NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS part 3: Please Save Me He-Mans!

Although I consider myself the Indiana Jones of toy robots archaeology and I romanticize my hobby with terms like Roboplasticology, the truth is that all I'm doing is looking through trash as I go pop culture dumpster diving in the library microfilm archives of America. And although my search focuses on the roboplastical, I do on occasion come across ads for toys I remember that played a much smaller role in my robot obsessed 80s childhood (and a much larger one in the childhoods of kids not afflicted with roboplasti-tardation). So join me all this week as we take a non-robot oriented look at a couple other toylines that also made an impression on my Scraplets riddled brain.

JC Penny 24 November 1982

I'M JUST A SUCKER FOR A GUY WITH A BIG SWORD AND AN ORKO

Albertsons 11/30/84

He-Man! Just thinking of the name brings back memories of the booming bass of the announcer's voice in the opening seconds of that cartoon. I will never forget watching that show everyday after school in late '83 and playing with the assloads of He-Mans my mom had been buying me since '82 (although I must admit I never had Barrie Cat). He-Man also consumed large amounts of my time while I was in school because I was always drawing him on my notebook paper while the teacher was talking. And until the sad day that my mom cut off our He-Man because she thought the toys were getting satanic, He-Man was all that got me through after Return of the Jedi left me cold. I guess I was on the rebound after Star Wars ended, stuck between toylationships and He-Man was there and I was weak and vulnerable. He had big muscles and a nice house. He had all sorts of cool rides and he was even a cat guy. We were just using each other when all along I should have been hanging out with that cute little red Lamborghini from Japan!

Murphy's Mart 21 November 1984

TEELA WAS MY FAVORITE HE-MAN

Before I go further, I have always called the line "He-Man". When I look at somebody's Masters of the Universe collection I always think, man, look at all those He-Mans. I know the correct term has got to be "Masters of the Universe" or "Masters". Even "MOTUs" would probably be more acceptable. Hell, even the retarded sounding "He-Men" would be a more proper plural but ever since I was a kid I have always used the silly sounding and grammatically incorrect "He-Mans". But hey, with names like Spydor, Panthor and the Attak Trak, He-man wasn't exactly a toyline for budding grammarians or orthographers.

IT LETS YOU MASTER TURNS...MASTER SPINS...MASTER BAITING!

Albertsons 11/30/84

You gotta have a bike! Transformers and GoBots were both rather unimaginative with the naming of their plastic tricycle bikes. Both of their bikes shared the generic name "Power Cycle". Voltron did a little better with the "Lion Cycle". But before all these rather generic and uninspired attempts at plastic bike branding, there was the brilliant and magical moniker used for the He-Man bike-THE MIGHTY CYCLE. Man that name had balls! It's what I imagine Evil Kinevil wished he would have called his bike. Tell me this isn't the greatest plastic bike commercial you've ever seen! Okay, honestly I was a little disappointed in the commercial because I was expecting He-Man to show up at some point and shoot his sword lightning at one of the kids as they're riding, instantly vaporizing the boy and turning the Master Cycle into a robotic Mecha Battle Cat that would transform into a suit of armor for He-Man to wear as he leaps into space and kills the sun.

ROKKON IS THE MOST HEAVY METAL ACTION FIGURE NAME EVER

My focus when searching though old microfilms is entirely on toy robots ads and if I stray from that it's usually for good reason. One great reason came up when I saw the Gimbels ad below. Amongst all the other Mattel toys they were advertising for their "Mattel Week" was a three pack that is something of a holy grail for He-Man collectors. I found the Lionel Playworld ad next to it interesting because it's from late 1986 and by then toystores had stopped advertising He-Man as much as they used to. To see an ad with so much Masters of the Universe line art love in one place was rather novel, even if it was within the context of a liquidation ad. The characters shown illustrate why He-Man lost favor in my house. Mom thought the Snake Men were a bit over the top and I thought Snout Spout and the Comet Warriors were a bit over the shark.

