The destruction of the 53rd seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of a super dimensional cardboard fortress crashing into southern Florida! Yes it's a Robotecatastrophe as the Nostrodomatron pays several hundred dollars for a cardboard box in the shape of his favorite giant cartoon spaceship from the 80s, the SDF-1! Listen in Zentraediriffic terror as I relate tales of the rarest, most impractical and ridiculously oversized paper airplane ever sold as part of any toy robots line. Plus I talk Robotech for an hour with the guy who owned it before me, who as it turns out wasn't a giant space alien named Zor. Is this the largest Robotech item ever sold at retail? Is the SDF-1 the Fortress Maximus of Robotech or is Fortress Maximus the SDF-1 of Transformers? Where in the world am I going to put a nearly 5 foot long cardboard spaceship? Find out none of these answers and more in this I DON'T THINK IKEA MAKES A SHELF THIS BIG (AND OTHER ROBOTECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES) edition of the podcastalypse!
Nowadays we don't get as much wacky cross merchandising of sci-fi cartoon toys as we did back in the 80s and perhaps the greatest victim of this modern day toy company conservatism is the cardboard playset. Vintage Star Wars is chock full of cardboard backdrops from the Palitoy Death Star to the Cloud City playset. GoBots had the Super GoBots Guardian Headquarters and Transformers had both the S.T.A.R.S. mailaway Control Center and the Warren Activity Center. And Robotech had this! The Play Make SDF-1 is the largest cardboard 80s playset I have ever seen. Staggeringly huge, it measures 4 feet 11 inches in length. That's enough to dwarf Fortress Maximus in spaceship mode. You'd think that it would be legendary in 80s kid circles, but I've never heard any stories from people who had one or knew a kid down the block that had one. I never knew they existed until the late 90s and even then there are very few pictures of them on the internet. So when mine arrived I built it right up and documented the building process in a gallery at Flickr and also over at the RoboFacial Bookocalypse. After completing this mighty behemoth I can understand why toy companies stopped with the cardboard playsets-not because there were no more awesome spaceship designs, but because Play Make used up all the world's cardboard making these.
The destruction of the 52nd seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of the Nostrodomatron crashing and smashing and parking and swapping into your parking space in an explosion of tables and tables of roboplasticos! Yes it was time for Tate's Comics Park and Swap 2013 and I was there with a van full of robotastic swappage ready to destroy countless customers' lives one toy robot at a time. Thrill to my incredible adventures as I relate swashbuckling highlights of my legendary experience selling used robots for ten bucks from the back of my van in the parking lot of a comic book store. What is the secret of the $250 devirginized Trypticon? What excuses did potential customers give me for wanting to buy Kiss Players Convoy? What excuses did I make to keep customers from buying my Fort Max? Find out all this and less in this HOW MUCH IS THAT FORT MAXIE IN THE WINDOW? edition of the podcastalypse!
Are you an extreme left wing bike gangster with a chainsaw and repressed psychotic anger issues? Are you a robot that turns into a self-conscious Lamborghini, a depressed Porsche, or a micro cassette that is hard to get along with on a personal level? Well Roboplastic Podcastalypse Episode 34 is for you! Let Dr. Steve L.K. Macrocranios guide you in this one hour therapy session where we'll examine the most infamous mentally disturbed robot (and non-robot) cartoon characters from Prince Adam to Spongebob Squarepants to Zartan. And speaking of everyone's favorite paranoid schizophrenic swamp skiing Dreadnok, we'll take a good hard look at the Zartan controversy of 1984 and see how several mental health organizations did not appreciate Cobra being an equal opportunity employer of action figures with mental problems. Dr. Macrocranios knows that when you're a robot that turns into a car, you can literally drive yourself crazy. So join me now in this EVERY STUNTICON COLLECTOR HAS A MENTAL BREAKDOWN edition of the Podcastalypse!
