Peace (through tyranny) on earth

I saw the American Greetings Megatron ornament last week at Kohl's. I tried tracking down the Optimus Prime ornament last year but I made the mistake of shopping for it in December. I was hoping to catch it on clearance. What an idiot! I should have realized the time for Christmas decoration shopping ends in November. Apparently September is when Christmas starts and black Friday is the new December 25th. P.S. It's October 1st. Halloween is over.

CHARMINGLY FESTIVE ORNAMENTED TREES...OF DESTRUCTION

So I was happy to see I was on the ball this year and I caught Megatron still on the shelves. Then I started thinking, why would I want Megatron on my Christmas tree? Christmas is steeped in symbolism, from trees and candy canes to Santa Claus so did anyone at American Greetings pause to think about how Megatron is robot Satan? He's the Emperor of Destruction! Why would anyone want a little tribute to robot Satan hanging on their Jesus tree? It would make it a robot Satan tree! We may as well hang up little baby Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer ornaments next to our Megatrons, and then after we open our presents we'll set the tree on fire and eat our neighbors and then make anti-matter guns that look like Walther P-38s and blow shit up!

LET'S NOT FORGET THE REASON FOR THE FUSION (CANNON)

I'm a little sad at how commercialized things have gotten. I think the meaning of Megatron has gotten lost in all this holiday consumerism and it's a shame. Megatron is not some cute thing to be hung on trees, he's the exterminator of the human race. But people are so caught up in their traditional holiday shopping and Christmastime domestic violence we forget the real meaning of Megatron. In the All Hail Megatron comic series out now he's singlehandedly responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of people, not counting all the others killed by the Decepticons under his command attacking New York. That's the Megatron we should keep in our hearts (and off our trees) this holiday season. If we're going to be hanging Megatrons on our trees then I recommend that Catholic priests should read a couple panels from All Hail Megatron after they do their gospel readings every Sunday in December. I would go to church for that.

I WOULD HAVE WAITED A NATIVITY FOR THIS

I am not against Megatron ornament. I would really like to get one but $17.50 is a bit much to hang the Emperor of Destruction on a Christmas tree. Those that do pay that much are dorks and posers, so don't do it. Then I will have a better chance of getting it on clearance. But if everybody in Rapid City goes out and buys my Megatron ornament before I go clearance shopping I just want you to know you will be making my Jeffrey Dahmer and baby Hitler ornaments lonely and sad. Forget baby Jesus, do you really want to make baby Hitler cry?

Jesus cut the brake lines when I was driving myself crazy in Optimus Prime

There is trouble brewing in the desert forest farmlands of America
what's the weather doing and something's bad about the economy
and I'm preparing for armageddon here in South Dakotica
building my midlife crisis fueled plastic robot army

I give up on you, world, I give up on your worries
My giving a crap dies here in my South Dakotic thirties
Don't care about money or taxes or massive economic collapses
I'm retreating to my world of toy robots with plastic asses

Once again their fortunes gone in stunning Dow Jones losses
when what they should have invested in all along was toy robotses
Forget those stocks and bonds if you want to make big money
I have never been let down by eBay's nostalgia based economy

Oh Wesley would you write me a song
about Voltron and how we're all gonna die
because I'm growing numb to all that's going wrong
Jesus cut the brake lines on my red robot semi

I don't care about McCain picking running mate Sarah Palin
I care about the ice cream truck Michael Bay picked for Transformers Revenge of the Fallen
I don't care about messages of change from Barack Obama
the only change I care about is from tank to jet to robot

I don't think you want me voting for the presidency
I pick my president based on their roboplasticity
Hey Barack you want my vote, then help me understand
Where do you stand on shipping charges from Hobby Link Japan?

Oh Wesley I wish you would've written a song
about Voltron but we're all gonna die
I've gone numb to all that's gone wrong
Jesus cut the brake lines on my red robot semi

Optimus was my world and in his trailer he hauled my hopes
but like the world he transformed and where did that trailer go?
The world's a runaway robot semi and it's totally out of control
in our lives there's nothing to look forward to except the next exciting episode

I'll do the world a favor just before I go
I can solve all the problems! Tranzor Z told me how
The economy, the war, the herpes, hey just give me a list
There ain't no problem can't be fixed with a flying robot fist

Oh Wesley you can't write me a song
about Voltron because we've all got to die
and I just don't give a fuck about all that's gone wrong
since Jesus cut the brake lines on my red robot semi

eat it!

The son has become the Vader and the father has become...well, kinda just not really into Star Wars right now

Tuesday was the big day. Finally after a year of delays the new Star Wars video game came out. I went to Toys R Us to get it because they were giving $20 gift cards with every purchase of The Force Unleashed. TFU was one of the main reasons I bought a PS3 last year. For me TFU was the most exciting thing to happen in Star Wars since the first movie-without-a-movie multimedia merchandising event, Shadows of the Empire. Finally after all the hype and delays and expectations I found myself in the video game aisle at TRU and it was like that graduation theme song was playing in my head. After all this waiting and anticipation I grabbed the little Force Unleashed ticket and I had it in my hand. Then the unbelievable happened-I chickened out! I choked! I force choked, like, my own chicken!