Gimbels 11/20/83	Lionel Playworld 11/28/86

THE END OF (t)HE-WORLD

Playworld 11/18/87

The most powerful clearances in the universe handed He-Man his butt in 1987. Although I jumped that sinking ship early, He-Mannerisms would stay with me. Even decades later my love of He-man would make me both famous amongst literate toy collectors and an object of ridicule amongst hipster Antarcticans. I once started a thread on the Usenet group rec.toys.action-figures.discuss where I remarked that the 2000 reissue Teela looked fat. I was credited when that comment made it into the following month's Toyfare magazine, which makes me a famous published guy or something. Then once during a poetry slam in Antarctica I introduced myself as "Esteban, prince of Eternia and defender of the secrets of Castle Greyskull". I could tell by the rolling eyes and stunned silence that those Antarcticans weren't exactly the kinds of people who posted to rec.toys.action-figures.discuss. I took comfort in knowing that even though I was considered a weirdo in Antartcatica, the last refuge of social rejects and outcasts from all corners of human civilization, it was geographically impossible to kick me off the planet. THAT WAS THE LAST TIME I READ GREEN EGGS AND HAM TO THOSE FUCKERS!

NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS part 2: Please Save Me Secret Wars!

Although I consider myself the Indiana Jones of toy robots archaeology and I romanticize my hobby with terms like Roboplasticology, the truth is that all I'm doing is looking through trash as I go pop culture dumpster diving in the library microfilm archives of America. And although my search focuses on the roboplastical, I do on occasion come across ads for toys I remember that played a much smaller role in my robot obsessed 80s childhood (and a much larger one in the childhoods of kids not afflicted with roboplasti-tardation). So join me all this week as we take a non-robot oriented look at a couple other toylines that also made an impression on my Scraplets riddled brain.

Target 09/02/84

The Transformers were what got me into the insane world of comic book shops and action figure collecting. Transformers figures had no secondary market value in the 80s and the book was never considered a serious comic amongst my childhood friends, but it opened the doors into the terrifying and bizarre world of grown ups who took reading comics and playing with toys to a whole other level. I would probably never have stepped into a comic book store and could have lived my whole life content with buying Transformers comics at the Bag-n-Save grocery store were it not for the one time Spider-Man made an appearance in Transformers #3. It wasn't just any Spider-Man-it was black costume Spider-Man. That tripped me out because Spider-Man didn't tell me he was planning on changing his costume when I met him at K-Mart in '79.

SOMEWHERE THERE IS A 69 IMPALA THAT LOOKS LIKE IT GOT BIT BY A RADIOACTIVE SPIDER

I loved that black costume Spider-Man and the very first non-Transformers comic I sought out was Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8 because it explained where the black costume came from. Unfortunately the El Paso Bag-n-Save didn't keep back issues of comics even though I did try saving some Amazing Spider-Mans for future buying by sticking them in the Low Rider magazines. I thought nobody read Low Rider, but boy was I wrong and those well hidden Spider-Mans disappeared anyway. Now that I think about it, I may have inadvertently introduced El Asombroso Hombre Araña to a whole generation of cholos.

Secret Wars was an insanely popular comic back in '85. By the time I found a comic shop that had it, Secret Wars #8 was commanding the astronomical price of five dollars. To my horror and delight there was an accompanying toyline although the truth is Secret Wars started as a toyline first. Way back then it was an unprecedented milestone to have 3 3/4 inch action figures made of Marvel characters. Even as a toy robot obsessed weirdo I realized having a Wolverine the right size to fight Darth Vader was a really big deal. But black costume Spider-Man didn't come out in the initial wave and without the internet or toy magazines to tell me that it was coming I resigned myself to thinking it would never be made in my lifetime. This is because I was familiar with the concept of "Marvel time"-that is, in the Marvel Universe time runs at a rate slower than in the real world. This is why Spider-Man was a teenager in comics for like 25 years. What people don't know was that Marvel Time applied in real life, too. Why the hell else did it take over 20 years to finally get an action figure of normal Spider-Man? Marvel time at work!