But before we get into the mental illness antics of imaginary toy robots, let's talk about mine! I cosplayed for the very first time at a convention called Animate!Miami last month. I guess I was really inspired when I was reading the comments at the bottom of a news article about the latest shooting incident some crazy wacko did at the time. The inspiring commenter wrote something like, "We will be dead for trillions and trillions of years and our lives are but a blink of an eye in the span of eternity" or something like that. I immediately knew that although everybody else would take it as advice to kiss their kids and go skydiving or whatever, I knew what he was really telling me was to go to a Brony convention dressed as a robot from a cancelled 1984 toyline before I die. So I just ran with it. At 38 years old I taped a bunch of cardboard together to look like a robot from a 1984 cartoon that only had one episode and I went to a con where nobody knew what I was and most of the attendees were younger than my Super Nintendo. And although it is probably 30 years and several childhoods too late to be dressing up as Hun-Dred the Conqueror and have people recognize the costume, I'm kind of glad I got it done within my once-in-a-trilion years window.
WHO ZARTED?
Did you ever notice that children's entertainment is filled with tons of mentally disturbed characters? Eeyore is depressed, Charlie Brown has insecurity issues, and that Calvin kid was the poster boy for paranoid schizophrenia. But for some reason those characters are tolerated while others like Zartan are not! As I was going through old newspapers from 1984 I ran across a ton of articles from December of that year detailing the story of Zartan's file card controversy. So what I wanted to do with this episode was explore the controversy surrounding Zartan to see how it impacted Hasbro's practice of writing character profiles, especially for the Transformers. But get this-the Transformers post Zartan were some of the most whacked out, violent mental cases in all of kids' toys and television, yet no consumer groups went after Hasbro for their portrayal of robots with mental health issues! Why was this? Well I have a couple ideas and I discuss them to myself in the show. Because being a master of cardboard robot disguises and talking to yourself obsessively about schizophrenic toy controversies from 29 years ago is a totally normal thing to do (JUST DON'T TELL MY PSYCHIATRIST).
Sears November 18, 1984
FIBZIB-FRENZY IS BLUE AND ZARTAN IS TOO
This Sears ad from November '84 is a pretty typical example of how the Zartan was advertised in newspapers. Just like the cartoon and commercials, nowhere did they make note of or call attention to his schizophrenia. In order to pick up on that you really had to be an attention paying, filecard reading consumer. I don't think the Indiana Mental Health Association actively had people going out and reading GI Joe filecards to see which ones were negative portrayals of mental illness, so I'd guess that this was picked up on by an alert parent who let them know about it. (This ad is notable for a few non Zartanian reasons, too. It's the only use of Jetfire line art I have ever found in an ad from 1984 and it's the only ad I've ever come across that includes the art of all four Decepticon cassettes without Soundwave.)
Zartan 1984
Zartan 2001
STILL CRAZY AFTER SEVEN MORE YEARS
What really trips me out is that after Hasbro censored the original filecard (above left) and deleted all mention of Zartan's mental problems for the '85 edition of the figure, they went back in 2001 and added it all back in, with exception of the schizophrenia. It's essentially the same mentally disturbed guy, though! Yet this time there was no consumer outrage. But I guess the 2000s were a much different time. Heroes in comics were as deranged and scary as the bad guys they were fighting, so a Zartan with multiple personalities in 2001 was small time bad guy dysfunction. Hasbro has since stopped using Zartan's mental illness as a selling point in their filecards.
The 51st episode of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is a most dangerous intersection of ebay addiction, secret lost product release date knowledges and toy robot blow up dolls. Thrill to the almost daring adventures of the Nostrodomatron as I talk 35 year old toy robots news to myself while sitting at a bus stop at what used to be the most dangerous intersection in America. Then hear me squeal like rubber tires on a Stunticon as I realize an important ebay auction is ending so I rush home for a date with destiny and hopefully a future date with a Great Mazinga bop bag. Why were there so few ads for GoDaiKin toys in 1982 and '83? What year were the Superion and Menasor giftsets first released? And what kind of parent gives their kids Parasites for Christmas? All this plus part two of my Robo Force conversation with John of ToyFinity.com and Sean (the guy who bought Tiltor for 25 bucks) in this I'VE BLOWN BOTH OPTIMUS PRIME AND TRANZOR-Z edition of the podcastalypse!
HOW MUCH WEIRDO MUST A WEIRDO BE BEFORE HE CAN BE A HERO?
