do outside of Saturday so I'm comfortable with my decision. Next up on my convention radar is Infinite Bits, Miami's first videogame convention. It'll be in the same venue as Supercon and in a little over two weeks. Their costume contest rules specify the characters people dress as must have originated in video games. I don't know if I'll see any cardboard robots there unless someone really really loves Virtual On and is crazy enough to try making one of those Virtuaroids. My only hope is if the Cockmaster2005 convinces the con organizers that he was a boss in Yar's Revenge, but honestly that head really needs to be more triangular.

The wages of Shin is about 35 dollars

A new Tranzor-Z cartoon in Japan came out called "Shin Mazinger Z-Hen" and I know you're thinking, Hey that sounds like it translates into 'Tranzor-Z Chicken Show'. I was thinking the same thing and that's why I haven't seen it yet but it comes highly recommended by a blogger I like who's smart about Japanimation. The big news is it's getting shown at the convention I'm going to this weekend. Yeah, I decided to pre-reg for the Mizucon because although I am 35 and have nothing in common with the anime crowd and I have no idea who the guests are and me attending this convention sounds like a big train wreck, the programming in the video room looks robotastic. With two days to go the organizers still haven't uploaded any panel info so I don't know if I'm going to have a reason for going beyond cartoons and the dealer room. Hell, I don't even know when the convention is starting. It sounds like chaos but don't worry, my fellow Macrocranians. Even if I have to bribe a Pokemon hooker I will figure out where I need to be to watch Tranzor-Z Chicken Show and two other Japanimations I've been interested in seeing at the con-Detroit Metal City and Gundam 00. It may seem kind of dumb to pay what comes out to 12 bucks a day to sit in a room watching cartoons that might suck (and that I could torrent for free) but I will keep an open mind. I don't want to rocket punch my chickens before they hatch.

Beat You to the Rocket Punch

Last night was library night and you know what that means-more robot ads from the newspaper archives. Instead of going after 80's robot toys this time I went further back. I went all the way back to 1974. I thought it would be fun to read papers from the year I was born, but then as I loaded the machine with October of '74 suddenly I felt weird. As I was reading the news of the day, an unsettling feeling intensified. It's like I wasn't supposed to be there. I can't explain it, but there is something really creepy about reading newspapers from the year I was born.

I think it's partly due to the timeless bland look the Rapid City public library has. From the outside it looks modern enough, but parts of the inside might as well be from any time and any place. The area that has the microfishe readers is seperated from the rest of the library. The furniture is especially generic looking. Nothing looks modern. The microfishe readers themselves are technology that has existed since the 70's. There is no hint of what year it is when you sit there in front of those machines.

So when I sat down last night and pulled up 1974 it was like going back in time. I clutched my iPod tightly to remind myself that I wasn't in 1974. It was like that old Christopher Reeve movie where he goes back in time by emptying his room of all objects from his current time period and then he looks at the wall and concentrates on the year he wants to visit. The only difference was he really wanted to be back in time. As I looked at the pictures of the high school football players in the sports sections I thought about how they were all probably in their 50's or even dead by now. I did not want to be in 1974, especially at my current age.



[Although I guess it would be cool having knowledge of future events. Of course everyone would try to beat George Lucas at creating Star Wars if they went back to 1974. I probably wouldn't be able to create a movie, but I could write approximations of the Star Wars speaking lines off the top of my head and animate it with clay puppets and cardboard spaceships on public access television. Then when he comes out with it three years later I could sue him for ripping off my public access puppet show, thus toppling the Star Wars empire and preventing the creation of about ten million nerds.]

I always think about going back in time but as it was happening last night at the library, instead of feeling nostalgic and happy I got all bummed out because 1974 kind of sucked. There was very little toy robot action going on. I searched hard for any hints of the eventual robo awesomeness that the world would develop, but no traces of robot culture were evident in 1974. Nothing seemed familiar. It was a desolate time devoid of internets. Was I really born that year? Where were the robots? I was freaking out. 1974 was scaring me. The ads had no robots of any kind. I drowning in a sea of Evel Knievel wind up motorcycles and Snoopy radios. Please save me robots from the strange toys of 1974! Oh god somebody invent the internet already!

I was all freaked out so I jumped ahead and loaded up the reels with years I was more comfortable with-1977 and 1978. Maybe one day I'll have the guts to load up '74 through '76 but that'll have to wait a while. And guess who awaited me in the newspaper ads from '77 and '78? Those goofy crazy robots with lots of metal and little articulation-the Shogun Warriors.

Like I've said before, my recollection of the toyline is bad because I was only three to four years old when they were at their retail heyday, but hell, they were robots and I was glad to see their ads. It was years later that I started watching their cartoons but for some reason the names of the Shogun Warriors toys were different from the cartoon names. Like I remember the Mazinga toy as Tranzor-Z because that's what the cartoon was called. And Dragun was known to me as Star Dragon from Starvengers, part of the Force Five block of japanese robo cartoons in the early 80's.

TERRIBLE COOL NEWS!!! I just found out that there is a company making DVDs of the Force Five cartoons and you can see clips from Starvengers at their site! DREAM COMES TURE!!!

