So the other night I was watching that musical version of "A Christmas Carol" where Sir Alec Guiness played Jacob Marley and I realized that going to hell is actually not a bad price to pay for time travel. When I got to thinking about it, Scrooge accomplished what Einstien and eveybody else who wishes they could relive the 1980s could only dream of. He traveled through time both backwards and forwards and all he had to do was be cheap and a little stingy for most of his adult life. Hell I can do that and I'm already pretty cheap. Somebody tell me how bad do I have to be for Obi-Wan Kenobi to give me a ride to 1978?
Carsons 10 December 1978
IT ISN'T CHRISTMAS 1978 UNLESS AT LEAST ONE PRESENT COMES IN A BOX BIGGER THAN YOU
Here we have a really cool ad from Carsons (they're still around!) that is unlike most of the ads I've seen for old robots in a lot of ways. Not only does it qualify as a robotastic smorgasbord as defined in episode 32, but it also has a bunch of loose robots hanging out AND there's an actual kid in the shot. It's more than an ad-it's a vicarious 1978 Christmas experience. This must have been what it was like to be a dad during Christmas Day of 1978 looking down on all the money you blew on robots as your kid gently breaks their arms off one by one, loosing all their pieces while you dread how much of a pain in the ass it's gonna be to put that Micronaut Microrail City together. I once read that Baron Karza's motivation for being evil was he wanted to become immortal by committing such horrendously inhumane atrocities that he'd loose all his humanity. But I think the real reason was he just wanted Ben Kenobi to give him another crack at Carson's tremendous Micronauts sale that ended December 17th all those years ago.
The 36th seal of Roboplastic Apocalypse gets ground into a great big juicy super alloy flavored smoothie like a giant robot's arm caught in a blender! Yeah it's another round of Heavy Mattel Mania in the Kingdom Roboplastico as we fire up the GoBackatron 1978thousand on a mission to complete my list of 10 things Shogun Warriors did before or better than the Transformers any other American Toy Robots of Japanese Toy Robots! It's a celebration of everyone's favorite invincible guardians of world freedom and all their milestones in engineering, marketing, cross merchandising, and even porno magazine appearances. What cost more in 1978-a Shogun Warriors Combatra giftset or the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars? What costs more now-a 1978 Combatra giftset on eBay or a $375 fruit juicer from Bed Bath and Beyond? Find out all this and more in this ARE YOU READY FOR SOME ROCKET FISTING edition of the Podcastalypse!
Today's podcastalypse was inspired by the life changing event also known as eBay Auction 250943800281 where some guy decided to sell five toy spaceships in a box, causing me great emotional distress and much retreating deeply into the pages of my intro to psychology textbook. The psychologists who wrote it have a term they call "cognitive dissonance" which describes the tremendous feeling of mental anguish brought about when your actions must conflict with your beliefs. There are many great examples of cognitive dissonance throughout history, like when Jesus had to go through with the crucifixion, when Lee had to surrender to Grant at Appomattox, when Luke had to fight Darth Vader, and when I had to not bid on eBay auction 250943800281 because I was saving up money to get my wife a fruit juicer for Christmas.
COMBAT! COMBAT! RA! RA! RA!
Of course like all American toy robots of Japanese toy robots, the Shogun Warriors has their roots in Japan where all great toy robots start out with better cartoons and better names. One robot in particular, the 5 spaceship combiner Combattler V, was created by the same guys who would go on to do GoLion. It's like vehicle Voltron done right-only five vehicles and some really fantastic ship designs. Plus in the cartoon he does some crazy things with lightning and yo-yos. But the greatest significance of Combattler V was that unlike the three spaceship combiner Getta Robo which preceded it, Combattler's combination was physically possible and could be adapted into toys. By the time Popy's DX series Combattler V was imported into the US in 1978 under the Shogun Warrior line as the U-Combine Combatra, the Micronauts' combining spaceship robot Giant Acroyear had already been released. So Combatra wasn't technically the first robot combiner in the US, but Giant Acroyear's individual components were never released separately. Combatra then was the first combining robot spaceship team to be sold both individually and in a giftset, which would be the traditional method of packaging combiner teams from that point forward. That is why Combatra is historically significant and highly sought after on the secondary market and why in my household kitchen appliances are named after him.