I bought my first old toy robots line art catalog recently. This must sound like the Pope saying he just bought his first bible. I understand it's a shock to some people that this milestone comes so late in my career, given I fancy myself the Indiana Jones of old toy robots newspaper ads. But the truth is I have very little in common with the real Indiana Jones other than sometimes I feel like librarians want to make out with me. Yeah I waste a lot of time looking for toy robot artifacts that will eventually be sealed up in boxes like so many Roswell aliens and Arks of the Covenant in some New Mexican aircraft hangar, but my collection of old toy robot drawings books is far less valued by Nazis and all I had to do to get them was be searching eBay in the right category. So it was little surprise to me when I was going through Computers/Tablets & Networking > Monitors, Projectors & Accs > Other that I found the 1985 Matchbox Dealer Ad Planner. It is an awesome book featuring line art of the legendary lead paint Voltrons, a line of robot monster cars called Parasites, and tons of other possibly deadly and/or inappropriately named Matchbox toys that parents gave their kids for Christmas back in 1985. And since the book gives me all I need to make my own 1985 toy robots ad, I get more interactivity from it than Indiana Jones can get from his aliens (although talking with dead aliens is about as much fun).
A WISH IS JUST A F.I.S.H.
F.I.S.H.B.o.T. (Fuck I Should Have Bid on That) of the episode goes to ebay auction 271067160953 for a Shogun Warriors department store special catalog supplement (above left) proving that Combattra was indeed exclusive to upscale retailers as I had speculated back in episode 36. With a ninety-nine bucks BuyItNow I figured it would be up for auction forever. Then it sold a day after I first saw it! F.I.S.H.B.o.T. I say! F.I.S.H.B.o.T.! But then there's ebay auction 190732262858 for a Bandai price list from 1982 (above right) where the picture supplied is so good I don't have to win the auction to get what I want, which is information. I highly covet the material but I'm Not Bidding on That! Would that be a F.I.N.B.o.T.?
ROCKET SNIPE!
Up left is ebay auction 281014750917 for a pretty cool Mattel 1980 catalog. Usually these aren't a big deal but this one has Mattel employee names scribbled on the pages. This led me on an internet search for the men who designed Rodan. I suspect one of their names is Ray Gross based on these page scribbles, but despite several minutes of furious Google searching I am no closer to finding his email address so he can turn down an interview with me. Oh well. During my trip to McAllen, Texas, I came across an old ad for Shogun Warrior bop bags and commented at length about them back in episode 36. Well guess what popped up on eBay after I never in a million years thought I'd find one? And so the finding of this auction begins a 20 minute odyssey in the middle of this episode fraught with human tragedy, perseverance and last minute bid sniping as I curse the faceless other butthole sniper bidders who would deny my lips the opportunity to touch what amounts to a Tranzor-Z blow up doll.
The breaking of the 49th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of a cartoon kangaroo jumping on your frowny face! Cry along with the Nostrodomatron as I realize it has been almost twenty years since countless millions of frowns were forever frozen upside down when Lionel Corporation closed the doors of its toy supermarkets. Yes it's a Lionel Playworldocalypse with special guest William "Mr. Playworld" Hamby bouncing in to reminisce about growing up a Playworld kid and working at the Toy Capital of the World. Why do billions of children agree Playworld was the greatest toy supermarket (and pool table and outdoor rifle dealer) of all time? Whatever happened to all those buildings that used to be Playworlds in southern Florida? How many miles can a kid ride a bike balancing the GI Joe Defiant Space Vehicle Launch Complex on the handlebars? And why does October always smell to me like Kaycee Kangaroo? Find out all this and more in this WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ABOUT THIS FROWN NOW?!?! edition of the Podcastalypse!