GC Murphy 09/30/84

WITH GREAT COSTUME COMES GREAT FIGURE

I remember Lionel Playworld having an endcap full of Secret Wars toys well after the comic had come and gone. While looking through them for an Iron Man (because he kind of looked roboty) I came across black costume Spider-Man. Holy crap was that a total surprise. All the other Secret Warriors faded from my mind. After having to pay multiple times the cover price for the comic I swore that I would not open my black costume Spider-Man because of its collectibility. That lasted about a week. Although there have been many different and better plastic permutations of black Spider-Man costume since, that first one has always been my favorite and it's one of the few toys that survived my childhood intact.

...BUT DO YOU RECALL THE MOST ADAMANTIUM MAN OF ALL?

Secret Wars was a lot more than Spider-Man and while in Alaska I found a really nice giant ad from Carrs that ran 18 November 1984. It showed the Tower of Doom playset, some Secret Wars vehicles and action figures of a few of the most famous and recognizable characters from the Marvel Universe like Captain America and Wolverine Man! 1984 was an awesome year. I can't imagine how often the Transformers versus Secret Wars wars played out in playgrounds all over. Marvel must have got wind of this because last year there was a comic book crossover where the Transfomrers got to hang out with and get beat up by not just Spider-Man but a lot of the characters from Secret Wars including Wolverine Man! It only took 25 years! MARVEL TIME NOT DEAD!

A nerd by any other name is just as retarded

Beyonce wants to be called Sasha Fierce now. Although I thought making it big with her given name was quite an accomplishment, I can totally sympathize with having to change one's identity-or at least having to change the imaginary made up bullshit name I use on the internet. It has happened a couple of times already. When I first got on the internet in 1997 I thought I was being totally underground by using the handle of what I thought was an obscure character from a mostly forgotten cartoon. But instead of thinking I was all cool and underground, people thought I was lame for calling myself Optimus Prime. I should have known the internet was comprised of people who would know that kind of stuff already. I now realize I should have picked Sasha Fierce Optimus Prime .

THEIR LIE REFLECTED MY LIE

I decided I needed a totally new, totally original fake internet name that was entirely future proof. But since I wasn't creative enough to come up with anything on my own, I decided to use the name the other Target stockboys used to make fun of me with. "crazysteve" lasted me a good ten years before I discovered that there were tons more internet Steves who considered themselves crazy. I considered slight variations on the theme such as "craziersteve", "crazierthanthoseothersteves" and "crazieststeve", but the damn doppelgangers had become my personal internet Marla Singers. Instead of wasting the rest of my life waging some sort of "crazy off" against every other internet steve to see who truly deserved the title, I decided to ditch that name about three years ago. I am grateful that I did because I just found out that...

NICKELODEON RAPED MY OLD INTERNET NERD NAME

Apparently there's this character on the Drake and Josh show that goes by Crazy Steve. It is really weird to hear my Transformer nerd name being used on television. Honestly, I must admit that Nickelodeon Crazy Steve is way crazier than I. He would have out-crazied me in the first round of the crazysteve crazy off. And that is how it should be. I've moved on and hopefully I should be good until The Weather Channel comes out with the Evil King Macrocranios Weather Super Show.

NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS part 1: Please Save Me Yenilmez Savaşçilar!

Although I consider myself the Indiana Jones of toy robots archaeology and I romanticize my hobby with terms like Roboplasticology, the truth is that all I'm doing is looking through trash as I go pop culture dumpster diving in the library microfilm archives of America. And although my search focuses on the roboplastical, I do on occasion come across ads for toys I remember that played a much smaller role in my robot obsessed 80s childhood (and a much larger one in the childhoods of kids not afflicted with roboplasti-tardation). So join me all this week as we take a non-robot oriented look at a couple other toylines that also made an impression on my Scraplets riddled brain.

DID SOMEBODY BUTTPUNCH A TREE OR AM I REMEMBERING WRONG?

Sears 11/06/86

You ever feel like beating up a tree? Do rocks piss you off? Did you absolutely hate Captain Planet and wish they'd make a cartoon about blowing up the environment instead of saving it? Well that's what Inhumanoids was-scientists in biohazard suits on steroids kicking the earth's ass. Punching trees and rocks and stuff. Or at least that's how I remember it. The thing with me is that once I figure out there won't be robots I change the channel.