Hecht's 13 December 1978
NOT THE BIG PUPPY, MOM, THE BIG POPY!
This Hecht's ad from the Washington DC area came out in newspapers on December 13, 1978. I call it a "high fiver". High fivers are those rare ads I come across every now and then that are of such great roboplastilogically historical significance that when I find them I get so excited I want to run around the library giving high fives to all the homeless people, vagrants and college kids there with me. It's truly a rare piece and one I didn't think I'd ever find given the Combatra giftset's extreme rarity. Finally I have evidence of at least one store's original retail price for the Combatra giftset, which is quite elusive in old newspaper ads. Considering that $49.99 when adjusted for inflation is $165.19 in 2010 dollars it is not hard to imagine why these are so rare nowadays. At regular retail of $49.99, the Combatra giftset is not only the most expensive Shogun Warrior of the 70s, but the single most expensive action figure of the seventies!
Meanwhile, back here in 2011, individually packaged Combatra vehicles have been popping up on eBay. This boxed Battle Jet went for $135 on November 18th. The seller also linked to a nice gallery of big clear pictures of the box and the toy, which is essentially the dismembered head of Combatra. I find it interesting that the Battle Jet from the auction was originally sold at Macy's, which further supports my theory that only upscale department stores carried this subset of Shogun Warriors. I don't think it's coincidence that all the ads for Combatra vehicles I've ever found come from those kinds of hoity toity stores instead of discount retail outlets like Kmart. Also worth mentioning is that recently a Battle Tank went up on eBay but only pulled $61.
May Company 17 October 1980
FIRST COMBINE, THEN COMBAT, THEN COME CLEARANCE
Sadly, Combatra's final battle was fought in the clearance aisle as shown by this May Company ad from October of 1980. I've found one other deeply discounted Combatra vehicle clearance ad from a Los Angeles area store called the Broadway that ran in March of 1980. It's kind of crazy now to imagine these toys just sitting on the shelves at super deep price cuts all year long waiting for someone to buy them, but such is the power of the Force I guess. The individual vehicles were probably a hard sell since they didn't do much on their own and the only fiction supporting them was the Marvel Shogun Warrior comic, which wasn't mentioned at all on the boxes. You pretty much had to complete the set to get the most fun out of them, which was still relatively expensive even at clearance. To complete the set you'd still have to pay 20 dollars and who wanted to pay that when you could get all sorts of cool Star War stuff for around half that.
The Broadway 30 November 1978
SUPER ELECTROMAGNETIC CYLON FIGHTER!
Speaking of The Broadway, they ran this absolutely gorgeous ad back in November of 1978. It's a celebration of Mattel's two big science fiction/fantasy toylines of the time-Shogun Warriors and Battlestar Galactica. I find it interesting that the Battle Jet and Battle Tank are priced slightly less than the other three. This would lead me to believe all the vehicles may have been shipped in their own separate case assortments instead of together in the same case. Back when I tried to construct a chronology of release for the Shogun Warrior line I hit a wall trying to figure out exactly how these Combatra vehicles were shipped and I still haven't got it straight today. If it is true that the ships shipped in separate case assortments I wonder how the stores were able to ensure that enough of each vehicle were stocked so that people could complete their Combatras. If most customers were buying the ships separately it wouldn't make sense for stores to order more of one kind of ship than the other. But if you've ever seen the individual boxes for the vehicles you know they are all different sizes and it'd be difficult to fit multiples of complete sets of the ships in one shipping case without doing some serious cardboard voodoo magic.
Before we leave the subject of Combatra, here's some great covers of the theme song from Combattler-V. (You gotta skip to the 1:04 mark on the one to the right.)