I UNLEASH ME

I started thinking about how much time a game takes to play and how little time I have nowadays. I started thinking how I'd have to stop writing about toy robots on the internet for at least two weeks while I was playing the game. (Actually that was pretty appealing to me because there's always this voice in my head saying "Fuck the internet! You're not making a difference or curing cancer here with your 900 word emo robots essays!") But it's my time and how I enjoy spending it that matters. I started thinking about how I'd really like to get the Vintage Space Toaster Space Palace back up but I've only got 200 of the 600 ads watermarked so far. I started thinking about how far $60 would go during my upcoming trip to the Denver main library for Vintage Space Toast Tour '08. But most of all I started thinking how Transformers the game cost $60 on release day and now you can buy it new for $30. That pisses me off! I decided I would unleash the force some other day when saving the galaxy would be less expensive. So not only am I a nerd for wanting to spend my time at the library instead of playing video games, but I'm Darth Cheap-o, too.

BUT HOT DAMN CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME COSTUME WE GOT FOR TWENTY BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!

25 years ago in Transfomrers PART 3: WE'RE SCARED OF GUNS AND MONEY!

Off the top of my head if you were to ask me how the Transformers came about I'd say Hasbro thought it up in '83, got Marvel to do the comics and cartoon and then everybody lived happily ever after. That would be good enough for most people but I'm finding lately that my version omits a major player in the story and also doesn't take into account that prior to 1984 Hasbro management weren't the brilliant marketing titans I gave them credit for. In actuality Hasbro was unsure that toy based cartoons would work in the first place! HERE IS THE STORY OF SOME GUYS WHO WERE AFRAID OF MONIES.

THIS IS THE ONLY TRANSFROMERS HISTORY WHERE ELMO IS A MAJOR SOURCE OF INFORMATION

Griffin-Bacal was Hasbro's advertising agency during the development of the Transformers. Sunbow Productions was a subsidiary of Griffin-Bacal that produced and distributed live action and animated shows. Sunbow would co-produce the 1984 Transformers cartoon with Marvel but Hasbro and Griffin-Bacal/Sunbow were working together on children's programming well before then. I was doing a little research on a Sunbow show from 1981 called The Great Space Coaster when I came across an interview from the Just My Show Podcast with some of the GSC cast that included puppeteer Kevin Clash. Kevin was the man behind a Space Coaster character named Goriddle Gorilla (incidentally, he's also Elmo). What Kevin had to say about the relationship between Griffin-Bacal/Sunbow and Hasbro was pretty interesting-

"They (Griffin-Bacal/Sunbow) really wanted to get them (Hasbro) enthusiastic about doing half an hour commercials, like My Little Pony and Transformers and stuff like that. Since they couldn't get them to do that at that point, they sold them into doing this children's program, and it got their foot in the door to go in and do these half an hour (commercials like) G.I. Joe and all those things. Once they got Hasbro convinced of that, we stopped doing Great Space Coaster."

So here we have Kevin Clash explaining that Hasbro at one point wasn't sure that animated tie-ins used to promote their product lines was a good idea! Transfomer nerds everywhere owe a great debt to Griffin-Bacal. In the book Toy Wars, author G. Wayne Miller describes Griffin-Bacal as an ad agency "which did Stephen Hassenfeld's bidding". Hassenfeld was chairman and CEO of Hasbro at the time but to imply that Griffin-Bacal were mere puppets of Stephen Hassenfeld is to vastly underestimate the amount of influence and input they had on the company. Were it not for Griffin-Bacal there may not even be a Transformers cartoon!

THEY NEEDED A MORE CRAZMATIC LEADER!

"We don't believe in guns for kids. That one scares me." -Alan Hassenfeld

I love this quote because Alan was Executive Vice President of Hasbro in 1983. This doesn't sound like the kind of company that would give the world Megatron. Alan's emphasis that Hasbro didn't sell, make or distribute toy guns in a December 1983 Multinational Monitor article echoes a similar sentiment that his brother Stephen had when it came to play guns and children. Stephen would absolutely not allow toys that shot projectiles during his reign as CEO. The little cannons and missile launchers on G.I Joe and Transformer toys never fired while he was in charge-they just held their projectiles in place. Stephen's policy on shooting projectiles is most likely the reason that US released Megatrons did not fire bullets while their Japanese counterparts did. It wouldn't be until after Stephen died and his brother Alan "toy guns scare me" Hassenfeld took over that missile firing projectiles would be introduced in Hasbro action figures. It must have taken a lot of convincing to get the Hassenfelds to go along with a Walther P-38 being in the line at all with Alan the executive VP of the company so scared of toy guns. Or maybe it wasn't that hard to convince them, seeing how the alternative would be to have the leader of the evil Decepticons be a microcassette recorder.