IT WAS LIKE ROTTEN.COM FOR 8 YEAR OLDS

One thing that did stick in my mind about Inhumanoids was that it was a monster toyline. Not monster in the sense that it was extremely popular, monster in the sense that it had monsters. I think at the time they were pretty scary for when they came out, but in this post-McFarlane world they're pretty tame. Still, the cartoon was one of the better animated Sunbow productions and those monsters were pretty frightening in the show. On a scale with Madballs on one end and animated satanic decapitation snuff porn films on the other, Inhumanoids ranks only slightly below the decapitations. Maybe I was a 12 year old wuss?

Target 12/14/86

THAT TREE WAS TOTALLY ASKING FOR IT

While I lived in Turkey I found a couple video CDs of Inhumanoids at the supermarket and although they were dubbed in Turkish I gave them a try. THIS HAS NEVER STOPPED ME BEFORE. I watched a couple of episodes of "Invincible Warriors" (the translated Turkish name for Inhumanoids) and it was pretty trippy. All I can say is my 22 year old memories of this show were pretty right on-lots of monsters, lots of scientists, lots of trees getting their asses kicked.

Hills 11/16/86	Children's Palace 11/30/86

I can't really say much more about Inhumanoids other than when I'm looking through old microfilm I never see much advertising for them. Although I've been to quite a few toy shows I only rarely see them on the secondary market. Right now at one of the antique stores in downtown Rapid City there's a $1 bin of old action figures and among them is an Inhumanoids tree guy. (I WOOD buy it, but I keep LEAFing it there.) I guess the line died off because young monster loving, tree hating future scientists were kind of a niche market. If you want to find out more about Inhumaniods, I recommend "logging on" to X-Entertainment.com.

VINTAGE SPACE TOAST TOUR DENVERADO

Before I start on "No Weblog for Old Robots Week" I want to end my coverage of Vintage Space Toast Tour Denver with the customary recap of highlights from the ads I found there. Before I get into that, though, I want to bitch about what an enormous pain it was looking through microfilm for old toy robots newspaper ads in Denver. I thought a week would be more than enough to do a fairly exhaustive search of newspapers published during the last three months of every year from 1975 through 1990. But as it turned out, in the 80s Denver had TWO competing newspapers, each with their own daily and Sunday editions. Since some advertisers would put the same ad in both papers while other stores' ads would be exclusive to one paper or the other, I had to look through BOTH papers to make sure I got everything. Even with a week I ran out of time and due to prioritizing what time I did have, I ended up having to skip 1979 through 1982. It was a pain in the ads! RRRAAARGH!

PHOTOSHOP JESUS COULDN'T RESSURECT THIS MICROFILM LAZARUS JPEG MESS

Then I found the microfilms up through 1986 were made so that they displayed a negative image (white text on a black background) which is extremely disorienting for me. Plus the quality of many of the rolls was totally craptastic. For example, after much eyestrain I think the 1984 Circus World ad on the right is supposed to show car mode Wheeljack and robot Sideswipe and Mirage standing in front of a sealed Sunstreaker box with cassette deck Soundwave on the right, plus possibly some other figures. But because it's a blotchy, blobby, overexposed negative I almost missed it! It's a miracle I even found the ad at all! Sometimes the rolls were so bad I hoped I wouldn't find anything because it's heartbreaking when I see what I know is a good ad for a significant piece of toy robot history and it's a big messed up blur. RRRAAARGH!

ONE OF THESE THINGS DOESN'T BELONG HERE

The seventies were the greatest time to be a kid during Halloween because there was a fantastic selection of Ben Cooper costumes allowing you to trick or treat as a giant robot or ruthless genocidal tyrant from outer (or inner) space. I found a Woolworth ad from 26 October 1979 featuring Ben Cooper costumes of Darth Vader, the Micronauts' Baron Karza and Mazinga the Shogun Warrior. Unfortunately the line art of the kids wearing those three awesomest of awesome costumes was not grouped all together. You would think the the obvious arrangement would be Vader, Karza and Mazinga, but instead we get Vader and Mazinga next to friggin' Holly Hobbie! And interdimensional homocidal maniac Baron Karza is next to the kids wearing costumes of friggin' Pink Panther and Mickey Mouse! RRRAAARGH!

WE ARE THE TARGETS!