THE TEN THINGS SHOGUN WARRIORS DID BEFORE OR BETTER THAN TRANSFORMERS! (including the first five)
Back in 2009 I started a list of trailblazing events in toy robots marketing and merchandising that all first happened in the Shogun Warriors line, or at least before they happened in Hasbro's Transformers. But I only got halfway through the 10 things Mattel's Shogun Warriors did in the 1970s before or better than Hasbro's Transformers did in the 1980s (but just the first five) before I realized I was dumb about Shogun Warriors and I ran out of ideas. I figured I'd need to do some more research and get a little more experience with the line so that I could do the list justice. Well it's two years later and I'm still dumb about Shogun Warriors but I'm finishing the list anyways because I found this inspiring ad from the now defunct retail chain Barkers that ran 26 November 1978 featuring some truly incredible Shogun Warriors artifacts. Shogun Warrior bop bags! I saw that ad and I immediately knew the time had come to finish that list (or at least get to number six). And so without further adieu, here are the ten things Shogun Warriors did before or better than the Transformers (and almost any other line of toy robots, too!):
Barkers 11/26/78
#1-They sold the same robot character in different sizes-This is a no brainer nowadays but Shogun Warriors were the first to have the same robot characters concurrently on the shelves with larger or smaller versions of themselves.
#2-They took robots from different Japanese licenses and marketed them all together under one banner in the US-The Micronauts were Japanese but they were all from Takara's Microman (before the aliens). Shogun Warriors were each stars of their own cartoons with their own merchandising empires in Japan.
#3-The Shogun 2-in-1 subline introduced transforming robots to the US, including Raydeen the first transforming toy robot ever!
#4-Combiner robots-Combattra may not have preceded the Micronauts' Giant Acroyear but Combatra's combined mode and individual component vehicles were way nicer designs. Since the list is "before or better", combining is included here.
#5-Comissioning new robots-Mattel had the three inch line of Collector's Shoguns made to fill out the line, much like Hasbro would have to do when they ran out of original Takara molds in the third year of the Transfomers.
#6 Bop Bags-This one is a bit of a personal indulgence due to my fondness for toy robot themed bop bags, but in the Barkers ad from 1978 we are shown the first toy robot based bop bags released in the U.S.
#7 Zargon-The mechanized, self propelled, battery operated robot death machine released years before Omega Supreme! Of course pretty much every toy line that had robots pre-1978 had a mechanized guy like Zargon so it's not really that big a deal. Heck, the Micronauts Biotron and Microtron precede Zargon and even remote controlled R2-D2 came out the same year as Zargon, but were Micronauts and Star Wars truly toy robot lines? Discuss amongst yourselves!
#9 The first combiner giftset made up of toys that were also sold separately-Sure the Micronauts' Giant Acroyear's arms and spaceship torsos separated and turned into robots or vehicles but they weren't sold separately! That counts somehow I think.
#10 Beastification-Shogun Warriors was the first robot line to jump the shark by letting animals in as part of the line. Thankfully Mattel canceled everything before Godzilla and Rodan could do much damage.
With all the great stuff that came out celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Transformers: The Movie I forgot that this year is also the anniversary of GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords. I ran across the newspaper version of the BotRL theatrical poster from its opening day (March 21, 1986)*. I don't remember seeing this one as a kid, or if I did it didn't make much of an impression. I wouldn't say it's a terrible ad-it's just the worst looking newspaper ad for an animated movie I've ever seen. It looks like all they did was rip out a page from a coloring book and call it a day. Actually this art does have its origins somewhere else. The original GoBots Battle of the Rock Lords theatrical poster it came from is pretty nice looking in full color but it suffers here in the transition to black and white line art. I don't know why they didn't go with a greyscale version of the color poster like what was done for The Transformers: The Movie in newspaper movie sections. The GoBots newspaper ad consequently looks rather crude and lacking in sophistication by comparison. It's kind of odd considering they ran all sorts of nice greyscale promos for the GoBots cartoon and then this thing looks little better than an ad for a direct to home video 22 minute cartoon.
*Which also happens to be opening day for the BMX bike epic RAD
Yesterday I went to Tate's, which is the greatest store of anything ever in the universe around here. I was looking to buy a Han Solo in carbonite ice cube tray but mostly I went to do a little recon before this weekend's big Halloween sale. Since my time in Florida is coming to an end I got a most proactively nostalgic idea. I asked if I could take some pictures and the Taters in charge said yes. I always wish I would have taken pictures of Lionel Playworld or Toys R Us back when I was a kid and I get the feeling I'm going to feel the same about Tate's after we move away. Actually I just wanted one last look at the place before everybody and their mom invades the store this weekend and packs the aisles tighter than the dealer room at DragonCon. Here then is a short robotastic overview of what I saw in terms of Voltronians, Cybertronians, warriors Shogunian, souls Chogokinian and even some Gundamonians during the week of October 19, 2011.