I ONLY HAD 15 TRANSFORMERS IN 1984 AND NOW I KNOW WHO TO BLAME

Was Hasbro management afraid of making money? Of course it's easy to second guess them now with 25 years of hindsight, but did everyone at Hasbro not see the popularity of the Transformers coming? Bob Prupis was Hasbro's associate vice president of marketing in 1984 and at Botcon 2004 he stated "...in the first year I had forecast a potential sales volume of 30 million dollars. Management fought me on this and they decided that as a new line it was too aggressive and they cut the forecast down to 15 million dollars." By February of 1984 Hasbro would have 100 million dollars in wholesale orders.¹ Prupis estimated the backlog of unfilled orders to be in the range of an additional 70 to 100 million. Once they hit the shelves in May, Hasbro asked Takara to increase production but it was too late. I would not get a Soundwave that Christmas. Is it too critical of me to blame the Transformers shortages of 1984 on Hasbro management's lack of confidence in the line in 1983? Could anyone have seen the popularity of toy robots coming? I don't know but I can't think of anything more heartbreaking during Christmas 1984 than a little boy with four fake toy robot cassettes and no fake toy robot cassette player to fake play them on. THAT'S WHY I'M ALL WEIRD NOW!


¹Kathy Hacker (1984, November 23). ROBOTS GRIP THE IMAGINATION. Philadelphia Inquirer,C.1.

The robots trailer we have all been waiting for

THEY BROUGHT THEIR WAR WITH THEM

Wicks Fulfillment OR: I now realize that 1985 was the start of a lot of people's bad habits

In the last few years I've been looking back and getting all emospective about life and wallowing in my own personal feelings of disappointment over what I have or haven't accomplished. But I've never wished I was someone else, although I joke about it a lot. I stopped wishing I was a rock star or a millionaire or getting free cable a long time ago. I'm not like the normal American toy robots nerd who wishes he was Japanese. Actually I've been wishing a lot lately that there was a Japanese me so I could see his website of old Japanese toy robots ads.

IF I WAS MARTY MCFLY I WOULD BE TRYING TO HOOK MY DAD UP WITH CHICKS IN GRADE SCHOOL

No, what I really wish is that I was born just a few years earlier than I was. Mostly so that I could be a little more sentient when all those things that formed my childhood years happened. So that I could be young during the 80s and have the presence of mind enough to appreciate everything as it was happening. Of course one more go around would be fantastic, but I don't necessarily have time travel fantasies so much as I have appreciation fantasies. I wish I would have realized how great I had it back then, you know, before the world turned into its current state of total crap.

OPTIMUS PRIME MASKS IS THE NEW DIAPERS

My latest attempt at self diagnosis and treatment of my toy robots fixation had me reading up on a similar condition called infantilism, where a person becomes infatuated with reliving their babyhood so they collect and surround themselves with baby items and sometimes even go so far as to wear diapers. Infantilism is essentially the same behavior as toy robots collecting but it skews towards a slightly earlier period in life and has a different wardrobe.

TRUE INFANTILISM IS ONLY ONE INTILISM AWAY FROM TRUE FAN

I've found an essay titled "What is True Infantilism?" that explains the difference between people who get off sexually on wearing diapers and people for whom the diaper is used as a comfort object of sorts to help them regress to an earlier time when they felt more comfortable and loved. That's all this toy robots hobby is, really. A collecting of comfort items that bridge the transition between the current suck of today and the wonderful gloriousness that was 1985. I think the way RoboPlasti-Holism works is the more robots I have the more my happy childhood memories are supposed to surround me, just like the more diapers you wear the more shit you can carry around with you. Something like that.

TIME TRAVELING FOR A BETTER TODAY

This all came to a head today when I read a book called Too Cool to be Forgotten. It's one of those hardcover comics that's a little over a hundred pages with one single self contained story. Other people have done better reviews than I ever could but the basic premise is that a forty year old guy named Andy Wicks tries to quit smoking by trying some regressive hypnosis therapy that ends up sending him back in time to 1985 when he was 17 and in high school. This comic character does all I fantasize about doing every minute of my existence-he tries to kill off a retarded habit and he goes back to 1985. Plus he's just a few years older than I was in 1985. Some kids wish they were Peter Parker but hot damn I'm wishing I was some balding forty year old comic character named Andy Wicks.

THERE ARE EVEN CHARACTERS IN IT WEARING IRON MAIDEN SHIRTS

If you look around on the internet you can find previews of almost the entire First Two Chapters of the book and that's what I was doing one night last June. My wife remembered I liked it and today in the mail I found she ordered it for me. What a surprise that was! I feel bad because although the preview pages were too cool, I had sort of forgotten about it. If my opinion matters to you, my fellow Macrocranians, then I want to say this book is nothing short of fantastic. It is my ultimate personal wish fulfillment realized and written in such a way that I felt changed for the better as a person after having read it. There are truths within this story that apply to anyone afflicted by any sort of shameful adult behavior, be it diaper wearing or toy robots collecting (which are pretty much equally embarrassing).