Okay, it's November 23rd, 1978. The unthinkable has yet to happen. Target runs the following ad for the Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper and Cylon Raider with text admitting that they "launch missiles". Aside from the usual creepiness of these pre-choking incident ads, this one is all sorts of super ironic in that Target also runs a blurb saying "play safe All toys sold at Target are tested for safety at an independent laboratory. Target meets or exceeds government safety standards...one more way that says 'We Care!'" This independent Target toy safety testing laboratory sure missed a big one with those Battlestar Galactica missiles. I'm left wondering who exactly was working at this independent Target laboratory and what did it look like? RRRAAARGH!

VOLTRON BIKE-COMBINING THE FEROCITY OF SPACE LIONS WITH THE FUN OF PLASTIC BIKE!

An 80s toy robot line simply could not be taken seriously if it did not have a badass plastic tricycle. Transfomrers had one. GoBots had one. Zoids and Zybots did not. There is a correlation there. Plastic tricycle was the merchandising tie-in that said your licensed robot property was here to stay (at least until the next "product reimagining" as Rock Lords). And like the GoBots and Transformers before them, Voltron had a bike, too! The coolest kid on the block was the one who furiously peddled his Voltron bike like a madman from house to house, steering with one hand with his big metal Voltron in the other, screaming RRRAAARGH! RRRAAARGH! like a manic space lion. I admit being jealous as I stared in awe at the spectacle of devotion inspired by Voltron, but now that I think about it, he was probably just batshit crazy from all that lead paint poisoning. RRRAAARGH!

IT IS THE OMEGA SUPREME..OF EVERYTHING!

What was the largest 80s transforming robot toy ever sold at retail? A Shogun Warrior? The SDF-1? Fortress Maximus? NO! They all pale in comparison to GOBOT RIDEM. A 26 inch tall monster robot that transformed into a ride on toy more powerful than Voltron bike, more terrifying than a Ben Cooper Darth Vader Halloween mask and possibly more dangerous than a Target independent toy testing laboratory! You can goof on it if you want, but now that I'm a dad I would kill many Bothans for one of these. It is insanely awesome! RRRAAARGH!

NEXT WEEK: NO WEBLOG FOR OLD ROBOTS (I've got an ad feeling about this)

Starting Monday I am going to go robot free! That's right, a whole week of me blabbing about 80s newspaper ads that do NOT have toy robots in them! Believe it or don't, over the years I've collected some non-robot ads! My knowledge of non-roboplastic toylines is weak, but hey, even I know ads for He-Man 3 packs, the Sears exclusive GI Joe playsets, and figures and vehicles from Dune are pretty interesting. I figured I might as well put them up somewhere so get ready for a week of Please Save Me He-Man, Please Save Me G.I. Joe, Please Save Me Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, Please Save Me Star Wars and a whole bunch of other non-roboplastic blasphemy! What can I possibly write about toys that in most cases I never had and know nothing about? I guess we'll see!

A somewhat brief and very incomplete history of 1980s ToyStoreSauruses in Denver (by someone who never lived there) part 2 of 2: Lionel Playworld

Denver, Colorado is famous for having assloads of dinosaur bones. It's the place dinosaurs went to die, much like my laundry room is the place toy robots go to die. Denver in the nineties was also fantastic place for uncovering my favorite type of archaeological artifacts-fossils known in roboplasticology as roboplasticus transformus.

IT WAS THE JURASSIC PARK OF DINOBOTS

Why was Denver such a hotbed of 80s toy robot activity? How did all sorts of crazy roboplasticus transformus get there? The answer is that Denver was a breeding ground for one of the greatest ToyStoreSaurus to have ever roamed the 1984. From 1980 through 1987, seven Lionel Playworlds opened in Colorado with six of them in or around the greater Denver metropolitan area. I grew up in a place where there was only one Playworld and it left in its wake memories of dozens of clearance priced Dinobots. How much better then must Denver have been with half a dozen Playworlds! It must have left behind whole herds of of clearance priced robot Triceratopses!