I'M A GUN-DUMASS
Every visit to Tate's is always a lesson in robots for me in some way or another. My area of expertise is primarily American toy robots of Japanese toy robots from 1977-1987, so the sight of something as purely Japanese as a buttload of Gundam model kits is always bewildering and amazing to me. I know absolutely nothing about Gundams but I know a nice selection of Japanese model kits when I see it. I imagine a lot of other comic book shop visitors are in the same boat and they might even think all them robots is just a bunch of robots. I'm kind of that way with newer Japanese stuff so I can see how some might think that all comic shop Gundam displays look the same. But take a closer look and check out...
...Mega Bloks Gundam kits! Holy crap I'm not even into Gundam but I know this is something you don't see everyday at Toys R Us. I kind of wish the Transformer Kre-Os were more like this stuff. These models at least look like the classic Gundams and they're not all needlessly complex in their design like the robot mode Kre-O Transformers. Since I don't follow Gundamn I wouldn't have known these existed were it not for Tate's.
VICTORY LIES IN THE CONQUEST OF GUM CANDY TOYS
On the way to the robot figure displays I passed this glass case of what I think are Yamato and Gundam gashapon toys along with some recent Kabaya Transformers. The presentation is really nice here with the clear step shelving showcasing the spaceships and Gundams. I was impressed that they had the Ultra Magnus, Jetfire and Prowl because that's the kind of stuff I only expect to see online. 8 bucks each is great especially since they're at least that plus shipping if you order them through the internet. It's nice to see these things in person but part of me wishes the boxes weren't absent. I'd bite if I could get all the packaging and the terrible candy I'll never eat along with the robots. But this display didn't look like it was totally finished yet so maybe they do have the boxes and they'll put them up later.
ALL THE LOST SOULS (OF CHOGOKIN)
Massive glass cases full of robots are part of the reason Tate's is the preferred destination for the discriminating toy robots enthusiast. The other part is all their Godzillas. Tate's understands that organization is important and they segment their selections accordingly. There is a method to the presentation here, unlike retail stores or even other comic shops that are satisfied with just lumping robots alongside action figures and super hero statues. No, Tate's knows that Japanese super robots deserve their own section and if anything else is to be displayed next to them it should be kaiju monsters.
The super robot section was looking healthy with a whole bunch of Soul of Chogokin and robots of various vintages and superness. It may be hard to imagine from the pictures above but that wall of Godzillas is adjacent to the big glass display case of robots. I've tried to position the pictures with respect to how the actual layout is when you're at the store. There was some cool stuff buried in that glass display case so the following pictures go through it all on a shelf-by-shelf basis.
Oh my god! Triple jumbo Grendizers all the way across the sky! They're so vivid! Up top is the jumbo scale stuff obviously too large to fit under the glass. Tate's made the tough call not to put the recent Shogun Warrior GoLion and Dairugger jumbos here but I think they made the right choice. Maybe. It's debatable whether those should be here or over in the Voltron section given that they're described as Shogun Warriors and not Voltrons on their boxes. But then again, GoLion and Dairugger15 were never Shogun Warriors. But on the other hand, GoLion was a GoDaiKin so shouldn't the GoLion jumbo at least be in this section? This is obviously a huge topic of controversy here in the Kingdom Macrocrania. I don't know how I ever got any sleep last night.
There's a Daitarn 3 back there among the kaijuices. I don't speak kaiju so my terminology might be a bit off.
I don't know if those are Shogun Warrior 5 inch Poseidons or the straight up Popys. If they are Shoguns I can't tell what versions they may be from this shot. Honestly I didn't notice them when I was talking the picture so I didn't take a closer look.
That's a smaller scale Dorvak Mugen Calibur (aka Roadbuster) hiding behind the SoC Garada K7.