When I was a kid growing up in El Paso, Texas, my life was changed forever at the age of ten with the grand opening of a Lionel Playworld just a few blocks from me back in October of 1985. There was nothing else like it. Toys R Us wouldn't open in El Paso for another two years. Suddenly my toy exposure went from the single aisle of action figures at K-Mart to worshipping Playworld's full blown toy robots Valhalla where they had entire gondolas dedicated to toy robots alone. I loved that store. Then it went out of business and consequently my life turned to crap. Well when I visited Colorado for Vintage Space Toast Tour Denverado I was surprised to find that they had a couple of Playworld stores in the 80s and those had been around since at least '78. It was an eye-popping revelation. It's like living in the present where Halloween is only once a year and then excavating the site of some long lost tribe of Colorodoan Halloween people civilization who had Halloween every day. I thought Playworld was just one local store that existed in El Paso, not an entire chain of multiple toy Valhallas scattered across the universe. So you can imagine how blown away I was when I moved to southern Florida and found Playworld was down here since the early seventies and they were all over the place! Broward County is a virtual graveyard of Playworlds! I became obsessed what those buildings were like now. While the idea of visiting the corpses of one's childhood Valhallas might be depressing to some people, I decided I wanted to visit them all anyways. Nevermind that they would probably be old, abandoned, or converted into something else. I just wanted to visit the buildings that were once brothers to the store that shaped my childhood. And maybe, just maybe, one of them may still be something remotely similar to a toy store. I hoped I could at least find something robot related for sale at one of these used-to-be-toy-heavens.
Lionel Playworld 24 October 1970
IT'S A WAR ON HIGH TOY PRICES AND THEY BROUGHT THE GUNS
So I started digging deep in the newspaper archives of the local library, which is where all the most revered ancient knowledges of secret lost Floridian toy civilizations are kept. Sure enough, I was able to figure out Playworld opened down here in a big way in 1970. The ad above is one of the earliest for the Playworlds of southern Florida. There was yet another surprise in store for me. When Playworld first started it was a place where you could buy sporting goods and camping equipment in addition to toys! Eventually the sporting goods would be phased out but in those early ads you could usually find rifles and pool tables. Note how there are four stores listed in Broward County and only one in Miami (the Hialeah store on west 49th). At its peak during the 70s and 80s Playworld would have up to 8 stores operating simultaneously in southern Florida's Broward and Miami-Dade counties. With the exception of the Oakland Park location, these original Broward stores and the 49th street one in Miami would stay open from 1970 through the chain's demise.
Oakland Park
Lauderhill on State Road 7
Pompano on US1
West Palm on Military Trail
A TOUR OF(what used to be) THE PLAYWORLDS OF BROWARD COUNTY
Once I had the addresses down I went out on my quest to visit the locations that used to be Playworld. The buildings pictured above are the sites of the first four Playworlds in Broward County. They all share a distinct shape, which leads me to believe the structures were built by Lionel Corporation. It's a form characterized by an overall elongated rectangular front with a large area protruding up from above the entrance that made space for where the marquee originally mounted. Of the original four, three are still occupied and in business today. One is an art supply store, one is an antique mall, and the last one is split up into a dollar store, a furniture store, and an AutoZone. So it's possible for some people to walk into the same building that used to be their Playworld and stand in the spot where they first bought Star Wars figures in 1978 (although that spot may now be an endcap stocked with antifreeze). I was hoping that the one that's now an antique mall would have some old Transformers or other kinds of robot that maybe would have first been sold at that building when it was a Playworld. I was also hoping I would pass my Calculus mid term but that didn't happen, either. But if anyone is looking for hardcover volumes of the erotic art of H.R. Giger I know a certain antique mall in Pompano Beach you need to check out.
(this may be)Coral Springs-the last Playworld ever built The Fountains location-the last Broward Playworld
IT ENDED NOT WITH A BOUNCE
After the initial burst of three Broward stores in 1970, three additional Playworlds would open up in Broward County from 1973 through 1988. There was the Hollywood location in 1973 followed by the Coral Springs Mall store in 1986 and then the one at the Fountains Shopping Center in 1988. The Hollywood location lasted for 10 years before closing in 1984 but the other two stayed open until the chain's demise. The Coral Springs store is notable (according to this message board post) for being the very last Playworld built by the Lionel Corporation. If this is true, Playworlds opened after 1986 all moved into existing buildings. I am not 100% certain that the empty building I took a picture of is the exact location of the Lionel Playworld because I have no eyewitness testimony to back me up unlike all the other buildings I've taken pictures of. But I'm pretty confident that it was.