28 October 1980	29 October 1980 pg 1	29 October 1980 pg 2

The very first two Lionel Playworlds in Colorado held their simultaneous grand openings in Denver on 30 October 1980. They were at 6791 W Colfax in the JCRS Shopping Center and 10615 Melody Ave just west of Northglen Mall. The amount of promotion done for the grand opening was staggering. Playworld gave away 1,000 Hot Wheels cars, 2,000 t-shirts, 1,000 plants (for the adults), 500 buy-one-get-one-free Burger King coupons and free tickets to Nuggets and Rockies (the hockey Rockies) games. There were special appearances by Denver Broncos and Nuggets players, Miss Colorado 1980, a magician, a frisbee demonstration and even friggin' Blinky the Clown! There were also big name celebrities in attendance like Frankenstein, Strawberry Shortcake, Spider-Man, Mister Potato Head and Kaycee kangaroo. Not as great as the best toystore grand opening ever, but still very impressive.


This is what now stands at 6791 West Colfax

The third and fourth Colorado Playworlds had their grand openings in the Denver area on 23 October 1986. One store was in the Arvada Marketplace at 52nd & Wadsworth and the other was by Aurora Mall on 14301 E Exposition Ave. The Aurora Mall building is now a Korean restaurant and I filmed VINTAGE SPACE TOAST TOUR DENVERADO LIVE (part 2) there.

DOCTOR HENRY MACROCRANIOS JONES KNOW YOU DON'T GO LOOKING FOR TOY ROBOT TYRANNOSAURUSES IN ANTRACTICA

Then on 15 November 1987 three more Playworlds opened up in Colorado. I think these would be the last Playworld store openings of the eighties because although I know an eighth store opened in Colorado Springs, I never saw it mentioned in any 80s Denver area ad. It may have opened in 89 because I know it was up by July of '90. This round of openings included stores in southwest Denver at the Southwest Commons shopping center, one in Glendale (an enclave within Denver) at South Colorado Boulevard & E. Ohio Avenue, and finally one in Fort Collins, Colorado at The Pavillion shopping center.


It looks like 1987 was when it all started turning to kangaroo crap for Playworld because I think that's the year one of the original two Playworlds closed (the one at 6791 West Colfax). Their ads stop mentioning that location in '87. Then in 1988 Playworld stopped including weekly color circulars in the Sunday newspapers. Instead, they ran some black and white ads with little reminders that if you want the circular you needed to go to the store to get it. Was this clever marketing meant to get people in the store or could Playworld just not afford to put their circulars in the Sunday paper anymore? Whatever it was, it sucked because Playworld circulars were a great source of Transformers ad line art and by excluding themselves from the Sunday papers they excluded themselves from being archived on library microfilm.

THE LOST (LIONEL PLAY)WORLD

Kaycee Kangaroo took some more bad bounces in the late 80s. Judging from the ads, in 1989 the other of the original two Denver stores closed, leaving them with five Colorado locations in 1990, four of which were in or around Denver. Then when Toys R Us showed up in June 1990 it really fell apart. A new store opened in Colorado Springs but by the fall of '91 Playworld was down to just three Colorado stores when they went out of business. Why they opened that last store only to have it close a year later is beyond me. Maybe like the dinosaurs, Playworld went to Colorado to die.


I will stand in front of anything if it looks like it could have been Playworld

IT WOULD BE SO EASY TO LEARN ABOUT DINOSAURS IF YOU COULD JUST SIT DOWN AND TALK TO ONE

Unlike Children's Palace with its unique architecture, old Playworld buildings are very difficult to locate because they look just like any other brick big box store. So I had a hellacious time in Denver trying to take pictures of the buildings that used to be Playworlds. I tried asking people who looked old and even comic shop employees, but nobody seems to live or work near where they grew up so nobody remembered Playworld. Nobody except for one comic shop employee guy, but the Hobby Lobby location he told me used to be Playworld in southwest Denver isn't even in the right shopping center. Between faded memories and changing shopping center landscapes I couldn't say for certain if any of the pictures I took are of buildings that used to be Playworld. It's bad enough that this Colorado ToyStoreSaurus is long extinct but what's worse is nobody even remembers being trampled by it. But I know you were here, Playworld! Nothing else could explain the assloads of Denver Dinobots you left behind!