A whole lotta SoCing going on at Tate's. Some Xabungle on this shelf. I have a small Irongear in a box similar to that one but I'm not sure if the one I currently own is a bootleg. I also had that toy as a kid so I get all nostalgic when I see one but it's hard to tell if any of them are the exact same as my childhood one because there are so many bootlegs with similar boxes.
The case goes out with a bang as a SoC Ideon and a GoDaiKin Laserion round out the final level of super robot fun. Those Ideons are a bit tough to come by nowadays. All in all this case was a pretty good show of Chogokin. It was like a nice booth at MegaCon. Actually it was a bit better. Honestly if it weren't for the guests I'd never have a reason to go to any convention and instead I'd just come here and look at robots all day.
NOW I ENTER THESE HALLOWED HALLS...A ROBOTS LOOKER!
Meanwhile over in the area I like to call the American toy robots of Japanese toy robots section we have stuff from the great 80s cartoon robot shows. This wall here is dominated by Transformers and Macross. Some highlights include a nice sampling of Yamato 1/44 and 1/60 scale Valkyries featuring the 1/44 Angel Bird custom. There's a 1/55 Bandai Roy Focker and a whole bunch of Toynami masterpiece veritechs that got cropped out of the shot. There's the Takara reissue minicars set that has the Bumblebee with the remolded head and also some Binaltech Arcees. But the real star of this display is that glass case to the far left.
On the upper left is a straight on shot of the Transformers case. You can see how it's a nice selection of Transformers, mostly of '84 through '86 vintage but there are some more recent pieces in there as well. I imagine this is impressive enough to people who aren't extremely well versed on tronians Hasbronian but there is also something for the discerning toy robots archaeologist. If you know what you're looking at there are some pieces here that are of historical significance with mucho wow factor. Like that Diaclone Insecter Robo Grasshopper type and the boxed Deluxe Insecticons he's on top of. You don't see that at K-Mart everyday.
But here's the real Oh-holy-crap-what-is-this-thing-doing-here moment. That's a Milton Bradley Megatron. Over in Europe the first few waves of Transformers were released in Milton Bradley boxes but what makes Megatron special is that he was a mid-'85 release. So instead of getting two full Christmases worth of Megatron like we had in the states, Europe only saw Megatron briefly for a few months before he was replaced on the shelves by Galvatron. So this is one of the rarest Megatron packaging variations out there. What it's doing at Tate's I don't know but I'm learning to not underestimate this store's ability to get stuff that's not just nice but outright Transformer archaeologist historical artifact level nice.
There's a New Years Special Convoy and a loose Powermaster Optimus. The only thing scarier than realizing New Years Convoy came out almost ten years ago is knowing Powermaster Optimus Prime is almost 24. I still remember seeing New Years Convoy for the first time at Botcon 2002 and Powermaster Prime for the first time at K-Mart on Zaragosa Road in El Paso in 1988. I ended up getting my PMOP from El Paso's first Toys R Us that same year. I hear they're going to close that store soon. That's going to be a sad day for me. Zaragosa K-Mart is still going strong, though.
SOME OF THESE CATS ARE ON THE LOOSE BUT OTHERS ARE STILL IN THEIR BOXES
Speaking of still going strong, Tate's still has a ton of old Thundercats. It looks like that Snarf I had my eye on sold a long time ago. Oh well Voltron is my preferred space cat anyways and he was well represented in both vehicle and space lion form here. The Shogun Warrior jumbos stand on top of the case and a section of the top shelf is dedicated to Voltronians of an older vintage. What was really impressive to me though were the Panosh Place action figure bad guys and the lion set. That's all the baddies there except for Robeast Scorpius. I guess Robot Chicken has made Scorpius the more sought after of the two Robeasts. Plus they had some sort of crazy ST scale Dairugger gifset with a pellet gun and Dairugger discs to shoot at.
I'll do a Flickr album and dump all the pics I took so you can see everything here unedited and more old toys including more robots, some GI Joe, more Thundercats, some Masters of the Universe and lots of other stuff.