Damnit, I was supposed to talk about Shogun Warriors in this post but I spent it writing about how 1974 scares me. So without further adeiu, the first ad waaay at the top is from a store called Gambles. It was published November 20, 1977. I like it because somebody hand drew Dragun to fit the layout of the ad instead of using stock images. The one that reads "Invincible Guardians of World Freedom" is another Gambles ad, but from December 11 of 1977. The "Almost 2 Feet tall" ad is from Mill's Drug Store published 28 November 1978. "Shogun 24" Warriors" is a JC Penny ad from 21 December 1978. The final ad is for the three inchers and it came from JC Penny's 28 November 1979 newspaper ad.

Rocket fistfull of suck

Remember that comic book about the big robots where there was that bad guy named Megatron and he could transform and the good guy transforming robots had to stop him? Yeah, I do to. Too bad it got totally ripped off years later by the Transformers.

Robot cartoons in the late 70's and early 80's kicked lots of butt. One of my biggest regrets was not being born a little hawaiian boy about 5 years earlier so that I could really understand all the bastardized english dubbed anime cartoons from Japan that aired on TV when I was five years old. If only I was just a few years older I would have really been able to comprehend how mind blowingly awesome this crap was. I got to watch Tranzor Z, Starblazers and the Force Five block of robot shows as a kid so I guess I can't complain, but watching a show at 4 years old doesn't have the same effect as watching a show at 10. It's like the difference between being a fan of Tranzor Z and having a doctorate in Tranzor Z.

I really started paying attention to these crazy syndicated robot cartoons in El Paso when I was going through a weird time in my life, also known as 1983. It was a transition period for me. My old likes were no longer fresh and new. I had to find new likes. My Star Wars was old and busted and my mom stopped buying He-Man because she thought it was satanic. Transformers hadn't hit yet. I thought GI Joe was lame because it had people in it. I wanted to watch robots. And sure enough, thanks to KCIK, the UHF station channel 14 in El Paso, there were robots to be watched. Channel 14 was my favorite as a kid growing up. They have since sold out and are now whores of the Fox corporation, buck back when I was a kid they were the ass kickingest, Japanese robot showingest channel in El Paso.

The thing about the Force Five robos was they weren't commercially available as toys this late into the 80's. They were sold as Shogun Warriors in the late 70's. I was able to watch the shows in the early 80's, but I had missed the boat as far as toys. I don't think Starblazers ever had toys. So here I am at 8 or 9 years old and the only Shogun Warriors stuff I had was a small 3 inch Dragun (who I broke a face spike off of when I was 4) and that legendary two foot tall Godzilla, who I still have. I got that for Christmas in the late late seventies when I was four or five. So by the time I was 9 and thought this stuff was cool, it was all over and the weird robo lull of 1983 settled in. As a kid I didn't have the resources to really commit my life to Shogun Warriors and try to hunt down their merchandise. The next best thing was the fights I would get into in the 3rd grade pretending to be Mazinga or Dangard Ace and then getting my ass kicked by little girls smaller than me.

So fast forward to 2006 and I'm going to Kmart last Saturday and I find a new little bookstore in the seedy little shopping center where KMart is here in Rapid City. Amongst the piles of sports memorabilia, records, paperback books and other assorted crap are three boxes of comics. I love Rapid City because almost every mom and pop antique shop and bookstore will have comics. And holy hell, this guy had a buttload of Shogun Warriors comics. Here at last was my chance for redemption! My 8 year old self may have been too lazy to get a job and track down old comics, but now at 32 I had $20 in my pocket and I was ready to roll!

So I bought the last six issues of the book just to see what it was like if I knew how to read in 1979. I was learning letters back then. I was just in kindergarten. I don't even think I was housebroken by then. I had a lot of trouble with that. Thankfully, after reading these books I realized that the Shogun Warriors comic had a lot in common with my kindergarten pants-they were both steaming piles of crap.

I thought this book was supposed to be the American equivalent of the Japanese manga for these robots. Maybe a loose translation of some wacky zany adventures these guys were going on in Japan. But nope, Doug Moench the writer just made crap up that had nothing to do at all with anything that these robots were doing in Japanese fiction. It's kind of like when I'd take my He-Man figures and pair them up with my Maxx Steele Robo Force and call them Prehistoric Robot Dinosaur Humpers Force. So although the toy companies invested millions of dollars establishing elaborate mythologies for the characters these toys represent, in my house they'd go on adventures humping plastic dinosaurs I got from the swap meet. In a fantasy setting represented by my toilet. I was a four year old Doug Moench.

Shogun Warriors the comic book is also some of the most racist offensive stuff ever. There's a black guy robot pilot in the book whose first name is unpronounceable so they call him by his last name all the time, which just happens to be Savage. So they call the black guy "Savage" all the time. Plus there's a story where a rat accidentally gets teleported into one of the robots. Then a little while later, the same accident occurs except this time a little mexican boy gets teleported into the robot. I understand the literary device of foreshadowing, but I also sensed a bit of racism here. Does this mean the writer was trying to equate Mexican boys with rats? I think so. What's up with that.

In the end, Shogun Warriors the comic sucked total ass and I guess I'm a bit better off for not knowing how to read or poop yet in 1979. My ignorance saved me. But sometimes when you're a kid, crazy crap like big gold racist robots named Megatron that want to stomp little Mexican boys have a strange appeal. Who am I kidding. It was robots. I would probably have loved reading it back then no matter how much it was calling me a rat boy.