Speaking of existing buildings, the Lauderhill location in the Fountains shopping center is also significant as being the last Lionel Playworld opened in Florida. The chain died 5 years after this store opened its doors. It was later converted to a SteinMart but it remains unoccupied to this day. One of my native Floridian friends told me that there used to be big lion statues at the entrance to that building when it was a Playworld but they've since been taken down. The Fountains store most closely resembles the brown bricky exterior of the Playworld built near my home in El Paso. I never knew Playworlds of the early seventies with their creamy white exteriors that looked like long giant soap bars. My Playworld looked like it was a castle and when I saw the Fountains store I instinctively knew it used to be a Playworld because it looked so much like the one by my house when I was a kid.
Lionel Playworld 07 October 1970
Lionel Playworld 24 June 1981
COUNTDOWN TO FROWNTOWN
Well that wraps up this 20 years too late tour of the Lionel Playworlds of Broward County. I would like to summarize the comings and goings of Playworld stores in this area so I made a list of all the southern Florida Playworlds including the years they opened and closed. Since I'm not a native I don't know if this information is 100% accurate but it's the best I've been able to piece together from the sources I have. So now I present to you...
A chronological listing of the opening and closings of Lionel Playworld stores in southern Florida (Broward and Miami Dade counties) based on newspaper ads and news reports:
1970-LAUDERHILL (closed 1993) 1621 N. State Rd No. 7 (Now an abandoned building) 1970-OAKLAND PARK (closed 1971) 1033 E. Oakland Park Blvd (Now a Pearl discount art supplies) 1970-HIALEAH (closed 1993) 1170 West 49th Street (Now a La Ideal baby store) 1970-POMPANO BEACH closed (1993) 960 North Federal Highway (Now the Sugar Chest Antique Mall) 1970-WEST PALM BEACH closed (1993) 1722 Military Trail North (Now AutoZone/Aaron's/Deals)
1971-An ad from 1971 1971-CORAL WAY (closed 1993) Shopping Ctr. 8621 Coral Way (Now Party City) 1971-NORTH MIAMI (closed 1993) Biscayne Blvd at 123rd (unconfirmed as a present day Ross store)
1973-An ad from 1973 1973-HOLLYWOOD (closed 1984) Pembroke & 441 (Now a D&B Tile)
1980-CUTLER RIDGE (closed 1985) 20805 S Dixie Highway
1986-CORAL SPRINGS (closed 1993) W. Atlantic Blvd & Riverside Dr. (Now abandoned)
1988-An ad from 1988 1988-PLANTATION (closed 1993) 801 S. University Drive The Fountains Shopping Center (Now abandoned)
1993-The closings hit Florida
Steve Lydic is an illustrator who drew sketch cards for the upcoming EnterPlay/Breygent Marketing Transformers trading card set. He talked about why he went with characters from Transformers:Prime for many of his subjects even though he really loves the old robots, too. Check him out at his Deviant Art page ~stevelydic.
Banky also did cards in the upcoming Transformer set and decided to take on robots from the Michael Bay movies. She talked about what it's like drawing Michael Bay's robots knowing Michael Bay would have final approval of her art! Check out some of her Transformer sketches at her Deviant Art page ~BankyOne.
Long time friend of the Podcastalypse Mike "Locoduck" Duron is seen here rendering some obscure, mega popular and fantastically handsome Japanese super robot. Mike and I talked growing up in El Paso, drawing robots in and out of their disguises, and of course, Sugar Boogarz. Check him out on Facebook at Locoduck Studios and also at locoduck.com.
THE NEWEST OLDEST TRANSFORMER AD AND THE CURIOUS CHRONOLOGY OF JAREDMAN328
Of course no podcastalypse would be complete without me talking about old toy robots newspaper ads. As I walked around PalmCon I was reminded of a matter of great roboplasticological importance and I promised I'd expand upon it here in the show notes. Well back when I posted the very first Transformers commercial on YouTube I got a comment from "JaredMan328", who laid out a chronology of release for the very first Transformers explaining what robots hit the shelves exactly when back in 1984. This subject is so difficult for anyone to speak with any certainty about that I was impressed he gave it a shot. According to JaredMan328, "the first three Transformers released in the US were Hound, Soundwave with Buzzsaw, and Jazz" and the rest came out between June and September, with the Decepticon jets not seeing release until the cartoon hit. At first it seemed like this theory would be easy to disprove since I knew Transformers shipped in mixed assortments with different robots of the same size class in each case. Yet in all my ad searching and case assortment researching, I couldn't 100% refute Jared's chronology because the earliest ad I had was from August '84 (coincidentally showing only two Hounds) and cases have been found with a bunch of the same robot in them. In a way my own experience was backing up JaredMan328's version of toy robot history, and that kind of drove me hexagonal nuts.