It's March 31, 1986 and a couple lions and some kind of weird monkey are on the loose! Who will stop them? Yes! It's Ohio Magnus! KILL 'EM ALL, OHIO MAGNUS!
It's the 35th episode of the Roboplastic Podcastalypse and it's more fun than taking a Snowspeeder to the face! Yes it's a most Star Warsian adventure as the Nostrodomatron revenges returns to Texas for Fan Days IV with the new hope of talking to some people that know a thing or two about drawing robots. Are all Star Wars conventions really toy robots conventions in disguise? They are from a certain point of view! So join me for over an hour of shocking revelations like how they make those giant Transformer standees in the stores, who drew those lenticular cards they packed in with Transformers that one time and how much I paid for a potentially deadly Mattel Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper in the dealer room! All this and more, much more in this "EVER SINCE THE OPERATION I'M YOUR MOM, TOO" edition of the podcastalypse!
Luke there's something else you need to know about your dad.....
WEAR WHAT MUST BE WORN!
I put up a ton more pictures of just about everything I mentioned in the show (and more) over at Flickr in a set called crazysteve at Fan Days 2011. Check it out if you wanna see more Star Wars fans, collectors, toys, costumes, artists, celebrities and Transformer coloring books from 1985 than you can shake a gimmer stick at. For even more convention pictures check out Dallas ComicCon's Facebook page.
Illustrator Jamie Snell has worked on 5Finity's Voltron projects and IDW's Transformers comics
Artist Brian Rood has done numerous covers for IDW's Transformers comics and also packaging art for Hasbro
THEY COULD DRAW A MEAN R2 IF THEY HAD TO
Fan Days has a bit of a reputation as a Star Wars convention but the organizers mix it up enough that you can be comfortable as a fan of just about anything and find stuff to do and people to meet. Being a bit of a robot fan I was able to find quite a few artists who had done illustration in an official capacity on a lot of my favorites like Voltron and the Transformers. They were illustrators who worked on everything from Voltron cards and Transformer comics and packaging to the Dark of the Moon standees you see in stores wherever Transformer toys or movies are sold. It was awesome and I could tell they were happy to talk to me, which means I could also tell none of them have ever listened to the Roboplastic Podcastalypse.
Steve Sansweet, Gus Lopez and Duncan Jenkins teamed up for a panel on Star Wars collecting that blew my Ewok mind
THEY EVEN BOUGHT THE DROIDS THEY WEREN'T LOOKING FOR ANYWAYS
I've always felt like Star Wars collectors are the gold standard for the sharing and distribution of information among collecting communities. The panelists on the Star Wars collecting panel at Fan Days are a big reason for that. Steve Sansweet, Gus Lopez and Duncan Jenkins are so legendary that I'm a GoBots fan and I know who they are. So it was awesome to actually get to meet Gus and Duncan and pick up their book Gus and Duncan's Guide to Star Wars Prototypes. Star Wars is really lucky to have these guys and I even told them that. I said I wished GoBots had someone like them in its fandom. Then Duncan told me that I could be that person and after I did the work then I'd reap the benefits of having accomplished things for that fandom. I kind of laughed because while it would be cool to be the Duncan Jenkins of GoBots, I really want to be the Duncan Jenkins of the fandom where girls dress up in metal bikinis.
Illustrator Lawrence Reynolds has done freelance work for Hasbro including point of purchase displays for Dark of the Moon
Gus and Duncan were signing their books for free. This was great because the signed version is $20 more online.
Fans active in the Star Wars collecting community will look at this picture and recognize Brian and Karl from the upcoming Star Wars collecting documentary Plastic Galaxy. Then fans active in the Star Wars collecting community will look at this picture and wonder who the heck I am.
Double Steve autographs all the way across the page! They're so vivid!
Watching my son color the old Transformer coloring books I got for him at Fan Days is the most insanely surreal experience I've had in a while. He's now as old as I was when I got my Shogun Warrior Dragun. It's like the Transformers stuff that came out when I was 11 are his Shoguns. I was thinking a modern four year old may be a bit too sophisticated for this old robot stuff but he told me he likes it. I half expected him to say it was too retro or something. It's weird how I can have childish interests but still have no idea what it's like to be a child.
Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.