Zayre 29 April 1984
LOOK MA, NO HOUNDS
So for the past few years I was extremely annoyed that a totally anonymous YouTube commenter could come out of nowhere and brazenly posit the toy robots equivalent of the theory of relativity and although I knew he was wrong, I had no definite concrete proof to disprove it. What gnawed at me most was that I had no Decepticon jet ad from before September of '84 and no Transformer ad at all earlier than August. You can imagine my elation then at finding this Zayre ad from April 29, 1984 which not only reigns as the earliest Transformer ad I have ever found, but also soundly refutes JaredMan328's evolutionary theory of Cybertronians. Finally I had solid proof of Decepticon jets being sold before September of '84 and also other cars that were not Hound and Jazz being out as early as April. In my own experience I'd heard early Decepticon jet shipping cases had date codes printed on them confirming they shipped in March of '84, but without pictures of those cases I couldn't prove anything. The ad was nice to find because it provided solid proof of a version of events that I assumed was right from circumstantial evidence and common sense, but that I couldn't back up. Not only that, but the ad shed some light on another great Cybertronian mystery revolving around those first three Decepticon jets, namely the issue of where the term "seeker" came from.
SEEKER AND YOU SHALL FIND
The Zayre ad is interesting because it uses two terms that pop up rarely in old Transformer ads-"drones" to describe the Autobot minicars and "seekers" to describe the Decepticon jets. "Seekers" only ever appeared in catalog and newspaper ads and not in the official cartoon or comic continuities, yet it somehow caught on with the fandom at large and eventually became official Transformer canon. Referring to the minicars as drones didn't quite catch on and it's become an obscure footnote in Transformer newsprint ad history. But seekers! Lately I've been getting very lucky with finding ads in enough quantity that the term doesn't seem so obscure to me anymore. I've only ever come across two drone mentions but now I've got a total of four ads referring to the Decepticon jets as seekers. In addition to the April '84 Zayre, there's a November '84 Zayre, a November JC Penney ad and another November '84 ad from a store called Dahlkempers. I've updated the 1984 Decepticon Jets section at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace to include all of these.
JC Penney 11/21/84
Dahlkempers 11/06/84
So what does it all mean? Well I would propose a theory that somewhere there must have existed promotional materials supplied by Hasbro to stores that used these terms. That's a bit of a no-brainer given the circumstantial ad evidence. But finding the exact source of promo material is a lot tougher. "Seeker" and "drone" do not appear in the Decepticon jet and Autobot Minicar pages of the '84 Hasbro toyfair catalog or the 1984 Hasbro price list. My best guesses are that these terms originated in the pages of the '84 line art catalog, '84 pre-Toyfair ordering materials or possibly on the cases themselves. But the line art catalog is my best guess since pre-Toyfair materials were long gone by November of '84 when most of the seeker-using ads came out. Retailers had to have something sent to them somewhat recently at that point and the best guess is it came from the line art book. But since I've never seen the line art book I don't know for sure and I can't explain why the term is not more widely used.
FIRE IN A BOX
Alexanders 09 December 1984
Finally, I wanted to mention that I updated the Jetfire 1984 section of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace with all the earliest Jetfire ads I've ever found, including a really great one from a New York based retail chain called Alexanders from December 09, 1984 featuring a boxed Jetfire. Boxed Jetfires in any ads are super rare, and this is the only one I've found from 1984. It's very special because all the other '84 Jetfire ads I've seen either don't show the figure at all or only show a loose prototype of it. So here's a newsprint example of a production Jetfire still in the box. It's really awesome from a Roboplastological archaeologist point of view and I talk about it a little on the show.
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.
